Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
A wonderful day for photos
Today we got out and took all of the photos for our project. It went way better than any of us could have expected. Everyone chipped in and things went very smoothly. After we finished the shooting, Andrea took the photos home and did some digital touch-ups on the photos, then sent them to each of the group members to do our things with them. I took them and added them all to the web site, and the others went through our lists and emailed the photos along with a thank you and a link to our website and survey. Now all that's left to do is to write our paper.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Class review; March 9th
The "You Are Beautiful" project is well under way. We met in groups again today and discussed details of the project. Solidified the dates, clearly stated our objective (raise awareness about self esteem issues around body image and boost confidence by engaging people in photo shoots with positive enforcement in the form of a sign with the slogan "you are beautiful" and supported with the website). I worked all week on the web site and got it up and running with all of the information from the group I have received to date inserted.
http://youarebeautiful.x10.mx/
The class discussion today was centered around Buddhist truths. I do not have issue with the truths, I do however, think there are ethical problems with bringing religion into the classroom and disguising it as a discussion related to a larger theme. For this reason, I will not include details of these discussions in this journal.
http://youarebeautiful.x10.mx/
The class discussion today was centered around Buddhist truths. I do not have issue with the truths, I do however, think there are ethical problems with bringing religion into the classroom and disguising it as a discussion related to a larger theme. For this reason, I will not include details of these discussions in this journal.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Class review; March 2nd
Today began with an eco-art project. Went out, collected leaves and branches, returned to the room and wrote positive messages on the leaves with markers, painted the branches, and put it all outside for passers by to take notice.
Objectives for this could be to raise awareness, waste reduction, use found/natural materials, inspire or create good feelings. The objectives of a project should reflect the problem. the problem in this case could be deforestation, pollution or waste, etc
we received our mask and photograph grades today, I was given the opportunity to submit my full paper because I had not received Andrea's email in time, and she did not receive my email either. It was sent tonight.
For the rest of the class we worked on our group projects. Our group made the signs, delegated tasks, and I designed the layout and formatting for the web-site that will serve both as a component of our pubic art, as well as our presentation material.
Marcie: Advertisement, signs
Andrea: Release/permission/information form, "We Are Beautiful" "I Am Beautiful" signs
David: Questionnaire
Christina: Website content; "About Us & the Project", collection of resources relating to positive body image
Lance: Web site planning, construction
All: carrying out project on days planned, resource collection
We were also given the criteria for the paper that is to accompany the project and presentation. It is to include the following (direct from board)
-Creativity
-Activity
-Problem
-Objectives
-Materials
- Process and Reflection (Personal and Team) relating to Image Development (What was good, bad, would you change?)
-Presentation
-as for my personal work today, I designed a layout for the web site that will consist of a small number of pages (likely only 4-6) with a simple layout. However, because it requires some features that I am currently unfamiliar with using in web-site construction, it will require a fair amount of time to build as I need to learn how to use and/or create the features we want. I also need to find some way of taking our survey information and creating some way of making sense of all the collected data.
This is going to be a long project with countless hours spent off the streets and out of the public to complete; but I'm still looking forward to it. I think it will be a lot of fun. I am slightly worried about not being able to make the site work the way that is currently planned, but everything else should go smoothly as we work well together as a group.
Objectives for this could be to raise awareness, waste reduction, use found/natural materials, inspire or create good feelings. The objectives of a project should reflect the problem. the problem in this case could be deforestation, pollution or waste, etc
we received our mask and photograph grades today, I was given the opportunity to submit my full paper because I had not received Andrea's email in time, and she did not receive my email either. It was sent tonight.
For the rest of the class we worked on our group projects. Our group made the signs, delegated tasks, and I designed the layout and formatting for the web-site that will serve both as a component of our pubic art, as well as our presentation material.
Marcie: Advertisement, signs
Andrea: Release/permission/information form, "We Are Beautiful" "I Am Beautiful" signs
David: Questionnaire
Christina: Website content; "About Us & the Project", collection of resources relating to positive body image
Lance: Web site planning, construction
All: carrying out project on days planned, resource collection
We were also given the criteria for the paper that is to accompany the project and presentation. It is to include the following (direct from board)
-Creativity
-Activity
-Problem
-Objectives
-Materials
- Process and Reflection (Personal and Team) relating to Image Development (What was good, bad, would you change?)
