Hello, Welcome to my blog! My style of photography is basically 'see something interesting and snap it'. I enjoy looking for things that nobody would have seen if it wasn't for my photo rather than taking photos of something everyone can recognise and has seen before.
I took some photos of my brother pulling faces which would be made when playing an online game. I wanted a black background and limited lighting to focus on the face so this is the only thing the viewer can see, ensuring full attention on the expression.
I came across the photographer Robbie Cooper who created a series of work called 'Immersion', showing the expressions on childrens faces whilst playing 'video games'. I was interested to see that most of the expressions show a 'trance like' state. These children look enthrawled in what they're playing, almost as though they are 'lost in the game'. Their minds are 'stuck in the game'.
• Obsessed players may forget to eat or sleep
• Patient, 23, treated with 12-step abstinence course
Addiction to online games is becoming more widespread among vulnerable young people, according to a treatment centre that has begun running abstinence courses in Britain.
As games become more visually enticing and the recession leaves people at home in front of computer screens, therapists are encountering more cases of people obsessed with being online. In extreme circumstances game players can, they warn, become detached from normal existence and forget to eat or sleep as they interact with screen characters such as wizards and monsters. Youngsters can also develop posture problems.
Broadway Lodge, a residential rehabilitation centre in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, that normally deals with alcoholics and drug addicts, has recently treated a 23-year-old for his obsession with online games.
Brian Dudley, the centre's chief executive, said: "He was staying online for seven or eight hours at a time. We developed a treatment for him which followed the 12-step [abstinence] approach, but you can't tell someone never to use the internet again. He had eating issues, he wasn't eating properly. He did very well. He has … the mechanisms now to cope with it.
"The problem is not just restricted to young kids. We know parents who are hooked on these things. It's only a small percentage of people who get addicted but it's also only a small percentage of people who gamble too much. I don't know anybody else who is treating [such cases] in this country. There's no helpline."
Peter Smith, another counsellor at Broadway Lodge, said: "It's not unusual for people to get so obsessed with online gaming that they forget to eat and drift towards an anorexic and undernourished state. You can play online with people around the world, so it can be at odd times of the day – when it's 5pm in Chicago or evening in Japan. You have a relationship with characters in the game that give you an artificial feeling, created by your body's natural endorphins, when you have killed some monster or solved a problem."
"Addiction" is a loaded term among psychiatrists and psychologists, with many disputing whether the dependency exhibited by a few constitutes the same type of physical craving triggered by opiates such as heroin.
Online Gamers Anonymous, a US website, classifies "massively multiplayer online roleplaying games" as the most addictive. "Success in these games is highly dependent on the amount of time you put into them. Playing the game casually will leave you trailing behind others who put in more time, possibly making you feel as if you aren't as good or are falling behind."
Children can sit at home and enjoy playing a war game without the knowledge of what's happening somewhere else in the world, somewhere where the war is real and effects the children in a really bad way. I created some images to show this, the images are rough experiments to see if this is the route I wanted to take forward to producing my final piece.
Children sit there on their nice comfy couches playing on game based on war. Weapons and violence are the main attraction to these games. Children don't realise that whilst they sit there 'shooting people' online that people are really being shot in real wars. Is it such a good idea to base a game on such a serious matter?, can this make people question the seriousness of real war situations? I want to create some images to show people that whilst they're safe at home playing war games, some people aren't so lucky and have to live through what the people at home are 'playing'.
I found an article online explaining the effects that war has on children who have to try and survive though it, it made me realise how lucky children who live away from war zones are whose closest experience of war is an online game.
The effects of war on children
Among the many devastating aspects of war is its effects on children. Far from innocent bystanders, children are often casualties of war–through death, disease, malnutrition or injury. For example, from 1985-1995, an estimated 2 million children were killed due to war*.
Many children in war zones become refugees due to separation from or death of their family. Orphaned children often have limited access to food and clean water and therefore become susceptible to deadly illnesses and face life-long health problems. It is estimated that such diseases account for 60-80% of the deaths of displaced children of war*.
Those that survive are not considered lucky. In many instances, vulnerable boys are brainwashed into becoming child soldiers, working with the oppressors and regularly engaging in combat. Girls can be exploited into sex trade, forced to offer sexual services, married off to rebel leaders, or even sexually mutilated.
Beyond death, injury, exploitation and displacement, children in war zones are often emotionally damaged and suffer post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). They typically lose years of education, and the level of violence that they see can alter their normal development and lead to a skewed sense of reality.
If we hope to live in a peaceful and just world, we must start with the children because they are the seeds of the change we hope to see.
Thinking around the 'online game' topic, I have thought up 4 messages I could portray.
- How people don't realise the seriousness of real wars whilst sat there playing war games. - How people (mostly children) get 'stuck in the game', obsessed almost. - The loss of chilhood and memories as childrens lives are made up of staying indoors playing online games. - Alter egos, how people use their game character or avatar to 'escape from reality'.
I will experiment more with each of these possible 'messages' and see which I would like to take forward to produce a final image.
Wednesday, 15 February 2012
Inspiration can come from the strangest places! I was looking at circuit boards to get some inspiration for my game themed images and came across this photo of a tie. This image has given me the idea to work with 3D elements when finalising my photos. I would like to experiment with wires and LED lights within my photography creating a partly 3D image.
I took some photos of my brother after asking him to show expressions of 'mind is in another world' and merged them with photos I took of the screen whilst my brother was playing on the xbox.
I used the healing tool on this photo to get rid of the redness, spots and marks to make the image cleaner after merging it with a scene from the game.
These photos show how 'in that game' my brother is, I portrayed this through the expressions on his face and merging of the game photos. I like these photos but think they seem a little too simple. I will try other ways of showing how people can get trapped into games.
These photos are just something I came across when researching, they show half of the real life scene and half of the scene in the game. It struck me how life-like the game versions on the scenes are, this in itself shows how game world cam take over. We are presented with a vertual reality. I could use this layout to show how life-like the games are that are most commenly played today.
I found some images on a website which I found very interesting, they show game characters in real life situations.
The photos are quite comical, I think the comedy would take away from the point im trying to get across if I chose to do something like this, although I would like to try it out and see how it turns out. These photos are really interesting because they're so surreal. We never would witness these scenes in real life therefore find them intriguing when we do see them.
I watched 'Spy kids 3 - Game over' which is all about some kids who get caught inside a video game. This film gave me some ideas of how I can portray 'society getting stuck inside the game' I can portray it in more of a litterally sense like how it is in the film to make my point more obvious.
I like how the kids in the film look like what the game characters would look like, it really does make them part of the game. The backgrounds in these images do look very game like, if I do anything like this I will make sure to use un-natural colours, pixels and bizarre scenes.
I scribbled down some rough ideas and routes for my project to take and came up with a few different options. The idea of 'lost childhood' can be portrayed in this work as I believe most games these days take over a childs life not leaving them room to explore other aspects of childhood for example, playing out. My best memories of being younger are when I was outside with my friends climbing trees, making dens and basically making up our own games outside. These days children don't play out much, they're more interested in staying in and going on the xbox. I could explore more negatives to people staying in playing online games and on the xbox like what effects it can have on the body, e.g. obesity, lonelyness. Another way of which I can portray the aspect of online games taking over so many peoples lives is to show online games replacing parts of peoples everyday lives.
I found the path I wanted to follow quite early into the project and once I got the idea I was hooked into it. My idea is all about the 'game world' and how people these days can be obsessed with it. This idea came from when it was snowing outside and I asked my brother (who was at the time playing on the xbox) if he wanted to have a snowball fight to which his reply was ''No I'm on here'' so I had a bit of a go at him... ''The xbox will always be there but it won't snow again til ages'', and still he didn't budge; this made me realise how enthralling games can be these days, especially to children.
''We are all cyborgs now'' - Donna Harraway This quote suggests we are all cyborgs because we incorporate alot of technology into our lives. These days technology has become an extension to us as people, almost everywhere we go we are using some form of technology to make our lives better in some way. iPods, mobile phones, TV's, laptops.. the list goes on.
Wafaa Bilal is an artist and professor who once had a camera surgically fitted to the back of his head, this camera took a photo every single minute. Bilal intended on having this camera there for a whole year but his body rejected the camera so he had to have it removed before the year was complete. The photos posted live onto his website for viewers to track.
These photos are some of the photos of which the camera fitted tot he back of his head took in August 2011. I like the idea of this work, it captures and hold memories. Everywhere he has been for the amount of time he had the camera has been captured and saved. These photos show a journey and an outlook onto someone elses life. This is a new way of seeing for us as viewers and for Bilal himself; for us because we're looking at someone elses life and for him because it's a backwards view, it's what he doesn't see normally. The whole aspect of looking at something through a different viewpoint interests me, I might use this idea somehow within my project.
