Cultural Consumption: Discuss a Documentary

After watching Blackfish at home, we were left in absolute shock, some of my house mates found it extremely distressing, we discussed how it is morally wrong for us to take any kind of animal from its natural habitat and train it for our benefit and entertainment, and how the human race can be very selfish/cruel. Although our main topic was the utter disgust at sea world it was very fascinating to learn about the psychological behaviour of the whales as there has never been any record of a killer whale harming anyone in the wild.

Cultural Consumption: Learn a new word for each day for a week

Mon 13th: IMPISH adj. Mischievous. Inclined to do slightly naughty things for fun. “He approached her with an impish grin on his face.”

Tue 14th: ARDENT adj. Enthusiastic or passionate. “He is an ardent sports fan.”

Wed 15th: SERVILE adj. Having or showing an excessive willingness to serve or please others. “She wrote a servile letter to her upset neighbour.”

Thur 16th: COMPENDIUM n. A collection of concise but detailed information about a particular subject. A collection of things, esp. one systematically gathered. “Compendium of old stories gathered by topic.”

Fri 17th: PRECOCIOUS adj. Manifesting or characterized by unusually early development or maturity, especially in mental aptitude. “A precocious child.”

Cultural Consumption: Learn to spell your name using BSL

Cultural Consumption: Find out the full name and profession of you Great Grandfather and Grandmother

After talking to my grandmother I discovered that she had a very distant relationship with her parents, although I did learn a little about my family history.

My great grandmother was Elizabeth Hannah Cousins (a.k.a Betty!) which is also a knick name of mine. Her maiden name was Vickers and she worked in a clothing factory before having children and becoming a full time housewife.

My great grandfather was Forbes Robson Cousins who was a ship riveter for Doorman and Long.

Dorman Long & Co., Ltd was first formed by Arthur Dorman and Albert de Laude Long in 1875 in the north east of England as ‘ steel makers, constructional engineers and bridge builders’ and went on to construct many of the most famous bridges built in the first half of the last century, including the Sydney Harbour Bridge (1932), the Tyne Bridge (1928, UK), the Tees Newport Bridge (1934, UK) and the Omdurman Bridge (1926, Sudan).

 

Cultural Consumption: Visit a Museum

A day out to Bradford…

NATIONAL MEDIA MUSEUM

When arriving at the media museum I had no idea what to expect apart from the usual boring timelines of historical information although I was pleasantly surprised when entering the ‘Life On line’ area I thought the information and artefacts were displayed innovatively and found myself instantly engaged. It reminded me how much technology has advanced from the first computer in 1970 and brought realisation to how much the internet has impacted our world.

The Kodak gallery was inspiring for me as I feel as though I have recently neglected my love for photography, I studied the subject at A Level and started with black and white film before working digitally, over the recent years I have relied heavily on digital out of convenience and feel I have forgotten how much I admire the traditional processes involved and definitely feel inspired to incorporating it into some work or at least making time for it as a hobby.

The ‘Experience TV’ section kept us entertained for quite some time and had us running round like kids in a playground, it was exciting to have a close experience to being in a television studio, playing around with green screen and Lowz had a bash at presenting the news. I also  enjoyed seeing the evolution of the TV from the huge brown nostalgic boxes to the thin plasmas we have now.

The Gaming Lounge and Magic Factory also brought a few surprises, as a massive fan of classical games I was over joyed when arriving at this floor as it simply brought out the kid in me and brought back memories of a pix-elated childhood.

The Animation Gallery was one of my favourites as I have a genuine love for this art form, growing up watching Morph and Wallace and Gromit, it was endearing to be able to view some of the last standing sets.

Cultural Consumption: Play a Board Game

 

I inherited this vintage Monopoly from my grandfather when I was much younger, not sure how old it actually is but its always a pleasure when I have an excuse to get it out.

10 Clowning Street.

After coming up with plenty of ideas many of which we decided were not viable due to not being robust enough and easy to manufacture, our ideas seemed to be complex and problematic. We finally landed on the idea of the traditional children’s game of ‘pin the tail on the donkey’ as we thought it would be easily constructed and simple to evoke. Although we developed our idea to have a twist in order to fit with our brief of ‘circus of the senses’ we reinvented it to be ‘pin the nose on the clown’ and pushed the idea further so it could be more engaging to the public and decided to have removable faces in which the player could choose the face they wanted. After contemplating between which celebrities and animals to use we thought it would be more current to use the faces of politicians.

We all had an active role in the project as we took the job of choosing the images, editing them and printing out the large-scale clown while the first years decorated them to fit with the clown theme, we also made colourful bunting with the name of our game which unfortunately was misplaced on its journey down to Vernon st.
Once we had a clear idea we had all agreed on I felt we collaborated well as a team as we all had the same end goals although at first we found it difficult to agree on a solid idea. The running of the stall went well, although we could have done with an extra person on the first shift in order to let us explore the rest of light night but overall was a success as people were instantly engaged with our game and were more than eager to have a go.

Things that went wrong;
-the clown nose didn’t always stick first time as we had only used blue tack
-the bunting was lost due to bad organisation

Our game was pretty straight forward to understand and was entertaining to see the reaction from people of all ages as children were excited by the image of clown faces although adults recognized the politicians and found it quite humorous, I feel that less adults would have joined in if it had just been a simple game of ‘pin the tail on the donkey’. If we were to do it again I think we would have put more time in as a group and organised ourselves better when it came to smaller details of the nose etc.

Light Night Pics