RATIONALE:
Consumerism
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| SPAM, 2014. |
Consumerism is a social and economic order
that encourages the excessive acquisition of goods and services. In the UK,
consumerism drives capitalism, relying on private companies and corporations
convincing us we want and need products that we don’t actually need at all. In
the 21st century, we are obsessed with consuming which has no doubt
evolved from the expanding dominance of media culture and mobile technologies.
In common, everyday life it is unlikely that we will go a day without finding
ourselves bombarded by the enticing imagery, bold typography and bright colour
of advertisement. The use of celebrity endorsement, ‘weasel words’ and humour
all contribute to the manipulative approaches of advertisement, encouraging us
to relate through their promotion of false, short term ‘needs’. It has almost
become more about how well a product is marketed than the actual quality of the
product itself that determines its success.
Recently I have become interested in the
expansion of online advertisement. On a daily basis I find myself bombarded
with poorly designed, tacky advertisements and junk email presenting imperative
statements telling me how I’m ‘entitled to compensation for my recent accident’
or how I can ‘claim a free iPhone’. The persistency of these distracting and
empty claims is almost mesmerizing, underlining the manipulative methods
associated with 21st century advertisement.
Initially I was considering the idea of using found imagery in my response, montaging a collection of moving advertisements or ‘GIFs’ found online. However I felt it was an image-making process that would be the more appropriate method.
The shifts in online advertisements have
brought the need for new words or semantic changes to the meaning of a word.
For example, ‘SPAM’ once completely associated with the brand name of a tinned
ham product is now more commonly used to define ‘irrelevant or unsolicited
messages sent over the internet to large numbers of users’. I find irony in the
comparison of these two definitions of the word – the idea of a cheap,
processed product often described as ‘mystery meat’ almost echoes the cheapness
of the ‘SPAM’ advertisements.
It seemed appropriate to take this
comparison forward into the image making process by combining an image of tinned
SPAM with the techniques applied to the online SPAM. Whilst wanting to comment
on the prevalence of online advertisement I also wanted to ensure that I was
producing a response of visual interest.
In my final response, I shot a still life
image of a SPAM tin depicted almost as a commercial product image. The spam is
positioned in the center of the frame on a bold coloured red backdrop helping
to emphasise attention on the tin. By using direct flash I was able to create
quite a flat image with the rich tone of the red backdrop appearing more
saturated. This method also created glare from the tin highlighting its shiny,
greasy textures. These technical choices were based on the idea of creating an
almost distasteful and uninviting aesthetic to the product, perhaps the
opposite of the clean, polished aesthetics of advertisement. I suppose
essentially I was aiming to implicate an amateur aesthetic, presenting a more
realistic, untouched, unedited image, going against the conventions of
commercial advertisement and traditional photography in order to draw a
comparison to the amateur characteristics of online advertisement. To further
illustrate this I made the image into an animated .GIF, with the image
continuously bouncing and flashing a variety of colour hues in an almost strobe like manner, an
appropriate method intended for online and mobile use.
