Passion Project #13 (Final Week)
For the final week of the passion project, I thought I would reflect upon my developing artistic process after doing one last non-traditional art medium that I had never done. Since mother’s day is coming up, I decided to combine my skills as a designer and engineer to make her something super cool in the Makers Space.
I bought a wooden frame from a craft store and chose my favorite picture of my mom and I. I then put it in illustrator and edited it so that there would be a good ratio of light-to-dark so that when sent the file to the laser cutter, it would come out more like an illustration than a photo. I then made sure to try and center the piece correctly on the preview, but to my surprise, I COMPLETELY messed up and I only engraved half of the wood with the photo and it was just a mess. I ended up sanding off that engraving, re-aligning the photo on a larger laser printer, and spent about 30 minutes watching the engraver etch the photo of my mom and I onto the wood. Here’s how it turned out:
I am very happy with the way this turned out and I am hoping it will ship to Boston in time for my mom to get it before Mother’s Day. I learned a lot from this little independent project, a few things being that I can’t anticipate technology to do what I want it to on the first try, I shouldn’t cut or engrave anything without testing it on cardboard first, and that I should never tell someone how easy it is or else they will ask me to make them one.
A friend of mine saw this photo on my social media and decided to ask me if I could make them one. After thinking about how easy it really was once I lined everything up accordingly and color-corrected everything, it seemed like a quick favor I could do my friend that would mean a lot to them. This was a mistake. Here is how it turned out:
As you can see, it’s not the worst thing on the planet but it is definitely wayyy darker than I anticipated it being. There were two big problems here: the original photo was very dark in the first place and the plank he gave me to engrave was an old family emblem that was a very soft type of wood. I tried by best to fix the contrast on the photo so that there would be enough white to make out the faces, and I had to do some trial and error with the correct settings on the laser printer. There are to main settings that the laser printer bases its settings on: raster engraving and vector cutting. Since I was not cutting the wood, I chose the raster engraving setting. Depending on the material, there are different power and speed settings you have to kind of experiment with especially if the material you are using is not listed on the cheat sheet near the computers. I knew my piece for my mom was basswood, and there is a setting of 70 speed and 10 power for that kind of wood. Using that setting on this wood made no image show up because the wood itself was very dark. I then played around and used a different kind of wood setting with a higher power, but this nearly burned the Makers Space down. I finally found the (almost) perfect combination of 40 speed 30 power (which is actually good for engraving corrugated cardboard, as a matter of fact) and then I finally finished his mother’s day present. I should not have tackled this project not knowing what kind of wood the piece was, but I definitely learned new things about laser cutting and photo editing in the process of making both of the pieces.
In concluding this Passion Project, I can’t say I really reached a particularly tangible goal. I did reach my goal of getting better at different kinds of art through doing art myself, looking at the processes of others, and understanding the implications that come with marking art. I think that throughout this process, I have been able to hone in on many digital and physical art forms which have helped me in a lot of my other classes throughout the semester. I am excited to continue using the Adobe Creative Suite, the Makers Space, and traditional art tools to grow my artistic and creative process throughout my design career.
Dystopia Final Presentation 5/2
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1sTzI23Bd885ImasEWdVJF8dvITowhoLp
Dystopia Iteration #3 4/30
This weekend I got a lot of footage for my short commercial I will be making for my final product. My friend Chloe has an emotional support cat who will be the star of the film, and I am planning on using the NYU labs in Jacobs to film the informational aspect of the service. The 4 established circumstances that will be in my video are:
- Body immortality is not possible
- We have devices that allow our memories to be periodically uploaded to a cloud
- We have the ability to take these devices and put them into other sentient beings that can live accordingly as domestic animals
- Traditional funerals do not exist anymore because of this technology
Dystopia Iteration #2 4/25
Dystopia Storyboard 4/25
High-Fidelity Wireframes 4/23
The interface mock up for this iteration is making the assumption that the technology available in the next 100 years will involve an attachment to the human body that acts as a cell phone. It is located in the forearm and will have calling, video/photo, and browsing capabilities that will allow the user to communicate with their loved ones. With this technology, memories would be periodically downloaded to each persons individual body interface so that after body death occurs, the interface is still backed up on to the cloud for loved ones to access.
Would we still have funerals for body deaths? How do we project the way in which the virtual human looks to the live viewer?
