Topic One: The Tough Question-First Assignment.

First Assignment

 Original Idea

     The Original idea I had for this piece came from high school. The basic concept behind the piece was the idea that memes, more specifically the Harambe meme, was being used to hide police brutality. Before this piece was ever created, the event of police brutality against African American people was taking place throughout the United States. You would turn on the TV and hear news about the Trevon Martin incident, the Shooting in Ferguson, Mississippi, the Black Lives Movement, etc. Along would come the Killing of the Gorilla named Harambe, and memes spawned from the Gorilla's death and spread like wildfire. At the time I perceived that people were focusing on the short lived meme of Harambe instead of trying to bring awareness to and solve the problem of police brutality. That lead to the sketches seen above which reflects the final product. 

Process

     I originally wanted to use newspapers for this piece, but I did not have the newsprint to use so I could try and make my own newspaper, so I stuck with using online sources, though I only use one source (here) in my piece. I did do more research on Harambe and the meme, and this is where My concept for the piece became fuzzy. I Started Comparing dates of when all these events occurred, and I found that the killing of Harambe happened a few years  after the shooting in Ferguson, which made me feel less strong about the idea of people focusing on Harambe rather than Police brutality. On top of that, I ended up seeing a few meme somewhere, in my research, that compared Harambe to police brutality, shown below.

 

      This idea did influence my concept, as I also wanted to somehow add this to my piece, though, this the point where I just really did not know what I was doing, so I simply did my best to combine the two concepts, and I ended up with what follows.

 

What I hoped for my finished product to do was to provoke the thought of where we are now in terms of police brutality and to simultaneously convey the idea of Harambe being tranquilized, instead shot, aaking the question of whether or not this incident would have been memed so heavily. The latter part of the concept is not really grasped, and I can't really say that this piece had much direction, which is why I can't really give a clear concept, though a multitude of ideas and messages can be grasped from the composition I put together.