Pchiumeow's Weblog

Critical Review

Peggy — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 22:02:47 +0000

Alanis Obomsawin was one of the guest speakers in Emily talk series. She gave her presentation on March 27^th at 7: 00pm in the south building at the lecture room. She is a Canadian filmmaker of Abenaki parentage and was born in New Hampshire and primarily raised in Quebec. She has produced and directed many National Film Board of Canada documentaries on First Nations culture and history. Her best know documentary is Kanehsatake: 270 Years of resistance which is about the 1990 siege at Oka crisis. Obomsawin plays many roles in her career, not only she is a Canadian filmmaker but also she is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. She has toured Canada, the United States and Europe performing in universities, museums, prisons and art centers as well as at folk art festivals and for humanitarian causes. Yet, she is more into filmmaking after she wrote and self-directed with “Christmas at Moose Factory” in 1967. Since then, she has made over 30 documentaries on issues affecting Aboriginal people in Canada. Her latest film work is the 2007 National Film Board of Canada documentary “Gene Boy Came Home” was showed during the lecture. In this film, Obomsawin turns her camera on the ugliness of war through the eyes of one survivor, a Vietnam War veteran whose name is Eugene Benedict from her home community of Odanak which refer as “Gene Boy.” The film includes Eugene’s experiences and feeling when he was at the war, and also his fears and nightmares after the sequela from the war. Obosawin’s camera also brought people to see the disaster that the war brought to the Vietnam and the people who were involved to it. Many people have lost their lives, and children have lost their body parts which are very disturbing to watch. I was striking by a group of little children who lost their body parts and together in a room learning how to read and write. I was shocking by the image because I have ever felt that the war is very truculent. Especially for children under five years old, at a young stage, they already lost the chances to be normal like everyone else because of the war. Obosawin told us that children do not call others by name instead by numbers. It shows how the war has effect on people’s daily lives and behaviors. Thus from this film I have reconsidered about today’s issue about the United States is in a war with Afghanistan. It has always been shown an imagery of United States is the savior to those poor or undeveloped countries. They import force, agriculture, manpower, and finance to help countries that they think it’s needed. To be honest, I found some of the countries are not very democracy and they need to have more human rights or woman rights. Yet, I was discouraged to use force to solve the problem. The instance of United States attacking Afghanistan that I found the United States is the outsider tries to take over the indigenous land. Today we look at the Afghanistan, many people have lost and sacrificed their lives to aim for better living, but ironically the people who live in Afghanistan aren’t live in better live!

Project 5 – mobility game

Peggy — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 05:23:12 +0000

Here is our photo tagging presentaion:

http://docs.google.com/Presentation?id=dc4wh2×6_0hbmjr9hj

“STOP” Throwing the Credit Card @ Me!

Peggy — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 01:22:46 +0000

Am I not a human being or what? Don’t I deserve a certain respect from customers?!

I had enough some customers are just so rude and disregard others people who work at the registration counter. Aren’t we not a human being???? Why can’t some customers pay their bill by ”handing to” the cashiers instead of “throwing at” the cashiers? Don’t we deserve a certain respect from the customers too? Although we are serving the customer, but we all are equal, and we don’t owe them anything? Why is I handing back the change by two hands to the customer, and they pay the bill by throwing the cards or paper bill at me? Was it fair? Seriously, there was one time a customer throw the credit card to pay his bill, but because I wasn’t faster enough to catch it,the card slid off the counter. At that time, I really want to swear but I didn’t because I knew I am representing the company, and I am also the supervisor of the shift. To be very honest, if I weren’t on the shift, I would tell them it is rude to pay their bill by throwing the money to the cashier!

Adobe In Design CS3

Peggy — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 08:48:15 +0000

On Friday, I spent at least five hours on the mobility game group project,but only on the picture editing and PowerPoint outline by using both ” In Design (ID)” and “Photoshop”. I have to admit that this project helps me to be more familiar to use ID, because when I learned ID from last semester in Digital Essentials class I didn’t know and wasn’t sure what I was doing. I didn’t use a lot of function from that class. I was more like taking files from Illustrator and Photoshop which I didn’t use much function that offered in ID. Yet, the mobility game project actually helps me to know more about ID’s functions.

It was tired and sat in front of the computer for five hours, but it was a great experience to explore the program.

Cheers~*

Group Studying~

Peggy — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 05:51:16 +0000

I just had my AHIS mid-term today. I didn’t think I did it well because I was very nervous. All the info got mess up in my head. My friend told me I should try to understand the history, instead of trying too hard to remember everything. Maybe I would get less confusing.. Sigh~yea I should..

But I really have to say, group studying is really helpful because people can share their notes together. If people don’t understand or miss any part of the notes, they can always share and teach each other. Since our teacher speaks very fast and there are so much information to copy down. It is very hard to copy all the notes while listening to our instructor talking about the history. Sigh again.

