Social Issue Research

Some research I did for choosing a social Issue's when I ended up choosing Global Hunger and Global Obesity.

Animal Rights   

Modern animal rights activism has developed primarily out of concern about the use and treatment of domesticated animals in agriculture and in medical, scientific, and industrial research. The rapid growth in membership of animal rights organizations testifies to the increasing momentum of this movement.

Biological Weapons   

Biological weapons are organisms or their by-products used to deliberately spread disease. They include bacteria, viruses, rickettsiae, protozoa, fungi, and their toxins. The effects of biological warfare agents are diverse, but they generally incapacitate or kill their victims or destroy crops or livestock.

Child Abuse    

Child abuse is defined by the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (1974) as "the physical and mental injury, sexual abuse, negligent treatment or maltreatment of a child under the age of 18 by a person who is responsible for the child's welfare under circumstances which indicate that the child's heath and welfare is threatened or harmed."

Domestic Violence   

Domestic violence tends to be a pattern of behavior used by one person in a relationship to control the other. Domestic violence is not limited to any specific socioeconomic, ethnic, racial, or religious group, and same-sex abuse among intimates is just as prevalent as abuse among heterosexual intimates. The most frequently reported type of domestic violence is physical abuse such as hitting, punching, pushing, arm-twisting, biting, and use of a weapon.

Eating Disorders   

Eating disorders are unhealthy behaviors related to food and body weight. They may involve a severe reduction of food intake or excessive overeating, as well as extreme concern about body shape and size. Approximately 8 million Americans, including children, are affected by eating disorders such as anorexia, bulimia, and binge-eating disorder.

Family Relations   

In virtually all cultures, the family is considered the basic societal unit. Based on the U.S. Census Bureau census definition, a family is two or more people related by blood, marriage, or adoption living in the same household, which is defined as a single housing unit.

Global Warming   

Global warming is the theory that average temperatures around the world have begun to rise, and will continue to rise, because of an increase of certain gases in Earth's atmosphere. These gases are called "greenhouse gases" because they trap heat just like a greenhouse. The most plentiful greenhouse gases are water vapor and carbon dioxide. The increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is believed to be the main reason for global warming.

Hate Crimes   

A hate crime is generally understood to mean a crime against a victim who is chosen specifically because of his or her race, religion, gender, national origin, disability, and in some states, sexual orientation. While "hate crime" is a relatively new addition to legal terminology, appearing about the mid-1980s, it is not a new concept.

Illegal Immigration   

Illegal immigrants, also known as undocumented aliens, enter a country secretly, without obtaining visas or passing through an official entry point. Because illegal immigrants do not readily identify themselves for fear of deportation, it is almost impossible to determine how many there are in the United States. Various sources have estimated between two and twelve million, but most estimates are little more than educated guesses and are often politically influenced.

Juvenile Drug Abuse   

Drug abuse includes the use of an illegal drug (such as heroin or LSD), prescription or over-the-counter drug (such as cough syrup), or socially acceptable drug (such as tobacco and alcohol) for a purpose other than directed, in a greater amount than directed, or in a different manner than directed. In the United States, the highest rates of drug use are among young people age 16 to 20.

Legalization of Marijuana   

Policymakers in the United States claim that marijuana use is hazardous, often leading to the use of more potent drugs, such as cocaine and heroin. As of 2000, eight states had passed laws allowing seriously ill patients to take marijuana as a prescription pain-control substance. However, people who grow, buy, or use the drug for such purposes can be arrested and prosecuted under federal law.

Mental Illness   

Mental illnesses are biologically based disorders that interfere with an individual's ability to think, feel, act, and relate within the standard norms of society.

Nuclear Weapons   

Nuclear weapons are destructive devices that derive their power from nuclear reactions. The term weapon refers to devices such as bombs and warheads designed to deliver explosive power against an enemy.

Organ Donation   

Organ transplantation, the surgical replacement of a patient's diseased or damaged organ with a healthy organ from a living or deceased donor, is generally a last resort for patients in the final stages of illness. Even so, there are far more people seeking transplants than there are doner organs available. In the U.S., more than 75,000 people are on the waiting list for transplants; only 1 in 4 will receive them in time to save their lives. This shortage has raised several practical and moral issues, such as how to increase the organ supply and how to distribute scarce organs.

