whatisthis

One of the posters from the workshop held by Ken Garland

IKEA's mobile:

CALDER's  mobile:

MUNARI's mobile:

PERSONAL mobile - designed elements:

The active participant

First image is the leaflet originally designed

Follows a Gif realized with some teasers "personalized" by Camberwell students.

This was an activity realized in order to promote the actual event.

Biography

Petali Luminosi

Nasce in Italia nel 2012. Nel 2014, riconosciuta la migliore band di élite dell’anno, il suo successo dilaga e raccoglie consensi soprattutto in America e nella sua madre-patria: l’Italia. Petali Luminosi è composto da Flaminia De Bacco e Michelangelo Di Rocco, (37 e 39). Entrambi insegnanti di storia dell’arte ma con una spiccata passione per la musica, nel 2000 si incontrano per la prima volta. Le loro influenze non sono solo sonore ma anche visive. Attraverso la loro musica, è come se dessero vita all’epoca classica, in particolare Barocca, dalla quale sono affascinati date le atmosfere.

“Quando mi ritrovo ad ammirare un dipinto è come se poco a poco lo assorbissi e ne riesco a percepire le sfumature, l’essenza. Quella stessa essenza è quella che proviamo a trasformare in un pezzo musicale. Vibrazioni e energie del passato che si fondono con quelle di un passato più recente, quello dell’era Disco, che se vogliamo potrebbe essere considerata il nuovo barocco data la sofisticatezza e la ricerca data all’immagine.”

Basically this project requires to design an album cover of a vinyl.

Faith gave us a mix of two musical genres; the one in question for me was Classical - Disco (woohoo).

I decided to join forces with other two people in my class because each one of us has different skills that would have helped us to develop the project in a very efficient and satisfactory way. For our cover we decided to set up a photo session.

Inspired by old baroque paintings of still lives we went on our trip to all the possible galleries of London: V&A, National Gallery, Tate Britain, Tate Modern. In each one of them we found something that has been useful for us. We found the atmosphere, the feeling that we wanted to recreate in our photo-shoot.

Disco is about this:

Reference:

http://socialdance.stanford.edu/syllabi/disco_lifestyle.htm (that's the bible of disco culture). So disco is about sophistication and referring to classical music, we wanted to represent that by referencing to classical, baroque paintings.

This because baroque is about sophistication too.

In order to do so we researched in the visual aspects of disco culture:

colors

objects

shapes

lights

We decided to rent some objects for few days like disco-balls, record player, a vinyl. 

this is one of the first shoots and not the definitive one

Elflock

For this project we had to take an old fashioned word and create a 10-20 sec promotional animation. It could have been an individual project or a group project, other girls and i decided to join forces and do the job together :)  We started researching old fashioned words and we came across big lists of them. Our main concern was to pick a word that would sound modern, even tough it wasn't and that could be used every day. this is because, as we had to "promote" the word, it has to be something easy to remember!

The word we choose is: Elflock

elf•lock (ˈɛlfˌlɒk)  n.

Usu., elflocks. locks of hair tangled as if by elves. [1585–95]

As soon as we read the word, we all had in mind the same image and we knew exactly what we were going to do. In these lists you can find other old fashioned words: - http://www.buzzfeed.com/lukelewis/27-delightful-obsolete-words-its-high-time-we-revived

- http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/oldfashioned-words-that-should-be-brought-back-into-modern-language/story-fniym874-1226768577929 And these are some relevant videos from the research we conducted in order to have an idea of how to practically realize our concept. - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btpZNRurnc8

- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlV0ySXukmA

Here is the storyboard that i sketched for the animation

Si Sedes Non Is, is the title of my book. It's Latin and it's also a palindrome. If read in the opposite direction it will result as Si Non Sedes Is, this literally translated means:

-> If you sit, don't go     If you don't sit, go <-

This is an inscription written on the Alchemy Gate in Rome. Obviously it's a metaphor, and as my book it's about a process of research and discovery, which is an active process, i feel that that's the right title. Also i choose Latin for the captions of the images because it's a language that was used a lot in sacred esoteric and alchemical texts, and so, because my images carry with them those references, i thought that Latin, death language but also universal, was the more appropriate. Here follows a list of references that i used as research in this project:

After the images, the appendix.

In this section you will find further explanations on some of the element used in the images.

In the images number 2, 3, 4, 5 there is, up in the sky, Io. And Io, which in Italian means I, is Jupiter’s moon. In all those images, going through determinate phases, Io is intended to represent a Moon, which is not ours – a false satellite, a false reference point, in the end replaced by the ‘real’ Moon in image number 7.

In the image number 2, the female figure represented is Miranda (from a painting of J.W. Waterhouse). She is one of the main characters of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Also, Miranda is a name of Latin origin and it means “worthy of admiration”.

Images 3 and 4 have in both of them a flying bird. That bird is a seagull and it doesn’t carry the ordinary meaning of a seagull. It is instead a reference to the book Jonathan Livingston Seagull by R. Bach and to all the meaning that that book carries within itself.

