Made in the 1960s, this footage would originally have been seen in movie theatres and possibly on television. Today, we can watch it in our homes or offices, in university lecture theatres or on mobile phones and i-pods just about anywhere. We now have access to visual media that Hitchcock couldn’t have imagined, which brings us back to the principles of Memefest.
Hitchcock used a commercial medium – the cinema trailer – to promote more than his film. He used a cinema trailer to promote, or disseminate, his ecological stance on man’s relationship to nature. Hitchcock's trailer is effective and memorable because it uses humour and parody to make a serious point. Memefest invites you to produce a visual response to this film, considering the wider theme of ecology.
What is a visual response?
A drawing, a cartoon, a photograph, a series of photographs, an advertisement, a magazine mock-up, a poster, a postcard, an installation, a short film, an animation, a website, a blog, a tattoo, a performance, a visual poem. That’s where I ran out of ideas, but you don’t have to stop there. However, first consider what you want message you want to communicate, and then the best way to communicate that message. Make sure you document any work that is not produced digitally so it can be uploaded to the site.
Ecological responsibility
If you're not sure where to start thinking about ecology, here are some ideas.
"A designer’s job is to be concerned with both the tiniest details and the broadest cosmological abstractions, and how they affect each other – as well as what looks good … In short, designers are naturally concerned with ecology… making things function and ‘appropriate for their context’ is no longer enough; designers have to be concerned with how their designs affect their environment."
Tucker Viemeister, ‘Towards a New Ecology’, Design Issues.
Tucker Viemeister's statement addresses the need for designers to think at both a micro and a macro level; designers must consider not only a specific project (micro) but also the affect the output of that project will have on its environment (macro). That environment might be cultural (it could affect the way people think and behave) or it might be ecological (it could physically affect the world). This consideration of micro and macro is a basic principle of design ecology.
The term ecology refers to the relationships between living organisms and their environment. However, when we speak about ‘ecology’ it is often synonymous with the idea of a crisis. Specifically, the damage human beings are inflicting on our planet. The Earth Charter (www.earthcharter.org) provides a system of sustainable values and principles for all people to adopt in order to address major ecological issues. This document is a valuable resource to get your head around some of the major contemporary ecological issues.
As designers, our ecological responsibilities are twofold: firstly, we have a behavioural responsibility (how do our actions affect the environment?) and secondly, we have a communicative responsibility (how can designers promote awareness, about ecological and environmental issues?). So, as designers, we are responsible for the design outputs we release into the world, and we are also responsible for the messages we communicate to the world.
Memefest invites you participate in a growing online community of designers, writers and cultural theorists by responding to a new text each year. If you haven't already done so, watch the Hitchcock film. Read the Earth Charter. Have a look at some of the links on this site. Visit the Memefest homepage (www.memefest.org) and look at examples from past years. Research the history of protest graphics. But most importantly, have an opinion, and let us know what it is.
The term ecology refers to the relationships between living organisms and their environment. However, when we speak about ‘ecology’ it is often synonymous with the idea of a crisis. Specifically, the damage human beings are inflicting on our planet. The Earth Charter (www.earthcharter.org) provides a system of sustainable values and principles for all people to adopt in order to address major ecological issues. This document is a valuable resource to get your head around some of the major contemporary ecological issues.
As designers, our ecological responsibilities are twofold: firstly, we have a behavioural responsibility (how do our actions affect the environment?) and secondly, we have a communicative responsibility (how can designers promote awareness, about ecological and environmental issues?). So, as designers, we are responsible for the design outputs we release into the world, and we are also responsible for the messages we communicate to the world.
Memefest invites you participate in a growing online community of designers, writers and cultural theorists by responding to a new text each year. If you haven't already done so, watch the Hitchcock film. Read the Earth Charter. Have a look at some of the links on this site. Visit the Memefest homepage (www.memefest.org) and look at examples from past years. Research the history of protest graphics. But most importantly, have an opinion, and let us know what it is.
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