Passion Project Entry #12
This week, a friend from home was visiting New York City. On this rainy day, we decided to go see some art at the MET, and during this visit, I got to see a lot of exhibits I had never seen before that helped me to gain a little more insight on the historical element of art. Here are some photos:
This trip to the MET was especially enlightening to my artistic process because my friend who was visiting (Haley) is a sophomore currently studying anthropology and indigenous peoples at American University. Having her there in the Oceana exhibit as well as the other exhibits helped give me a lot of historical context I would not have otherwise had without her there. She often stated that a lot of the context of the historical artifacts were omitted from the placards describing the objects. She also made a good point regarding the irony of there being an indigenous peoples exhibit from Oceana but the art itself is held somewhere across the world and away from the successors of the artists themselves.
This statement really stayed with me because it is very hard to know every single piece of historical context necessary when seeing art and artifacts from other places/from a long time ago. In terms of my artistic process on one hand, I can take inspiration from art that may not be traditional to what I know. I can also take from this experience the knowledge that there is an appreciation that comes with art that may sometimes be unintentionally compromised when brought somewhere else to appreciate. Context means a lot more than a placard.
High-Fidelity Wireframes 4/21
These wireframes are fit for web sized screens as a beginning point. As I work through logistics, the hardware being used for this cloud software will be different and appropriate for the time period.
Dystopia Low-Fidelity Wireframes 4/21
Sources: Dystopia Project
https://www.thelivingurn.com/pages/tree-zip-code
https://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/d/d_07/d_07_cr/d_07_cr_tra/d_07_cr_tra.html
Using Design to Tell a Story Response
In the HowDesign article on how design can be used to tell a story, a very compelling part for me was the aspect in the beginning about storytelling. The whole process of design is about telling a story and not really about making something look “pretty.” Understanding that the process is a huge part of storytelling helps give meaning to a lot of different kinds of art and that is why artists tend to appreciate a lot more than people who do not consider themselves artists. They understand the process and how much meaning can be taken from the very nature of making art and design in general. Doing things just to get to a final product means that part of the process is sacrificed, and thus the effectiveness of storytelling is compromised.
Ira Glass Response
In Ira Glass’ videos about how to tell a story, a big piece I took away was the way in which you must be constantly prompting questions to the audience. This is something that is very applicable to design in general because questions beg for an answer, and when you ask questions you often get people to think more subjectively about the way we perceive the things around us. What purpose does something serve? Why should people care about something?
Another piece I took from these videos is that if I am not failing and failing often when it comes to coming up with a good idea or creating a good story, then I am not creating opportunities for myself to potentially be put in a situation where something works. The chances of doing something right the first time are very slim, so when there are many chances to have an epiphany or a breakthrough, there is a better chance that success may come.
Evolution Timeline: Dystopia Project
Mind Map: Dystopia Project
Passion Project: Entry #10 & #11 (Week of April 8th & 15th )
This week, I went to the Gallatin Art Show with a close friend of mine to see her friends art. There were two very big takeaways from going to this event, and I think that there is a lot to be said about the creative process and the way that art is made. Firstly, I just thought that this painting of Jeff Bezos was an absolute gift to this world and that everyone should see it.
Secondly, my friend, Sean, who I attended the show with had an interesting story to tell about her friends art. Her best friend Fin is currently studying abroad in Buenos Aires, Argentina and is majoring in interdisciplinary art at Gallatin. She told me that he started creating this project long before his semester abroad began, and she saw every step of its creation mostly due to the fact that she is the one who finished it for him. As a preface, Sean is also at Gallatin but in the STEM field majoring in biomedical engineering and sociology. Her experience with art has not been as lengthy as Fin, but she followed his vision to help submit his art for the showcase. Before I explain anything, here is the final piece.
The piece is titled “Lucky!,” and is meant to represent the way we believe that luck is incorporated into our lives and the weight we put on luck and prophecy to guide us in our decisions. Fin began with buying a box of cigarettes and flipping one over to be “the lucky bone,” if you will. He then continued by asking his friends for a cigarette in exchange for one of his (also a representation of smoking culture, might I add). He left for his spring semester abroad, and Sean continued to ask for cigarettes, flipping each over as he continued making his way through the pack, until there was one unflipped cigarette left, “the unlucky bone.” For the lipgloss, the two friends found it left at a bar and took it as a relic of the night, unknowing of it’s later fate. From 5000 miles away, Fin instructed Sean to break the lipgloss they found from their night out onto a plate directly down the middle. After hacking at the plastic with a large knife for a few minutes, Sean managed to bring Fin’s vision to fruition and represent this item as our beautification of luck.
