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3D Experimentation: Beginning CAD.

One of the things I have started looking into is the use of CAD design in digital art. With the help of Steve Oliver at university, I have been given access and information pertaining to 3D CAD Design. In particular, I wanted to start using it to create my own crystals. But as I started to learn how to properly design, I realized that there are so many other interesting ways to use this medium. In particular, I want to duplicate objects found naturally, like seeds, sticks, rocks, nuts, and reprint them out of resin to create a project dealing with the theme of Natural / Unnatural that I started to explore in level 4.

The biggest learning curve for me with regards to CAD design is the amount of mathematics involved, which is a field I have never been particularly gifted in. I have found the mathematical aspect to be extremely similar to the ways math works within web page design and other forms of coding, so once I got that figured out it was much easier for me to continue on.

One of the projects I’ve begun to work on is a series of images exploring contemporary “post-truthism” and gender activism. What this project encompasses is a series of images created in photoshop of multi-coloured gradients with text plotting indicating when a color falls into the “Feminine” “Masculine” or “Androgynous”.

At the beginning I had started by creating the random gradients above and plotting my own opinion of which colors were male, female or non-gendered. After making a couple of these, I had become tired of only reflecting my opinion, so I created a Survey which asked a series of questions pertaining to gender associations and color:

On which continent have you predominantly lived?

What is your age?

What gender do you identify as?

In the comment box below, please list these colors (RED, ORANGE, YELLOW, GREEN, BLUE, PURPLE, PINK, VIOLET, WHITE, GREY, BLACK) along with what gender you'd personally associate with each color (MALE, FEMALE, ANDROGYNOUS)

Had you ever thought in-depth about the common associations between Gender and Color before this survey?

Over the course of two weeks, I received over 300 responses from three particular places on the internet: facebook, reddit and tumblr. I had only given out three specific links which, on the data analysis of the survey, showed me which website they had come to the survey from. 

From the results I received, which I am still in the process of fully tallying and organizing, a number of extremely correlations between continent and colored gendered association became apparent, as well as the drastic differences in the approach to answering question 4 depending on if one identified as M/F or Trans.

I am aware that the data won’t be entirely tangible nor could it be heavily relied upon to create the basis of an gendered argument, but I think in the sense of combining data mining with digital art, this could develop into an extremely fun and interesting project, that stretches beyond the scope of just plotting gendered associations with color on a gradient. Data mining is fun and interesting to me.

With regards to the initial inspiration that sparked this project, I had come up with the idea shortly after watching Barack Obama’s post-election press speech in November 2016, wherein he proclaimed that “fake news” and the reliance on information and data put forward by polls, is perhaps a major contributor not only toward the outcome of the U.S. Election but also the recent happening with Brexit. 

As a person who believes that gender is largely socialized and does not depend to one’s physiology, this project has been really insightful in terms of the average person’s associations of color and gender. It’s made me realize that far more people I anticipated are innately aware that their associations between gender and color are in part due to the way they are socialized.

This was the first attempt I made involving the projection of my images and animations into a physical space. I rented out an Optoma HD Projector from the student shop in addition to a digital camera to document how the projections looked. This was so exciting for me as I had never really experimented with bringing my digital works into a physical space outside of printing the works on to paper. I tested out both animations and my mixed media, often digitally edited photographs. It really brought my work to a new level for me and made me feel like the work was “professional” for the first time.

I video documented the use of the projector, but the file size is too big to upload to tumblr (despite only being 40 seconds long). I intend to turn the video into a .gif set which you can find on this blog.

Throughout the creation of the body of work during this module, I have picked up and revisited skills outside of the digital art mediums I have found myself comfortable in. Using the notion proposed in the brief that this should be an experimental body of work that encourages creative play, I decided to try a plethora of different mediums.

Focusing within my physical submissions, I have submitted a body of work exploring Watercolour, Collage, Sewing, Mixed-Media and Poetry. Focusing within my digital submissions (located on the tumblr: http://punk—art.tumblr.com), I have submitted a body of work exploring Photography, Animation, Digital Collage and one short film.

