Frankly Shai

Because of the current events that is happening in the world right now, I would like to share my work in Image & Identity as I chose my topic issue to be Racism in Australia. I know that this is not only happening in Australia but for project-purposes, it was best to be specific with my audience.

We were to do a profile of our chosen issue and create a design artefact of some sort for it, and I did a series of posters advertising a campaign called #StopRacism to increase awareness that it’s still happening which is affecting TOO many lives.

If you missed it, this is the part one all about the development and iteration of my project.

Holke79. (Unknown Year). Kinetic Type. Retrieved from: http://www.holke79.com/project_kinetictype.html

So this post is all about the execution of my video… and man it was hard. I envisioned a video like Zang Tumb Tumb and how it was very type heavy filled with movements but the problem is, I have never even touched After Effects nor Premiere Pro… I actually paid for a course in Domestika called “Animation for Typographic Compositions” by a great artist Holke79, a freelance motion designer who focuses on type. I paid $21 when it was supposed to be $75 so like… who’s winning though? Anyway, I watched the introduction of it and I was like… there’s no time. So I delved into After Effects and Premiere Pro all on my own and tried my best to figure it out. So basically I bought a course and didn’t watch it, moving on... It was really challenging especially because these programs doesn’t know what “fast” means because they’re annoyingly slow to run but we managed and this is when all nighters came in.

I didn’t realise that making 4-5 words of a SENTENCE takes (no kidding) 2 hours (or more) to make depending how much graphics and effect you’re putting on it. I think that my first question took me a day to finish. SO like… yes, this project took a lot more time than any of my assignments did. And my first draft looks something like this:

This is 38 seconds... And this wasn’t even the full answer.

Anyway, when it was my turn to share for feedback in class my connection cuts off so I emailed her instead and she gave me an in-depth feedback that really helped me:

- She likes the direction I’m going so far - It’s clear and there are some fun bits - Including graphics are very effective - Balanced image and text which makes the frame really solid - Text movements are all at the same time making it feel mechanical - Not too sure about the “LIVE” and the film grain

And I was a bit worried about the voice over so she suggested that instead of having a voice over; sounds, drumming, ambient noise and choral singing could be added in instead, of what the Futurist will sound like.

So before the next class which was the catch-up class, I really want to have a solid video to show for the one-on-one feedback and I managed to finish everything, questions & answers:

Some points she said was that:

- There are points where you can really tell the effects so it’s not as effective as the ones that includes graphics. - Some parts were too fast. - Some parts are out of place such as the lightning and the “Individuality” at the start.

So then I refined it and added some sound fx for the final:

The sound FX is harder to do because I found it challenging to find something that will best represent the Futurist and so I just opted for machine/mechanical sounds and hoped that it’s a bit more effective.

I was really worried about this project because I struggled with finding the right subject to interview. I brainstormed a few:

1. Albrecht Dürer inspired by the week five lecture. 2. Surrealism 3. VHS vs DVD 4. Sony Walkman vs MP3 Players 5. Nokia 3310

I realised that number 4 – 6 is not really a “historically significant” in the design world… kind of… but I ruled it out anyways since I couldn’t see where I was going with them. I just didn’t feel inspired by any of these subjects and felt like I was gonna dread doing the whole assignment if I did choose one of them so I know I need to research more. Then I had the idea of interviewing Mona Lisa which is actually not a bad idea but I was still not inspired. And then week eight lecture came and the Futurist and Zang Tumb Tumb was introduced and I knew I wanted to do a video like it. Then I was inspired, and this was such perfect timing because it was still the research stage and Bailey said it’s not too late to change our topics.

I came up with my questions after researching more about what and who are the Futurist, what they stand for and etc. And I came up with these questions:

1. What do you fight for as an art movement? 2. How did you think this movement influenced the WWI? 3. Why is the future more important than the traditions and history of the past? 4. What is the role of speed in this movement? 5. What other forms of work have you done?

Bailey asked us what these questions will reveal about our subject and I said that these will reveal the Futurist’s beliefs and purpose as an art movement and their influence on both past and present. This is actually why I changed the last question to “How did Futurism influence the design today?”

After coming up with the questions, I researched and based off my answer to how Filippo Marinetti speaks in his Manifesto, and at first I thought we can use their actual words but Bailey said it’s better if we don’t so I tried my best to replicate his tone of voice and the way he talks in my answers and use two or three quotes from his manifesto to reference back. Using the answers I constructed, I did some experimentation in graphics to visualise what I’m going to be using for my videos:

Which I may or may not use as well. Bailey’s feedback was that she likes that there’s a mixture of graphics and text, it’s a great break between just text and it will make my video a lot more interesting and detailed. And she also likes the aesthetic of it so I felt confident of where I was going.

I can’t believe it’s the end of semester one! This whole semester went by so quickly and felt surreal. It actually feels like this whole semester is a free-trial subscription… it didn’t feel like I’m actually a uni student because of being online. It was really a challenge for everyone as it was hard to discipline ourselves to maintain a routine of working and being productive when you’re always at home, so motivating yourself to work is really hard. It sucks that our first year would be like this but I guess what can you do in this situation.

