Collage Project – Man’s Effect on Nature
New York City streets are decorated with countless cigarette butts, scraps of litter, and smoke spewing out of trucks and cars’ mufflers. I always contemplated how the world used to appear before cigarettes, paper, automobiles, and other human inventions were made. The world used to be bountiful in green landscapes, vibrantly colored flowers, and full of all kinds of animals. I chose this topic to display aspects of nature alone, untouched by humans, and transition to today’s world when humans leave behind traces of their existence. Many passersby in the city streets ignore the trash that is carelessly thrown onto the ground, as if the trash will disintegrate and will not be existent in the days that follow.
I decided to capture the beauty of nature as well as its counterparts, the humans’ traces left behind in nature, by taking photographs and recording videos to put into the collage. I used the audio from the videos to demonstrate the difference between the peaceful sounds of nature versus the raucous sounds that are human-made. By using photography, I was able to use my eyes to see what I found suitable to use as examples of untouched nature and of humans’ traces. If I were to cut out images from magazines or other forms of paper media, I would have very limited options to display what I thought would be a good comparison of the before and after of humans in nature. Creating an 8×11 inch page collage is extremely restrictive because I can only put a number of items and pictures on the page before running out of space. Using a video to display various pictures and using audio makes the project more realistic because you can both view and hear nature as well as the effects of humans on nature.
As great as creating a video for my collage is, a video is also limiting in the sense that you can only see and hear what it has to offer. Looking back on my project now, I can see that if I had created a paper collage instead, I could have incorporated pieces of nature as well as scraps of litter found on the streets; for the nature portion, I could have picked up leaves and pasted them on the page, as well as flowers or feathers found on the floor, and for the humans’ effects portion of the page I could have picked up cigarette butts and paper litter and cans to put on the page. Using actual objects found on the streets and parks of New York City emphasize the fact that we New Yorkers are the cause of all the trash laying around in the city, while using a video can be viewed almost anywhere and not personalize the fact that humans polluting the environment is an issue in our particular city. Adding in the audio presented many challenges for me since I had to extract them from the videos I recorded and insert them where I found suitable; I also had to make them transition well so they would not sound choppy and out of place.
Starting digitally presented me with a wide array of options on how and where to capture my images to use in the video collage. I was able to choose which particular flower or scenery I wished to include, and I was able to carry my camera around and snap a picture whenever I saw it was necessary. Using the VadoCam, I walked around in the city and was able to capture sounds of birds chirping and trucks’ noises to incorporate into my collage. Using my camera, the VadoCam, and my laptop really broadened my creativity because I could edit my video however I wanted and incorporate sounds where I wanted them to be.
LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg5AMMVlTxM
