Crave

Together with Danielle O’Shea and Pandelis Plousi our major group
project was Crave.

The marketing and advertising industry is a multi-billion-dollar
industry that has the power to change the world, but is it changing
the world for the better? Australia recently ranked number two in
the world for overweight concerns among children, which proves
that the messages that food advertisers are communicating, in
many instances, are misleading, or are not necessarily in the publics
best interest and are being misinterpreted. Studies conducted by
the American Psychological Association in 2004, concluded that
most children younger than 8 years old do not have the critical
thinking skills to understand the persuasive intent of TV. A large
percentage of food advertisements are promoting products that can
best be described as fatty, salty, sugary and fast (Australian Council
on Children and the Media, April 2008). The problem is that much
more money is spent on advertising ‘unhealthy’ food than what is
spent on fixing the health problems that this food is causing.

Crave endeavours to:
+ Make people aware of the affect
advertising has on us as individual consumers.
+ Decrease the negative impacts that consumerism
has on society – particularly health aspects.
+ Educate society of how advertising strategies are
created to manipulate ones ethos.
+ Help consumers discover the knowledge to decipher
between advertising and information.
+ Help parents to find ways around advertising and the power
it has in particularly when it come to food and their children.

Click here to visit the crave blog

1.C Sustainable media networks

Lecture 8 - Shit Design

To conclude the lecture series, Keith gave his ‘Shit Design’ Lecture. The Lecture looked at two extremes in the design world, ‘Vouge living” and “That’s Life” Magazine.

Lecture 7 Visualisations

Following on from the movie watched in an earlier lecture on the way Cuba was force to deal with ‘peak oil’ crisis, this week was a panel discussion on ‘Community’.

Lecture 6 Visualisations

This week Keith had a lecture on two of the great theorists in Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu.

Lecture 5 Visualisations

Edward deBono’s Lateral thinking was the topic of discussion for week 5. Craig Austin took us through some of Edward deBono’s work as well displaying how he his furthering the work of deBono. My visualisations explore some of the concepts Craig talked about. These include how the brain thinks laterally as well as the 6 hats of thinking.

Spot the Difference 2

User 1 - Piscine
Favourite Book - Braveheart
Postcode - 3056
Visit Time - 2:26pm

Remark
In 2001 l was overseas in the UK, and happened upon a copy of BRAVEHEART in the Lyme Regis op shop, a haunting seaside town in the south of England. I ended up reading it as we travelled to Scotland on the train and explored the spectacular highlands. It really brought the history and mystery to life, and Scotland was thus a highlight of my holiday.

Thoughts
I see Pisicine as a 45 year old woman living in Brunswick, married once but divorced with one teenage girl. From the post it is clear that she loves traveling and nature so much she is willing to do what it takes to protect it. The issue of global warming will allow nature and the preservation of it to take a bigger role in her life.

User 2 - wolfhound
Favourite Book - Narnia Chronicles
Postcode - 2470
Visit Time - 5:42 AM

Remark
Great to see other bookloverscomments! we could have a deep & meanigful conventioni am sure.please give lots of advance notice when the t.v.show is on.it was so hard to pick! my childhood influences won out. c.s.lewis”narnia chronicles”by the last one i knew what he was on about at a deeper level.i grew froma child to woman in those years,as if it was time for me to indeed have to leave narnia.i am pleased to report
the real action movie of the L,theWitch&theW is being made!”power of one” and “dune” and “sarum” were very potent for me .i must mention the australian classic “poor fella,my county”by Xavier Herbert.as a migrant from mother england ,this taught me more about australia in a months reading than the then 7yrs of living here.

Thoughts
To be blunt, i don’t think wolfhound gets out much. I see him as a 27 year old that still lives with his parents. His main source of communication is via the internet (msn) . I don’t believe sustainability concerns wolfhound at all, as he stuck in his own fantasy world inside his head. He is more concerned with dungeons and dragons than global warming.

User 3 - Peter
Favourite Book - The Power of One 
Postcode - 4000
Visit Time - 11.49pm

Remark
Although I voted for a warm favourite - (Hugo award winner “Diamond Age” by Neal Stephenson) - I read Bryce Courtenay’s “The
Power of One” when I was 12 and loved it. After reading it I knew how *stupid* racism was/is and that no one is born racist, just raised. (I sure it had the same affect on me as Jane Elliot’s “Blue Eyed” exercises still have).

Interesting that Israel - a country of people oppressed by racism - collaborated with the South African apartheid regime to research and build nuclear weapons.

This book will always be with me.

Thoughts
Peter sounds educated and well off financially. He works hard for his wealth possibly in medicine. Peter takes interest in what is happening in the world and in the future i believe will happy to donate money to charity’s that wish to protect the earth. However i don’t think he would be willing to trade his bmw for a bike or downgrade his mansion in a leafy Brisbane suburb anytime soon.

Lecture 4 Visualisations

This week we watched a documentary on how Cuba became sustainable during the ’special period’. My visulisations center around peak oil as well as having a look at how cuba survived during this potentially dark time.

Lecture 3 Visualisations

the ‘Designing for the hunter-gatherer brain’ lecture by Professor Allan Whitfield was the third lecture off the rank. I decided to have some fun exploring a few of the themes that Allan touched on with these visualisations.

Lecture 2 Visualisations

The second lecture consisted of a panel discussion on ‘ethos’. Stephen Huxley raised an interesting point that large web sites such as google and face book have large server setups that require alot of power to run. I had a look at this for my first visualization. I also had a look at how advertising firms are telling us to consume more, when this is clearly not sustainable along with the misconception the we need our objects to be ‘bigger, stronger and faster’.