Communication Design in conclusion is probably the most interesting but hardest subject out of the three. It’s interesting because of the topics covered, it was inspiring, educating and at times fun. But the projects are very challenging, starting it with the “Hello my question is…” which I struggled with the transition to online class, being out of touch of juggling uni work, actual work and life. I forgot how to manage my time and the beginning of lack of resources because of shops closing down. Being unmotivated and uninspired… it was a whole lot of emotions. I wasn’t too proud of what I created, and my grade reflected that – which I did expect. And that was a really bad start for me which at first discouraged me even more but when the next project was introduced, I was a little bit more challenged and determined to do a lot better which was good. This subject also challenged me to go out of my comfort zone when it comes to design, I explored animation and creating with different materials which I absolutely love. It taught me varying topics about design that I wouldn’t have touched on if it weren’t for the lectures as well. And I also realised that this journal was a great way for me to learn because I dissect a topic and learn more about it than just reading about it. It helps record my progress which is great to look back at, and I am VERY VERY VERY glad that I kept it up to date as weeks goes by because I often write a lot which takes more time than I thought it will.

Long story short, I learned a lot about movements, communication using different types of tools/design, different medias, grids, creepy ballet dancers, typography, print and many many more. There’s still a couple more post coming up, just some activities I want to do but always didn’t have the time (or motivation) to do. But, thank you Karen, Andy and Bailey for being legends! See you when I see you.

This week, in the lecture they discussed the purpose of designing and the assistance it could give us. They started the lecture with the ¹Eyewriter, a device that could draw using your eyes which was developed because of a graffiti artist, Tony ‘TEMPT’ Quan who was diagnosed with ALS and lost the ability to do what he loves. ²The Eyewriter is controlled by tracking the artist’s eye movements and blinks to draw.

¹Eyewriter. (Unknown Year). The Eyewriter. Retrieved from: http://www.eyewriter.org/

²Not Impossible Labs. (Unknown Year). Tempt and the Eyewriter. Retrieved from: https://www.notimpossible.com/projects/tempt-and-the-eye-writer

Thinking of other technology that helped us today to express ourselves, Andy and Karen also talked about the Movie Barcode which anonymously created by a Tumblr user who takes the film’s frame by frame’s images and put it all together which creates a series of colour gradient. Some of my favourites are:

The Little Prince because it’s my favourite movie and one of the first ever books I read when I was a child. 

A short love story in stop motion, which was is the most different out of the ones I saw.

Bring It On; the shades of red because of the cheerleading outfits...

Purple Rain because purple... :)

They also talked about InspiroBot a inspirational quotes generator and at first I was like, wow! This is really great and then the second one comes and I was like… yeah not for me.

The next one is This Person Does Not Exist… creepy. Very creepy. Not even gonna include the picture I got.

And then the most interesting one is the Metaflop a website to adjust fonts.

It has two options, dummy or nerd and this is the difference:

Not much to say about this week in lecture because I didn’t really enjoy the topic that much... sorry. But class was fun because Bailey gave us another class activity, a Photoshop activity. She gave us 3 challenges which takes 5 minutes each:

Emphasising the text:

Emphasising the photo:

And a distortion which is my favourite:

This is another good activity that she advised us to do if we’re ever feeling stuck with our work, because its very liberating and quick to do. I felt inspired afterwards and was proud of what I came up with in 5 minutes so I’ll definitely do something like this again. 

Hi again from week 10, I decided that since my posts are always too long – and week 10’s collage post is no different – that I will divide it up for this week and talk about the lecture in this post instead. Here’s a link for the part 1 of this week all about the class activity: Collage.

The lecture as always, is interesting. This week’s topic is conceptual art and what is design for? I am not very familiar about this topic and so of course like any of my other posts, which tends to be a research summary about a topic - and this is no exception.

Conceptual art is actually an art movement or as per my research, instead of a movement is a ¹“set of strategies” explained by Sol LeWitt, one of the significant artist of Conceptual Art. It is essentially focused on the planning (set of strategies) and decisions which obviously takes place before the creation of the actual art. The CONCEPT of the art is the focal point of this movement, hence CONCEPTual Art. You’re still confused by my bad explanation? Here: ²“Conceptual art is when the idea or concept behind the work of art became more important than the actual technical skill or aesthetic.” It emerged in the 1960s in United States following the modernist movement in the early 1920s and their obsession with aesthetic which conceptualism critiques.