However, I already did my mid-term, I cannot change anything from it. People should look forward instead of the past. Mid-term went bad, I still have final! I have to be positive!

My Panorama – A New Day Has Come

Peggy — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 05:31:51 +0000

(Geez~myself!!! I finally put on my panorama project. )

Idea:

My theme of the project was coming from sunny day.

I have always love the sunny day better than other weather. I enjoy the sunshine better cold raining day or cloudy day, thus I chose to shoot a sunrise scene.

Process:

I chose one day and went up to the roof top of my apartment to take many pictures. I supposed not allowed to go up to the root top, but I had good friendship with the conservator. He knew it’s for my project , so he actually bright me up there secretly. Thank you so much Ivan!! \^v^/

After taking the pictures, I was listening to Celine’s one of the old song called “A New Day Has Come,” thus I named my panorama after the song. Although the lyric of Celine’s song is different than what I was wanted to present, my intention was to bring a cheerful day that everything and everyone would be very wonderful. I want the viewer to have a great day started!

My Goggle Map – I have been Followed

Peggy — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 10:03:33 +0000

Here is my goggle map webist: http://maps.google.com/?mid=1204279142

Concept :

I continuously expend the idea of surveillance on to my next project – my goggle map.

I put myself in to a victim position and has a peeper to follow my daily regular live. This peeper would follow wherever I go, know how much I spend, and see what I do in my regular live.

Urban Intervention(record 2)

Peggy — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 09:45:40 +0000

Process / New Idea:

February 4th, after I heard many suggestions from my classmates and Suzi, I felt my vinyl was very cheesy. Kevin told me I should look deeper. Sigh~

~Thank you classmates, I appreciated all your valuable comments.~

It was almost 3: 30pm..the class was almost over, some people already left the class but I was doing brainstorm. Money, gazing eyes, people, numbers, receipts, paper,..etc.~ I didn’t want to change my concept, but I wanted to re-design my vinyl. And finally I came out with an idea using numbers to represent that personal information could be stolen and be reused in other people’s hands. My intention was to appeal people should destroy their personal information thoroughly when they throw away things that they thought is garbage.

~The things that you don’t think it’s important; other might not thought about the same way.~

Print result:

February 7th, I went to pick up my vinyl, I was in shock because it didn’t come out the way I wanted it. It was way too big; I was kinda mad! There was a misunderstanding with Carlos.(sigh) But what could I do? It was too late to change my vinyl and reprint another one. I must figured some way out!

~I had my difficulties, so did Carlos’. He already did the best he could, I should not blame him.~

Final / Thoughts :

I re-design my vinyl, this is the final product. It was very big about 24′ x 28 ‘. So I destroyed my original shape and recreated another one when I pasted on the garbage box.

My first idea was putting my vinyl on the ATM machine area, but I changed my mind on to the garbage box beside the machine

<~This is the final vinyl that I recreated from the big piece. I took away the face, and also reorganized the numbers. Having overlaping and curving irragular shape of numbers, I wanted to show the number represented the personal information which had blabbed outside the garbage can.

Urban Intervention(record 1)

Peggy — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 09:45:29 +0000

Process:

I have never done a vinyl before, it was new to me, I bet it was new to some other people too. When I first started this project, I had no idea at all, so I actually partnered with Zack and shot some photos in a freezing winter day on Granville Island.

~January 31th, I shot 22 pictures in different spots.~

I upload those 22 pictures on the the computer and tried to think anything from it, but my mind was blank…I felt hopeless, and stuck.

~Febauary 2nd, I wanted to escape from my problem, but I knew I could not.~

Sunday, I was studying art history, and the contents had something related to Michel Foucault‘s theory. Thus, it reminded me that I have read he wrote about ”Discourse” and “Disciplinary institutions” which has something to do with surveillance.

~Febauary 3rd, an idea came through my mind; ATM v.s. Surveillance.~

February 4th, the digital mock up day, before I showed my idea, I realized I made a huge mistake on the spelling and grammar. Thank God ! It wasn’t my finial, becz I caught it.

~February 4th, I showed my original idea to Suzi, she suggested that I should re-considerate the colour of the image and the place that I was going to put on.~

<~hahaha mistake Version <~Here was where I was going to place my vinyl.

Biotherm V.S. Clinique

Peggy — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 02:12:51 +0000

Recently I finished my daily moisturizer, so I want to try different brand, so I choose a similar product which is Clinique’s Moisture Surge Extra Thirsty SKin Relief which I heard it has same effect as Biotherm’s Aquasource Non Stop.

I have using Clinique’s moisturizer for a week, it does have similar effect as Biotherm..but I still like the Biotherm better because it has better smell. Whereas Clinique is known as “Allergy Tested. 100% Fragrance Free,” the smell of the moisturizer is weird but not stinky. So personally I like Biotherm better!