BLoooOOOG

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Summary

In last week’s 100screen grabs, I used an image of a man “eating“ a hot dog to do the iteration. The wealth of this character lets this picture spread widely that people discover whether a person is rich or poor, they seem to eat in the same way.  I tried to decompose the image from the color,  composition, and line. Or using different people to play the same posture.  Then, analyze the action in the process of reproducing the movement frame by frame.

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Reflection

First of all, the topic of this project is “eating”, which is going to be an anthropological study of human beings from the perspective of biology and culture, using graphic design as a method. In general, academic research is conducted by essay, academic forum, or other traditional methods using verbal and written language. However, we shouldn’t ignore the significance of images, such as mind maps, charts, diagrams, and networking are related to graphic disciplines. As stated in Graphic Design Interpretation (Drucker, 2014), when simple numbers and words couldn’t explain and integrate more complex information, the new models which are arguments based on images are gradually accepted by people. The visual language is more flexible and concrete (Drucker, 2014). As in my visual production, the connection between human eating and brutal animality emerged unconsciously when the body movements are listed horizontally. The configuration relationship based on visual scale breaks the boundary of data and intuitively looks for the answer in a more familiar way. The “eating” images are like a slow-motion of the animal gobbling up prey from a nature documentary. At the same time, as the research by Neil Cohn (2020) confirmed, the reason that a single image can be understood without difference is that the universal visual language it uses. Almost all people have the same perception ability. This makes it possible to transfer knowledge to more minutiae because visual thinking is the universal potential of human beings to construct logic through a series of images, analyze and integrate information (Cohn, 2020).

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This made the audience understand the series of “eating“ body actions in my iteration. How the images circumstantially transformed into a dematerialized symbol of taking? Why it has the value to metaphor the animal nature of humanity？ Because we are animals and have the most basic needs, to eat, to defecate, to rest, to reproduce. The eating rituals evolved from primitive hunting animals, tribal celebrations, to elaborate cutlery, having religious prayers like Thanksgiving. But the act of eating doesn’t seem to be ennobled by it. No matter how elegant the way of eating, there is no way to hide eating is animalistic, primitive, and involves killing. Because this is the process of converting the body of another living thing into its energy.

Later, I was inspired by the phenakistoscope, the horizontally listed images of body movement formed into an infinite circle, which turned to symbolize the energy circulation. Implying the cyclical nature and the role in the food chain. The eating image is only a representation, which can be a metaphor for various phenomena in society. As mentioned in this article about global warming written by Wendy Chun (2018), the linear graph of temperature prediction has been endowed with political significance, arousing the audience’s attention and vigilance to environmental change. The images are easy to understand，so the influence of the idea itself will magnify. This demonstrates the role of graphic designers in addressing social issues.

Overall, I pieced together the images of “eating” as a body language through montage, and turned them into visual symbols of animalism and depredation. Through the investigation of “eating”, because “eating“ is a universal image, it will be transmitted in a broader sense.

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Brief

This project will take biology and culture in anthropology as the starting point, and study the meaning of a series of actions related to “eating“.

Explore the symbolic value of this body movement through iteration for challenging the possibilities using graphic design research in the anthropology discipline.

The digital moving images is the method, and the circulation using montage will stitch into a repeated infinite model system.

Finally, hoping to find the political value of this visual symbol to society.

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Reference:

Drucker, J. (2014) ‘Designing graphic interpretation’, Graphesis: Visual Forms of Knowledge Production. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, pp. 180–192.

Cohn, N. (2020) ‘Visual narrative comprehension: Universal or not?’, Psychon Bull Rev 27, April, pp. 266–285. doi:10.3758/s13423-019-01670-1.

Chun, W. (2018) ‘On Patterns and Proxies, or the Perils of Reconstructing the Unknown’, Accumulation, Available at: URL: https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/accumulation/212275/on-patterns-and-proxies/  (Accessed: 24 April 2021).