This reflective statement will be split into two parts, Physical and Digital, and I will write about my overall experience for both with a reflective conclusion at the end.

During the beginning of my physical body of work I wanted to create some works of art that forced me to revisit previous skills and begin to properly dedicate my focus to getting better in these mediums. With the watercolours in particular, it was an art form I used to experiment with a lot during childhood and at secondary school, and it had been about 5 years since I had properly dedicated a block of days to this form.

My favourite part about the watercolour work is the fact that although I’d only spent about 5 days in total on it over a period of two weeks, I feel like my progress and my attempt getting-to-grips again with the form was really successful. I have very low confidence in my drawing ability, which is one of the main reasons I stay focused on and so comfortable with Digital Art mediums - but this project of creating my own technicolor crystals really helped me begin building confidence in my drawing from reference and free-hand ability again. Although the structures for many of the crystals aren’t perfect, they still have an edge to them I really like and I think I would like to explore this medium in more depth. The creation of the colour palette for Painting 4 was really one of the most exciting aspects to the whole project, I spent a lot of time really organising the colours and number mapping them out on to my outline, and I think as I developed this technique throughout the project it really helped bring integrity to the work.

With regards to the collage work, this was one of the more emotional and intricate focuses within my body of work, and as I went on, the inclusion of my own poetry written on to some of the pieces in the notebook really adds a dimension I wasn’t expecting to get out of this project. I love collage work a lot and I am really excited to continue pursuing this form next semester. I would love to do large scale pieces, however I also really enjoy the notebook format. I liked showing the pieces to my friends before this submission, and having them flick through the book, as if it was one cohesive artwork in itself made up of separate ones. I have gone into quite a lot of depth with this body of work during the “Collage Reflective Statement” I have submitted alongside this, and I hope that will help give more information on the pros and cons of collage work and my development throughout.

My physical body of work, although small in size, took up much of my time within the 8 weeks I had to compile this new body of work, and I feel that the thought processes and the meanings behind some of the pieces are some of my most developed work yet, with the collages in particular.

During the beginning of my digital body work, I wanted to keep on the tangent that I had started with my Live Brief project “Natural/Unnatural” last semester. The most solid sections of the digital body of work I believe where the Photography projects and the Animation. These are mediums I feel very comfortable in as they are the main mediums I showcase on my personal arts blog on tumblr that I have gained a following on. I have a familiarity within these mediums that I have built up over a number of years, and the most trailing part of any work based in these mediums is the aspect of finding theme and context to the work.

With the photography project “Vulnerable Masculinity” - which can be found on the blog provided - I wanted to explore the concepts I am personally researching for my Dissertation Project next year. I plan to write about Vulnerable Masculinity in Contemporary Art and the decontextualisation of Masculinity that we have come to know in the west. The photographs ended up looking extremely soft while also remaining powerful. It was a delicate balance to uphold while still keeping the bizarre aesthetics I love to showcase within my artwork, and I feel like these photographs are extremely successful, and some of my best photography work to date.

The animation I worked on during this semester was also engaging and interesting, however I feel like I could have been doing better in the range of palette I had based a lot of the works around. My favourite piece I created for this body was the first version of “Mutual Destruction”, which is an Animated Gif that depicts a bunch of shot-up and destroyed iPhones floating in a pastel abyss. My least favourite Gif is the Anime Eye one, which was only a short test but I feel like the gradient is lacking. I really loved exploring notions of animated text movement and how that can determine the tone of a piece, and I would like to explore this notion more in the future.

Overall, I feel like this is a very experimental body of work which has reflected some of my most personal work submitted at university yet. The majority of the work was made during a time of immense reflection while I was at my parents house in France for the first time in two years. I feel like I am beginning to become more comfortable with presenting aspects of myself and my thoughts without fear of others thinking it is stupid, and using my already developed sense of aesthetic to tie in my political and social mind with my aesthetic.

I hope that I have organised this submission in a concise manner and that the information I have provided alongside each experiment within the wallets will help make sense of the work.