Process and Product

Process and product are discussed in Launching the Imagination. The book discusses how friction is used by some artists in three-dimensional pieces. One example is Todd Slaughter’s piece called Grinding Knuckles. The two graphite knuckles grind against each other, taking away from the sculpture and creating a pile of graphite (pg. 274). I find it interesting how the artist is willing to have his piece slowly destroyed, because of the beauty of the piece that he created. But then again that is part of the piece and the piece wouldn't be the same thing without that friction. The piece would have a totally different meaning without the grinding.

Time and Sculpture

Mary Stewart discusses sculpture as time. I like sculptures that change over time. I like to see the change, and it keeps me interested in the piece. While some sculptures change quickly, like Fumaki Nakamura’s Light Communication, other pieces change slowly, like Shelagh Wakely’s curcuma sul travertion (pg. 284). I like curcuma sul travertion because one can see how many people have walked, or not walked through the area. I would like to see it at different times during the day and at different time intervals. This piece of art could be used as a research piece as well because it can tell when more people walk through the area during certain times of the day, and where they walked to. 

Sound

Sound is very important in films. When I was reading the section of Time Design in Mary Stewart’ Launching the Imagination I never thought I would be reading about sound design. The book is very visually centered, but I am happy to see some stuff about sound. I never really thought about all of the qualities that sound has until I read that sound has seven of them (pg. 309). Sound sets the mood in a film and helps signal to the audience what the mood is or what it is going to be. Sound can tell when something is about to pop out of nowhere and scare the audience. Sound can also have an impact on the audience’s emotions. A more quiet sound can set the tone for a more somber moment or scene. Sound is all around us, so it is natural for sound to play an important role in film. 

Film Transitions

Mary Stewart talks about transitions in Launching the Imagination. Transitions in film transition from one scene to another (pg. 296). I think transitions are important and can defiantly change the look of a film. I don’t like when a lot of fancy transitions are used in a short amount of time because it breaks up the film too much and makes it seem choppy. I think it is important to use like a fade or a dissolve every now and then, but a cut seems to work well in a lot of cases, and keeps the pace of the film going.

Visual Books

Mary Stewart discusses visual books in her book Launching the Imagination. Visual books, like pop-up books, combine two-dimensional composition with three-dimensional structure (pg. 349). I really like pop-up books. I don’t really like books, unless it is a cool pop-up book or if the nook has something to do with Cirque du Soleil. I haven’t seen a pop-up book in a long time. Most people might think that they are for kids, but I think that they present a book in a different way that everyone can enjoy. It creates a space that one can explore visually in a new, unusual way within a book. I found a video of a pop-up book that I liked: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnZr0wiG1Hg.

Non-narrative

In Launching the Imagination, Mary Stewart discusses non-narrative storylines. She discusses the three most common approaches in non-narrative, which are categorical, rhetorical and abstract. In the book she talks about how audience participation is needed more in non-narrative, compared to narrative due to the lack of a concrete plot (pg.340). I like non-narrative pieces because I can take what the artist made and interrupt it in my own way, I can make it what I want. However, I don’t like it when I have to think a lot about it, or stop what I am watching to think about it. I don’t like that because I feel that when I have to really think hard about it, it takes away from the actual piece. So, instead of concentrating on the piece, I am concentrating on what I am thinking about. I think it is important in this case, of non-narrative, to give the audience just enough to think about, but not too much. 

"Europe. It's Just Next Door"

In this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGW6Rm437tE, there is a door in the middle of the walking area in a city in Europe. When a participant opens the door another city in Europe is shown on a screen within the door. There is a camera set up in both cities, so participants can see what is on the other side. On one side there is a performer who is ready to perform, and on the other side there is a participant who decided to open the door. While web cams are not new technology, this video shows how this older technology can be used in a new way, in a public, group way, with strangers on a side walk. It creates a type of interactive art piece that connects the large public world together and makes it smaller. 

When Technology Meets Imagination

A few months ago Cirque du Soleil launched a pilot project in partnership with Create.it. It is a coopetition where Cirque du Soleil wants participants to use technology in a new, creative way. They “are seeking technological creativity such as an ingenious use of new techniques or innovative use of old ones, resulting in an original experience.” There must be an artistic element to the piece that drives it forward. So far the submissions are of only old videos that either people found and posted that is of someone else’s work, or is old work of theirs. The contest ends in February. This pilot project is a perfect way of merging technology and art. All it needs is some participants who aren’t trying to cheat or rip Cirque off.

http://www.cirquedusoleil.com/en/jobs/casting/contest/technology.aspx

Website

Here is the link to my website that I created: http://users.tricity.wsu.edu/~austin.wingle/index.html.  My faux products are cirque nouveaux shows. These types of shows don’t feature any animals, and are more focused on the theatrical side and contain a theme or non-linear story line. The hardest thing to do on the website was getting the drop shadow the way I wanted it. After reading and watching many tutorials I finally found what I needed and tweaked it to the way I wanted it. I used Adobe Edge Animate to create the opening sequence.