Pornography   

The word pornography is difficult to define. In the past it was used broadly to refer to sexually explicit words or images. Today, the meaning of the term has been narrowed somewhat to describe sexually explicit material that is considered offensive. But views about what is "offensive" vary widely. Pornography falls under the larger category of obscenity, another difficult-to-define term that refers to offensive or immoral—but not necessarily sexual—material.

Right of Privacy   

The right to privacy is not mentioned explicitly anywhere in the Constitution. However, a right to privacy is thought to be inherent in the Fourth Amendment's limits on search and seizure and the Fifth Amendment's protection against self-incrimination.

Same-Sex Marriage   

Same-sex marriages are not legally recognized in the United States. As a result, partners in homosexual relationships often lack privileges, such as the right to inherit property and to medical, tax, and retirement benefits, that partners in traditional marriages enjoy. However, local governments and private corporations are beginning to acknowledge domestic partnerships. This recognition gives members of a committed but unmarried couple most of the same benefits as married couples.

Teen Pregnancy   

About 1 million American teens become pregnant each year. More than three-quarters of these pregnancies are unintended. About 30 percent of adolescent pregnancies result in abortion, 14 percent end in miscarriage, and the remaining 56 percent result in live births. The birthrate among teenagers is about 49 births for every 1,000 teenage girls. Over 75 percent of adolescent mothers are unmarried.

Underage Drinking   

In the United States the legal drinking age is 21. Legally, this means that those under the age of 21 cannot purchase or be served alcoholic beverages. There is also a national "zero tolerance" policy that considers a driver under 21 years old with a blood alcohol content of .02 percent or higher to be legally drunk. Alcohol remains the most commonly used legal drug and consumption of alcohol by young people is very high.

Video Game Violence   

Video game violence refers to depictions of aggressive behavior, fighting, shootings, murder, and other types of violence, often glorified, in video games, particularly those aimed at teens.

Water Pollution   

Among the many environmental problems that offend and concern us, perhaps none is as powerful and dramatic as water pollution. Ugly, scummy water full of debris, sludge, and dark foam is surely one of the strongest and most easily recognized symbols of our misuse of the environment. Water pollution can have dire consequences for vegetation, animal life, and human health.

Youth Issues   

During adolescence, roughly the years between the ages of 13 and 18, young people begin experimenting with the behavior, beliefs, and attitudes of adults, mingling some qualities of childhood with some of adulthood. While most youths depend on their parents or other relatives for support, they are entitled to the same rights and protections under the U.S. Constitution as adults. However, in some cases, government has set narrower limits on those rights.

Website: http://socialissues.wiseto.com/AZIndex/

Find a designers solution to a social problem.

Women in Design

Elle Magazine  -  Helene Gordon

The Image of women in design

Issues

Female Emancipation

The image of women in a design piece

Content and style

Ground breaking technology

Swiss Modernism

Personal style of communication is flirty.

She had a lot of charm

Women’s roles in different cultures, all over the world, Middle East.

Female repression to enhance the males position

Chivalry.  The two sides of  Chivalry, Polite or Demeaning. 

Global Hunger and Global Obesity

Global Hunger and global obesity are 2 extreme halves of the same social issue of how to feed the whole world. Obesity being caused by the availability of cheap unhealthy foods and Hunger being caused by poverty.

Facts:

Every year 15 million children die of hunger

For the price of one missile, a school full of hungry children could eat lunch every day for 5 years

Throughout the 1990's more than 100 million children will die from illness and starvation. Those 100 million deaths could be prevented for the price of ten Stealth bombers, or what the world spends on its military in two days!

The World Health Organization estimates that one-third of the world is well-fed, one-third is under-fed one-third is starving- Since you've entered this site at least 200 people have died of starvation. Over 4 million will die this year.

One in twelve people worldwide is malnourished, including 160 million children under the age of 5. United Nations Food and Agriculture

Globally, there are more than 1 billion overweight adults, at least 300 million of them obese.

Facts:

Obesity and overweight pose a major risk for chronic diseases, including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension and stroke, and certain forms of cancer.

The key causes are increased consumption of energy-dense foods high in saturated fats and sugars, and reduced physical activity.

Obesity has reached epidemic proportions globally, with more than 1 billion adults overweight - at least 300 million of them clinically obese - and is a major contributor to the global burden of chronic disease and disability.

Often coexisting in developing countries with under-nutrition, obesity is a complex condition, with serious social and psychological dimensions, affecting virtually all ages and socioeconomic groups.

The solution to this problem has been designed by Ellen Gustafson.