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Visual practices

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Montage is not only an important technique in movies, it can also be used to describe the artistic usage of images such as collages to create continuity, discontinuity, dialectics or antagonism. (Sheikh, 2015)

It has the nature of assemblage, whether images are placed next to each other on a single visual plane or in order. These kinds of images that follow each other in a particular sequence, form the meaning and discourse and produce the subject of politics (Sheikh, 2010).

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The sign should be connecting the symbol carrier and the meaning of the symbol. And the sign is a perception that is thought to carry meaning. Meaning must be expressed by the sign, and the purpose of symbols is to express meaning (Zhao, 2013).

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A symbol is a special sign which points to a complex meaning or spiritual quality. Symbols can acquire this ability mainly through repeated use in a culture (Zhao, 2013).

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Next Week？

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The “Cannibalism” Society

The book “A Madman’s Diary” (1918) by Lu Hsun, it has compared the oppression of classification to “cannibalism” (Heller, 2015).

This metaphor can be understood as injury between individuals.
People, no matter what they do, whether they hold good or bad intentions, will drive others to act in order to accomplish their own goals. Between driven or being driven, a bleeding-eating relationship is formed.

“eating” posture

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Iteration

First, 30 iterations, mainly around how “eating” posture presented in this image，

and shifting it gradually from color，line and character.

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Break down to see the whole action，

tried to eat a normal hot dog and recorded the process.

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Then In order to analyze the whole process of “eating” in more detail, I refer to the method of study the “walking cycle” in animation and arrange every significant movement vertically. You can directly see the cycle of picking up, eating, and putting down through the moving of arms and mouth.

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Circulation

 The circular continuous images inspired me.

In the previous iteration, I used animals like monkeys, and this circulation of animals eating reminded me of the food chain in Biology. 

So I made some cycles of big fish is eating small fish and small fish is eating shrimps.

（ producers, consumers, decomposer）

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Circulation

100 screengrab

Conclusion

Snippet：

“eating” posture

Iteration method：

· versioning to produce a set of interrelated final output（usually identifiable by a shared visual，methodological，or conceptrual structure）

· engaging in a process，where the process is the output

Question / Position：

eating？food？

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Unrelated

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3 item built up a customer persona

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Stage 1 – book

Experiment one

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“The complex and paradoxical relationship between drama in print and drama in performance has occupied scholars and critics for as long as the two forms have coexisted.”

(Prest, 2001)

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I selected books as a medium of transformation because the relationship between printing and film needs to date back to the era of drama. Movies and plays performed the script as the core. And performance elements include props and so on, contain the onstage and the off-stage (audience) interaction relations. Both plays and novels can reflect the development of certain life contradictions. The way the drama presents the plot is mainly through the actions of the actors.

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Making this book, I wanted to summarize the plot development in chapters in order to appeal to the structure. For example, books will have covers, tables of content, and different chapters. I took the content of the actor’s behavior, state, as a way to tell the story.

Each page of the book is like a stage for the two protagonists, with a blue shirt on the left and white on the right, each occupying a page fairly.

The flowers appear in the middle.

The effect of flipbook animation is added to the flower and is stand out of the book. This is a response to the original visual effect of the animation, as well as an emphasis on it as a symbol throughout the film.

When two people start to fight over flowers, they begin to draw boundaries on each other’s territory to possess that flower.

For the transformation of knowledge

First, by putting the moving Image into the book, the whole story is divided into paragraphs rather than a very consistent change from beginning to end. And, because of the limited pages, there are fewer detailed changes in the relationship and the emoticons.

Second, the original humorous animation effect is lost, and the original visual language is lost. The stop motion animation, through editing, gives the character the exaggerated expression that many cartoon characters can have, like Tom and Jerry. The background music also contains a pixel game feel, making the dark content of the later period, still like allegory or fairy tale, less difficult to accept. But when presented in a book, without these bonuses, the atmosphere becomes serious. More about the educational value of the story itself.

