Well, a lot of progression has occurred since my last post!

In fact, we’ve been so busy writing and designing, it has caused some neglect with my blogging…

We divided up a whole range of tasks in terms of writing and production.

My main task has been to put together and design the proposal publication. We are very pleased to say that this task has been completed a whole two weeks early from the submission date!

We went back to some initial brainstorming for product names and settled on Re<mind. The reasoning behind this decision can be found on the group blog.

We have been developing a unique and effective logo, which has now been finalised and applied to a range of applications. Again, details of this development can be found on the group blog.

Another of our main outcomes has been the design development of our product – the information retention aid. These glasses have been rendered beautifully by Danielle, with artistic direction from both Amy and myself, as well as research into consumer preferences.

Our next tasks will be to focus on the final presentation of our research and design development for mid-November. We have developed a range of interesting ‘hooks’ which we hope will help to contextualise our product and concept, and make people aware of the need of such a product as we are proposing.

We will also be designing a range of marketing/branding applications which will assist in positioning the Re<mind brand.

Crossing things off my list of things-to-do is very satisfying…

• Encode
• Cortex

Memory:

• Recordatio
• Memoria
• Animus

• Memory
• Vision
• Eye
• Recall
• Retention
• Retain
• Remember
• REMIND
• R.E.M
• Brainwave
• Impression
• Learning
• Lasting
• Education
• Perception
• MIND
• Associate
• Recite
• RE
• Repeat
• Recap
• Repetition
• REGAIN
• REGAINER
• Recover
• Subconscious Mind
• Thoughts
• Alpha
• BETA

Below is the literature review we wrote as part of the research and development of our project…

The people at Apple never cease to amaze…

http://gizmodo.com/5045269/apple-multi+touch-data-fusion-adds-camera-voice-force-sensors

and the discussion at the end of the article is equally as interesting!

“By contrast [with cinema], if there is a narrative form intrinsic to still photography, it will search for what happened, as memories or reflections do. Memory is not made up of flashbacks, each one forever moving inexorably forward. Memory is a field where different times coexist. The field is continuous in terms of the subjectivity which creates and extends it, but temporarily it is discontinuous…”

A photograph is simpler than most memories, its range is more limited. Yet with the invention of photography, we acquired a new means of expression more closely associated with memory than any other. . . . Both the photograph and the remembered depend upon and equally oppose the passing of time. Both preserve moments, and propose their own form of simultaneity, in which all their images can coexist. Both stimulate, and are stimulated by, the inter-connecctedness of events. Both seek instances of revelation, for it is only such instants which give full reason to their own capacity to withstand the flow of time.

Photographs can relate the particular to the general. This happens, as I have shown, even within a single picture. When it happens across a number of pictures, the nexus of relative affinities, contrasts and comparisons can be much wider and more complex.”

http://politicstheoryphotography.blogspot.com/2006/07/mohr-photography-memory.html

Some nice quotes I came across, in relation to photography…

(Found at: http://politicstheoryphotography.blogspot.com/)

• “WHAT WE NEED IS A CRITIQUE OF VISUAL CULTURE THAT IS ALERT TO THE POWER OF IMAGES FOR GOOD AND EVIL AND THAT IS CAPABLE OF DISCRIMINATING THE VARIETY AND HISTORICAL SPECIFICITY OF THEIR USES.” – W.J.T. MITCHELL. PICTURE THEORY (1994).
• “The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.” ~ Dorothea Lange
• “Photography is nothing – it’s life that interests me.” ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson
• “Photos always seem to exist as sort of stuffy, unnecessary antiques that we put in a drawer — unless we take them out, put them in current dialogue, and give them relevance.” ~ Mark Klett
• “Light, then, …. is indeed a wonderful instrument …” ~ Mark Rothko
• “What the modern means of reproduction have done is destroy the authority of art and to remove it – or rather, to remove the images which they reproduce – from any preserve. For the first time ever, images of art have become ephemeral, ubiquitous, insubstantial, available, valueless, free. They surround us the way language surrounds us. [. . .] The art of the past no longer exists as it once did. It’s authority is lost. In its place there is a language of images. What matters now is who uses that language for what purpose.” ~ John Berger
• “[P]hotographs depend for their meaning on networks of authority. The image supplies little in itself. What counts is its use and the power to fix a particular interpretation of the events, objects or people depicted. Some people, and especially some institutions, have much more clout in this processs than others do.” ~ Steve Edwards
• “The first question must always be: Who is using this photograph, and to what end?” ~ David Levi Strauss
• “… A photograph, while recording what has been seen, always and by its nature refers to what is not seen. It isolates, preserves and presents a moment taken from a continuum. … Hence the necessity of our understanding a weapon we can use and which can be used against us.” ~ John Berger
• “A picture can be an answer as well as a question but if you can’t answer your question try to question your question. There are clever questions and stupid answers as well as stupid questions and clever answers. There can be questions without answers but no answers without questions.” ~ Ernst Haas