10 Word pitch 2

Pairing up my 10 words

Empathy and Repetition

I have used repetition to illustrate empathy to show empathy's effect on society rather than the individual. Empathy is not good way to determine public policy because it makes us value the life of one individual we can relate to over a large number of people who we have no direct connection to. I have used repetition to illustrate large numbers of people as indistinguishable from one another rather than as individuals in contrast to an individual that we can identify and therefore empathise. Paul Bloom talks about empathy saying "empathy is narrow; it connects us to particular individuals, real or imagined, but is insensitive to numerical differences and statistical data."

Doorways and Escapism

I have used doorways to illustrate escapism because doorways symbolise entry into another world. Escapism is term that cover a large range of activities that are seen as an escape from the worries and responsibilities of our real lives. Doorways are often used in escapist fiction to symbolise the transition from one world to another, eg The Secret Garden, Coraline, The Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe etc. Neil Gaiman talks about us returning from these places with new tools and weapons that help us to deal with the issues we face in the real world so I wanted to use doorways to show not only the transition into escapism but also the positive aspects of our return and how the real world looks when viewed from the other side of door.

Aperture and Bias

I have used aperture to illustrate bias. Empathy is widely regarded as something positive but it is based on bias. We are more likely to feel empathy towards someone we find attractive or who we have something in common with such as ethnicity, language or religion. I wanted to use aperture to show that we tend to focus on these individuals and this prevents us from the seeing the wider objective picture. I have used a camera aperture over the top of another image to show how we are blocking ourselves from seeing the bigger picture and how this can alter our perception.

Character and Fiction

Fiction is one of the overarching themes of my research, one of the things that makes it so effective is the ability to make you connect with and see through the eyes of the characters in the story. I wanted to use characters in the same way to communicate the influence fiction has had on both the individual and society as a whole. Characters can be used to guide the readers response either by guiding them towards a point of view or pushing them away from it (good/evil, sympathetic/unsympathetic).

Morals and Glasses

I have used glasses to represent the way our views and moral judgments are influenced by escapist activities. I have looked at studies that demonstrate the effect certain activities have on our expectations and our ideas of moral responsibility. Studies have indicated that people who watch and read fiction (as opposed non-fiction) are more likely to believe in the just world hypothesis, That good things happen to good people and bad people will pay for their actions in the end. This belief colours the perspective of the individual and alters the way they view events in the world around them. This view is not based on reality, bad things happen to good people, the majority of crime goes unpunished and some bad people prosper. On the one hand it seems as thought the just world theory encourages positive behaviours but the problem is that this way of thinking can lead to victim blaming, a belief that if something bad happens to you, you must have done something to deserve it.

I have used glasses to show how peoples moral vison is coloured and distorted by the perspectives derived from the fiction which they read.

10 word pitch

10 Word pitch

Empathy

-the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

-the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner; also :  the capacity for this.

Door

-a means of access or participation

-any entrance or access to a place

Repetition

-the act or an instance of repeating or being repeated

-the recurrence of an action or event

Escapism

-the tendency to seek distraction and relief from unpleasant realities, especially by seeking entertainment or engaging in fantasy.

-habitual diversion of the mind to purely imaginative activity or entertainment as an escape from reality or routine

Aperture

-an opening, hole, or gap.

-the diameter of the objective lens or mirror of a telescope

Character

-the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual

-the complex of mental and ethical traits marking and often individualizing a person, group, or nation

Morals

-standards of behaviour; principles of right and wrong

-expressing or teaching a conception of right behaviour

- Teaching or exhibiting goodness or correctness of character and behaviour

- The lesson or principle contained in or taught by a fable, a story, or an event

Bias

-inclination or prejudice for or against one person or group, especially in a way considered to be unfair

-an inclination of temperament or outlook; especially :  a personal and sometimes unreasoned judgment

Fiction

-literature in the form of prose, especially novels, that describes imaginary events and people

-something that is invented or untrue

-a useful illusion or pretense

Glasses

-a pair of lenses set in a frame resting on the nose and ears, used to correct or assist defective eyesight