As for the aces, which traditionally represent luck in many card games, Sean poured cheap liquor in the middle of the top ace and burned a hole through it before attaching them together with a binder hook. Lastly, she was instructed to polish every side of the die except for the 6, since the six is the luckiest number in most games using a die. The six, being unpolished and therefore imperfect, loses it’s value as a lucky concept. The die itself was found on a sidewalk in Alphabet City, making this found object another nostalgic representation between the two friends that was used to make this piece.
Since I have known Sean since last semester, I got to see a lot of this project unravel once it was handed off to her. From my perspective, I got to see a lot of the process and how there is a lot of storytelling behind the conception of art and the artistic/creative process. Though I haven’t had the privilege of meeting Fin yet, I can tell that as a creative, he values the process and he values his relationships with the people in his life because he had the confidence to hand off a project to someone he knew would do it justice as a representative of his work. Seeing this piece myself without knowing anything about it, I can’t say I would have understood every nuance of the art and what it was all supposed to mean, but seeing from the perspective that I did have, it was amazing to see the artistic process being placed on another person to pick up.
Empathy Exercise
Dystopia Project Idea Proposal
I am looking to explore the idea of post mortem practices, assuming that we are a few steps closer to immortality. There exists a myth that the living outnumber the dead, and even though this may not be true, it prompts the question of how we are currently handling the disposal of bodies. There are those who choose to be cremated, buried, turned into a tree (https://www.thelivingurn.com/pages/tree-zip-code), etc. But assuming 50 years in the future we have made some progressive steps forward toward immortality or life extension, we must consider the stranger practices. The practice of cryogenically freezing the head and/or the body is a practice has gained popularity in the scientific community, and those who do it believe that there will one day be a scientific breakthrough that allows those who have been frozen to have the use of their bodies if they could one day be “revived” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Duy-W3-Gkhg). There are a lot of unanswered questions here, though: how do we assure that when frozen, our brains are retaining any kind of pieces of our identity? What will be preserved? This brings about the topic of post mortem theories; do we have souls? If we believe in duality (the existence of a physical body and soul that make up a person), will we be preserving our souls? Are we defined by our personalities? Does this mean that death is actually death? Would funerals be less of a goodbye and more of a “see you soon?”
In order to accommodate for this changing dynamic of life and death and our mortality, I will be creating a commercial for a new kind of technology that will help us look toward the future. If we can find a way to take the memories stored in the Hippocampus that have helped us form our personalities, we can potentially replicate those personalities from the saved memories to bring back the ones we love in either a physical or digital way. CUSOON will be a cloud-based company that offers physical hard drives of the deceased as well as paid cloud storage of all of the information stored in the Hippocampus. The information will then be brought through our server that helps formulate a simulation of the deceased individual. For the time being, a to-scale replica of our loved ones can be put on screen or projected so that we can interact with them.
The problem of overpopulation has led our hope for human longevity and immortality to the ground in the physical sense (due to the fact that the birthrate would continue and death would become obsolete), we have come to accept the fact that a physical body may not be in our best interest to keep our loved ones in our lives. Our cloud interface will allow the entities to interact with one another and form their own new memories, making the content within our cloud grow exponentially.
All in all, this is a choice. To be a part of our interface is not a requirement, but it is highly recommended if one feels as if they could lead a life much longer than what their physical body allows. Just as someone may choose to be an organ donor, the option to commit to a CHD (Cognitive Hard Drive) is open at any point in someones lifetime. They are allowed to rescind this commitment at any point in time. If someone does not choose to make this commitment themselves before their time of physical body death, there must be sufficient proof from the will or family of the deceased to receive the CHD post-mortem. Just as a patient may sign a DNR form while in the hospital, the CHD commitment may be signed in the last moments of a life.
These are just the early stages of this highly specialized AI learning program where the artificial comes from the real and tangible.
Public Intervention Project
Public Intervention Project Phase #2 – Mock Ups
The first mock up is one that I don’t think we will be able to execute very effectively due to the fact that we don’t have baby carriages, but Taline is doing the more realistic ones and I got to do the more imaginative ones. It is funny to think that we could play off the fact that many people walk with their babies on the promenade, and it would be kind of a statement if we did something having to do with that.
The second mock up is a representation of if we marked the promenade with road lines, which I don’t really know how we could execute efficiently but I am very interested in this one. The visual isn’t perfect by any means, but it gets the point across. I am excited to do this project because it is the first time we are going to get to do something with our hands and I look forward to seeing what we end up picking for this issue that is affecting so many people right now.
