Transending Addiction

"Changing the environment/living quarters of an individual with addiction"
I chose this image from the magazine telling a personal story of this individuals struggle with addiction.  It is a very dark outline of a human standing in a condemned room and thought: "what if art and natural calming murals can change this person's battle with addiction?"  I remixed the image with hand painted murals of trees in the forest on the walls and represented the dark floor with natural stone.  I thought  that bringing in these elements of nature will help aid this individuals recovery.  I think changing a person's everyday look/interior can help enlighten mood and positive progress with someone battling inner thoughts and illness.  I hope that this thought can be used not just in homes but in hospitals and out patient settings as well.  

Remixed by Leniese Gatto

Original image citation: Title of Magazine: Tricycle The Buddhist Review,  Fall 2012

The World At Their Fingertips

People often refer to this new generation, so rich in technology, as having "the world at their fingertips."  With access to games, movies, social- media, music, and endless entertainment through the tap of a finger, children are spending more time than ever in front of screens.  This means that they are spending less time than ever in nature, discovering the world through active engagement with it.  Children are not meant to interact with the world through a screen, which distances them and desensitizes them to all that they see.  My remixed image is an alternate perception of children having the world at their fingertips.  As they hang their feet in a stream below, they hold in their hands the world as they are discovering it.  

Remixed by Katherine

Original Image Citation: Parents Magazine, September 2016

Tumbleweeds Remix

I was first introduced to the concept of invasive plants and species by my father, an amateur horticulturalist, when I was a child. He taught me about Japanese beetles, Popillia Japonica, which threatened to destroy his prized heirloom rose bushes. My father and I walked sadly but fiercely picked off the beetles and dropped them into a can of kerosene. For my REMIX project I was interested to learn about the invasive tumbleweeds of California, Iowa, and Nebraska. Although we often think of these floating weeds as wild and beautiful and an integral part of the western landscape, many tumbleweeds are actually an invasive species which came from Russia. The giant weeds scatter their seeds prolifically, reproducing thousands weeds, which choke out other plants, and pile up around homes and businesses. My remix envisioned a utopian scene where the tumbleweeds have been eliminated.    

Remixed by Nancy Merrifield

Original image citation: National Geographic December 2013, page 139  

Made Locally

  

The image I chose to remix is a picture of a barren drought stricken farming field in California. The vast landscape appears extremely dusty and dry with no crops growing. It made me want to see a luscious green field full of crops and farm animals thriving off the land so that became the basis for my remix. Knowing that climate change can cause drought, I imagined a world where everyone took care of the earth to prevent such things. In a sort of whimsical way I added lots of vegetables and farm animals to the foreground of the picture to make it seem like the field is being planted and harvested anew. I chose the words made locally to emphasis organic and local farming. 

Remixed by Isabelle

Original Image is taken from the October 2014 issue of National Geographic page 61, photographer unknown

 

Your Sense of Freedom

Unfortunately, advertising drives our understanding of things.  It can take things we hold dear, like the sense of freedom, and cause us to disregard the effects of what we do.  Geico Insurance manipulates our idea of freedom to make us believe it encompass riding a paved highway, causing pollution runoff into that pristine ocean and cuts through a sensitive ecosystem, on your new motorcycle that runs on fossil fuel, produced by detrimental resource extraction, polluting refinery practices, land altering and precariously unsafe pipeline construction and carbon dioxide emission.  Therefore, we prioritize these practices in fulfilling a false and mislead idea of freedom being sold to us by a cute little gecko.

In my digital remix, I want to show on one hand, the reality this “sense of freedom” produces, and on the other hand, an alternative practice that can provide a more authentic, ecologically sound approach to finding and experiencing that sense of freedom.

Remixed by Rebecca Cote

Original image Citation: Geico Insurance Ad.  Nature Conservancy, June/July 2016. Image taken from the back cover.

Garbage Patch

I was instantly drawn to the original image due to the simple fact that I have a great love for aquariums. The perspective in the image is bold and makes a statement that tells me that the only thing between the viewer and the sea-life is a thick pane of glass. After overthinking why we as humans find it a necessity to capture wildlife for our entertainment, I began to wonder what their natural habitats really look like and if they would be better off living in the ocean. The immediate answer to this is, yes. I then began to think about how our oceans have been consumed with pollution, all of which could be eliminated if we took responsibility for our actions. After a little research revolving how climate change is affecting our oceans, I stumbled upon information that explained the multitude of waste in the Pacific Ocean, better known as The Great Pacific Ocean Patch. The digital remix illustrates the amount of waste that we, as humans, are causing and highlights the juxtaposition of what the natural habitat really looks like for sea animals. 

Remixed by Nicole Burnor

Original image citation: STERN Magazine (Germany) | 2007

Swin in the Darkness

Swim in the Darkness-Explore the Ultimate Nature  

Camping has always been important to me. There is something so beautiful and breathtaking about slowing down and living in the woods for a couple days. The city life can bare down on your soul and cause people to feel anxious, stressful and claustrophobic. I chose this image to remix and enhance the beauty of living within a dark starry landscape in the woods. Living in the city we see a great deal of light pollution so the stars are dulled out by the bright lights.  I am always amazed by the blanket of stars when I travel to Vermont or New Hampshire. There is so much beauty within the simplicity of living in nature especially under the stars.  

Remixed by Jennifer DeAngelis

Origianl Image Ciation: Men's Journal, Photographer unknown Aug 2017 pg. 71  

Flower Garden

I picked up the magazine Big Steam is Back in hopes that I would find issues related to trains and problems we might face when railways change landscapes. It turns out that steam engines are some of the most environmentally-friendly forms of transportation, despite there massive tonnage and the energy and manpower it takes to work the machinery. Although we are far away from the golden age of steam trains, in an ecological sense, they are the best form of transportation when you consider the burning of harmful fuels and the degradation of the natural landscape. Here I chose to depict a decommissioned locomotive that has been turned into a flower garden, and workers caring for the flowers with an unusual sort of grace and effort, despite the flowers growing among a tangle of overbearing machinery. Once I saw the connecting rods, I immediately saw some sort of shelf that could cradle this arrangement of flowers. Then from the first image, I saw the prideful man holding the water pitcher to water his garden. The black and white contrasting with the popping colors is especially effective in this piece, as is the bright yellow water pitcher. 

Remixed by Roy Gabrielson

Original Image retrieved from: Big Steam Is Back Magazine, Special Edition # 19-2017, pg. 84

Photo: Chase Gunnoe

Nothing Grows Her

What first caught my eye from the original photo was the woman standing in her garden with her hands outstretched. Her head is bent, arms out as if she is holding something delicate, but in reality, as she states, "Nothing here grows" and her image becomes filled with sorrow. I wanted to fill her arms with hope again. I choose to do a surrounding collage of greenery, hope, and a message "Clean up the Earth" in hope to bring awareness to oil spills and pollution. I wanted to represent what the land could look like if the oil pollution never took place.

Remixed by Pearl Kerber

Original Image Citation: Photographer :Reza, National Geographic May 1999, page 20