10 word pitch 2

Pairing up words and relating them to my project

Fiction and Sanctuary

Fiction is often described as a sanctuary, a place to hide away from the circumstances of your own life. It can form a place to retreat to and find comfort, a new world to immerse yourself into. In my research and my essay I have been looking at the uses of fiction and how it can effect us, Some theorists believe it is purely an escapist activity and a way to ignore or hide from our real life responsibilities. In the quote from Neil Gaiman that started off my researching he says that fiction provides us with tools and weapons that we bring back into our real lives to help us deal with the world around us. From my research it would appear that the effect of fiction goes far beyond providing escape for the individual and that it may have had an important impact on the way societies function. my research suggests that fiction can act as a sanctuary but is much more than that and its influence is much more profound and far reaching.

Escapism and Society

The term escapism applies to a variety of activities from playing computer games to recreational drug use, it is often viewed in a negative light and seen as hiding away or ignoring responsibilities. There are clearly negative aspects to a number if not all of the activities if they start to take over an individuals life but here are important positive effects that are often overlooked. In a modern society where we are bombarded with information every minute of everyday it is important to take time out to process this information and make sense of the world around us, escapist activities often form the basis of these times. Escapist fiction, whether in the form of a book, film or television programme has a powerful effect on our beliefs and how we relate to other people around us. Works of fiction have played a part in huge social and political reforms since the invention of the printing press allowing us to understand experience and understand situations and perspectives different from our own.

Empathy and Emotion

Empathy is directly associated with fiction, studies show that individuals that read or watch fiction regularly show higher levels of empathy than an individual that doesn't. Empathy allows associate ourselves with situations we have never experienced and feel to some level the emotion of another person making it easier for us to see their point of view. This seems like a positive effect of escapism/fiction but there are issues with using empathy as a way to make decisions. Empathy does not allow us to feel a connection with a large number of people, we will feel more strongly about one person who we know something about than 100 people that we know nothing about and therefore value there life more. Studies show that we are more likely to empathise with some we have something in common with nationality, skin colour, language etc or someone who we find attractive.

Empathy can also have a detrimental effect on our emotional state, because we fell the emotion of the person we empathise with we can end up taking on too much. Women show higher levels or empathy than men and also higher levels of depression, taking on the pain of everyone around you can have serious emotional implications.

Just World and Beliefs

Fiction and escapism can have a profound effect on our beliefs and may also have an effect on how our society functions, it could be argued that without function the society we live in would not function at all. In the vast majority of works of fiction we are shown a world that is governed by the just world hypothesis. A world where good people are rewarded and bad people get what they deserve in the end, and this affects our beliefs and our behaviour. We are nice to people we meet we perform good deeds that make use feel better because that is what we are supposed to do. The problem is that the world is not just, bad things happen to good people all the time and bad people often prosper (most crimes go unpunished). But if we all acted in these destructive ways and tried to gain all we could from society having no care for anyone else would society still function? Studies show that people that watch/read fiction will conform to just world beliefs and show higher levels of empathy than people that watch/read the news and other non fiction.

Bias and Objectivity

Empathy allows us to share the emotion and situation of other people and the span of empathy has been extended through fiction since the dawn of mass printing. We are able to understand situations we have never been in and see through the eyes of people we have never met. Unfortunately empathy is inherently biased and does not provide us with a perfect model for social policy. Empathy does act as a weapon against selfishness but can cause problems if used to decide public policy. We need to be able to understand that the life of someone we do not know in a far away land is as important as our neighbour and that 100 lives are more important than one, to make these decisions we would need to put our emotional bias caused by empathy to one side and think objectively.

Study Task 9

This post was meant to be part of study task 9 for studio brief 2 but I have done it wrong and based it on my essay and research rather than my visual journal. It has helped me define the key pints of my essay and make changes to it.



Task 1

10 Word Pitch

Ten words that relate to my project

- Fiction

-Escapism

-Empathy

-Just World

- Beliefs

- Society

- Emotion

- Bias

- Objectivity

- Sanctuary

Definitions of fiction

-literature in the form of prose, especially novels, that describes imaginary events and people.

