This snapshot from Fifth Avenue New York shows a huge advert by Zara, a hotdog stand and a lady. Although the subjects have nothing in common in there ordinary lives, in this photo they are showing us how good we can play the game of encoding and decoding in advertisments and what role irony play's in it.

The sheer size of the ad and the downward looking posture of the lady in the ad makes the people in the street look small and silly and perhaps ‘less’ people than the glamours looking models you usually see in the adverts. Infact this is exactly what the advertisment company’s want to say: you are better and feel better if you buy our product.
But the irony is that i don’t feel better if i look at those ad’s and i don’t think the lady that is coming down the stairs is feeling good either.

The advertisment industry has much experience and is way beyond ‘direct’ communication and so is the viewer. We are so used to read and to decode ad’s and images on the streets and in magazines that we have developed a blindspot for pulp and standard advertisments. Nowadays it requires a more sophisticated aproach and seasoned visual communication to get the message across.

This is why Zara doesn’t show a nice summer dress and a happy looking model on the Fifth Avenue but engages with te people on the street with big gestures an even bigger perspectives like the stairs (this ad is next to a very big pedestrians crossing/zebrapad) Like the people on the street, the model in the ad is waiting.. for the light to go green or the Zara shop to open. So you better be looking good while your waiting!

What is the implication of looking exactly? you could say there's nothing going on here, but i would disagree. When we look at Kim Jong Il looking at bubblegum in a factory in North-Korea there is definitly something going on. Why is he looking at bubblegum? Not only is he looking, he is 'touching' the bubblegum with his bear like glove. To me this seemingly lonely looking baby bear is lost and hopelessly searching for love and effection. Others find Kim Jong Il  the best dressed dictator after Muammar Gaddafi, and there are even Kim Jong Il clothing styles seen on the streets. There is a total different perspective for the lady worker in the picture, here 'the looking' and visit of the general to the bubblegum factory is very serious and has great implication for her and her entire family. So while we, the viewer, the general and the lady worker are looking at things we constantly choose between acceptance and rejection (likes and dislikes) of things that we are confrontated with. This way we are able to produce an opinion, develop meaning and in doing so, shape our identity.
Thanks http://kimjongillookingatthings.tumblr.com for putting this up.

When the first astronauts on the moon toke the first photos of the earth, people all over the world saw how small and vulnerable we really were. That view changed moral and social thinking around the globe but seems no longer important today. Nowadays we need constant reminding of the vulnerabilty of the earth by scientists, politician and major disasters and storms. The picture above then seems to have a purpose and if it wasen't for real, could come straight out of a movie or even worse: our own imagination. What would the earht look like inside? are there people living down there? I wonder if chaos would break out if scientist al over the world would all say that these holes could occur everywhere and the earth is in great danger? If you did not have any more information than this picture, it definitly seems that way.

My eye was drawn to this picture because of its composition. Now there is no turning back for me, i can never see again what i saw, when i first encountered this picture. The circkel becomes the focus of your view and the orange dot in the middle of it IS the centre of the picture. Taken literally, it becomes the suspect of the picture and the meaning of this dot grows. This Hooligan is wanted by the Dutch police for his participation in a beach riot last year. I thank the police for choosing this picture to put on there website. Maybe they figured that somebody with an abnormal brain could reproduce this image and detect his neighboor. If you gaze long enough then the colors and shapes become shadows and persons and your brain accordingly gives meaning to what is sees. But it can only see this particular thing because it is 'trained' to see it. Our brain knows that police cameras produce these sorts off images, and our brain is programmed to detect 'people' in shapes and faces in a blending of colors. Our world is programmed to always give meaning to what we see, this way we can give it a place and feel it is save. I think it is also the way for sidedness and stereotypes which do not contribute to creativity. The police officer who put this up maybe agrees with my on this one.

This picture of a man standing next to a emty steel box holding a wooden plate with a cross on it,
transfers a direct meaning to the viewer. Feelings of sadness, lonelyness, emtyness quickly
cross your mind. Although the feeling of the picture is very direct and clear, the basic elements
in the photo that cause our reaction are very subtly. If you look at the elements separate,
they don't carry as much meaning when all the elements combined. For instance the photo would
not have been so strong if you take out eigther the man, or the steel box. Even though you don't
actually 'see' the man looking at the box, you feel there is a strong connexion between the two.

22 dec 09

Funny little creature, 'Proteus Anguinus' a salamander kind and very rare and beautiful. Doesn't see a thing because it lives only in totall darkness. This is why over many years of evolution his eyes have disappeared and he pray's on smaller animals via electrical senses also used by sharks and some crocodiles. For me a nice depiction of adaptation by nature.

Fascinating how scientists often and by chance create beautiful things. Take this satellite for instance, looks like a house to me! The people at ESA Belgium, who created this just wanted to collect data from the northpole and while they were working on instruments for the satellite created this 'roofshaped' construction. Interesting to see how these kinds of processes of development work. Many artists i think, work in the same way. They are looking at how the smaller elements/components of the entire piece work and how the artist or scientist wants them to work. Then decide how to change, make or add more elements. This process stipulates the final product.