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Experiment two

Stage 2 – Greeting Card

• I really liked the idea of each page being a scene to miniaturize a scene onto a piece of paper that was a mini stage. I deleted all the fights and turning them into a friendly greeting card
• On the other hand, greeting CARDS are more accessible than books and can be delivered to more audiences.
• Maintain the sense of humor of the original and make the viewing experience more interesting

For the transformation of knowledge

In terms of richness of knowledge and story, greeting CARDS can have very little. To fit on a card, compress the entire content into a central idea, “Love your neibougher.” And through the cover of the blessing, and the scene to show the theme.

But in the process of transmission, more audiences will be involved in it. And every person who fills it or receives it reprocesses it.

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Bibliography

Prest, J. (2001) Theatre of the book, 1480–1880: print, text, and performance in Europe, History of European Ideas, 27:4, 426-428, DOI: 10.1016/S0191-6599(01)00031-6

「w2」

meat as logo

meat & text

meat blocker

meat changed color

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meat landscape

meat to sound

meat package

1. 把牛排包上打印纸，拆开是水果

image “spam”

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meat mark making

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meat in 3D

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meat in reality

「I」

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Contrary to Santos’ work, I created a cruel butcher’s paradise. The background music is a rapper telling how difficult it is for him to get his family a bite of meat.

「II」

All the furniture, including bananas and green plants on the table, have a fleshy texture. It implies that we are consuming the body of the earth.

「w1」

Through extensive testing, devise a process that transforms an online image collection.

An online image collection: “MEAT” on Google.

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“Sausage”

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Moving image 1.1

Moving image 1.2

Different meat but the same texture can provide

an illusion of “unity“, and the “same”.

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Me as Meat 1.1

When I post a pic online, I’m like meat under scrutiny.

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When I expose the essence,

what is the difference between others and me?

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Me as Meat 1.2

A person with no soul in a picture

is an object just like the other furniture.

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So the Meat is scattered in the corners of the house,

as proof of existence.

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Discussion

There are many judging in the world, your age, skin color, outlook, or body shape.

Without skin, everyone is the same in intrinsic nature.

There is no difference between others and me,

and there is no difference between people and animals.

Only meat is under everyone.

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Transform the living creature using the meat texture 

ongoing process

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[ w3 ]

Investigate through ‘word frequency’

Through word frequency, I tried to find the behavior model of ‘consumers’ diet structure, consumption concept, lifestyle, and explore the connection with the social class. Explore whether the supermarket, as an infrastructure for providing food, has a decisive influence on social stratification.

“Der Mensch ist was er isst”

( Man is what he eats)

Ludwig Feuerbach 費爾巴哈

“ Everyone eats only what is in accord with his individuality or nature, his age, his sex, his social position and profession, his worth. Every class is what it eats according to its essential uniqueness and vice versa.” （Cherno, 1963）

Word frequency analysis on High-frequency words appearing at the same time – from Twitter

It was unexpectedly discovered that in 94 Waitrose strawberry tweets, “British” appeared nearly 20% of the time. these people like to eat strawberries with cream or chocolate or make them into cakes or jams.

At the same time, strawberries are the best taste of summer for those buyers. In general, eating strawberries is a very enjoyable thing, which basically appears as a positive statement.

Word frequency analysis on buyer reviews-from 4 kinds of strawberries

Hope to find:

• What kind of product do consumers expect when buying?
• Are their expectations different among different strawberries?
• What disappointed them?

Finding：

Based on the words frequency analysis of their positive and negative reviews, I think it can be concluded that consumers are expecting a difference in buying different strawberries.

In particular, for NO.1 (Waitrose’s best series), “best” really appeared in the praise. And “nothing” appeared in the negative evaluation of it, which is not as a high-frequency word in several other products.

For less than perfect strawberries, the praise is proved by the appearance of “lovely“, because the price is cheap and consumers don’t expect too many things, which is already very good for them.

The expectations are affected not only by price, but also by packaging, there is only 5 pence difference between “British” & “No.1”, but people will think that No.1 is the “best”.