-something that is invented or untrue:

Definitions of escapism

-the tendency to seek distraction and relief from unpleasant realities, especially by seeking entertainment or engaging in fantasy.

Definitions of empathy

-the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

Definitions of just world

-The just-world hypothesis is the assumption that a person's actions are inherently inclined to bring morally fair and fitting consequences to that person, to the end of all noble actions being eventually rewarded and all evil actions eventually punished.

Definitions of Beliefs

-an acceptance that something exists or is true, especially one without proof

-trust, faith, or confidence in

Definitions of society

-the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community

-the community of people living in a particular country or region and having shared customs, laws, and organizations

Definitions of Emotion

-instinctive or intuitive feeling as distinguished from reasoning or knowledge

-a strong feeling deriving from one's circumstances, mood, or relationships with others

Definitions of Bias

-inclination or prejudice for or against one person or group, especially in a way considered to be unfair

-cause to feel or show inclination or prejudice for or against someone or something

Definitions of Objectivity

-the quality of being objective

Definitions of Sanctuary

-refuge or safety from pursuit, persecution, or other danger

-A place of refuge or asylum

"ivory tower A condition of isolation or seclusion from worldly or practical affairs; a sheltered, protected existence removed from the harsh realities of life; an attitude of aloofness or distance from the mainstream of society. The original term appears to have been the French tour d’ivoire first used by the French literary critic Sainte-Beuve in reference to the French writer Alfred Victor de Vigny in his book Pensées d’Août (1837). The expression appeared in English in Brereton and Rothwell’s translation of Bergson’s Laughter (1911):

Each member [of society] must be ever attentive to his social surroundings … he must avoid shutting himself up in his own peculiar character as a philosopher in his ivory tower.

The term has spawned the noun ivory-tow-erism and the adjectives ivory-towerish and ivory-towered ‘impractical, theoretical, removed from reality.’ "
fee dictionary sanctuary

Reflective Evaluation

I have been looking at ways to add to the reflective evaluation section of my essay. I have kept reflecting on my research and talking about its relevance to illustration throughout and included an example of illustration that I think is a good example of the theories from my essay put into practice but wanted to add some of the work from my visual journal to show how I have responded to my research. I did not want to add too much as it would break up the flow of the essay, I don't want it to be broken into separate sections or make it harder to read and understand. I chose one of my illustrations that I think best communicates the effects of the just world hypothesis. 

The illustration is partially covered with another sheet to create an aperture that represents the way our view is distorted by just world beliefs. Looking through the aperture it appears as though the homeless persons situation is of their own making as a result of their own choices and actions. When the aperture of the beliefs is removed the illustration shows the full picture suggesting that the world is not fair and that the homeless person's troubles may well have come about through circumstances beyond their control. I wanted to show how a simplified and distorted world view, even one that encourages positive behaviour can have negative effects.

Glasses

I found this illustration about morality that I think applies to my subject, it shows a man having an eye test using glasses that allow him to see what is right or wrong. I think it works as an illustration of the simplification we use throughout our everyday lives to help us process information and understand the world around us. I would like to create images similar to this in my journal to explore the way that empathy and the just world hypothesis effect our view of the world around us. Lenses we use to help us decide what is right or wrong and encourage us to act in a positive way even if they are based on an unrealistic view of society and human nature. The idea of using glasses or an aperture is something I have already experimented with, I think it is a powerful way to show how we use a variety of methods and influences to filter or focus our view of our surroundings in order to help us make sense our world.