Passion Project: Entry #8 & #9 (Week of March 25 & April 1)
As a continuation of last week, I made some final mock ups for the physical application I will end up making. This process was especially difficult because we had to use InDesign for the first time, so this process took a lot longer than I wanted it to. These past couple weeks, I also have been learning how to use Premiere Pro, so it has definitely been a learning curve with all of these Adobe platforms. Without further ado, here are my mock ups
The same week I did these was the same weekend I made the mock ups for the public intervention, so I got to practice my skills a lot. Even though these aren’t the most beautiful things ever or the most realistic ever, I am really proud because a couple of months ago, I would not have been able to execute these as well at all. I think I decided to take the art route for this passion project is because I used to be so passionate about so many things having to do with art that I just got overwhelmed and stopped completely. It is frustrating to me to think that I could be further ahead than I am, but doing these mock ups and going through the iterative process and then being able to reflect about it here has given me some perspective that I just need to re-train myself to commit to something even if I think it isn’t great.
Public Intervention Project Phase #1
Public Intervention 3/14
Areas in Need of Public Intervention 3/14
Passion Project: Entry #6 & #7 (Week of March 11 & 18)
Luckily, the work I have been doing in a different class has given me a really good opportunity to work on my digital design skills. Because I get the chance to work on these skills for my assignments, I think it’s fair for me to say that I have been incorporating my creative process into those assignments. In the past few weeks, we had to make some mock-ups the logos I showed before, and I decided to draft the following physical applications.
By no means are these perfect, but I think I did a good job at establishing an aesthetic and theme that I carried throughout the process. My thought was that I could do a modern take on the classic idea of an old grandfather clock, and I updated it within my logo and within the ways I applied it. I am anticipating sticking with the pocket watch idea, but I might turn it into a necklace or something cool. I have to make it myself eventually in the Makers Space or have it ordered, so I think it could be a cool project to make some jewelry I could wear after the project is over. The iterative nature of this assignment allowed me to do many different applications and try out different things I may not have otherwise thought of, and I think that is imperative to the creative process to iterate and make your brain do something it might not have otherwise done. I hope that by the time I do another entry, I will have my mock ups of my final iteration!
Stephen King Research Paper 3/5
Stephen King Research Presentation
Passion Project: Entry #4 & #5 (Week of Feb 25 & March 4)
I have spent A LOT of time over the past couple of weeks doing iterations of a logo project I have for another class, and since it is under the umbrella of art and digital art, I have combined two weeks under the same entry simply because of the amount of work that I have done for this one project in particular. Beginning with my first iterations, here are my progressions up until today.
These iterations of a logo I am making for my “company” took many hours of work, and the last page are the last iterations of my logo. Since we are not picking our final logo until next week, I am using all of these as my options. This process helped me to hone in on my illustrator skills, and I think my iterative process is very clearly shown.
New Skill/Tool Documentation 2/19
Over the past few weeks, I have learned a lot about the creative process, what it means to have my own creative process, and why it is important to think about my own creativity and processes. In terms of how I have applied the skill of iteration and planning, I had to take photos for my Still & Moving Images class which required me to plan not only in a creative context, but to iterate my ideas to get my best photograph. For this assignment, I had to submit a single image that told a story. My initial thought was, “I have no idea what I am going to do,” but after thinking about creative processes, I knew I needed to step back and think about how I was going to get into a “creative mood.” I thought about what we talked about in class, and I got back to my dorm, cleaned my floor, and sat down with a cup of hot chocolate. I turned on some music, and I found myself thinking about what I wanted to represent in my photograph. I finally decided upon an idea, and I had about three days to think about who I wanted to be in the photo, the setting of the photo, and the implications of each aspect of the photo. Over these days, I had time to think about my idea and come up with different iterations as each idea built on top of the prior. I think learning about the creative process in class made me think a lot about how I can apply processes to my other classes and can serve many purposes.
Passion Project: Entry #3 (Week of Feb 18)
This week, I got to go back home to Boston over the weekend. Instead of taking a drawing class next week, I took the opportunity to take a painting class at home with my friends at a paint bar a couple towns away from me. I knew this would be helpful to my process of my passion project because before painting along, each person must sketch the drawing on their canvas before doing anything else. I did not get a picture of the initial drawings so I wouldn’t get behind, but I did get a photo of the final piece.
The process was a paint-along Bob Ross kind of process, and it was not only fun, but it was completely different than what I would have done had I done this painting myself. My process would have been something like this:
- Paint the background in 3 strips of color (orange, then pink, then blue)
- Add white streaks
- Add darker streaks of each color
- Paint the trees immediately over, right?
- Splatter white paint for the stars
- Done!
Here is how it actually went
- We sketched out our background proportions, marking where we wanted each horizon line to begin and end. This was supposed to be pretty similar from person to person, since the proportions would later be important when incorporating black into the painting.