Accidentally found – a video by an angry dad

“Waitrose duchy organic strawberries. All strawberries either rotten or bruised！”

“For the price you pay，the quantity is tiny and the quality is foul！”

Build up the Consumer Model through word frequency

Conduct the word frequency analysis from 6 customers who use #waitrosestrawberries and several other Waitrose No.1 fresh fruit tags.

Explore what’s kind of keywords often appear from 5-10 food posts they have made on Instagram.

Hope to find:

• What kind of people buy fruit in Waitrose?
• Why would they buy it?
• Is this related to their self-perception?
• How do they describe themselves?

Top5 keyword in their #waitrose posts

I divided the results into different layers. The words on the outer circle can summarize the words on the inner circle, and there is a progressive relationship in frequency and meaning.

“Healthy”, “vegan”, “life”, “wholesome”, “fitness”, “home”

It can be concluded that they are basically life lovers who pay great attention to healthy eating. According to research（Svastisalee, C., Holstein, B., and Due, P., 2012）, fruits, and vegetable intake is directly related to family income. And Waitrose as a relatively high-price supermarket, that focuses on quality and sustainability, is welcomed by these middle and high-income foodies, and families. Because this coincides with their self-perception of “eat healthy and delicious food”.

How does Supermarket become a hierarchical infrastructure ？

Hope to find:

• Why do supermarkets or customers need to have a classification?
• What’s the difference between the supermarkets?
• What did the supermarket do to cater to this classification?

When I tried to learn more about different supermarkets, I found that M&S and Waitrose both provide seasonal special magazines using paper publication conveying the atmosphere of enjoyment.

While Tesco and Aldi both provide online magazines, but focus on best prices use extremely high-contrast colors, bold fonts, shouting, “look at me, come and buy, I’m very cheap”.

From their visual language, it is obvious that different atmospheres can be felt. The theme of Waitrose is how to eat healthily, high-class, enjoy the best food. This diet structure is created under the joint efforts of consumers and supermarkets.

discussion

“Consumption decisions express the civilized state, establish personal and collective identity, and mark social differences.” (Shapin, 2014)

Supermarkets have intensified the classification of society. It is the supermarkets’ choices to decide which customer or where the community they want to serve. This difference in diet structure is gradually implanted in different groups of people. When a person considers which one is cheaper to compare Aldi and Lidl every day, he will no longer think about how great organic tomatoes does Wholefood Market provide because it imported from other country and how environmentally friendly the packaging is.

This cannot be said it is the lifestyle different, most people want to be healthier with no doubt. Because an economic basis decides the superstructure, and your purchasing power is the only criterion for measuring the availability of food. In a study of 25,000 British families as a sample, a significant gap in fiber intake can be seen from different income families (Pechey, 2013). Foods enter your blood and organs, converted as your life fuel. Maybe at the beginning, the gap widened, because it’s like in a car race, one uses 98 and the other uses 92, even if they are the same car.

Bibliography

Cherno, M. (1963). ‘Feuerbach’s “Man is what He Eats”: A Rectification’. Journal of the History of Ideas, 24(3), p404. doi:10.2307/2708215

Svastisalee, C., Holstein, B., and Due, P., (2012) ‘Fruit and Vegetable Intake in Adolescents: Association with Socioeconomic Status and Exposure to Supermarkets and Fast Food Outlets’. Journal of Nutrition and Metabolism, Volume 2012, Article ID 185484, pp.1-9. https://doi.org/10.1155/2012/185484

Pechey, R. et al. (2013) ‘Socioeconomic differences in purchases of more vs. less healthy foods and beverages: Analysis of over 25,000 British households in 2010’. Social Science & Medicine, Volume 92, Pages 22-26. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2013.05.012

Shapin, S. (2014)‘You are what you eat’: historical changes in ideas about food and identity, Historical Research, Volume 87, Issue 237, Pages 377–392, https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2281.12059

Waitrose As supermarket（from strawberry）

as a main food supply infrastructure

Unlike the traditional markets, supermarket in our century now may require more effort to sell a simple piece of fruit.

