IDENTITY THROUGH MEDIA CONSUMPTION

Introduction

Self-portraits are a unique way to self-reflect. I originally wanted to create portraits that involved my family and important changes through my childhood. However, since we discussed that one’s identity isn’t only about one’s heritage, place of birth, or neighborhood, I decided take a different approach and show my identity though the media that I consumed through my childhood until now.

Childhood Self-Portrait

The first self-portrait shows an 8-year-old me surrounded by in all kinds of forms. My taste in music was mainly influenced by my fathers love of classic rock. Mind you, this was a time before there was such thing as Pandora Radio or Spotify, so we would tune into Q 104.3 and jam out to all the legends such as ACDC, Led Zeppelin, and Pink Floyd.

At that time, I also had a Sega Genesis that my father bought right after we moved into a new apartment in North Newark. I had four games, but the most memorable games where Mighty Power Rangers and Sonic the Hedgehog.

A couple of years later, my father got his hands on a PlayStation 1 with a missing centerpiece that allowed the CD to spin. He quickly replaced it from one of his Walkman CD players and fixed the PlayStation. I mainly had racing games, but none could compare to the Dukes of Hazzard video game.

Along with the racing games, movies such as The Fast and the Furious fulfilled my passion for cars even more. The first of the franchise introduced me to the iconic Japanese sport cars and the tuner culture with cars such as the Toyota Supra, Mitsubishi Eclipse, and the Honda S2000.

Recent Self-Portrait

My second self-portrait shows me a little less than a year ago surrounded by more current media that I consume. I choose to stick with the same forms of media as my childhood self-portrait (music, TV shows, video games) to compare them side by side.

My more recent self-portrait shows how technology has advanced over time. Ditching things like the radio for streaming services such as Spotify. My taste in music has changed over the years as I started to discover old-school hip-hop artists, such as Notorious B.I.G, Wu-Tang clan, and more modern ones such as Travis Scott and Kanye West.

As for video games, the Sega Genesis made its way up to the attic and the PlayStation 1 was thrown out after my father found out that the PlayStation 2 was backwards compatible, meaning that it could play all of my original PlayStation 1 games. At this time, I got my hands on more violent video games such as Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty. At first my parents where regretting letting me play these games. They worried that the violence depicted on the screen would do me harm, but I convinced them that I had a strong morality and was mature enough to play.

As I got older my parents got looser on me. I would spend Saturday nights watching Adult Swim over at a friend’s house. This introduced me to adult animated shows such as Family Guy, South Park, Robot Chicken, and most recently Rick and Morty. 

Future Self Portrait

This self-portrait is intended to show my predicted media consumption after graduating college. Using the three consistent forms of media, I’ve shown how my future responsibilities may prioritize my media consumption to other things.

New logos such as Google Chrome (the internet), Pinterest, Awwwards, Adobe Creative Cloud represent my key tools in my future professional career as a graphic designer. The MB Design logo shows my future plans to open my own design firm in the tri-state area.

Other logos such as Zillow, Robinhood, and YouTube represent other forms of incomes. Whether its investing in stocks through Robinhood, investing in real estate through Zillow, or building a YouTube channel, I will always make sure that I’m financially stable, one way or another.

Things such as my passion for cars like the Mazda RX7 and Porsche 911 (993), or my love with classic rock and video games are one of the many things that will stick around no matter how old I’ll get.           

Connections to Course topics

Throughout the course, we’ve discussed how our identity isn’t only shaped by where we come from, or what we physically look like. Identity can also be shown through the media that we consume. When we discussed about how sesame streets educational standards became more dynamic and not just be limited to teaching kids math and letters, I would watch other PBS programs such as Arthur, Caillou and Cyberchase that would go beyond teaching me numbers and the alphabet.

In my older more recent self-portrait, it shows how technology has modernized where I can choose what ever media I want at any given time. With the invention of the smartphone, the newer generations seems to be sucked into some kind of mind control because social media platforms such as Instagram and Twitter, as well as streaming apps such as youtube and spotify, give them the ability to consume all the media they could ask for on demand.