- We used the wet on wet paint technique with orange (This began with having one tone of orange, a bit of white, and a bit of black. We started on the bottom with one block of orange with a bit of a wavy horizon line, and before it dried, we blended an lighter orange tone and a darker orange tone. I had never taken an art class in high school, and I had just assumed that every color we needed would come out of a different bottle.)
- After mixing the different tones of orange, we blended in streaks of each while the orange paint was still wet in order to prevent the paining from looking streaky.
- I repeated this process with the pink and the lighter blue, and then the darker blue was blended with the same wet on wet technique. Before painting any trees, we let the whole thing dry and splattered white paint near the blue portion to look like stars in the sky.
- After everything was completely dry, we sketched the palm trees in pencil. As long as we had 3 larger trees in the foreground, we could do however many we wanted in the background. To sketch them, we only drew the biggest pieces and not the leaves. I think this was in order to challenge the way we wanted to paint the trees and made us paint freehand.
- We used pure black paint with a very thick brush in order to make the stumps of the trees, and then used a smaller-tipped brush to make the palms. We used a very little brush to stipple the rest of the leaves, and before I knew it, we were done!
The whole process was fun to spend with other people because they had the same anticipations as I did regarding the process that must logistically be gone through in order to complete a very simple painting. Next week, I am thinking of using this process in Illustrator to potentially re-make this painting on a different platform at some point soon. If anything, I will be playing around more with Illustrator because my Visual Foundations class is beginning to teach me that I can sketch and iterate on something other than paper.
How Not To Destroy the World Response Response 2/19
After looking though this presentation, I learned about the consequences that sometimes arise from the inventions and innovations that were never intended to cause harm. It was also significant to recognize the fact that there may be a strong awareness of the potential consequences, but it is up to the moral and social obligations of the individual to decide if the benefits outweigh the consequences. As used as an example in this presentation, facial recognition in tandem with voice recognition and replication can prove do be detrimental and dangerous when it comes to creating and publishing fake news. Because I love conspiracy theories, I made the connection with this to the “deep fake” content that can be made by anyone with the proper software to replicate the identities of celebrities or figures and make them say or do things that did not actually happen. This has been not only a problem in the political world, but also in the world of adult content where celebrities faces can be put onto the bodies of sex workers. There are obvious problematic implications with this, making it seem as if the real world benefits do not outweigh these consequences that could lead to bigger problems. The big idea in this presentation is the relationship between consequentialism and utilitarianism, where morality is based solely on the consequences involved, and the latter is where morality may be partially compromised in favor of the majority. This connects to the later slide about Duty of Care, or taking responsibility for doing or creating something with full knowledge of the potential consequences. In the end, using ethics “as a design tool” seems to be one of the most important aspects of design and the creative process once an idea comes to fruition.
Metal Gear Solid Documentary Comparison 2/19
The Metal Gear Solid documentaries were an extremely interesting inside look of the making of a video game, and though I had never heard of this game before, I felt as if I learned a lot about what it means to be a game designer and just how much work goes into the process. In the beginning of the first video, I felt a very strong connection to the Bandersnatch episode of Black Mirror because of the way the main director of MGS was dedicated to the user experience of his game. In both documentaries, it was very clear that the main purpose of the video game is all for the user and all about the way the player feels while playing it. Though I knew none of the characters or references, it was interesting to see in both representations of documentaries that the director was insistent on collaboration and team effort when making the game. It was also cool to see the way in which they brought in experts to make the experience more authentic, such as getting the suggestion to point the guns downward when learning about soldier behavior. One of my favorite parts of the first documentary was hearing what the score composer had to say about his own creative process. He was used to creating sound that matched with a scene that he could watch and feel out for himself, but in the case of making MGS, he had to make the sound for the game without much at all to watch for himself. He had to reverse-write music in a way that he was not used to doing, and I thought this was a very interesting addition to the process. In the second documentary, it was more focused on the way in which games are developing, making the process to make them longer and heavier on the director. Game design is very unfamiliar to me, so I never really thought about how game design can never really be “perfect” for each user. Game design projects are limiting due to the fact they each individual experience of the game cannot necessarily be designed for. Another point that was specific to the second documentary is the nature of trying things that are new to the field of gaming, and one of the main directors made the statement, “doing things you can’t normally do receives attention.” This applies to the way we have been encouraged to think about design since it is significant to do things that people believe may not be possible. Lastly, both documentaries end with the emphasis on iteration. I thought that this point was the most recognizable from what we have been learning because iterating designs is the best way to find faults, build upon what you already have available to you, and progress the project in many different directions.
Passion Project: Entry #2 (Week of Feb 11)
As a continuation/elaboration on last weeks exploration, I decided to watch a few art documentaries about artists and their creative processes. I got a bit sidetracked and began watching a documentary about Gregory Crewdson, a famous American photographer and his photographic process. The documentary itself is called “Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters,” and I thought this would be an interesting way to finish out last week because I spoke in person to my friends who go to art school or who are very talented artists, so watching the creative process of an adult in the art industry would give me a bit of inspiration when it came to this passion project.
The main focus of the documentary is the creative process of Crewdson, and I was absolutely amazed and the meticulous nature of his photos. He would use the budget that would be necessary for a short film just to capture the one image he imagined in his mind. His style of photography is different from what I normally associate with photography because he specializes in photos that look like snapshots from a movie; a movie you feel like you have seen before. He gives no context and predisposes nothing to the viewer except the content in the photograph. He knows exactly what he wants, acquires the resources to make it happen, and then makes it happen. I think in terms of my passion project, though he is not an illustrator or painter, that I could learn a lot from his process because it is about having a vision. Having an idea worth pursuing is difficult enough, but I feel like Crewdson uses his vision as the match to start the fire. I need to take my desire to get better at drawing and sketching as a match to start what is going to be my own literal creative process, and I am glad I got to watch this documentary of another artist who took years to perfect his craft.
In terms of this week, I tried my best to take out my sketchbook three times to draw random things during the school week. According to my plan from my last Passion Project entry, I was supposed to draw “what I like to draw,” but it was extremely uninspiring when I actually started doing it. I think I need to have an objective or a “kind” of drawing I want to get better at because narrowing my focus will be better for my process than having a wide, overwhelming range to pick from. I don’t want to say that this weeks efforts did not have much payoff, but it was kind of a dud in terms of how often I tried to draw because I was sometimes just not inspired to do so. Next week, my goal will be to start drawing common prototypes or blueprints of things that already exist.
Artist Research: Marcel Duchamp (February 14th, 2019)
Marcel Duchamp was a french artist born in 1887 in Blainville-Crevon, Normandy who changed the course of art in favor of those who express or represent themselves in a non-traditional way. Some of his most famous works were initially unpopular, but showed the importance of individualism by challenging what was expected of someone who dared call themself an artist.
“Coined by Duchamp, the term “readymade” came to designate mass-produced everyday objects taken out of their usual context and promoted to the status of artworks by the mere choice of the artist. A performative act as much as a stylistic category, the readymade had far-reaching implications for what can legitimately be considered an object of art” (theartstory.org)
Duchamp was an artist known for how he questioned the subjectivity of art and what made it “art.” In a way, this connects to the way we may think about engineering because of how loosely the word engineering can be used, especially in the brainstorming process. How each process differs from person to person is similar to the way that the creative and innovative/inventive process differs from engineer to engineer. The way that Duchamp challenged the norms of art is inspirational in itself, making the effect he had on the world change the course of art.
“Duchamp had two strategic objectives. First, to destroy the hegemony exerted by an establishment which claimed the right to decide what was, and what was not, to be deemed a work of art. Second, to puncture the pretentious claims of those who called themselves artists and in doing so assumed that they possessed extraordinary skills and unique gifts of discrimination and taste” (dadart.com)
“The readymade also defied the notion that art must be beautiful. Duchamp claimed to have chosen everyday objects “based on a reaction of visual indifference, with at the same time a total absence of good or bad taste….” (moma.org).
The most significant point Duchamp made, in my opinion, was how we must question everything that seems objective. His most telling inquiry was that of what made something “beautiful” or what beauty really means in the world of art. Thought his art, he made people question not what he was doing, but what he meant by doing so. In his “Fountain” piece, he used his power as an artist to defy the nature by which people understood art and beauty, and how those things overlap.
Wallet Exercise (February 12th, 2019)
This wallet design for Taline was so that she could have a convenient place to put all of her gift card balances to use almost like ApplePay or an AppleWallet. She was mainly concerned with having something compact with a place to keep her necessary physical cards, such as her ID, her NYU ID, and her metrocards. She initially was concerned with having to carry many items, and knowing she always has her phone with her, this was a convenient solution that is reasonable to create in this decade. Had I thought a little more out of the box, there also could be a “universal gift card” that could have a readable balance on a phone, but it would also make sense to have the entire balance accessible on the phone to allocate each purchase to each store. I think it would also be a cool idea if excess gift card balances could be donated to the companies to go toward charities, or could be posted in a forum where people are in need of a couple extra dollars to certain stores. The back of the phone is where she can keep her other cards safely with a snap-to-close fastener.