Now that we’ve got that covered let’s move on to how it works and how one’s art is labelled as a Conceptual Art. Based on what I gathered – which is veeeery little – the artists of this movement acknowledged that all art is basically conceptual, but it only becomes a Conceptual Art if the material presence of their artwork is reduced to an ABSOLUTE minimum. For example:

One of many important artist of this movement John Baldessari, created an art project with his mates and students from University of California called “Cremation Project” in the 1970, where they gathered paintings he had made when he first started and cremated them, placed the ashes into an urn inscribed: ³ “JOHN ANTHONY BALDESSARI – MAY 1953 MARCH 1966” And described this project as an act to, “rid my life of accumulated art…” It is known that this project aimed to emphasise his work’s physicality which makes it destroyable. It asked an important question in which has also been asked in week 11’s lecture where Andy and Karen asked: “How much is your design authored by you and how much is authored by the device you’re using?” which will be answered on the post for week 11. But the question being asked in Baldessari’s project is, ⁴“where is the art itself located?” is it when the art is completed, and it’s displayed? The planning stages? When it’s been recreated by someone else? The notion behind the project is where it becomes a conceptual art. The concept of it, the idea of it, the deeper sense of the art itself is when it becomes a conceptual art.

That’s. So. Cool! The good thing about this lectures and reflective journal is learning new things and understanding something in-depth. Anyway, see you in week 11 for real… :)

¹Sol LeWitt’s words in the article written by Isaac Kaplan. (2016). If you don’t understand Conceptual Art, it’s not your fault. Retrieved from: https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-if-you-don-t-understand-conceptual-art-it-s-not-your-fault ²Jo Morten Weider. (Unknown Year). Art Movement: Conceptual Art. Retrieved from: https://magazine.artland.com/conceptual-art/ ³Steven Zucker. (Unkown Year). Conceptual Art. Retrieved from: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/atd-sac-artappreciation/chapter/reading-conceptual-art/ ⁴Steven Zucker. (Unkown Year). Conceptual Art. Retrieved from: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/atd-sac-artappreciation/chapter/reading-conceptual-art/

This week was another fun class because our activity is making collages. I’ve never done a collage before and always wanted to try it, so I’m grateful for the opportunity to experience it in class along with everyone. Before we dived into the activity, we talked about collage artists and artworks first in class to get inspirations and see the techniques used by the artists. A few of my favourite that she showed us are:

Mary Lum was ¹born in St. Cloud Minnesota in 1951, and studied Bachelor of Fine Arts in University of Michigan and also received her Masters in Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. Her work has been showcased internationally in numerous institutions and she have also been a recipient of many awards throughout her years. She is a professor at Bennington College, teaching painting and drawing since 2005.

Her work is mostly inspired by architecture and the world around her and creates not only collages, but also installations and photographs surrounding this inspiration which explores geometry, abstract, perspectives and colour. She aims to “construct new meanings from the familiar and mundane” through her works as it’s also influenced by Cubism and Russian Constructivism. Lum’s artwork shown above which is called ²“Condition Three” is part of her exhibition ³“Edge Conditions” which features her work that explores urban environment in its transitional state and the experience of being in this space in contemporary life. She uses comic books, photographs and paintings to create layers of multiple perspectives to represent spatial memories.

¹Yancey Richardson. (Unknown Year). Mary Lum. Retrieved from: https://www.yanceyrichardson.com/artists/mary-lum

²Lena Valencia. (2009). Mary Lum’s Edge Conditions by Lena Valencia. Retrieved from: https://bombmagazine.org/articles/mary-lum-s-edge-conditionsv/

³NY Art Beat. (2009). Mary Lum “Edge Conditions”. Retrieved from: http://www.nyartbeat.com/event/2009/E54F

Another one of my favourite is by Nathaniel Whitcomb, a designer/artist based in Cleveland, USA who was studying to be a dentist originally but ¹“got to the point where [he] couldn’t not make things” and later on pursued his passion in creating art, or more specifically collages inspired by surrealism. What’s cool and different about Whitcomb is his moving collage which I’ve included (one of many) above. This collage is one of his artworks from his project called “Breathing Collage”. He also uses music and considers this as one of the important aspects of his creation as his ideas are heavily influenced by music. His other works can be seen in his website and Vimeo.

¹Nathaniel Whitcomb. (Unknown Year). Nathaniel Whitcomb is a Colectivo Futurist. Retrieved from: https://colectivofuturo.com/nathaniel-whitcomb-is-a-colectivo-futurist/

And finally, for the activity I only have Frankie magazines so that’s what I used:

And I wanted to have a topic of some sort and what better topic can there be than the pandemic and the world’s situation right now. My process went like this: 1. Went through my magazines looking for topic ideas, here’s what I came up with; differences in culture, everyone has stories of their own, etc. and obviously I went for isolation during COVID-19. 2. Looked for photos or graphics that can be related to each topics and seeing if I have enough for whichever topic, I was lucky to have enough for my chosen topic. 3. Search for a good background – ripping off the whole A4 page. 4. Plan the layout, where the chosen images are going to be sticked, take a photo for reference. 5. Start cutting up and gluing!

It was really fun and I can see myself creating more collages as a fun activity to challenge myself. Here’s close-up pictures of the details of my collage:

Here’s a part two of WEEK 10 all about the lecture’s topic: conceptual art.