Studio Final Project:
Paper B was entitled “Disordered Eating in Youths due Media”.
My thesis for my paper was this, “Within the last decade, along with the rise of accessible media there has been an increased rate in disordered eating in youths to young adults. So my paper focused specifically on the effects of social media.
Paper B Question: Why has social media lead to increased rate in youth diagnosed with eating disorders and body dissatisfaction?
Research:
I found in my research that the number of those affected negatively from the outputs of the media were specifically those who had multiple accounts in comparison to those who only maybe had one account or none at all. This was something I touched on in my paper and wanted my studio project to not reflect this as a summary but rather I wanted my project to present this, to show this in a visually stimulating way.
Studio Project:
First off I decided to focus my studio project not solely on the specific topic of eating disorders as not everyone suffers with that but many people can relate to experiencing some form of body dissatisfaction.
For my process: I shared a survey on Google Docs with a few questions pertaining to this subject. I made sure to ask of their gender, if they have an account, have they ever started a diet to lose weight, have they ever felt pressured by the outputs of the media and if they didn’t have an account how that has affected them.
And so for my video composition:
I chose to show eyes in grayscale in my video because I feel that an eye is universal, and general. Everyone has eyes but on the other hand they are very personal and they are the window to the soul or identity of the person. But in someone’s eyes you can’t see their body type or shape you just see a body part that everyone has. I think this was important not to show a full body shot to even the face because I really wanted to focus in on the eyes as the interviewees were talking.
I also had the voices fade in and out and talk over each other because I felt it was more engaging and interesting to listen to then to just hear them talking one after another.
My process did change:
I wasn’t always going to create a video or even use the sound pieces the way I did. At first I just wanted to have people listen to the interview and look at a still image of an eye but I am happy with the way my final piece evolved.
I also used an instrumental piece at a very low sound in the video. It was the song try by Pink. I feel it really relates to this subject.
Would I have done this before this course:
No, my approach on these art projects were very straightforward and simple and so the making of this video and playing with these sound pieces is maybe not something I would have origionally done.
