Week Six
Lecture Notes:
Lecture Summary
I thought this weeks lecture was so eye opening to be able to show and talk about different designers across the decades! The designers that particularly stood out for me are as follows:
Guy Debord - Naked City
I just really like the graphics within this piece and the concept behind it is really cool. Making your own path through the city. Also how he’s put the words into different shapes.
Stephen Gill - Hackney Flowers Project
One of my favourite artists from the lecture. I just think this is a really clever concept and I think it would be interesting to test this out in this weeks workshop session.
Maxwell Granger
Such a simple project yet so effective. This one is just someone at home with the flu watching the Manchester United game. I was thinking the whole time how would my friends react if I just popped over and took pictures of them without them realising.
Resource Notes:
Resource One
Resource Two
Resource Three
Resource Summary:
Resource One
This particular source was eye opening in terms of thinking how our surrounding effects the experience that we are having especially when it comes to admiring art work. Noted points about how we don’t notice if theres music playing when looking at a piece of art. We also tend to put out own influences when interpreting the art itself, in terms of the scene that being presented.
Resource Two
I think its always so personal when you look into other peoples sketchbooks. But at the same time kind of mysterious as you don’t know where they’ve been or what they have seen that sparked them to sketch those ideas throughout daily life. I love how all of these artists also carry sketchbooks around with them constantly to enable them to brainstorm things, I haven’t been able to do this myself although there are often times where I think I would love to have my camera on me! The two sketchbooks that stood out for me were:
Frederique Daubal
I really liked the way that Daubal sketched over the top of images and magazine covers to make them her own piece of work and to add that personal touch.
Ed Fella
I love fellas work, especially how he mixed different collaging techniques with drawing styles. I think this is really cool and wonder how it would look with photographs too.
Resource Three
One of the interesting points about resource three was the fact that we know the world and we learn knowledge from other people and from our own experiences but I think it would be such a different space if we were to unknow the unknown. The image below was one of my favourites from the case study and the brain is so clever to associate certain patterns with certain parts of nature. Below you automatically see a river but it is intact a road.
Research
I decided to research some everyday photographers and artists this week. Also decided to do some more research about everyday optical illusions:
I think this image by Liz Barker shows how different things look when you look up. Shown in the image of the Eiffel Tower.
Another image by Liz Barker, showing how simple a photography can be when looking up.
Andy Yeung - The looking up series led me to this beautiful image looking up at architecture. The symmetry is amazing.
Simon Wiffen - This amazing black and white contrasting image of the trees is beautiful in terms of noticing when you are looking up.
The Long look // Essay - This led me to look at the same but different in terms of images. When first looking at the image your mind automatically jumps to it being the same one but when looking closer the image is different. The same with the image below again.
I think this is particularly effective especially when it goes to tricking the brain.
This led me to want to do more research about these photographers - Bernd and Hilla Becher.
They call their pieces constructing worlds - The views likes to see the form of the structure as aesthetic objects alone. They document the instrustrial landscape within Germany. I think its clever how they’ve taken everyday things that people see and turn them into art. They decided to photograph these particular objects because within 100 years they will disappear. They call it ‘looking at a lost world’.
I think that they have some sense in why they are taking the images to capture the architectural beauty because within 100 years it may not be there anymore.
I then also found this image that it very similar to the previous but by the artist Idris Khan.
Idris interested in what people leave behind. He’s worked in monocratic work but now has started using colour. He explains it as falling into the image. I think how he scans and layers the image is so nice and interesting - Marks made by people who have left the building.
One of the points that stuck with me from idris was what the people left behind. I then stumbled upon this particular photographer who photographed just that - Romain Thiery.
I really like how the image above has been photographed almost like they’d just left the chairs / the dinner table just how it was but the decaying around makes you realise that it’d been years.
This particular image by JACEY VERMEERSCH talks about how the government collects data about us from the day that we are born but what is it that we really leave behind?
Workshop Task
So this weeks task was to go around your neighbourhood and find something unique that you haven’t seen before. Ive lived in my neighbourhood for 21 Years (my whole life) So I would find it very difficult to find something that I hadn’t seen before. Instead I decided to try have a focus when exploring the area. I focussed on 2 things:
The unseen
The ageing
Walk One:
My First explore I felt that my eyes wernt’t open enough to the surrounding area and I just kept picking up on the trees or how the light hit certain angles instead of physical objects
Contact sheet one:
On this particular walk I tried to look up as much as possible as I feel this is something thats always taken for granted, I love autumn colours as much as the next person but every tree always looks so different so I tried to edit some different effects:
Now i’d done this with one image I wondered how this would look with multiple images:
I experimenting with inverting the image - I always kept thinking about what would the trees look like at night (without the use of a night camera)
I also decided to play around with some typography and see how that would add to the image.
In the end I settled for half black and white and half inverted. Just showing how the image may look at night and how the image may look if you are colour blind.
Walk Two:
After walk one I decided to go back to the main road that was near my house at night to show that the lights that surround us can only come out at night.
Contact sheet two:
I then played around with how these could look layered over the day images. So night layered over day.
I liked this final image for the second walk - its showing how the light that is there in the day but often cant be seen till night falls.
Walk Three:
This time I decided to walk into my neighbouring sports centre that also has a golf course. This is a normal route that I would take my dog for a walk and i’ve enjoyed all the sporting facilities over the year.
Contact Sheet Three:
One thing I did notice is a lot of things were getting older and decaying a lot more. Things were abandoned but also I thought there were some simple things that I would see every time I walk through here for example a cyclist or a golfer or a walker and the multi coloured trees. I started researching different ways that I could show and document this:
I started to just collage the images together:
I also kept thinking about this topic of unknown and how we take colour for granted so I edited it to be black and white to see the effect that it would cause and how different the image looks.
I also edited with just one main colour, I tried red as this is the colour of our famous football team within Southampton.
There was something about this picture that I just wasn’t 100% sure on so I decided to start with the collaging again to see if it took me in a different direction this time by printing of the images and hand collaging and tearing the images:
This enabled me to play around with the images especially as they were printed at their true size - I will now format this and take it into photoshop.
I ended up playing with the blending filters on the images to give it a kind of spooky there not there look but also seeing how the layering of the images work together.
This was the final product - I think the image looks better cropped as there is less white space around the image.
Weekly Summary
Week six, has been really insightful especially learning about how everyone’s mind works differently when it comes to art and design. I found it really interesting to see inside and learn about some sketchbooks as I feel this is such a personal trait for any designer. Everyone is learning from the environment around them and taking in inspirations differently, so seeing how this is then portrayed within their art is eye opening. I think it was also interesting to note how perspective changes and how we experience things today are very different to how we experience them 20 years ago.
This can be shown through the images of Brend and Hilla Becher, who have recognised that structures that are surrounding us are being destroyed. They have created a physical print like photography that allows us to enjoy the beauty for years to come. I think perspective is a huge part of this week in terms of seeing things differently. We all see the world from a different angle, we need to get out into the world more and experience things with our own eyes instead of through the internet.
This weeks workshop challenge, I found hard at the beginning due to the fact I have lived in this house for my whole life. I would usually walk around the neighbourhood so there weren’t often things that I didn’t see. One of the reasons that I decided to portray the decay and the people that were unseen this week within my workshop task. Overall this week has taught me to keep my eyes open to my surrounding environment, mainly as inspiration can come from anywhere but also the world is changing.