-Presentation
-as for my personal work today, I designed a layout for the web site that will consist of a small number of pages (likely only 4-6) with a simple layout. However, because it requires some features that I am currently unfamiliar with using in web-site construction, it will require a fair amount of time to build as I need to learn how to use and/or create the features we want. I also need to find some way of taking our survey information and creating some way of making sense of all the collected data.
This is going to be a long project with countless hours spent off the streets and out of the public to complete; but I'm still looking forward to it. I think it will be a lot of fun. I am slightly worried about not being able to make the site work the way that is currently planned, but everything else should go smoothly as we work well together as a group.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
the forcast for today was; classroom summary with periods of ranting.
What we did in class (straight out of the note book)
-media and social change/influence
-told the story about the monk who wrote "Call Me By My True Names". Story was about a girl who threw herself over the side of the boat after being raped by pirates. Could not blame the pirate because of the conditions he knew. Personally I think this is BS. It assumes that we are all victims of our circumstances and avoids the notion of universal truths or inherent "Right" and "Wrong".
-This got me thinking about psychological and sociological differences between someone who succumbs to the circumstances they were born into, and those who rise to the occasion and find a way to "fight" as it were. (this is assuming that the circumstances are of negative influence, though it could be applied in reverse).
-We then talked about right-brain communication which reminded me of this TED talk I once saw about a woman who experienced a stroke from a golf-ball sized clot on the left side of her brain, effectively shutting it down. Her experience living almost exclusively in her right hemisphere was astounding. (video posted below)
Following this we put out our masks along side the photos we had created and did a walk-around looking at them. This was great for saving time, but I would have like to have discussed this project. More than the other things we have done in class, this one angered a lot of people in the way that it was executed. It would have been good to hear how this delivery method of the assignment altered their creative process and resulted in the images that they made. I know in my own process it did not alter much as I always use visual research methods in developing my ideas and images, and one project more often than not, evolves into another project. What I did not like about this project was the short-notice for the additional requirements. As the email provided to the university for school related things is NOT my primary email address, I do not check it every day, expecting that if there are to be changes to an assignment, notification will be given several days before the assignment is due. Because of this I did not have the opportunity to complete all of the requirements for the written paper at the end. This was in part due to the fact that we were first told in class that there would be no written portion to this assignment, then in an email were told to do a brief rational as to why we chose to take the photo of our mask in the location that we did, and then in yet another email, were asked to add explanation of our process, symbolism, an added requirement of juxtaposition was thrown in the mix, etc. This was a terrible delivery method. All requirements of the assignment should have been made available to us from the beginning, or at least delivered in two parts, not several pieces strung together through a series of unclear email's.
After the all to brief gander at the masks around the room, we watched a video about Ben Shahn "Paintings for Social Activism". I could not find this video, but I did find another one about the artist and his art (posted below)
we also watched a video on "Park(ing) day" in SF. Many video's about park(ing) day can be found on youtube or with a simple google search.
-These lead to a discussion about Random Acts of Kindness and then into our group projects. It did not take long for our group to come up with a concept for our engage art project, outline what we were going to do, and develop a schedule. We have decided to do a project promoting positive body image called "You Are Beautiful" involving photographing of the public both on campus and down town, as well as setting up a gallery web site were people can view the photos and be provided with links to resources about positive body image. There are still some details to be worked out, but that will all come when next the group gets together.
The website is youarebeautiful.x10.mx
Shooting days are scheduled for the 16th (campus) and the 17th (inner harbor).
The group currently consists of myself, David, Andrea, and Marcie. We may be absorbing two other classmates who were absent at the time groups were formed.
The last thing done in class this day was to be assigned another paper. the requirements outlined are as follows:
-1500ww.
-12pt font
-dbl spaced
-due Mar 9th
-APA citation style
-the goal is to demonstrate an understanding of engaged art and knowledge of contemporary engage artists. It is to include both theory and personal inquiry. questions posed in class were: What is engage art? What is social art activism? What are examples of artists and projects? Provide an analysis of "that" work and your point of view (when asked what "that" work was, if it was a particular piece or a body of work, the answer was that it was up to us. This leaves it open and extremely broad and makes me wonder what the grading criteria will be). Give your point of view on the art (whatever that may be), provide alternatives. What are future implications (im assuming this is in relation to future teaching and classroom application as well as for the aspect of society the project was intended to influence or change), Personal connections and professional connections.
-media and social change/influence
-told the story about the monk who wrote "Call Me By My True Names". Story was about a girl who threw herself over the side of the boat after being raped by pirates. Could not blame the pirate because of the conditions he knew. Personally I think this is BS. It assumes that we are all victims of our circumstances and avoids the notion of universal truths or inherent "Right" and "Wrong".
-This got me thinking about psychological and sociological differences between someone who succumbs to the circumstances they were born into, and those who rise to the occasion and find a way to "fight" as it were. (this is assuming that the circumstances are of negative influence, though it could be applied in reverse).
-We then talked about right-brain communication which reminded me of this TED talk I once saw about a woman who experienced a stroke from a golf-ball sized clot on the left side of her brain, effectively shutting it down. Her experience living almost exclusively in her right hemisphere was astounding. (video posted below)
Following this we put out our masks along side the photos we had created and did a walk-around looking at them. This was great for saving time, but I would have like to have discussed this project. More than the other things we have done in class, this one angered a lot of people in the way that it was executed. It would have been good to hear how this delivery method of the assignment altered their creative process and resulted in the images that they made. I know in my own process it did not alter much as I always use visual research methods in developing my ideas and images, and one project more often than not, evolves into another project. What I did not like about this project was the short-notice for the additional requirements. As the email provided to the university for school related things is NOT my primary email address, I do not check it every day, expecting that if there are to be changes to an assignment, notification will be given several days before the assignment is due. Because of this I did not have the opportunity to complete all of the requirements for the written paper at the end. This was in part due to the fact that we were first told in class that there would be no written portion to this assignment, then in an email were told to do a brief rational as to why we chose to take the photo of our mask in the location that we did, and then in yet another email, were asked to add explanation of our process, symbolism, an added requirement of juxtaposition was thrown in the mix, etc. This was a terrible delivery method. All requirements of the assignment should have been made available to us from the beginning, or at least delivered in two parts, not several pieces strung together through a series of unclear email's.
After the all to brief gander at the masks around the room, we watched a video about Ben Shahn "Paintings for Social Activism". I could not find this video, but I did find another one about the artist and his art (posted below)
we also watched a video on "Park(ing) day" in SF. Many video's about park(ing) day can be found on youtube or with a simple google search.
-These lead to a discussion about Random Acts of Kindness and then into our group projects. It did not take long for our group to come up with a concept for our engage art project, outline what we were going to do, and develop a schedule. We have decided to do a project promoting positive body image called "You Are Beautiful" involving photographing of the public both on campus and down town, as well as setting up a gallery web site were people can view the photos and be provided with links to resources about positive body image. There are still some details to be worked out, but that will all come when next the group gets together.
The website is youarebeautiful.x10.mx
Shooting days are scheduled for the 16th (campus) and the 17th (inner harbor).
The group currently consists of myself, David, Andrea, and Marcie. We may be absorbing two other classmates who were absent at the time groups were formed.
The last thing done in class this day was to be assigned another paper. the requirements outlined are as follows:
-1500ww.
-12pt font
-dbl spaced
-due Mar 9th
-APA citation style
-the goal is to demonstrate an understanding of engaged art and knowledge of contemporary engage artists. It is to include both theory and personal inquiry. questions posed in class were: What is engage art? What is social art activism? What are examples of artists and projects? Provide an analysis of "that" work and your point of view (when asked what "that" work was, if it was a particular piece or a body of work, the answer was that it was up to us. This leaves it open and extremely broad and makes me wonder what the grading criteria will be). Give your point of view on the art (whatever that may be), provide alternatives. What are future implications (im assuming this is in relation to future teaching and classroom application as well as for the aspect of society the project was intended to influence or change), Personal connections and professional connections.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Journal; "Endless hours" edition
It (or they) is finished! Finally. This was a very time-consuming project. I took this mask photo assignment and ran with it. There were scheduling issues, technical difficulties, weather related problems, etc. But, after 4 days of "let's try this again tomorrow" I finally got what I needed and very nearly abandoned it all.
I got the photos I need for the assignment and worked for a day in Photoshop getting it all together in a way that was working for me. I think I am still going to call the finished piece "Icarus" because it still feels like it belongs to me, and it adds another level of contemplation to the piece.
I am pleased with the final piece, but still wanted to experiment with the idea of combining photographic with illustrated elements for a different kind of image. My original idea was to incorporate cartoon-like drawn elements into the above image, but after some trials I abandoned the idea. What ended up happening was that I did a digital painting and then added the mask in as the face. The painting was inspired by a child sitting on the grass in a park near where I was shooting the portrait for the above image. I took out my sketchbook while waiting for the model to arrive and did some figure drawings of the child that I later used. This image is more literal when it comes to the Icarus myth. The child sitting on the ground with his wings falling apart around him. Also the "i" on his shirt with the dot as a simple sun.
There are a lot of things about this image that I like, but I liked it more without the photo of the mask incorporated. Because of the time invested in getting it to this stage, I will likely work with it more, adding texture to the background, and completing the face of the child with the mask off. I may also change the feathers to gray-scale and add some melting wax dripping off into puddles in a luminescent golden-yellow... or rainbow :)
I got the photos I need for the assignment and worked for a day in Photoshop getting it all together in a way that was working for me. I think I am still going to call the finished piece "Icarus" because it still feels like it belongs to me, and it adds another level of contemplation to the piece.
I am pleased with the final piece, but still wanted to experiment with the idea of combining photographic with illustrated elements for a different kind of image. My original idea was to incorporate cartoon-like drawn elements into the above image, but after some trials I abandoned the idea. What ended up happening was that I did a digital painting and then added the mask in as the face. The painting was inspired by a child sitting on the grass in a park near where I was shooting the portrait for the above image. I took out my sketchbook while waiting for the model to arrive and did some figure drawings of the child that I later used. This image is more literal when it comes to the Icarus myth. The child sitting on the ground with his wings falling apart around him. Also the "i" on his shirt with the dot as a simple sun.
There are a lot of things about this image that I like, but I liked it more without the photo of the mask incorporated. Because of the time invested in getting it to this stage, I will likely work with it more, adding texture to the background, and completing the face of the child with the mask off. I may also change the feathers to gray-scale and add some melting wax dripping off into puddles in a luminescent golden-yellow... or rainbow :)
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Journal; the "Brocade, Lace, and Feathers" edition.
So by the time I got the email about the photo and all that jazz, I had already completed my mask. I decided to do a photo-shoot with a model instead of just placing the mask in a setting and photographing it. Because of the steampunk/pirate/arts and crafts look to the mask, I am drawing inspiration from Victorian/Edwardian costuming, Steampunk & Pirate cosplay, Greek myth, and Cartooning. I began with some sketches, image and materials collection and I think I have a concept that synthesizes the themes into a coherent aesthetic. Tomorrow I have arranged with my hair and makeup artists and the model to meet me at the locations that I went and scouted out today. Hopefully I'll be able to get the shots I need and the weather cooperates. In addition to amalgamating the different styles and aesthetics of the various areas into a single image, I am going to play with gender roles in this piece. Because of the combined costuming from several areas, it naturally became a bit androgynous, and having a female model wearing the male mask will hopefully bring to binary into sharper focus. I am excited to do this piece, I just hope that I have enough time to get it all worked together the way that I want it. The digital work is going to be extremely time consuming :SSo it's a female Icarus in a steam-driven Victorian age, with corsets, brocade, lace, ruffles, blimps and boilers. Likely over-exposed and finished in desaturated sepia tones. It plays on male/female, youth/aged, and bringing together elements of different time periods. Im not sure if I have a message that I want it to convey, but it is going to be a whole lot of fun and fantasy... if I can make it work in the time that we have.
*the sketches are just some ideas for posturing and some detail work, nothing solid; simply idea generation for the development of this image.
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