Category Archives: Ekin Levent

Student

On Final Presentation

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When I used CATTt and Design Thinking Framework for the new project, I changed almost everything except the concept of addressing gender inequality. I changed my theory from a feminist film theory to sociological one, limited my audience to a more specific group, changed my medium to an interactive one. However I lacked the practice and background information to create that project. So I went back to where I started and thought about what I know and how can I analyze or critique that.

At that point I decided to start from myself. After all self is the first step to start a change. So when I thought about it, I remembered my own struggle and dilemma with the gender roles that I expect me and the opposite side to fulfill. Although they were not the main forces that causes sexual violence, they were part of it.

I started making a list, “My List of Gender Roles”. I realized that although I believed in gender equality my expectations were on the opposite side. I expected a man to be stronger and wiser than me. To get it out there for other people to think about it too, I decided making GIFs , a medium that is easy to spread and fun at the same time. Sometimes the fun element triggers more than a deductive medium. I wanted to use it as an opportunity.

After this project what I have to decide is to which way I will take. Do I want to go deeper to the more serious, harmful part of gender inequality and sexual violence or do I want to continue from the starting point of this project, dealing with the daily problems of our lives which on the surface does not seem like serious problems but they cultivate the patriarchy one way or another. I guess the semester break is a good opportunity to think about it!

Link to the project: https://www.behance.net/gallery/45805223/My-List-of-Gender-Roles

 

What? So What?

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Artboard 3

what?
I am planning to design a workshop that will use drama and the design itself as means of communication tool. Men and boys have been taught to express themselves with aggression and any other emotion has been considered weak, female or homosexual. This association of emotion with aggression causes various ways of sexual violence as well as harming individuals themselves by pushing them to live with a mask. If we are talking about design becoming an essential course for the education of everyone then why not use it as a communication tool? Instead of feeling trapped by language and not being able to express ourselves because of feeling ashamed in talking in public that almost everyone faces for at least once in their lifetime, we can use different medium.

so what?
The importance of this workshop is the fact that it challenges gender norms. We have been talking how to end violence against women by governmental solutions but what about ourselves? How do we raise boys and how do men perceive themselves? As women, how do we define a “man”? What are our expectations, our biases, our heterosexual norms? If we don’t start from ourselves then how come we can blame friends making sexist jokes, parents and partners expecting fulfillment of gender roles, or anyone for not speaking up about violence they have experienced.

 

Ways of Sphering

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I am still not sure what kept me away from the Woodshop but I know that I am one of the last people who completed it. When I was “turning” the wood, I was intimidated by the power of the machine, how it can harm me with just a moment of carelessness. And at the end it did! I cut myself, again, after whittling. I was also kind of frustrated how much time it took and my limitation to one day, since moving the wood from the machine caused some orientation problem later on. So here comes the confusion: A machine that is supposed to make process easier limits me, frightens me and demands attention.

With the Fab Lab, it was like watching an entertainment show. Machines seemed less aggressive and more gentle and they didn’t require my hands therefore safer. However, it took 40 minutes just to create a little sphere and it was not the “perfect” sphere, it had flaws. One of the reasons for time and quality was the machine itself, which made me think of: “So now even the perfection requires money.” If you have the money, you can have better machine and better results.    

Or you can go with a fun way and do your own! Last week’s class was really fun for me since I like creating things with my hands in the most analogous way. It also reminded me Bauhaus curriculum that was based on learning and experimenting with materials. In a world where digital became the material, I believe that “touching” gained even more value. We start learning about our environment by touching, tasting, smelling and at the age of 7, with school, we are expected to transfer what we have learnt through an abstract medium. We are not teaching our language to a material anymore, we are trying to learn the language of computer that is developed by other people and I think it limits us, forces us to think in computer’s terms instead of ours.  

Bauhaus curriculum

 

CATTt Applied to Gaze (Roundup)

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My graduation project Gaze, is a satirical 2D animation video that criticizes objectification of women within the realm of entertainment and popular culture industry.

In terms of CATTt:

Contrast

My stand is against objectification of women with male gaze that has roots in heteronormative social structures.

Analogy

Both the daily experience of the subject and the effect of the video is like changing a disposable diaper.

Everyday, every woman wakes up to a world that had been contaminated but tries to start all over, a new blank page, a brand new diaper. High hopes. What happens is at the end of the day diaper needs to be changed, again. The ideal is the day when baby learns to say his needs but it is a long and tiring road.

With the video on the other hand, viewer perceives  an animation image, like a cute baby. Then the video starts, and you open the diaper, a funny smell fills the room. The baby is looking at you, he is already stressed out, unhappy, so you have to laugh to make him comfortable, also you love the baby! Video continues and you feel uneasy. It is not fun anymore, it is the reality, the poop in the diaper. But you can’t stop and you also laugh because baby is so cute.

At the end, the diaper is changed and everybody is happy with the hope of tomorrow might be different. You close the video.

Theory

In Gaze, the theory that the video based on is Laura Mulvey’s “male gaze”. Her theory is based on film, mine is on entertainment industry and indirectly on life. Although my inspiration was the novel based film Gone Girl, I took the script from book itself. Script in the film was an analogy in itself because it was criticizing the Hollywood industry which Gone Girl movie was also very much depending on. But I tried link it with daily life rather than turning the video to a film analysis. So for the video the gaze was everywhere in our daily life. It was satiric of course but at the same time very real. We were as young women expected to be the cool girl.

