Object

To complete the series I turned the images into place-mats with the idea that the user would be reminded about their meal consumption at each sitting.

Chris Jordan Technique Meets Pop Art

So rather than copying the pop art images completely, I took the general aesthetic and applied them to my images. I like how they stand out more than my initial attempts at blending. Although you can not see all the individual pieces (e.g. each banana, plate etc), you can still get the general idea of how much is consumed, reused or thrown away.

Referring Back to Artist Precedents

To push my images further I went back to Chris Jordan's website and noticed that he sometimes uses famous artwork to demonstrate the data.

Retrieved 16/10/12 from http://www.chrisjordan.com/gallery/rtn2/#gyre2

So I thought about the content of my data and the over all images, which made me think about the pop art movement. Images of everyday objects, in particular food, was turned into high end art. The main aesthetic is a similar effect as hard mix or posterize in photoshop.

Retrieved 16/10/12 from http://questartists.blogspot.co.nz/2011/02/lepop.html

Retrieved 16/10/12 from http://www.edp24.co.uk/what-s-on/andy_warhol_pop_art_exhibition_at_norfolk_stately_home_1_712412

Initial Attempts at Blending Images

For these images I used the screen blending mode on all the images so that they fit together better as a series. However, some of them made the over all image slightly over exposed, so I will experiment in Photoshop to make the images more effective.

Main Images to Blend

I will blend this image with what I throw away...

...what I eat

... and what I reuse

I decided to use images that are simple and most relevant to the data I was showing in order to complete the circle. Similar to what Chris Jordan has done but slightly more literally. 

Making images more clear

If I ate the same meals each week over a year.

If I used the same utensils to eat my meals each week over a year.

If I threw away the same rubbish each week over a year.

After discussion in the tutorial I was given permission to use only three images in my series, though the minimum is 4, as it worked best with my idea. For these I changed the aesthetic slightly to make the image more relative to the user. This is just an experiment I am not sure if I will use this technique for my final images.

Starting to represent data visually

So here I cut out all the photos of the meals and multiplied them by 54 to represent the weeks of the year then complied them to create a background image.

I then stole this image of a mouth (just to play around with) from http://rutgersday.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/mouth_open.jpg

I then used the blending tools in photoshop to create this image, which is my adaptation of Chris Jordan's technique. This image is made up of all the meals I would eat in a year (heavily layered, will probably be more spread out when I try it next) combined with the image of a mouth - for my final series I would use an image of my own mouth.