09/11/2010

Monday 8.11.10



Installation project. I loved this project, I’ve always liked working collaboratively and my group was really enthusiastic and we had lots of ideas.

We were given a quote from Hamlet, and ours was to do with Hamlet’s uncle being old and wanting to be youthful again. We worked along the idea of time passing, making a sundial out of cling film and shining an amber light up through it, signifying the time-encapsulating qualities of amber…

I wasn't really too sure about the outcome, I think we were quite rushed in the end and didn't think things through well enough, but the process was certainly interesting.

08/11/2010

Week 8 Review


This week has been a lot of work, typography really made me think outside the box. I could have gone with my first instinct which was to paint the fonts onto someone's body and do a nude shoot, but then I started thinking about what the word FRAGILE actually meant (it was my favourite) and how it related to the world around me. I thought about what things in my world were fragile and fleeting, the words and the way they sounded reminded me onomatopoeically of the way ice looks and feels when it melts, and how it almost seems sad, the way it slips away. I wanted to portray that but also give a sense of mystery so I reversed it.

I didn't realise at first what I'd got myself into, trying to do a good time-lapse shoot. I had to set myself up a background on my desk with paper, sort of like an infinity curve, and put the mirror onto it so the ice could reflect (just a bit more interesting). Then I had to set up my lighting which took an hour at least, doing about 200 test shots with ice cubes until I got it right. In the end I used two desk lamps, one lighting it from the front-left with a greaseproof-paper diffuser to, well, diffuse the harsh bulb-light; the other lit the cubes from the back-right, I used a paper snoot to direct the light through the cubes to make them stand out. I then set up my tripod, and connected the camera (Canon 550D with polarising filter to reduce glare from the mirror) to my laptop and set it to photograph every 5 seconds. The test shoot I used a remote shutter but it produced way too many photos (I was shooting in RAW so iMovie and Quicktime couldn't handle it!). I then did the same for the titles.

Basically, I didn't realise how much work it would be. It still isn't really perfect, for some reason I forgot to set the white-balance off auto so it changes every other shot! It's very annoying that the exposure isn't the same throughout, but that's something I'll know for next time. I really loved the precision involved in making the movie and will definitely go out and do more time-lapse photography, it's good to try something new I guess!

Fashion-wise, I've always loved making clothes, and have been since a young age, though I've never really designed clothes myself before, or worked on a mannequin, so that was completely new. I can't imagine myself ever really wanting to go into fashion as a career, but I'll always love making clothes from patterns etc. and will definitely keep it as a hobby.

I discovered that film director Michel Gondry's preferred medium is time-lapse, I'm going to dig some more to find other great time-lapse artists.

I also must buy a Neutral Density Filter and one of these little beauties...

05/11/2010

Friday 5.11.10


Lecture

Vivian
“If you don’t like picture books and cats, you’re not going to like this lecture”
There ain’t no cats in this book
Illustrator, went to Falmouth
She’s super-cute
Falmouth BA illustration
Commission to write picture books

Ollie Sutherland

Fal Foundation then Slade
Film
Tottenham court road
Film about somewhere he didn’t like being, but turned into more than that.
Worked in an old school in redruth, studios
Newlyn
Theremin
Time machine. Likes weird things
I’m dreaming of a white Christmas, NIGHTMARE.
Interest in impending doom and superman.
Iceberg
webcams from worldly places
go stop go (Gestapo?), redruth 4 weeks
Andy put his head in a basketball hoop.
Spike Island!
Animal enrichment, games in zoos
Obsesses about things, lived on a boat. He lost a stone and made work about space
NASA never said – deleted every star from a nebula
Gary the swan
Talk to me

“Oh, I’ve got some acid house I made this year!”

Thursday 4.11.10


The second day of typography. I decided to make a time-lapse animation of the word 'FRAGILE' in melting ice.



I really enjoyed making this. I did a test-run which I decided I didn't like, so I spent an hour or two researching and perfecting the lighting that would work best with the ice. I then spent another two hours photographing the ice melting, setting my computer to take the photos every 5 seconds. I used iMovie and Quicktime to pieve it together.

Music is 'Sea Talk' - Zola Jesus

03/11/2010

Wednesday 3.11.10


Lecture – ‘Brendan’s been working here for a while, and he’s very 4-Dimentional’
VJ Theory – Ideas, creativity and quality behind live visual media.
HTML 5
Film
Appropriation of eastern ideas by western capitalist society?
Easy Java - Processing
The Wilderness Downtown - Video & digital processes
RJDJ iPhone app
Back in time…
Miniature painted portraits – photographic portraits, similar to miniature portraits
Photography takes on what painting was, painting then becomes it’s own artform.
Lumiere brothers, train coming into a station. Terrified people. 1895
Modulate VJing software
Viaje a la luna, de Melier, 1902
Recreating theatre. Croydon sheds, creating DRAMA.
Sprocket between each neg, punched big holes if out of sync!
Cinema1, cinema2
Routes through film, cinema, drama, art. What can you do with film?
Long exposures in film
Death of experimental forms of theatre=movies
Dickson experimental Sound film, Edison laboratory. Absolutely ridiculous. REMAKE
Intolerance – racist film.
Battleship Potemkin – Sergei Eisenstein
Symbolism.
Cinematic orchestra Man with the movie camera 1
Marx, capitalism is creating new types of men. Socialist experiment.
Gimp. Openoffice.
A study in choreography for camera
UBU.com. Named after Pere Ubu!
GPO film unit- A colour box by Len Lye
Bill Viola – the reflecting pool. Reason for knocking at an empty house
Chris Cunningham – All is full of love, Bjork
Aphex Twin and Hecker

02/11/2010

Tuesday 2.11.10



First day of Typography.
We had been told to bring in a photograph, or any sort of image to work from. I couldn't pick just one, so I bought in two photographs, one from my portfolio, and one scrap photo that I'd worked back into using bleach:


We then had to write as many words as we could to do with the image, and pick five of the best to work from.