Reading Response #3 (February 12th, 2018)
While watching “Exit Through the Gift Shop,” I got to see and try to understand the process of artists and how they commit wholly to their art form. In terms of Banksy, I already knew who he is and how he is anonymous. Knowing this, I was extremely surprised to see him in this documentary and even more surprised that he trusted MBW to film him and not blow his cover. I also recognized the way in which MBW as an artist took a lot of influence from the artists he would film, which I think says a lot about what he learned from them versus what hey didn’t. I can’t say whether or not his style was too similar to that which other people make, but I think I could agree with the way Shepard Fairey reacted to the way MBW got his fame; it all happened prematurely. It was almost as if his process was learned simply by observing and then doing since he clearly was unsuccessful in making his film. In both cases of filmmaking and art, MBW was hasty and only ran with what he knew about art. As much as I wanted his film to be successful, his process and lack of success is telling of the best way to have a process. It is one thing to have an idea and a lot of footage, but it seems very counterintuitive to dedicate so much time to filming and experiencing when the footage itself is going to be butchered and misrepresentative of what he was trying to actually get across. Visually, a lot of MBW’s work took a lot of influence from Invader, Banksy, Warhol, and Fairey, and it raises the question of where is the line between influence and plagiarism? I could not imagine having put trust in MBW and then see him take something too far. Had he not taken Banksy’s advice to make his own art exhibit, his fame would have probably never existed unless he reworked his documentary. The ending of this documentary did not leave me satisfied but left me in awe of the way that the relationship between a person and their art can be so personal and come to a point of near self-destruction. The creative process seems to have a lot more to do with commitment and less to do with just having a vision.
After watching “Everything is a Remix,” it really struck me in part two of the series when the narrator talked about how some of the most popular films are adaptations of things that already exist, making me believe that they are basically iterations. Some remakes of movies are absolutely horrible, but some of them reframe the structure of the old concept and refresh it, almost like an engineer would. An idea also within this section that made me think about familiarity and why some moves are so brilliant is because they go against the grain of what is deemed “normal.” Yes, Avatar is one of the greatest movies of the decade because of its entertainment value, special effects, etc. but the narrator does a great job at explaining just why this film is so well received: it is a part of a sub-genre template that already exists. As he continued, it made me think of the horror film that came out last year called “Hereditary,” which I personally think was one of the greatest films of the year because it did not fit the template of any horror movie I had ever seen before. Structure and flow were similar to other horror movies, but conceptually, this seemed to be like something I had never seen because it did not feel like an iteration; it felt original. Another part of this commentary I resonated with was how the components and elements of pre-existing things make new ideas basically obsolete. There are always new ways to think about something, but we take these ideas from the influence of things that are already in our repertoire. I really enjoyed watching both the documentary and the remix commentary because I can now clearly see how influence can inspire others and that it is okay to use creativity inspired by pre-existing things because that is genuinely how our brain functions.
Passion Project: Entry #1 (Week of Feb 4th)
For my passion project, I am going to try and get better at different art mediums such as drawing and painting. Specifically, I want to get better at drawing accurate representations of shapes, structures, and objects. I want to learn how to train my body to get better at something by committing to it. Ultimately, I will be handing in a progression video of how I have improved these skills over the semester, as well as this weekly reflection to show how I feel I have been doing. For this first week, I spent a lot of time talking to my friends who draw as a hobby, and one friend from home who even makes money drawing portraits. With their help, I have drafted a weekly outline of how this process will progress over the semester.
Week #1 – Insight from other artists (What did they do to get better at drawing? How long has this process taken them? What do they think is the best way to go about this process? Is it wrong for me to want to focus on certain kinds of sketches and drawings or will I hinder myself?
Week #2 – What do I like to draw? What am I already “good” at drawing? (A few pages of exploration for a week)
Week #3 – Begin online basic drawing tutorials (including illustrator) (basic exercises every day or every other day)
Week #4 – Attend a drawing class (I still have to find one that is inexpensive, but this is one of the first things I knew I wanted to do when I came up with this idea)
Week #5 – Drawing things to scale (Mostly architectural drawings – This will be two weeks of drawing every few days) (Also, with each weeks focus, I will be guided through video tutorials, then breaking off using those skills to draw my own designs)
Week #7 – By the mid-term, I will hopefully have a couple dozen pages of sketches, architectural drawings, and doodles — By this point I am hoping to begin digital drawing and art given I have the resources
Week #8 – TBD
During the first week, I spoke with three of my close friends who are art students. I asked them the questions stated above, and these are some of my favorite answers…
Mia: “To get better at digital drawing, I think I just did it so often that I learned how to fix certain things as I went. Going to Parsons even for a semester taught me a lot about how to critique my own work, but not be so critical that I hindered myself. It was almost like I got a third eye just for viewing my art. Since I have changed my major to photography, I have learned to be just as picky with my photos as I used to be with my drawings. And yes, I still draw almost every day.”
