Is the moon hollow? Are craters just vast emptiness that leads to nothing?
During Tuesday's critique, I got some feedback on adjustments I could make to help emphasize the idea of the housing crisis in America. I learned that the idea I tried to depict wasn't tying into my overall idea. I wasn't entirely confident in the initial idea post-critique, so I changed my approach/concept.
My new concept for this project was to depict a fictitious moon. A common conspiracy theory is that the moon is hollow. I started by creating a night scene near water to create an engaging landscape from my original scenic image. To add detail to the photo I added silhouette of people looking as though they are socializing out near the waterfront. As you move your eye above to where the moon is, it looks like there’s a crater-like form that is filled with darkness. This crater effect is how I was able to represent the hollowness of the moon. I took an image of a cut out of a cave overlooking an ocean and used various blending effects to blend the image in with the moon. For a finishing touch, I added night clouds and a blurred reflection of the mountains onto the body of water in the scene.
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ReplyDeleteCredits
ReplyDeletePhoto by Free Nature Stock from Pexels (night sky)
License: Free Creative Commons Zero Images (pexels.com)
Blue Sky · Free Stock Photo (pexels.com)
Photo by SevenStorm JUHASZIMRUS from Pexels (moon)
License: Free Stock Photo & Video License - Pexels
https://www.pexels.com/photo/moon-photography-684440/
Photo by Ciocan Ciprian on Unsplash (clouded night sky)
License: Free to use License | Unsplash
https://unsplash.com/photos/the-moon-is-seen-through-the-dark-clouds-gpmzdAm2dRc
Photo by Etkin Celep from Pexels (Silhouette of people)
License: Free Stock Photo & Video License - Pexels
https://www.pexels.com/photo/silhouette-of-starting-hot-air-balloon-12248529/
Photo from pxhere
License: Deed - CC0 1.0 Universal - Creative Commons
Free Images : sea, water, rock, ocean, hole, view, stone, formation, cave, reflection, soil, blue, through, macro photography 4752x3168 - - 1260515 - Free stock photos - PxHere
Photo from rawpixel
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night sky full stars stands | Free Photo - rawpixel
Photo by Aliyah Valcin
Background Scene photo
The work Fake It by Aliyah Valcin is a dark, blue and night time scene. The scene is of a body of water during the night with the moon in the upper right hand corner. The work also depicts a group of people standing around either talking pictures of themselves or the moon and soaking up the moonlight. There seems to be a hole in the moon that seems to protrude outwards and seems to show a void within the moon.
ReplyDeleteI’m interpreting the work as strong evidence of there being nothing in the moon itself or something having come out of it with the way the exit of the surface on the moon. The meaning of the work seems to speak for itself in its success of making it look like the moon is hollow. The silhouettes of people as onlookers seems to drive the message home because the subjects (3 from the right) seem to be in awe of the moon and looking at a what I can assume is a picture of the moon on their phone.
I think this work successfully addresses the issue of disinformation because it does look pretty realistic. Especially when you look at small details, like how you can only see the silhouettes of the people because of the angle at which the picture is being “taken” along with the light thats supposed to be present at the time that the moon is the brightest, which is at night. The lighting has to be one of the strongest applications in this work, the blue hue is evenly spread throughout the entirety of the image and the brightness of the moon seems to be very accurate. My only critique would be to possibly line up the glow of the moon on the water with the actual moon itself, right now it looks like the moons glow on the water should be slightly adjusted to the right. The fact that this work is very spot on with the lighting and shadows throughout makes it even more believable and a great example of spreading misinformation.
This work exists within our larger culture in the sense that there are still to this day many people that still believe that the moon is hollow (after a quick google search). Due to there still being a large group of people who still believe that the moon is hollow only further exemplifies how this work can be used to increase our awareness of deep fakes. While other who don’t believe the moon is hollow will easily say this is fake, a person who does believe it may believe this is all the proof they need to prove everyone wrong. The social commentary created from this image alone could grow the population of people who believe the moon is hollow. I think the responsibility isnt only on social social media when it comes to restricting the content of works such as these, in the end it is the viewers job to make sure they do their research before resharing. However, social medias ease in quick and easily sharing to large groups of people at once does make it easier to spread misinformation.
Overall I believe Aliyah Valcins Fake It work successfully shows how with the correct techniques deep fakes can be believable. I think the angle of the image, the lighting and the shading throughout this work really drives the success of the image. I only have minor critique for making this work stronger, which would simply be aligning the light of the moon that is reflecting on the water with the moon to make it just slightly more believable. Works like this show how easily deep fakes can be created, published and shared in society. She also did a great job crediting where she got her images from, she was very thorough.