Ellen Gustafson co-founded FEED Projects in 2007, she created a bag of which when purchased fed one child for a whole year. The funds of this program were then donated to the UN World Food Program (WFP).

This contemporary design is the solution or result of this global food crisis. On the one hand you have people eating too much food and on the other people dying of malnutrition for lack of food. Gustafson being a former WFP employee supported the mission to provide free school lunches in developing countries, this not only got them the food they needed but the education needed to provide them with a better chance in the future.

FEED also launched special bags when the earthquake struck Haiti. These funds went to the rebuilding of the schools there.

All FEED products are made as eco-friendly as possible. The bags are made with high-quality, 100% organic cotton and natural burlap.

The goal of FEED Projects is to market and sell as many FEED bags as possible and to FEED and educate the world's 400 million hungry children.

In May 2010, Gustafson launched The 30 Project – another contemporary designed solution project that is designed to stimulate a change in the way we produce and distribute food over the next 30 years. This movement’s aim is to provide healthy and balanced meals to all thus cancelling out the two extremes of the global food issue (hunger and obesity).

The 30 Project is a new way to understand and change the food system.

Basically, over the past 30 years our food system has changed dramatically, through poor agricultural production there has been an increase in global hunger and global obesity and the 30 project is the plan Gustafson has created to turn around this problem over the next 30 years. These problems cam about through a decrease in the US’s agricultural aid abroad and the availability of cheap and unhealthy processed foods. The aim of the 30 project is to make healthy and affordable food available to everyone around the world.

The 30 project wants to unite organizations around the world that have similar objectives. Many of the organizations around the world are too busy working hard for the cause that they don’t notice that together united as one they will make a bigger more significant difference, together being much stronger they can work together to create a more healthy and sustainable global food system.

A supporter of the 30 Project is Jamie Oliver, with his Ministry of Food campaign that was most recently in America. Where he visited unhealthy schools around the US that where serving unhealthy food to kids everyday for every meal of the day for example pizza for breakfast and such. Jamie Oliver's Ministry of Food is coming to Australia next to continue the campaign against obesity and diabetes. The main aim of Oliver's Ministry of Food initiative is to give people, particularly those in lower socio-economic communities, the skills and knowledge they need to improve their diet.

"Children around the world are suffering from malnutrition, despite there being enough food for everyone. "

Ellen Gustafson

30 reasons to support the 30-year project

1. 850 million hungry in 1980

2. Over 1 billion hungry today.

3. The number of hungry in America in 1980 was 20 million. That number today is 49 million.

4. Average number of food crises per year in the world in 1980 was 15. The average today is 30.

5. Every 6 sec a child dies of hunger related causes. 1 of 4 children in developing countries are at risk. That's 150 million and growing.

6. The USDA estimated that 16.7 million children lived in food insecure households in 1980.

7. Even mild undernourishment during critical growth periods in childhood can adversely impact behavior, school performance, and cognitive development.

8. Financial impact of undernourishment to economic development in the US each year is between 20 to 30 billion.

9. 1 billion people on Earth are overweight.

10. Since 1980, obesity rates for adults have doubled. Rates for children have tripled.

11. 2/3 of Americans are overweight or obese.

12. 1/3 of American Children are overweight or obese. Among children 12-19, these rates have tripled since 1980.

13. Since 1978, soda consumption has doubled among teenage girls and tripled among teenage boys. 1/5 of all infants are now soda drinkers.

14. Whole grain consumption in the U.S. has dropped 9% since 1980. Refined grain consumption has risen by 41%, that's an extra 30 lbs of fats and 19% more sugar a year.

15. Up to 80% of overweight children may have a lifetime of increased health risks, primarily cardiovascular disease - the leading killer in America.

16. Childhood obesity may cut 2-5 years off the lifespan of an average child in America – marking the first generation to have a shorter lifespan than their parents.

17. The U.S. spends $150 billion a year treating obesity related disease - nearly 10% of all medical spending.

18. In areas of North America, the UK, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, the Pacific Islands, Australasia and China, obesity rates have more than tripled since 1980.

19. Internationally, the WHO projects that by 2015, 2.3 billion adults will be overweight. Over 700 million will be obese.

20. 30% of the Global population is malnourished.

21. 30 years ago, Haiti grew all the rice it needed. Fast forward to now - rice production in Haiti has been cut in half.