New beginning

I have started writing my new introduction for my essay. My subject has evolved since I first started my research and I have changed to focus based on the feedback I received. It was suggested in my research that I had used too many practitioners as references rather than philosophers and researchers. I didn't think I had but I read my essay back and realised I had dedicated a large amount of the essay to quotes and theories from practitioners and the other research I had done was crammed into a relatively small section. I am in the process of rewriting my essay focussing on triangulating the findings of these researchers and theorists. It was also pointed out in the feedback that my essay draft was disjointed and unstructured. I think this is definitely true, The draft was a summary of my research without enough direction or evaluation. I have changed my essay question to better suite the findings from my research that highlight the problems faced by authors and illustrators in terms of social prejudice arising from genre snobbery and how practitioners address recent studies relating to just world theory and empathy regarding the ethics of their work. In my draft I didn't make it clear how my research was directly related to my practice and I think thee changes will address that.

This is my work so far on my essay question and introduction.

"This essay will investigate fictions role in society since the invention of the printing press; the negative view of the escapist aspect of fiction; fiction’s role in major societal shifts; and the effects of fiction on both the individual and society. Illustrators create images that communicate stories, ideas and emotions, often working alongside authors of fiction. Understanding the impact of these narratives and representations on their audience allows illustrators to make conscious decisions in terms of the ethical, cultural and social dimensions of their subject and the concerns of their audience. Starting with the conventional notion of fiction as escapism this essay will consider opposing views of the value of fictional narratives and will explore the complexity of the issues and the prejudices and assumptions faced by writers and illustrators."

Tutorial

I had a tutorial with on Monday that helped me to decide where to go with my visual journal, I have been trying to explore a range of idea and I think it is time to decide which I think are the strongest and explore variations of them. The two methods of visualisation that I think have worked best up to this point are repetition using holes cut and torn into the paper. it was suggested to me that I could glue in cover pages with doorways cut into them to save pages. A lot of my illustrations appear to show a negative view of empathy because of the theories I have been trying to communicate. What I really want to try and do is present a balanced view point that sums up empathy clearly although I think it will be difficult. I am going to continue to work with character, repetition and doorways to explore and refine my ideas as I think I could make improvements. My aim for the time being is to try and as clearly as possible communicate the effects of empathy on the individual and society.

Empathy

In the group tutorials a few people mentioned that I could create holes in the pages to illustrate the doorways. I tried this with one page that showed a forest through the whole in the page. The idea was to show the new worlds that are opened up to us through fiction, we can visit parts of the world we have never visited and start to understand how people all over the world live. Working in this way gave me an idea about how I could illustrate another one of the theories from my research. Empathy is flawed because it is based on biased views that we hold and means we will feel more empathy towards people we have something in common with to the extent that we will feel more empathy with one person suffering that 100 people as long as we know something about or have something in common the single person. The glasses in this image represent out views using empathy, we only see the one persons suffering whose name we know and its not until we remove empathy that we see there is a large group of people suffering. I want to keep working on this theory as I think there will be better ways to show that we value people we have something in common with over others. I need to find a way to show the assigned value. We are also more likely to feel empathy to people we find attractive so I could try and find a way to include that in my illustrations.

Compassion>Empathy

This image aims to explore the problems that individuals can have with high levels of empathy. Studies show that people with higher levels of empathy are also more prone to depression. Taking on the troubles of people around you can have an effect on your emotional state. I wanted the image to show the feelings surrounding the character making her feel boxed in and weighed down by them. I think I need to make it clearer that the emotions are from other people. I have chosen to illustrate the character as a woman because women have been found to have higher levels of both empathy and depression. I want to work more on this concept, I could use arrows to show the emotions transferring from other people to the main character. I could also use colour to show the characters emotion. I could include the character taking medication to show that the effect of empathy is more than just being sad. I think surrounding the character with other people and the emotions will create a feeling of claustrophobia that will help communicate the oppressive effects of the empathic emotions.

