Van Neeley

The first step was to scan the image. The image I chose from the graphic novel  Unflattening was uploaded to a computer using an image scanner - a device used to optically scan images or handwritten text and converts it to a digital image. 

Next, the image was edited using Photoshop. Using the PS software, I cropped the image and I made the image brighter and implemented a high contrast - the lasercutter works best with images that are white and black; gray colors would blur and blend into each other and the printed lasercut image would be obscured. 

Finally, using the Adobe Illustrator software, I incorporated a red line (to "tell" the lasercutter where to begin cutting the image) and red circles (to "tell" the machine where I wanted to put holes in the product to be able to hang on a wall.) 

Edwin Abbot wrote a novella Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions  published in 1884. The novel is a satire of the hierarchy of Victorian culture. The novel plays with geometric figures: women are simple line segments, men are polygons, and the narrator is a square. The narrator informs the reader of a life lived in two dimensions. - - -  https://tinyurl.com/htavv6v

Similarly, Nick Sousanis, authored and illustrated the graphic novel  Unflatenning -  which is the first dissertation from Columbia University to be presented in comic book format. Throughout the graphic novel, he provides his own commentary about social theories in contemporary society. 

In my own words, I would title this work, "Uniformity," illustrated by Nick Sousanis. The picture describes how ordinary people are being created and subjected to the same standard as everyone around them. Not a single person has any personal qualities, along with having congruent structures of the mind and body. The factory setting can be equated to many sources. For example, the factory could be a tyrannical government, policy, or the social standards that are subjected to all of the common populace. Sousanis provides a commentary of how the need for diversity - that being culture, race, sex, occupation - will prevent a bleak, boring, colorless, and uncreative society. I chose this image because the message it presents is powerful - that people should strive to be unique and different from the next person. 

Both Abbot and Sousanis use primarily images to tell a story about their feelings of their societies. I find this to be unique because the reader is presented with a story with illustrations with small bits of text; much of the message being presented is up to interpretation. Each author wishes for his audience to ponder well what is being "told" to them visually.