Gravity

The book Launching the Imagination discusses gravity in the section about three dimensional design. The book discusses how gravity is one of the first noticeable features when making a three dimensional piece. In the book there are examples of how artists used the force of gravity in a creative way that made their pieces seem as if they were defying gravity. One thinks to themselves "how do they do that?" when seeing a piece that seems to defy gravity. I went online to search for more of these gravity defying works of art, and found some interesting ones that I like.

  by: Cornelia Konrads

 by: Cornelia Konrads

by: Sandcastle Matt

by: Cornelia Konrads

Video

In the video below, a team has set up a visualization that fools people into believing something extraordinary or out of this world is happening. In another part of the video people in an elevator watch as the floor below them starts to fall. It's a pretty cool video. And funny.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gx5YzCowd30

Free Water

Pictured left is my propaganda poster. The poster aims to discourage people from using bottled water as a source of water. Water is a need, not a want in life, and thus should be free. As the poster states we don't pay for air which is a need for life, so why pay for water? The idea for not using bottled water was inspired by One Drop Foundation's initiatives that encourage individuals to set goals for themselves to conserve water. One Drop Foundation, who's mission goal is to provide water to everyone, believes that water is essential to life and should be free and accessible to everyone. I used the "rays" of blue that come from the circle to help make the poster visually engaging, directing the focus on the water bottle and the water that is escaping from it its prison. This pattern is seen in older styles of propaganda. For the water bottle I wanted to create a water bottle where the water was visible, and I also wanted the water to look as if it behind "bars" inside the wear bottle. I first created a 3D model of a water bottle in Illustrator, but didn't like how it looked. So, I then saved the 3D bottle as a jpg, and brought it into Illustrator. I then divan image trace of the 3D water bottle to get what is now the final water bottle that is shown in the poster. I added the text above to show that water should be free, and the text below to further explain what the poster was about. The circles in the mid and bottom section of the poster were used to fill in empty space, and also to continue the ongoing shape of the big circles that contains the water bottle. It's not "we want to drink water," it's "we need to drink water."

Problem Solving

I would say that I use convergent thinking more than divergent thinking. I like to have clear idea of what I am doing, and I like to have a visual in my head of what the end product will look like. However, some of the time my convergent thinking turns into divergent thinking. Sometimes when designing I change my mind and don't like my visualized end product. When that happens I usually don't have an end visual, and I tend to not know how the final product will look like. For example, for out letter abstraction exercise in DTC 355, I had somewhat of an idea of what I wanted to do, but I ended up just experimenting around with the letters. My original convergent thinking turned into divergent thinking.

Art, Design, Performance, Cirque and Quadcopters

Posted below is a link to a video made by Cirque du Soleil, ETH Zurich and Verity Studios called "Sparked." The video incorporates design, art, performance, quadcopters and problem solving. The creators of the video wanted to hide the quadcopters, but at first they didn't know how. They tried many, different things to try to conceal the flying machines, but nothing was working. The creators though, did like how lights looked on the quadcopters and wanted to incorporate that into the final design. In this case the designers and creators used divergent thinking. This is because the designers and creators were all over the place and there was no clarity to how the final piece would look like. In the end lampshades with designs on them were used to hide the quadcopters in the video. Below is a link to the video as well as a link to a behind the scenes video of "Sparked."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6C8OJsHfmpI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YqUocVcyrE&list=UUPiWIjwDZQo3UobMqvi4ggg

Illusion of Movemen

The image below is from a page in Marvel's four part comic series that is based off of Cirque du Soleil's show KA. The image shows the illusion of movement. The movement can be seen as one of the characters seems to be reaching down in one of the panels, while in the other panel the same character is reaching out with her hand towards us. The "bubbles" that surround the two characters shows how they might be underwater and are swimming. The way the one character has her arm shows that she is moving down. In the other panel her arm is coming towards the viewer which shows her swimming back up to the surface. Without the "bubbles" the characters would seem like they are falling; the "bubbles" slow down the movement. The page as a whole shows movement, and every piece in the page works together to convey it.

AJW

I chose to manipulate the letters"A," "J," and "W." The letters are my initials. The letters that I used weren't originally symmetrical, so even though the final images look symmetrical they really aren't. Up close the images are slightly different from their left and right sides. I first took all of the sides of each letter and stretched them out to the corners of the art board to form an "X" shape. I then just manipulated the shape to get a desired look. The letter on the far left and far right are more complex, while the letter in the middle is less complex. At the end I added a brush stroke to the letters.