Peer Review

Today we had a peer review session looking at our visual journals. I found this session extremely useful, it helped to highlight new ways to experiment and explaining my rationale to the group helped me realise where I was wanting to take it, what worked well and what needed to be changed. I have revisited my rationale and made some changes to make it clearer. The start of my visual journal concentrates on the doorways between worlds that fiction and escapist activities are often described as and the differing views of these activities. I think I need to make clearer comparisons between the negative and positive views of these activities, I could place opposing opinions and theories on opposite pages to make the comparisons easier to understand. My work so far has been based on authors and theorists views, it was suggested today that I try and find some illustrators that deal with similar subjects in their work to see how they tackle the issues. It was also suggested that I start to experiment more, start thinking of different was to illustrate the doorways and portals. I could make holes in the pages of the journal to create the doorways and portals I am trying to illustrate. I should look at children's books that use cut out and pop-up shapes to get some ideas of how to think outside of a flat page. In my essay I compare studies and opinions to draw conclusions about the impact fiction has had on society, both positive and negative, and whether society would function without empathy. I concluded that there a both positive and negative aspects of both escapism and empathy but one thing that was clear was just how powerful fiction is and the scale of it s influence on society. I would like to try and explore this through my journal.

Visual journal

I have been adding more to my visual journal, for these images I stuck to the theme of doors and portals to other worlds. I have chosen iconic doorways from literature and science fiction films to represent the escapist activities. I drew a keyhole to try and explore the idea of unlocking new ideas and information that people who take part in escapist activities can take back to their real lives. I felt I needed to move on from this idea and start to explore the other theories and ideas I have investigated through my essay research. I want to try and find ways to communicate them visually that make them more accessible. Through my research I have discovered the positive an negative aspects of escapism and I think if people have a better understanding of the negative effects it can have they can avoid them.

Fro these pages I concentrated on the negative views of escapism and the comparison drawn between activities such as watching television and the use of drugs. There are many forms of addiction that can turn positive activities in life threatening dependencies. Even trying to eat healthy and exercise can take over peoples lives to the detriment of their family, career and even there health. I wanted to show the impact of new technologies on escapist such as gaming, the recent introduction or virtual reality gaming has made the worlds we escape to even more immersive. Where reading triggers ideas and invites us to take part in inventing a world, virtually reality feeds all the information to us directly and shuts out the world around us. I would like to start exploring the more complicated theories surrounding escapism and empathy and see if I can find simple ways to communicate them through illustration. The themes of these images seem too much like satirical images in that they are very strongly one side or the other. My research shows that there is much more complexity to my chosen subject than that and I would like to be able to present a balanced overview of a theory that allows the viewer to decide for themselves.

My Practice

I have been planning how I am going to make changes to my essay, one thing I need to do is connect my findings to my practice. I have really enjoyed researching this subject and think it has helped me understand all the thing I need to take into account when creating a book. My research shows the power that fiction has had since the invention of the printing press and the problems associated with it. The messages in fiction can be misunderstood and mean different things in different cultures. My focus is on children's fiction so my work is unlikely to have the same damaging effect as some of the texts I have covered in my essay but lack of cultural understanding or unclear/ambiguous messages could damage my work. Fiction can have both hugely negative or positive effects on society and through my research I have become even more motivated to create illustrations that communicate important lessons that could benefit the reader and society. I want my work to help people not just by reinforcing positive behaviour but also by teaching life lessons that help readers understand the world around them and how to be part of it. One of the negative aspects of fiction is that people can become engrossed in it to the extent that it takes over to the detriment of their real lives. I want my work to help people to help people understand life and encourage them to interact with the world around them.

Please help Illustration

This illustration demonstrates how homeless people in need of help can become criminalised in the public view. It can be easy to make assumptions about someones life to justify their circumstances than to admit that we live in an unjust world where bad things happen to good people with no rhyme or reason. I like the simplicity of this illustration creating a juxtaposition between the please help sign and the measurements behind suggesting that this is a mug shot photograph. It challenges the viewers perceptions and puts them in a position to chose how they view the character. The illustration is direct in the way it approaches a complex subject and I think works effectively. It puts the viewer in a position to make decision about the meaning of the image itself, is the character a criminal? are they being being targeted because of their circumstances? The illustration forces us to draw on our own preexisting bias to make a judgement of the character and attribute our own meaning to the scenario we are presented with. I like the way the illustration feels like the start of a conversation rather then the end, it triggers a though process rather than just presenting information.