Before and After Project

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This is my Before and After project. It is a showing an object (me) in a constantly changing state as I leave my room and take a walk around the block in the early hours of the morning as the sun slowly rises in the city and gives light. The video starts at dark and ends in the morning as I return to my room. its filmed in black and white with selective color on, starting with red then yellow and finishing with green. similar to the traffic lights of the city that are in there own constantly changing cycle. 

This piece is a book called awkward moments from the Maison Kasini section of the Belgo building and it was composed by Daryl Vocat. The book is quite bold and suggestive and still has a friendly look to it. He uses bright contrasting colors (mostly primary). The prints are lined with thick, bold, black outlines and consist of 34 in total. The book (designed by Ric Kasini), after looking through is not as friendly as it appears at first sight and the tile becomes more and more apparent as one flips through the prints. Some of the prints come across as filled with torment and isolation and also tender and intimate making it the awkward moments he is talking about. The book is 8.5 x 11” and has saddle stitched bindings with 28 pages. I think that Vocat definitely benefits greatly from today’s digital media and without it wouldn’t have been able to produce many of the prints in his book. Programs like illustrator make prints like these much more accessible and therefore I believe digital media has made it possible for Vocat to reproduce his experiences in the form of his art work. Vocats work is certainly very relative to our class work and projects as we discussed artist books and types of bindings for our before and after projects as a book was an option. His work reminds me a lot of the work we looked at involving illustrator as well and that is possibly why I decided to write about his book.     

Not much information was given to me with this work of art. However, it caught my attention very quickly and though it may not have intended to be seen as art and more as a biology experiment I could quickly relate it to the before and after pieces we were assigned. This video time lapse was created my ‘Henry’ and posted on his personal blog and youtube.com where many people commented and shared thoughts. The video starts off as a bowl of fruit looking fresh and delighting, with rich vibrant colors. As the video progresses the colours fade and become darker shades of what they were while the fruits deflate as they begin to decay. The scene in the video becomes less and less appetising as the rotting fruit withers and browns. Just as the bowl becomes a revolting mess of rotten fruit, a green sprout emerges from the bowl and begins to grow lush green leaves. The from start to finish the video symbolises life blooming lush and colourful, slowly moving towards death and decay until it’s all rotten. Then like a cycle the bowl suddenly comes to life again as the seeds of the rotten fruit sprout and begin growing in to the plant that will bear more fruit and start the cycle over. This leaves us with questions like is before and after a constantly changing thing? One of the class lectures discussed the constant cycle of before and after with the rotting cow head in the two glass rooms. This example is very similar and has almost the same implication.               

This image by Chris Jordan is a large 60"x60" print of a collection piece. Chris Jordan inspired my collection project so I thought I would write another journal entry about his work. Jordan's "Running the Numbers" works are what attracted me most with his art. This image called ‘Oil barrels’ is digitally rendered image of supposedly 28,000 oil barrels each containing 42 gallons of oil. The image represents the amount of oil consumed every 2 minutes in the United States which turns out to be 1,176,000 gallons (equal to that of a medium sized river). Aesthetically, this image is cynical and dark or not very positive looking as well as possibly quite dramatic and overwhelming, as it should be seeing as it represents a very real and shocking fact. What I like about Jordan’s work is the message he attempts to deliver with each piece. It is as if he is taking facts and portraying them in a whole new way to get the world to recognize things that they would have previously neglected. I think that digital media has helped Chris Jordan to more effectively portray his ideas and experiences. without today's digital media I don't think Jordan would have half the amount of art work that exists in his Running the Numbers section of his website. Chris Jordan's 'Oil Barrels' are very relative to the collection works we have been doing in class. Some of his other pieces were used as examples in class lectures and this is how I came to know/learn about him.  

    

Imperial speeders

The topic I chose for this week was star wars because I can appreciate the work put into the movies in terms of computer editing and I feel that this particular piece strongly represents this statement.  The digital art piece I chose for this week is titled Imperial speeders. It was designed and created by Michael James Newlyn. Michael posted it on digitalart.org on May 2 2007. Michael created Imperial speeders using Paint shop pro. He got the idea from the movie star wars. The framed shot of the imperial speeders is a crisp almost life like picture.  When I found it on the site I found it to be the best representation of that scene and for that matter the movie itself.  I look at this picture and can see that the artist was striving to achieve the action and intenseness of the movie and put it into a framed shot. The picture also has a video game look or computer generated. I found the backdrop to be very well done and the imperial speeders to be better done. The best thing about this digital piece is the element of how Michael made the speeders look like they were moving at high speeds, almost looking like there coming out of the screen.  I also found that it was done very well for the time it was dated in because of coarse in 2007 the technology wasn’t as advanced. But all in all this is a solid picture and that is why I chose it.

3d Graffiti

3D Graffiti is a digital art piece by Graffiti Technica made in February of 2010 that expresses graffiti and how it makes people view graffiti. It makes people understand that graffiti is meant to jump out at you. It’s meant to describe how art jumps off the wall, canvas, and paper and gives people an intentional feeling that is created by the artist. I found 3D Graffiti on Digital art.org and it right away gave me the impression of what the Graffiti technica was trying to say. I think it’s an interesting way to express a type of art that is in my opinion the very abstract in a way. I think it’s creative and very outside the box. The most detailed part about this picture is the paint splatters above the art piece and the backdrop looks realistic enough to tell me that this is digital photography but the editing in this is magnificent. I love graffiti and everything it represents and this is a creative representation of the style of art. I love where Graffiti is created. Anyone can draw on a piece of paper or digitally remake something and call it art but it takes a dedicated artist to go the lengths that these artists go and take the time to bring it to a next level and digitally speak for the art itself. I also think that this work will set a trend for future digital art. So I think this picture was very well done.