‘Site‘- as a customer

Why Waitrose ，Why strawberry？

• nearest supermarket to my flat
• supermarket – easiest place to get fresh fruit
• easy to damage and not easy to keep – rely on the production line
• slightly expensive = work harder for attract buyer
• most of supermarket only have 1-2 variety strawberries 
• limited data compare to the whole supermarket

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How to investigate?

Can be physical: 

• packaging
• text description
• visual

Intangible and abstract: 

• the brand behind,
• the space (location, container placement)

In a hierarchy：

1. specific product
2. in the whole store
3. entire grocery industry

Method ？

• mapping
• photographing
• layout analysis
• note-taking
• cross contrast
• diagramming
• word frequency
• customer persona research

pakaging elements

To analysis how they are doing the classification, specific to target customer

graphic language experiment 

The experiment retains the original content, but exchange four different visual languages, and its visual language can be clearly seen.

strawberries classification

color palette

to see the difference between class

origin

sweetness × price

They distinguish strawberries by food quality and origin, but such classification is reflected in price and packaging. However, I have to think that the difference in their prices comes from the cost of the industry chain behind agriculture, transportation, and packaging rather than the taste of the food itself.

So I collect all the strawberries data from different supermarket.

And then I compare the price and the sweetness（as a fair way to do the tasting measurement）. The the following result shown they don’t have any causality.

branding research

Waitrose has different private brands in fruits and vegetables. Through their description of the products, you can see what kind of information they are trying to convey to consumers.

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By collecting the text descriptions of all the NO.1 series of fruits and vegetables, and analyzing the frequency of words, we can see the settings they are trying to implant in consumers.

Here are some keywords in the interviews of the essential product line brand managers.

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word frequency in Waitrose

Collect all the products of Waitrose on the website, and use word frequency analysis to obtain intuitive results.

Consumers’ dietary structure is related to the word that appears most in the supermarket. In Waitrose, the word that appears most is “salad”. It can be said that there is a connection with the market positioning of the supermarket, which is positioned as valuable, fresh, and sustainable.

[ w1 ]

Supermarket shopping，which is our biggest resource of food transformed into online shopping during the Post-pandemic era. Unlike traditional shopping in person, people cannot see the goods and more rely on the supermarket itself, we need them to do the delivery, and the selection. There will be un-fresh food or Purchase limitation which is the exchange of power between supermarkets and consumers.

For example, in a pandemic, the supermarket, has a Crowded Slot with a delivery delay of more than weeks. There is a global toilet paper shortage. One day there will be an essentials shortage even worse than now.

It might be the “Supermarket ”, this 20th century created concept needs an upgraded？

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In order to make a profit, a supermarket can only provide part of the products on the shelf. For example, The shops near the subway are mostly providing fast food or drinks. This is a process of mutual influence.

Supermarket As infrastructure, it affects the lives of people around this space.

can connect with some of the articles on our reading list.

the ‘Species of Space’ by Georges Perecor or Infrastructural-tourism.

Explore the origin of the food and see to run a supermarket need what’s kind of support? as an in-depth investigation of the production chain behind it.

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With the development of consumer preferences and the increasing complexity of product information, it is more difficult to provide products that meet consumer needs.

Even if a supermarket mainly meets the needs of nearby communities, the connection between product information and consumer preferences is still not enough, and I may go to several supermarkets at the same time.

Since supermarkets are basically chain stores they use the brand image to allow consumers to pick up their own favorite. Such as Costco is defiantly for multi-person families.

Consumers have subconsciously accepted where they can consume.

When I search the word “organic” on their products website. Compare the search results of Waitrose, Tesco, ALDI. Waitrose has 922 products with the word organic, Tesco has 204, and ALDI has only 20. Which is an interesting result

At the same time, I want to study its visual language on booklet or website, and how the food is arranged and distributed in the supermarket space. and other functional areas.

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