Target

My target was an audience instead of an institution. Video talks to young women aged 15-30 because of its content that is from the popular culture.

tale

Tale would be the video medium itself since the Mulvey’s theory was based on feature-length film that would be watched in a movie theatre. Whereas video is for digital platform be it mobile phone, tablet or laptop.

Design Thinking Framework Applied to Gaze

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Form
For the graduation project we had several options as form. Some of the forms that we could use included a documentary, short film, pr campaign, research paper. At the time I was having a senior student crisis, didn’t know what to do with all I have, a degree in communication design and graphic design, some background in media theory and personal interests and concerns. So I ended up choosing video as a medium with a popular culture content. Animation part came later as an area that I have always wanted to explore but didn’t have the courage to do so. (I still don’t consider myself capable of producing an animation though since rotoscope animation feels like cheating.) I started searching for styles and ended up trying rotoscope animation since it included the traditional means of video production before drawing phase.

Objective
I had a Film Theory and Criticism class at my last semester where I was introduced to feminist film theory. Before covering it in class I started searching about it and came up with the idea of feminist criticism of a popular culture product, Hollywood movie based on a book. Text in the book was already a criticism to the industry and with animation I wanted to separate it from its context and locate it to a daily basis of sexism.

Vision
I can’t really think of a metaphor for the project since the content itself is a metaphor for personal life of most women. Maybe you are not forced to be a cool girl but a wife or a mother for example.

Challenges – Opportunities
The opportunity of the video is that it creates the illusion of character speaking to the audience instead of me as the creator. So receiver is communicating with the form that is not capable of answering. Therefore dialogue turns into a monologue at some point hopefully leading into questioning. On the other hand since I can’t communicate with the receiver so video is all I have to reflect my thoughts and transmit my intentions.

Image of the World
My image of the world, most probably depending on my cultural background, have always been pessimistic. However what keeps us alive is the ability to make fun of things and that is what I tried to achieve in Gaze. I take the inequality, objectification and violence in all terms very seriously and it bothers me constantly but in order to be able to deal with them I need humor.

CATTt Post-Rationalization

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Using CATTt to analyze a previous work was an interesting experience for me since I have never used a theory to theorize my work. At the same time I also validated myself on the feeling of “something is missing” in my undergraduate degree. I remember this one time, one of our professors saying our works as a class had no value in terms of depth because we didn’t have anything to complain, that our lives were too easy. Back then I knew that theory was what we were missing but I was not sure even if we had the theory what would be the usage of it. Liberal arts worked and evolved on theory and in contrast we had imagination. Now I can see that we can use theory to analyze the imagination process or shape it from the beginning.

CATTt Applied to Gaze – III

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Gone Girl movie

Theory

In Gaze, the theory that the video based on is Laura Mulvey’s “male gaze”. Her theory is based on film, mine is on entertainment industry and indirectly on life. Although my inspiration was the novel based film Gone Girl, I took the script from book itself. Script in the film was an analogy in itself because it was criticizing the Hollywood industry which Gone Girl movie was also very much depending on. But I tried link it with daily life rather than turning the video to a film analysis. So for the video the gaze was everywhere in our daily life. It was satiric of course but at the same time very real. We were as young women expected to be the cool girl.

Target

My target was an audience instead of an institution. Video talks to young women aged 15-30 because of its content that is from the popular culture.

tale

Tale would be the video medium itself since the Mulvey’s theory was based on feature-length film that would be watched in a movie theatre. Whereas video is for digital platform be it mobile phone, tablet or laptop.

Designerly Ways of Whittling

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After reading “Designerly Ways of Knowing” I started thinking about whittling in terms of general design education. Since it is not a complicated activity to do, I thought that it can be used to teach design for high school students.

As mentioned in the article Peters suggested three principal criteria for education:

1-Worthwhile knowledge of some value must be transmitted.
In this case, while whittling I can say that “the art of making” is involved. You are literally “the maker”. Transforming an object with your hands.

2- Self-awareness and being aware of what and why student is learning.
You have to be self-aware for sure not to cut yourself while whittling. Also you need to know your limits and your power not to cause any long term injuries. When it comes to what and why, whittling is a great way to push a person to think as it happened to us all in the course. We may or may not grab knowledge at the end of process but still the process itself has its ways to teach. It even allows a free space for the person herself what to learn and what not to learn.

3- Knowing how vs. knowing that
Before starting whittling we might have watched a TV show or a video and somehow saw whittling. But now everybody learns how to turn a cube into a sphere. At the end of the process we will be “educated” in terms of what we grasped or saw while whittling.

CATTt Applied to Gaze – II

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Vivian Maier

Analogy

Both the daily experience of the subject and the effect of the video is like changing a disposable diaper.

Everyday, every woman wakes up to a world that had been contaminated but tries to start all over, a new blank page, a brand new diaper. High hopes. What happens is at the end of the day diaper needs to be changed, again. The ideal is the day when baby learns to say his needs but it is a long and tiring road.

With the video on the other hand, viewer perceives  an animation image, like a cute baby. Then the video starts, and you open the diaper, a funny smell fills the room. The baby is looking at you, he is already stressed out, unhappy, so you have to laugh to make him comfortable, also you love the baby! Video continues and you feel uneasy. It is not fun anymore, it is the reality, the poop in the diaper. But you can’t stop and you also laugh because baby is so cute.

At the end, the diaper is changed and everybody is happy with the hope of tomorrow might be different. You close the video.