Camel – Creation Ray – Desert – Earth – Io – Lake – Lotus – Miranda – Mountain – Night – Palm Tree – Phoenix – Rainbow – Sea – Seagull – Seven – Ship – Sun – Sundown – Tempest – Tree – Volcano (erupting) – Water.

In my book there will be text accompanying the images, i also wanted to have a preface and an appendix in order to explain to whomever will hold the book in his hands what's going on in it.

Here i'd like to share the preface.

I find it necessary to explain a few things before leaving you free of interpreting the book according to your own perspective of things.

First of all I must tell you that the intent within this book is to try to describe and represent – through images – a journey common to a certain number of people on this planet.

I’m not speaking about a physical journey but instead of a process that takes place with and within one’s own self. Maybe this is something in which you feel involved, or interested, or maybe you have no idea of what I’m speaking about (which would be perfectly understandable), but you, and you only are the one that can know whether in these words it’s held a little truth or not.

In this book is illustrated a process of growth and discovery which is based on the seek for truth about all and therefore about oneself.

All the images are a metaphorical representation of certain stages within this process; metaphorical because each one of the images hold a meaning based on both esoteric and alchemical symbolism, and ‘read’ together they describe through their scenarios a story of development.

The process is based on the theory exposed by G.I. Gurdjieff, that the man is a fragmented unity: is one person composed by many different fictitious Is that impose themselves the one on the other. In fact if we observe ourselves we will notice that, for example, we often change our mind, or we decide that we will do certain things and then we just don’t; this is because in one moment one of our Is decides that it wants to do something but in the very next moment another I prevailed on the previous one with his own will. Therefore a man is never the same and if he wants to embrace a certain journey, he first of all has to learn how to be true to himself, and in order to do so, he has to create a centre in himself, an integrity, he has to become one.

At this point I would like to pose you a question; have you ever wondered what’s your function, or more simply, did you ever ask yourself ‘who am I?’ If you remember that at some point in your life you did, you must already know that to answer is not so simple (you could easily answer by saying your name, but that’s not correct, that’s the answer that you should give when you’re asked for your name) but is possible.

Last project of the first year on uni! It was a self-directed project for which we had to write our own brief. I decided to base this project on the previous one (Pay Homage to Your Hero).

I wanted to illustrate through images some of the themes that Battiato touches in his practice and so I wanted to represent a journey of research. The whole project is based on this quote by  G.I. Gurdjieff, written in the book Consciousness - The Search For Truth by P.D. Ouspensky.

“What does it mean to become one? The first step, which is still very far, is to create a permanent centre of gravity. This is what is meant by creatingMoon in ourselves. The Moon is a permanent centre of gravity in our physical life. If we create a centre of gravity in ourselves, we do not need the Moon.” 

This project has plenty of references on alchemical and esoteric symbolism. The images are seven and nothing in them is accidental. everything has its own place. With the images i try to tell a story, to show stages of a process. I don't want them to be obvious in meaning but instead i want them to be quite subtle and what i aim is the viewer to ask himself questions about them and their elements.

As inspiration i looked up at a lot of pre-Raphaelites paintings and at the symbology that is hidden in the compositions. Also i found out about this work by M.Tagliferro called Beauty and i found it very interesting, creepy and inspiring. It consists in a video in which paintings are brought back to life as they are animated.

The word i picked in the end (because in the beginning i was really undecided) was * tea *. I started the project researching the meaning and the etymology of the word and at the same time sketching some of my ideas.

        But one evening, speaking to one of my friends, made me realize that the word * tea * and the letter * t *, in english language, have the same pronunciation. Therefore i decided to base the representation of the term tea, on its own phonetic sound. And also, i looked up at some artists like R. Magritte,  M. Creed and J. Kosuth in particular, who with this work called FIVE WORDS IN BLUE NEON, represented exactly what the title says.

This is called tautology and is what my final piece will be based on.  

This sums up the concept on which i've been working on; in the 1st image there's a quick sketch of how i wanted to represent the word, the 2nd is the digital sketch i prepared for letterpress.

I knew which font to use: Bembo, because i wanted something classy, classic and elegant (let's just think about the 'ritual', traditional in UK and Ireland, of the so called Afternoon Tea), characteristics that this font seems to have. At this point my main concern was related to the visual aspect only:  on the brief was said that we could have used up to 3 colors in our work; i didn't want to make it in black but i wanted some color to give something more to my tea. and so i researched semiotic (if you are interested in it i would recommend you this article).

Since tea is usually intended as a hot beverage and is something more like a ritual, or anyway a moment that requires tranquillity (you don't drink tea when you're in a rush - first or all because to drink it you have to wait that it cools down, and second because it requires a little bit of time - one has to wait for the infusion)  i wanted to use colors that could reflect this characteristics.

I found out that:  • blue is the color that best promotes calm • orange is the color that suggests warmth and also, because of the theory of colors complementarity, orange (secondary - made by yellow and red -primary colors)  harmonizes with blue (primary).

Also the choice of the paper is linked to the nature of teabags, most of the times of an undefined shade of white and made from a rough fiber paper . And so, after many attempts in letterpress, this is my final result for this project.