Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Habits of Work: Create > Collaborative Metamorphosis

Goal Concept:
Understand and be able to cultivate creativity strategies and improve time management.
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Access Prior Knowledge:

“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.” ~Vincent Van Gogh

Instructional Strategy
  • Identify similarities and differences
Learning Activity

Instructional Strategy
  • Deepen Understanding
Learning Activity

New Information:

Habits of Work - by Prof. Rusty Smith

Self Reliance:
Self-reliance is an active approach in which an individual drives their own learning and working process.  Rather than waiting for directions or blaming others for delays, individuals actively generates possibilities, weighs benefits, and makes choices.
Paul Cézanne, painter.Paul Cézanne, painter.

Organized Persistence:
Beating your head against a brick wall is an example of mindless persistence.  It may take weeks, but eventually organized persistence results in a solution.  It gives us the ability to prevail, even when faced with the most daunting task.

Daily Practice:
Momentum is extremely powerful when you are working on a difficult problem.  Daily practice helps maintain momentum.  For example, when learning a new computer program, practicing for a couple of hours each night is better than working one full day a month.    
Yves Saint Laurent, fashion designer.Yves Saint Laurent, fashion designer.

Appropriate Speed:
Some tasks are best completed quickly, with brisk decision making and decisive action.  Slowing down to reframe a question and weigh alternative solutions is necessary in other cases.  Knowing when to speed up and when to slow down is one mark of a ‘master learner.’

Incremental Excellence:
Most design problems are best developed in a series of stages.  Ideas evolve, skills improve, compositions are distilled.  Rather than trying for the ‘perfect solution’ on the first day, it is better to just start with a draft.

Yoshitomo Nara, artist.Yoshitomo Nara, artist.

Valuing Alternative Viewpoints:
Listening to others, understanding diverse points of view, and considering alternatives expands our capacity to solve a wide variety of problems.  Even when the advice is off base, we can often use the idea as a springboard into a fresh approach.    

Direct Engagement:
Talk is cheap.  Work is hard.  The only way to solve most design problems is to get involved.  You will never win a race when you are standing on the sidelines.  

Learn More:
Studio Sundays (great collection of studios) > http://goo.gl/cI3cs6

Art References:

Apply Knowledge and Skills:

Create > Collaborative Metamorphosis

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Goal:
Create work that shows progressive metamorphosis and utilizes collaboration.

Print out an image from art history that is 10” tall.  Cut a 1” strip from the left side and keep it as your starting point.  Next cut a 1” strip from the right side and place it in the class bin.  Pick from the bin someone else’s right side strip and use it to create your ending point.  Put a new piece of drawing paper between the two 1” strips and invent the visual connection in between.  Ultimately we will connect all the works into a collaborative banner.  

Trigger Mechanisms: Add, invent, collaborate

Materials: Paper, pencil, marker, photocopies, Google Art Project >  http://goo.gl/4GPfh0
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Generalize, Reflect & Publish:
Instructional Strategy
  • Evaluate the results
Learning Activity
Reflect > Should I go back and rework anything?
  • How did you combine art elements (line, color, shape, texture, value)  to develop art principles? (Unity/variety, balance, emphasis contrast, rhythm, proportion/scale, figure/ground relationship)
  • Where are the dominant shapes, forms, colors, or textures that carry expressive significance?
  • Why Is the work ordered and balanced or chaotic and disturbing?
  • What gives the work its uniqueness?
  • Is symbolism used in the work to convey meaning other than what one sees?
  • Does the work evoke any feelings?

Instructional Strategy
  • Providing Recognition
Learning Activity
Publish > Share your album to our G+Community > Concepts & Creations category
Display > Add your photos to the Event

Instructional Strategy
  • Providing Feedback
Learning Activity
Critique >
  • Give positive feedback > +1 every image that deserves it
  • Give peer feedback > Give 2 peer images a VTS critique > http://goo.gl/1WWmBY
Self-assess >

Create > Scanography Images

Create > Scanography Images


Goal: Create compelling images using a flatbed scanner.

Studio Activity:
Be inspired by the work of Elisabeth Schmitz-Garcia > http://goo.gl/AYLHqN and make images using a flatbed scanner.  Similar to a Xerox machine a scanner has the ability to create high quality digital files.  Elisabeth captures exciting movement by draping a fabric over herself and the scanner and then pressing scan.  Her Borderline Personality Disorder portraits show distortion and stretched images as the scanner arm moves across the screen.
Scanners can also be used to take scans of objects placed upon existing photographs.  Look at the examples of this by Rosanna Jones > http://goo.gl/UfVHXA
Get creative and experiment with the scanner and different techniques.        

Trigger Mechanism: Experiment, Distort, Depth of Field

Visual Examples:
Elisabeth Schmitz-Garcia > http://goo.gl/AYLHqN
Rosanna Jones > http://goo.gl/UfVHXA

Scanography art (1080p HD) - YouTube

www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEc-Fz0DM-0
Dec 13, 2013 - Uploaded by Right Action
Scanography, also spelled scannography more commonly referred to as scanner photography, is the process ...

