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Task: Continue to research your concepts of self identity and what it means to you?

I found this task quite hard to interpret. Then it sort of dawned on me that what self identity means to me, must be how i interpret it as well.

I recently had a discussion with an old friend from school who is also doing a media related course at Northumbria University. He also has a module based on the idea of identity, his final piece was a stop motion animation which i think is definitely worth a look at.
Below, 'Wear Your Identity?' by Kallum Richardson:



After a bit of thinking i decided that i consider my self identity to be all the things that make me different from everyone else. What combination of things makes me different to the other person walking down the street. Is it clothing? Is it the food i eat? Is it the music i like? Whatever you choose, there's always someone that also likes it. Then it hit me, it's all of your preferences that make up your self identity. Its the clothes you wear, the music you like, the food you eat, the countries you like, the cultures you enjoy, the hobbies you do, the things that grab your attention, the films you like, then magazines you read. It's everything! The chances of another person having everything in common is almost impossible!

Now I've figured out what makes my self identity, i need a medium to show this. Initially i decided to go with a photo montage with images of things that represent all the things that make up my self identity. However i felt that this could be expanded on. So, with a similar theme, i decided to make an interactive self identity program using Adobe Flash.

The final product isn't finished yet but to give you a bit of an insight it will look a little something like this:




































The front screen of the interactive piece (left), is a picture of myself split up into 12 sections. Each one of these sections are labelled with something i feel make up part of my self identity. These included everything from photography to food. In the final product each box will link to another page with a brief description of what it means to mean and a collection of images to support it.

This is now in the production stage however more ideas do keep coming to me, hopefully it will work as well as i have envisioned.




'Wear Your Identity?'
Animation and Narration by Kallum Richardson
Audio by riddlez3

The rule of thirds is a theory which can be subject to any image. The theory states that that if a key element of an image lays upon one of the vertical or horizontal lines it increases the aesthetic properties of the image.

Below is a 5 second film showing how the 'Rule of Thirds' works with one of the worlds most recognisable painting, Edvard Munch's - The Scream.



As you can see from the short clip, and this image;


The main focus of this painting (the 'Scream' figure), is located almost perfectly on the lower horizontal lines, the figure also comes very close to both vertical lines. Due to the physical scale of the image (much higher than it is wide) means that the focus point is close to many lines. I believe that this may add more aesthetic properties to the image. This could also give partial explanation to the fame of this piece.

In theory, any aesthetically pleasing image should use this rule in one way or another. This technique, and others, including the 'Golden Rule' which has a similar theory but uses different methods to view any of the focus points has been used in images that can be traced back over hundreds of years. Many people believe that abiding by these rules is the only way to conceive an aesthetically pleasing image be it painting, photograph, video shot or illustration.