22. In Africa, production of corn has fallen 14% since 1980. The number of malnourished has doubled.

23. During this same period, the U.S. cut its agricultural development assistance to Africa by 85%.

24. The U.S. now spends 20 times more on food aid to Africa than it does helping Africans develop ways to feed themselves.

25. Solutions lie not in feeding the world, but in allowing the world to feed itself. Switching to sustainable farming increases harvests in developing nations by an average of 73%.

26. In the early 1980s, tight money and high interest in the U.S. burst agriculture's speculative bubble. Farmland value dropped by nearly 60% in the Midwest alone.

27. From 1979 to 1986, 1 million jobs were lost in farming in the U.S. Farm poverty rates doubled to 20%.

28. The 1981 Farm Act set high price standards, rendering US agriculture too costly to compete on the global market. Thousands of people's lives were unraveled.

29. As population increases, the FAO says worldwide food output must double by 2050 to meet surging demand.

30. 1 Billion Hungry + 1 Billion Overweight = The World Today.

Banksy

Know one knows who he is.

Famous for stencilled street street Graffiti.

Governments want to get rid of his works.

Recently moved to canvas
Turned Warhols Marilyn to Kate Moss
Van Gough's Sun Flowers wilted

Liks to use rats to represent the triumph of the little people

Went to the british museum and put up his own pre-historic Art

Painted on the Palestinian Dividing Wall

Dislikes the institution, what the police represent.

CCTV cameras in his works represent people always watching you.

Goya is like Banksy but more Gorey

Vocab :D

Materiality:
the state or quality of being physical or material


Monochromatic: 
having tones of one color in addition to the ground hue


... an essential Property:
an essential property is one that is essential to the piece


Pictorial space:
In a painting or other two dimensional art, illusionary space which appears to recede backward into depth from the picture plane.


Critical theory:
Critical theory is an examination and critique of society and culture, drawing from knowledge across  
the social sciences and humanities. 


Optical Colour Mixing:
Optical color mixing is created through our perception of color. When one looks at two small amounts 
 of different colors laid down side by side the two appear to create a different colour. 


Traditional or Classical Architecture:
Classical architecture is a mode of architecture employing vocabulary derived in part from the Greek and Roman architecture of classical antiquity


Colour Field Painting:
Color Field painting is a style of abstract painting that emerged in New York City during the 1940s and 1950s. It was inspired by European Modernism and closely related to Abstract Expressionism. Colour Field painting is characterised by large fields of flat, solid colour spread across the canvas. The movement places less emphasis on gesture and likes brushstrokes and action over the consistency of form and process.


Action Painting:
sometimes called "gestural abstraction", is a style of painting where paint is spontaneously dribbled, splashed or smeared onto the canvas, rather than being carefully applied.


Prismatic:
resembling the colors formed by refraction of light through a prism


Orphism:
Orphism or Orphic Cubism, the term coined by the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire, was a little known art movement during the time of Cubism that focused on pure abstraction and bright colors influenced by Fauvism and the dye chemist Eugene Chevreul. This movement was pioneered by the Delaunays, a couple who relaunched the use of colour during the monochromatic Cubist movement.


Synasthesia:
is a neurologically-based condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway.


Motif:
is any recurring element that has symbolic significance in a story. Through its repetition, a motif can help produce other narrative (or literary) aspects such as theme or mood.


Woodcut print:
is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with gouges.


Facets (with regard to cubism):
Facets are flat faces on geometric shapes. The organization of naturally occurring facets was key to early developments in crystallography, since they reflect the underlying symmetry of the crystal structure.


Avante Garde:
The adjective form is used in English, to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture and politics.


Signatory:
a person who has signed a document such as a treaty or contract or an organization, state, etc., on whose behalf such a document has been signed


Manifesto:
A manifesto is a public declaration of principles and intentions, often political in nature.


Non-representational:
Of, relating to, or being a style of art in which natural objects are not represented realistically; nonobjective.

Homework
Bring Examples to present of art that was created with the intention to be politically provocative
NB You can bring cartoons.

ROAD TRIP!! Excursion to Roads through Abstraction

I Fell in love with Francis Picabia's work mainly "The Red Tree"
After these great abstract works he descended into depression and supported himself in france by producing a series of paintings based on the nude glamour photos in French "girlie" magazines like Paris Sex-Appeal, in a garish style which appears to subvert traditional, academic nude painting. Some of these went to an Algerian merchant who sold them on, and so Picabia came to decorate brothels across North Africa under the Occupation. :)