Scanography Tutorial - YouTube

www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1qw5l2XU6E

Dec 6, 2011 - Uploaded by anw0129
Scanography Tutorial ... Scanner Art Class - How to do Macro Photography Art Part 1 - Duration: 3:59. by Milliande Art Studio 20,301 views.



Create > Richard Diebenkorn Abstract Perspective

Create > Richard Diebenkorn Abstract Perspective


Goal:  
Create an abstract artwork derived from an accurate perspective rendering of a space and influenced by Richard Diebenkorn’s work.

Studio Activity:
Be inspired by the works of Richard Diebenkorn > http://goo.gl/az6eGS   
  1. Create a drawing on location. Sit in your driveway, on the street in front of your house or at a place that is part of your neighborhood’s identity and draw the scene.  Also photograph the scene for extra reference during class time.  Choose a dynamic point of view that shows a large and long depth of field.  Fully develop the drawing using a range of values.
  2. Next use that drawing to create and abstract expressive shape landscape painting inspired by Richard Diebenkorn.  Choose a color scheme and render in acrylic or pastel.

Trigger Mechanisms: Abstraction, Fantasy, Distortion

Visual Examples:






Great Example of a Concentration Series - Eric Pickersgill's > Removed


Developing a Concentration

  1. Determine Essential Concept
  2. Explore Polarities
  3. Move from General to Specific
  4. Move from Personal to Universal
  5. Develop Alternatives
  6. Edit Out Non-essentials
  7. Amplify Essentials

Is there?:
  1. Clear Topic Statement
  2. Evidence of research
  3. Evidence of personal interest
  4. Evidence of universal appeal
  5. Clear goals or motive to gain from the experience.

Student Commentary:
What is the central idea of your concentration?
How does the work in your concentration demonstrate the exploration of your topic. You may refer to specific images as examples.  When referencing specific images, please indicate the image numbers.




Check out Sherry Turkle’s - Reclaiming Conversation


Barbara deWilde

Sherry Turkle CreditPeter Urban

Check out Benjamin Starr’s article for Visual News > This is What Phone Addiction Looks Like… Without the Phones http://www.visualnews.com/2015/10/15/this-is-what-phone-addiction-looks-like-without-the-phones/

Check out Eric Pickersgill’s photo concentration - Removed

    The joining of people to devices has been rapid and unalterable. The application of the personal device in daily life has made tasks take less time. Far away places and people feel closer than ever before. Despite the obvious benefits that these advances in technology have contributed to society, the social and physical implications are slowly revealing themselves. In similar ways that photography transformed the lived experience into the photographable, performable, and reproducible experience, personal devices are shifting behaviors while simultaneously blending into the landscape by taking form as being one with the body. This phantom limb is used as a way of signaling busyness and unapproachability to strangers while existing as an addictive force that promotes the splitting of attention between those who are physically with you and those who are not.

    The work began as I sat in a café’ one morning. This is what I wrote about my observation:
         Family sitting next to me at Illium café in Troy, NY is so disconnected from one another. Not much talking. Father and           two daughters have their own phones out. Mom doesn’t have one or chooses to leave it put away. She stares out the           window, sad and alone in the company of her closest family. Dad looks up every so often to announce some obscure           piece of info he found online. Twice he goes on about a large fish that was caught. No one replies. I am saddened by           the use of technology for interaction in exchange for not interacting. This has never happened before and I doubt we           have scratched the surface of the social impact of this new experience. Mom has her phone out now.

    The image of that family, the mother’s face, the teenage girls’ and their father’s posture and focus on the palm of their own hands has been burned in my mind. It was one of those moments where you see something so amazingly common that it startles you into consciousness of what’s actually happening and it is impossible to forget. I see this family at the grocery store, in classrooms, on the side of the highway and in my own bed as I fall asleep next to my wife. We rest back to back on our sides coddling our small, cold, illuminated devices every night.

  The large format portraits are of individuals who appear to be holding personal devices although the devices have been physically removed from the sitter’s hand. They are asked to hold their stare and posture as I remove their device and then I make the exposure. The photographs represent reenactments of scenes that I experience daily. We have learned to read the expression of the body while someone is consuming a device and when those signifiers are activated it is as if the device can be seen taking physical form without the object being present.


Monday, October 19, 2015

Create > Paul Klee Abstract Perspective

Create > Paul Klee Abstract Perspective




Goal:  
Create an abstract artwork derived from an accurate perspective rendering of a space.


Studio Activity:
Be inspired by the works of Paul Klee > http://goo.gl/i1NWjB   
  1. Using a pencil create a drawing of an interior seen from another interior.  For example, draw the interior of a closet as seen from the interior of your room.  Another example would be drawing the interior of a room with an open door/window showing the interior of another room.  Emphasize a dynamic point of view with interesting angles and convergence. Use correct perspective techniques.  Fully develop the drawing using a range of values.  
  2. Next use that line drawing to create a cut or torn paper/fabric collage.  Extract out the forms in your drawing and reduce them to geometric shapes.  Then cut out those shapes and rearrange them to make a collage.   
  3. Next, create an abstracted shape work inspired by Paul Klee and done with oil pastels.   Paul Klee > http://goo.gl/i1NWjB


Trigger Mechanisms: Abstraction, Fantasy, Distortion


Visual Examples: