Assignment 4

Here's my Assignment 4. Yay for radial gradients!

In Assignment 4, we explored technology’s relationship to the landscape. I realized as I was brainstorming for this project that almost everything around me is technology. Buildings, cars, power lines, even the genetically modified corn stubble in the field across the road, are all technologies that dominate the view from my window. In many ways in my day-to-day life, technology is the landscape. I am so reliant on technology that very few aspects of my life would even be possible without it. I kind of live in a bubble of technology, like a tomato in a hoop tunnel.

            For this project I took pictures of three computer labs that I frequent around campus  -admittedly technology dense areas- and cut everything but objects giving off light from the images. I had to be selective in what I chose to keep in the pictures, because, as they were taken indoors, virtually everything they contained was technology. I chose light-emitting things like computer screens to keep in the images because I thought they would make a good representation of technology as a whole. Overhead lights, computer monitors, small LED power lights, and the screen of my cell phone are the only things I left in the images.

My intention for this assignment was to demonstrate just how much of our surroundings can be composed of technology and thereby show that technology can be the landscape. By removing everything but the computer monitors and lights in the photographs, my intention was to leave a landscape that was still recognizable.  I hope that the result of this selective cutting allows the viewer to recognize the content of the original pictures, and demonstrates how much of a landscape can be made up of technology. Once I had cut out the features of these three pictures, I realized that they provided another kind of perspective as well. It is interesting to see the orderly structure of the monitors and lights lined up in rows from the walls to the ceiling, and the depth of the space in the images that they reveal through the perspectives of their standard rectangular shape.

I think that part of someone else’s work on this assignment is visible on one of the monitors in the second panel. Is that one Chelsea’s computer? Actually, in the second panel, which was made with a picture of the art lab, you can see our whole class in progress. I think it’s really cool that a room full of people working on this project became the subject in my own work for this assignment. I don't think that was on my mind when I took the picture but I really like it.

Bleeding Narcissus

Here's my daffodil scan from the student art show. It's a composite of two of the scans of pressed flowers I made to gather images for Assignment 1. I did end up using the magnolia and forsythia in that assignment, but not these ones. There was a lesson learned there: it's a time commitment to cut out something as detailed as a flower! I really love how much detail the scanner captured. The original flowers were not very big, but you can see veins in the petals and tiny specks of mold in the big scan file.

The color in most of my pressed flowers fades very quickly. Blue, purple, and red often become undetectable or grey-brown in short order. Green will sometimes remain green or become an odd brown. In the case of magnolia flowers, delicate white turns dark brown in a matter of hours after pressing. This frailty of color seems to be less pronounced with yellow so I really like pressing the yellow flowers. Dandelions, forsythia, and daffodils do really well over the long term and usually end up bleeding the tenacious yellow all over the page.

 Bleeding Narcissus. Click to view a larger version.

Much Animation

How did I forget to post this one? We animated this example image for practice in class the other day. More funny cats! I love it. So doge.

Frankie the Magnificent Racehorse

Following Professor Shannon's hilarious suggestion, here's a hastily made animation of my pony Frankie as a Thoroughbred racehorse! Hahaha

(This is funny because he's a diminutive 34" tall.)

We practiced tracing movie stills to make animations in class today using Eadweard Muybridge's famous racehorse photographs. (Note that the Frankie animation is only a tracing of Muybridge's photographs.)

Underwater Exhibition

"Titled "Phantasy Fairytale," the exhibit can be seen from Huvafen Fushi resort and NIYAMA resort's underwater club, Subsix."

Wow, that's a very interesting idea for a gallery! I like the pictures that go along with this article: http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/13/travel/maldives-exhibition/index.html?iref=allsearch

Assignment 4 Proposal

With its prompt to “explore technology’s relationship to the landscape,” Assignment 4 offers quite a number of possibilities. For this assignment I think I will explore that technology is the defining element of the landscape in many places now. I could take pictures of technology-filled areas, such as computer labs or maybe parking lots, and cut out all organic elements so that only the technology is left on a white background. This might necessitate some selectivity in defining what ‘technology’ is for the purposes of the project, because if I counted clothing and tables and walls as technology as readily as computers, there may be very little to remove in some pictures. I might take this slightly further and remove all but the surfaces of screens in the computer labs. I hope that the result of this selective cutting would still allow a viewer to recognize the content of the original picture, to some extent, and would therefore demonstrate just how much of a landscape can be made up of technology. I think I will stick to JPEGs for this assignment because I have already used GIFs as the format for Assignment 3.

I probably will not need to appropriate any imagery for this project as I can take the photographs I’ll need myself. I think it would be interesting to use settings from around campus, like the library computer lab and maybe the computer lab for this art class. I have definitely drawn inspiration from the artist Matt Siber, who separates the text out of photographs of urban scenes. When finished, my idea might also be very similar visually to Penelope Umbrico’s work. Her piece composed of cut-out catalog mirrors comes to mind. Umbrico’s artwork has been very inspiring to me for the projects in this class.

Here's a link to some of Matt Siber's work: Siberart.com
And Panelope Umbrico: Penelopeumbrico.net/Mirrors

Animation

Animations in class today!

The example projects are so funny.

Keyboard Cat and the Practice GIF

We made this in class today. It's so funny!

Then I made this silly thing for the practice assignment. 

Oh dear, it doesn't seem to be looping forever. I must have forgotten to check a box.

Lots of cats today!

Assignment 3

Here's My Assignment 3

(Note: click on the GIFs to see larger versions of them)

I loved that Assignment 3 was so full of possibilities. There were so many things I could have mapped, but I knew right from the beginning that I wanted try using my trail camera for this project. A trail or game camera is a waterproofed camera equipped with motion sensors and, often, infrared light capabilities for taking pictures at night. They are designed to be set up outside and left for long periods of time to monitor game by taking a picture every time they sense movement. I thought that it would be very interesting to use for mapping because every picture it takes is from the exact same vantage point, with the same stationary features like bushes and trees, and only the subject changes.

                I thought to set up the trail camera on a telephone pole by the road after my dad suggested to me, half-jokingly, that I could try to map the garbage truck that was expected that night. The trail camera did indeed capture the whole garbage collecting process, allowing me to see clearly for the first time something that had happened in the dead of night once a week for my whole life. Perhaps more interestingly, it also took pictures of the every-day occurrences on the road that I hadn't thought about or expected. It did take many pictures of the empty road as cars tripped the sensor and then quickly sped out of frame, but it also captured the things that were moving slowly enough to stay in one place for a moment. I found sequences of the mail lady delivering mail, the UPS man delivering packages, and that the camera had taken two photos a day of a school bus driving past it. I learned that the neighbor's dog walks up and down the road at night (which you can see in panel two).

              I used these images to create GIF animations that map the commonplace things that happen regularly on the road. I seem to be completely unaware of these things happening despite their regular occurrence from day to day. I think that this provides a rather interesting perspective, as they illustrate how predictable and reliable the things that I take for granted can be. I set the GIFs to loop forever and I hope that this shows how repetitive many of the day-to-day functions of society can appear from the limited perspective of my driveway. After working on this assignment I wonder what else I don’t even realize I’m not noticing or acknowledging.

In addition, I now know for sure that the garbage men are not aliens with tentacle arms and antennae. How could I have been certain before that they weren’t?