Photomontage

            I ended up doing a photomontage of the sky. I took the pictures one night when I saw some clouds near my house, and the sun was poking through the clouds. I took quite a few photos, but the time from the first photo taken to the last photo taken wasn’t very long due to how rapidly the clouds moved away. I also incorporated a small part of a tree down at the bottom to help make the image more engaging.

            I decided to do clouds after I tried a number of different things for my focal point. I tried my shoes, a growing pepper, a rotting tomato, a leaf that was drying up, and shadows. But none of these turned out. Either the process was too fast and didn’t have much change, like the leaf, or the process was too slow, like the tomato and pepper. As for the shadows and shoes, they just didn’t turn out period. So when I was outside one night, I looked up and saw the clouds and decided to try a photomontage of them. While clouds may have been done before, each piece is different and unique. My photomontage of clouds has some clouds with a small amount of sun piercing through them that lights them up just a little bit. To my surprise I only got a few photos with a good amount of sunlight. After those few photos the sky wasn’t as bright, but there was enough light to take some more photos. I then finished with a blank sky.

            I wasn’t in the beginning, as into this project as what I would have liked to be, or what I am normally. However, once I was able to capture images that I knew would turn out the way I wanted them to, I was fully engaged. I went through many trials and errors with this project, but in the end I am happy with the result and enjoyed it very much.

20 Artists under 20

Here is 20 photographers from flickr who are under 20. Very creative, innovative and imaginative photos.

https://www.flickr.com/20under20

Art, Technology and Cirque

Here is a video of Cirque du Soleil using art, design and technology in one of their shows. The idea is of an interactive stage that involves projections that Cirque put into one of their shows. The projection designer had to capture video and images in nature and also design a few of the images for projections for the stage. The stage responds with how the artists in the show move across it. The video is in French but has English subtitles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b52qSNfJkQU

Safewalls

After I read about color schemes I thought about Cirque du Soleil, which is what I normally think about, and I remembered about a project that Cirque put on in 2011 called Safewalls. The Safewalls project took certain shows of Cirque du Soleil in certain cities and at certain times, and made that particular show the subject for selected artworks that would be created by local artists of that city. The artists were able to see the show for inspiration, but had total creative freedom. The artists then created poster sized artworks that would be printed and sold. After reading the color chapter I remembered one of the poster designs that had an analogous color scheme, which is pictured below. I then went and looked at more of the posters and found that many of the posters used recognizable color schemes.

 The above piece has a triadic color scheme of red, yellow and blue which helps create unity, but there are also orange and violet shapes which creates some variety for the piece.

The above piece uses a triadic color scheme also of red, yellow and blue.

The above piece has a monochromatic color scheme.

Value

This post relates to my previous post entitled "Color Schemes," which has the three images that use different color schemes. Not only does hue play a part in how different each piece looks and how certain objects stand out or don't, but value also plays a role in this. The middle image's shapes overall stand out not only because of hue, but also because of the difference in the background value and that of the shapes.

 

Color Schemes

I enjoy looking at pieces of art that are the exact same, but use different color schemes. Each color scheme is unique and different even though some of them share the same colors in certain sets that are chosen (pg. 49). It is interesting to see how a piece in an artwork will be hidden when using one color scheme, but will jump out when using a different color scheme. This can be seen in the pictures below. The shapes in the second picture stand out more individually compared to that of the first and third image. The difference is because the first and third images use colors that resemble one another, with the first one being monochromatic and the third one being analogous. The second image has colors that are completely different from each other, with it being a complementary color scheme. Shapes stand out more in this piece against the background compared to the other two where the shapes sometimes get lost.

Self-Portrait

This is my self-portrait. My self-portrait displays some of the things that I am passionate about. The big top that is shown is a photo that I took in 2010 when I went to see a Cirque du Soleil show in Seattle. I am a fan of Cirque du Soleil, and it is a huge part of who I am. Part of my face is integrated into the big top. I split my face up to show how much Cirque du Soleil is a part of my life. I wanted to show that it is almost like the big top and I are one, or that I am a part of the big top itself. In the background is the sky, but hidden in the sky is a background of tress. This shows the passion that I have for nature and how the natural world should be preserved. The other half of my face is in the sky and is centered inside a ring. The rings represent all forms of juggling. I am centered in the ring and in the sky to show how connected I am to nature and to juggling.

Shape and Shading

Shading a shape can certainly make a shape come to life. The way a shape is shaded can make a difference in how it is seen by the viewer. The cover of The Penguin Pool Murder is a good example of how shading can make an impact (Pg. 11). The cover seems to be flowing with movement and motion, for the piece has repeated shapes and shading throughout. While shading can make a shape appear three-dimensional, it sometimes isn’t needed to make an impact or to make an image stand out. When I first saw the cover I thought of the 1920 era. Here is another piece done by the same artist, John Jinks.