The fox and the Hound

The fox and the hound is a digital piece by Andy Simmons made in January of 2003. It’s a strong representation through digital art of curiosity between two conflicting things that rely on each other with amazing digital work for the year it was made. The shot looks not quite life like but is still very well done for its time period. The backdrop was very well done by Andy Simmons. Specifically the horse being ridden in the trees. The fox under the shoreline was good and same goes for the dog above it. The thing I liked best about it was the shading on the tree and the leaves. I discovered this digital piece online at digitalart.org and I saw something more than just a fox and a hound I saw to things that spend there whole time chasing each other driven by this curiosity of what they are chasing. When I first saw the name of this piece I thought of the movie the fox and the hound. And it made me think that this could have been where the idea was generated from. The themes I see in this picture I can see the artist worked hard to capture. I think that it was done very good and I would like to see more recent work by this artist to compare the older work to, find similarities and differences, see where they improved and see if I could learn something from his mistakes, and use it with my own work.

WEEKLY JOURNAL: Chris Jordan - Shark Teeth

This is Chris Jordan's work. Similar to some of the collection works shown in class this falls in the same category. I am really interested all of Jordan's collection pieces and I believe this will be similar to the path ill be following in my collection project soon to come. I like the way he takes a collection of similar images and combines hundreds of them to create a bigger picture and deeper meaning relating back to the collection. Anyone who looks at any of Jordan's "running the numbers" pieces can see right away that he has achieved his goal with each one. check out his website - http://www.chrisjordan.com/gallery/rtn/#denali-denial
This piece represents 270,000 sharks of all species killed around the world every day for their fins and is created from an equal number of shark teeth.

WEEKLY JOURNAL: Meret Oppenheim - (Beer mug) Texture

Meret Oppenheim is the artist behind the fur cup and saucer in the class lecture. This beer mug with what looks like a fur tail can be put in the same category. However, Oppenheim in not an artist who can be categorized in a specific theme or group. she prefers to look at her self as an artist seeking her own path. many artists see her as a surrealist though she remains faithful to her own style. supposedly her art has allot of influence from her dreams which she has been recording since she was fourteen. I came across this cup on the web while researching her work and I thought that this had the same if not very similar motives as the fur cup and both are very successful in achieving textile looks. I can relate this back to the texture project that Im working on as the cup and saucer was one of the given examples.  

WEEKLY JOURNAL: One Ransome Note - Obedience Is The Most Valuable Currency

Shepard Fairey is and underground artist who in recent times has slowley been moving in to the spotlight. "One Ransome Note - Obedience Is The Most Valuable Currency" was created by Fairey apparently in hope of portraying the dangers of capitalism.  However, weather his art was successful or not I couldnt tell because alot of people seem to think his work shallow and redundant and unoriginal while others value it greatly. critics say that he has turned a subversive and political movement into "just another fashion statement" and that he is using the system to his own advantage. For more information on this read the article "Obey Plagiarist Shepard Fairey" by Mark Vallen (http://www.art-for-a-change.com/Obey/index.htm). Shepard is more known for is obama "hope" poster, however, this too was accused of plagiarism.     

WEEKLY JOURNAL: Jumping janes, Martha Rosler

Jumping Janes by Martha Rosler was created in the women's art movement and is part of martha's private collection although it has been displayed in many museums world wide. Jumping Janes or "nature girls" is a photomontage created using mixed techniques. I came across Rosler in a class lecture and found this piece after further researching her on the web. I think she tries to achieve Photo-opt work by combining different media in allot of her pieces and this one is certainly of the more successful.
I can relate Rosler's work back to my project one, the found image remix project, because she takes different images and by combining them can force a new meaning out of her composition.
    

WEEKLY JOURNAL: Jose Antonio's Meta Graphics - http://www.inter-modal.org/

This piece of digital art by Jose Antonio Fernandez is a screen shot of an actual interactive website. Fernandez was a synesthetic artist and his work is inspired by synesthesia. With the help of graphic artist  Fernando Federico, Fernandez was able to create this website based on a few examples of his work. I like the way he expresses audio and visual pieces and allows the viewers to interact with the different graphic animations while listening to the audio clips.
I suppose the objective of this would be to simulate the way a synesthetes would experience the music. Therefore, not being a synesthetes myself, I would not be able to tell if it is successful. However, it does link the human senses well.  

- http://www.inter-modal.org/ 
     

WEEKLY JOURNAL: Pearblossom Highway, 1986

This kind of composition, composed by David Hockney, is called a joiner. Similar to a collage or photomontage, the image is made up of 3000 smaller pictures that all come together to form this one picture.

I first came across this picture in my high school's art studio and when I later came across an original image of Pear Blossom highway it quickly became apparent that there were many things included in Hockney's image that were not present in the original photograph.

Hockney made his image by taking different pictures while walking closer to some of the items and getting close ups. After all his pictures are assembled again it looks like they were all taken from the same spot (as i assumed on first site). 

I think hockeys goal was to take a boring uninteresting scene and creatively turn it in to something of a interesting, well balanced composition, which he has certainly achieved. 

          

Peace/War

Found Images Remix Project