We then found already-existing typefaces that represented the words and copied them onto a worksheet. We then developed ideas from this sheet, of what we could do as a project involving typography in any sense!

I enjoyed today, I liked the precision involved in copying the type, and also finding fonts to match the words I'd found, but the scope of possibilities for the final piece has kind of unnerved me, In that I can't really think of anything. I'll end up doing photography again!

01/11/2010

Monday 1.11.10



Fashion. Induction to household sewing machines and industrial sewing machines. Made maquettes.

30/10/2010

Friday 29.10.10



We didn't have a lecture because of an optional trip to the Eden project, and as I've been before, I decided to go home for the weekend!

27/10/2010

Wednesday 27.10.10


Lecture – Post Modernism.
Painting is ‘washed up’, Duchamp said in 1912. In abandoning painting, he said ‘I want something where the eye and the hand count for nothing’
1960’s onwards. Post-war period, 2nd world war changed society

Duchamp, godfather of post modernism. Decades before, ahead of his time. Art becomes more accessible, to everyone, but less accessible To the common man, why is that art?

Marcel Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’… 1917! Wasn’t allowed in the show, thrown out.

Bicycle wheel and snow shovel. When he was looking for objects, stuff that DIDN’T inspire him, ordinary on display and call it art.

Godfather of conceptual art.

·      Everyday banality
Warhol. Richard Avedon photographer. Interested in celebrity.
“Warhol’s Brillo Box was the end of the modernist lie… Art had completed the line of questioning…etc’
Brillo Box. Andy Warhol asking what art is, doesn’t have to be lofty. Graphic Illustrator rather than fine artist.
‘If brillo box represented the end of modernism in Danto;s schema, fot the commodity critics it marked the beginning of postmodernism. For them it’s key element was the recognition of the identity of artworks and consumer products’

Campbell’s soup. about repetition.

·      Cross cultural references, eclectic
Euro-centric so goes out to elsewhere. Yasumasa Morimura. Takes other’s art and uses it himself, dressing himself etc. Olympia by Manet etc.
Vermeer, girl with a pearl earring.
Chan-hyo Bae
1990, Existing in Costume
‘The sun never sets over the British empire’ etc.

·      Democracy
Modernism not accessible to common people, not only people who go to art galleries. Postmodernists wanted art to be seen by more people as well as done by more people
Susan Philipsz – sound artist
Filter – Tesco 1998
Shallow sea – New York, Guggenheim 2009
Lowlands – under bridges, Glasgow 2010
Haunting singing. Embed video.

·      Semiotics
Signs/signifiers
Ori Gersht, Israeli (Tel Aviv)
Weird still lives, shooting an apple etc! making still image suddenly explode.
Original composition of renaissance tries to capture a moment in time, this is the opposite.
Juan Cotan
Alessi – SMI – sensation, memory and imagination. Triggering memory to make a sale
Aldo Rossi teapot.

·      Material playfulness
Chris Ofili, the upper room 2002, elephant dung. With this work, olli raises questions about the relationships between civilisation and…

“the upper room is like a single entity’ HAH

The last supper, 12 elements with 13th most important element,
Tate website.
Mark Quinn, self in blood, also in poop.

Anselm Kiefer poppy seeds and remembrance. 2nd world war artist

·      Feminism
Barbara Kruger, we don’t need another hero, not stupid enough, yur body is a battlefield
Andrea Dezso, embroidery, lessons from my mother

·      Environmentalism

Tuesday 26.10.10


26/10/2010

20/10/2010

Wednesday 20.10.10


I also had my 2nd life drawing class



19/10/2010

18/10/2010

14/10/2010

Thursday 14.10.10

Photography Day
We were given Nikon D80's, which was a little annoying as my Canon D550 is a much better camera, however the Nikon does have a multiple exposure setting which I liked.
We had to shoot the objects on the tables and come up with one final piece:


I kind of got a little obsessed with the yellow vase, it has beautiful texture.

I also went to do a shoot by the pier with my Canon and Zoe, which was fun.


It was really good to do something that I'm good at, I felt I helped others who were learning too!

13/10/2010

Wednesday 13.10.10


Lecture – Making Things, 3D Design
Hans Hat – Give & Take.
Chairs, Product design
Art Nouveau - flora and fauna, tripod, roman.
Ruskin, Unto this last. Contemporary, Bauhaus. Conrad
Chairs- Mondrian painting
Philippe Starck - Amazing contemporary designer.

This lecture was interesting and well-presented, but didn't tell me anything I didn't already know. I plan to go into design so have researched the area thoroughly. It did make me think about design more though, and go back to my design books, especially my eco-design book,a dn re-read them!

Tuesday 12.10.10

Ill, catch up Painting day