Avery: “I think the best way to get better at drawing is just to f*cking do it. You can watch as many videos as you want, but you didn’t get better at dancing just from watching videos of it all of the time, right?
Stefano: “I don’t think you’ll “hinder” yourself necessarily but I think you could benefit from trying portrait drawing or something just to get that sense of meticulous detail. You can draw anything, so I don’t think your process will be much different if you draw one thing more than another. If you want to get really good at drawing buildings, just draw them all the time, you just won’t be great at drawing faces”
Reading Response #2 (February 5th, 2018)
In reading “The Ten Faces of Innovation” by Tom Kelley, I learned that I am a mix of a few different kinds of personas. Firstly, I believe I identify strongly with The Anthropologist due to the fact that I am a very observant person especially when it comes to observing people. I tend to have a very strong ability to read how people are feeling, how they react to certain things, and what they are like as an individual. Since I can do that, my connection with The Anthropologist as a learning persona is relevant because the relationship something has with a person or with groups of people is significant in innovation. The product, idea, or concept is really not relevant when you do not think about it in context of the population it will effect.
In terms of Organizing Personas, I resonate a lot with The Director because I like feeling in control of situations. I think it is important for a group to have some kind of leader or organizer to help guide, not necessarily dictate. I feel as if when people are in a group, some people are less likely to share their ideas or opinions, and as The Director, a very important to involve all ideas and concepts for the best results. There is no point in there being a group if one person is dominating it, but without a director, a movie is never going to be made.
For Building Personas, I have a strong connection with The Caregiver. The analogies about the hairdresser and the personal trainer make a lot of sense to me because I feel as if I would value that kind of relationship the most. It is important to make people feel as if you are doing something for them because you care to make them feel like they are being cared for, not because you can generalize them under an umbrella of “client.” When an individual is made to feel as if they are being accommodated for specifically to their needs, that is when they are going to have the best experience under your watch.
Mind Map of Myself
The Miseducation of the Doodle: Reading Response (February 4, 2019)
In terms of my own process, reading these articles helped me understand the importance of visualization and turning the visualizations on to paper. It does not matter if it looks ugly, unrealistic, or out of proportion; if I can translate my thoughts onto paper in any way, it is worth more than not doing it at all. This was also significant to my Passion Project, since I am going to try to improve my artistic process (specifically my drawing process). I think these articles will reinforce the idea that I should keep drawing despite the fact that I won’t be very good at first. Also, throughout the semester, I think I will benefit from knowing that it is better to draw something and have it be unsuccessful than not draw something and forget the idea entirely.
After reading both articles, I more so resonated with Sunni Brown’s “The Miseducation of the Doodle.” Though I thought the article about sketching was just as informative, I think the concept of doodling is very similar to the concept of drafting. Doodling is more connected to the process of brainstorming, whereas sketching is more for an existing idea. In terms of my own process, I think I generally have a harder time coming up with ideas than I do manifesting ideas I already have. And with the process of brainstorming, I think the kind of free association of doodling is imperative. A part of this article I thought was really insightful was the quote, “There is no such thing as a mindless doodle.” This quote, though simple, is very telling of the creative process. Things that may seem pointless to others may not be so pointless to you, especially if you are the one defining your own process.
Personal Inventory: January 31, 2019
This is my personal inventory! I talk about three things that represent me in a very awkward fashion.
Entry #1: January 31, 2019
In this class, I am hoping to gain an understanding of how I can refine my own process to become a better designer. I only recently changed my major to IDM because I wanted to be able to be creative while still feeling “productive,” in a way. Though I don’t really have the brain for math and physics, I have the creativity and drive of an engineer. In IDM, I don’t feel as lost, and I think that this class will help me draw my love for design with the technicality of engineering. I don’t have many specific people I look up to in terms of design, but I have always admired film and filmmakers. Directors like Greta Gerwig are huge inspirations for me because there is an extremely small population of woman filmmakers, especially in regards to those who are recognized by the academy etc. I am also very inspired by those who make documentaries about controversial things or in controversial places, because those who pursue things that other people fear are the most courageous creatives there are.