"Degraded Image"

The idea of human implementation into nature is a fascinating concept. Birds, for example, have been more than capable of finding food and sustaining themselves through thousands of years of environmental change and evolution. The fact that humans have curated things such as birdfeeders is a prime example of this cultural implementation into the natural world. I found this strange birdfeeder outside my apartment one day and became more and more curious about it. From my original photo, the contrast between culture and nature is stark – there’s not much going on in the photo besides this manmade creation and a natural background. I wanted to not only bring more natural elements into the mix, but also take a spin on modern society’s advancement in technology and amplify the two together. First, I duplicated the birdfeeder to make the cultural aspect more prominent in the photo. I then pulled leaves from outside and stuck them inside the printed-out photo, adding a textural element of nature. I really liked the glitch exercise we did for class, so I wanted to play around with that more. Here, I cut the photo up back in the physical world and taped the mangled cut-out to my TV screen, adding more technological aspects. Bringing more natural aspects into the photo, I photoshopped two bear photos I took earlier this year and made them sit on the benches. After this, emphasizing the digital realm more, I made the bears distorted, as they don’t realistically fit into the scenery. The sectioning of the photo began here, as I used clipping masks to change the color layover of each chunk split by the static lines. Finally, back in the physical realm, I cut the photo into triangles and miss-matched the colored version with black and white. The photo now looks entirely different, dramatizing the intertwining of nature and culture in a much more prominent way than the original photo represented.