invisible landscapes

take a look at this... a very interesting project that beautifully illustrates the spirit of connective digital networks.

digital recycling

Since I chose to develop a perspective of one of my projects in my portfolio, I found it a bit difficult to break away from my work process I typically use in renderings.  Although I have a great appreciation for hand renderings, I typically shy away from drawing things by hand for presentation purposes, as I find photoshop to be more efficient and forgiving.  That being said, there is a certain character indicative of a hand drawing that rarely is evident in a clean, polished digital rendering; for the digital recycling project, I wanted to create a process that would capture a certain roughness that is found in a hand rendering. 

I began with a digitally rendered section of my project, and printed it out without altering it in anyway.  I wanted to soften the ground plane and fade it out towards the edges of the composition, so I cut out digitally rendered ground and just did some smearing of graphite to fill in the ground.

I then scanned the image in gray scale, as I found the values to be more exciting in the image when they weren't competing with the blue tint of the digital rendering.  Since the image is now entirely desaturated, in photoshop I brought some color back by adding some foliage.  After printing again, I realized I needed to poche the section cuts and ground plane to allow for the rendering to read as a section.

In illustrator I cleaned up the line work and found that I preferred a yellow poche over my sharpie's light blue.  I had some crinkeled trace paper on my desk, and wanted to give the sky some texture, so I scanned in my sheet of wrinkled trace and overlayed it on top of the rendering.  As I stretched the s smaller scanned image over top of the larger perspective, it took on a subtly noisy and pixelated appearance, which I found added another layer of texture to the image.

I then layered in some background trees and sky from some photographs I took at the site prior to construction.  Finally, in order to give the image some life and a human scale, I found in a newspaper two figures that I scanned in and dropped into the final composition.

I found a point of diminishing return rather quickly, as although I feel that each step added something to the overall character of the composition, in the end I would be satisfied with any of the images after the third piece.  The most successful of the iterations was the texture added by the trace paper in the sky; this is a method I will probably use in the future.  It also would be interesting to apply this technique to the ground as well to create an appealing texture.

silk!

http://weavesilk.com/?9#new

2.23.2011

 "the purpose of art is to engage people."  I don't think I've heard a better definition of art.  It is extremely difficult to create an all-inclusive definition of art, as art is not necessarily a universal, independent entity.  It is easy to approach art from a "finished product" stage, only looking at the surface level of a finished piece and analyzing it based on appearance or performance. 

What if it is the process of creation, something that is not expressed in the final product without background knowledge or research, that truly defines something as art?  In class we talked about the work of Clifford Ross, a photographer who builds his own camera equipment in order to capture large format, extremely high resolution photographs. Nasa has adopted his techniques in order to direct his camera technology towards developing high resolution images of astrological events.  

We also talked about last class's inquiry into controlled serendipity, focusing mostly on the ways in which a digital process facilitates a more "serendipitous" environment; I think Frank Gehry might disagree.  Although he is the figure head behind the creation of Gehry Technologies and Digital Project, Gehry himself "doesn’t know how to use a computer, except to throw it at people."

controlled serendipity

in a creative profession, the fabled "happy accident" is an ideal way to stumble across something unexpectedly desirable. What if there were a way to create a design process which encourages these findings of controlled serendipity?

While by definition it is seems a paradox to control something that is otherwise unexpected, facilitating a design process that is open to mutations has terrific possibilities.  It is important that any designer not work in a purely linear fashion, but is always going back and reworking past notions, as well as constantly exploring new ideas as they arrive, instead of continuing to blindly develop their original direction.

Our digital recycling project should prove how somewhat unexpected outcomes arrive in the design process when switching between media, and alternating between digital and analog.  Often times when switching from the computer and going back to sketching or hand modeling, you are brought back into tune with textures and materialism.  Textures are often glossed over on the computer screen, but being aware that the roughness of a certain paper or striations in a basswood model are really improving the character of the project is something that could be defined as controlled serendipity. 

On the digital side, algorithms such as Galapogos are a recent development in design software, which is an "evolutionary solver" for formal design explorations.   The software emulates evolutionary processes defined by user controlled fitness parameters, and cross breeds models over x-number of generations to eventually come to a 'genetically' determined ideal model.  The algorithm intermittently introduces random mutations into the gene pool to allow for "happy accidents." While this sort of controlled serendipity definitely kills the romanticism of the "happy accident" found within a crumpled piece of paper, I'm sure it still has its applications to certain design processes.

presentation : representation... a comparison

While the gradient between presentation and representation does not define a clear line where one becomes the other, in their extremes, presentation and representation are very much separate.  In order to create a differentiation, it is necessary to analyze the two terms outside of their action form: it is possible to present a series of representations, just as it is possible to represent in some form, an upcoming presentation.

In class someone mentioned an example of a painting of an apple.  Let's assume underneath this painting there is a plaque engraved with the word "apple."  To anyone viewing the painting, this would be an example of a representation; clearly the apple depicted only abstractly represents an apple, and is not actually itself, an apple. 

Conversely, what if the words on the plaque under the painting were changed to "painting of an apple"? 

This shows how the stated intentions of the communicator/artist/designer entirely define the term and associated differences between presentation and representation.  Ultimately, if the stated intentions of a designer and given product align, it is a presentation.  If they do not, it is a representation.

presentation : representation

Representation implies an absence of presence; an analogous substitute must be used to portray something that is cannot be fully seen or otherwise understood.  Representing an idea does not require that said idea is fully developed, instead it would be very possible to use similar case studies with a similar desired outcome of the idea, partially leaving it to the audience or user to piece together what the idea is really about. 

On the other hand, the act of presenting an idea implies a more concise and controlled communication with an audience.  A presentation leaves much less to the audience to be interpreted than a representation.


 

iPad art

Digital Perceptions

JR campbell, director of Kent State's School of Fashion Design and Merchandising program, speaks on the influence of digital technology on his work.  Although Campbell once thought that his design goals prior to his emersion into the digital realm would remain unchanged, he admitted that he lost his original aspirations to tell stories once his work became a digital product.  Instead of defending his original goals, Campbell expanded his goals to include technical advances such as engineering imagery that can go across seam lines, creating things that shift their level of focus, and establishing multiple layers of work.  Through his explorations, Campbell found that as the process of digital printing can really be simplified to just the print button, his only limitations were the cost of material.  As he moves forward with his research, his aspirations have shifted to creating something economically viable and how to use the capabilities of digital printing to further express 'fabricness.'

other images of his work