#learninglog

Bodies in Spaces Dr Catrin Morgan, Parsons School of Design 

Where are you talking from?

“You cannot be clear in your message if you are not clear with who you are (to others) … I am a white middle age woman, middle class from England that live in the USA”

Thinking in those terms are quite foreign to me. I have always debate if I should think of myself as a woman of colour or not. Latin American or not. Privilege or not. So, on and so forth. If I were to speak to people from where I was going to speak them from.

This is an example of how difficult for me is to talk about those issues (This is part of a post that I did a couple of years ago and I never posted because I did not consider it relevant)

I have lived in the UK for many years and I did not like to talk about politics because I seems to have a different point of view that the people around me. I am Venezuelan and for many years, my perspective of Chavez was censure by the left because it did not fit the romantic idea of a lefty dictator and used by the right to criticize socialism and communism which Venezuela was not.

This attitude let me angry and frustrated. Took away my voice and identity because I started to deny that I was Venezuelan so people did not ask me and when I used a story or something that was a direct influence by my culture, I washed it so much that no one could tell.

Everyone deserve a voice; I did 10 years ago. Venezuelan people who are suffering today: poverty, famine and police repression deserve to have a voice. The question to answer is simple, I am the person to give them a voice, I have lived here for so long, I am comfortable in my home, safe, can I really relate to their suffering or I am just another person in privilege imposing my views onto people who are less visible.

Book: Do you remember, when

   United States Holocaust Memorial Museum          

I wanted to make a note about this book because I loved it. I cried like a baby reading the museum entry for the book. I am not sure why I felt so deeply, perhaps a love story that did not have a happy ending, because of the evil times, the care Manfred Lewin put into creating this book, the fact that was preserve and treated with care by the owner, Gad Beck. His tragic end. Perhaps everything.

In a less personal level, the book is a hidden story of a gay German Jew in the 1930s. With all the hate, the author wanted to show the love he felt for his lover, he wanted to be remembered, appreciated, love in return. As each one of us. The fragility and delicacy of the object is also a remainder of how fragile live was at that time and it survived. It is here so we can remember him.

The delicate drawings, the simple massages are beautiful. so personal.

In one of the interviews, I saw recently about holocaust saviours (I cannot fin which one) she said something that stick with me.

“they did not ask for mercy because they knew they were going to get any, they look at us and asked to be remember, because no one want to go to the oblivion and not be remember”.

This is the link for the exhibition page : https://www.ushmm.org/collections/the-museums-collections/collections-highlights/do-you-remember-when

Process art, creative process and art process.

What Are the Stages of the Creative Process?

This article explains in detail the theoretical differences in the art process and how different psychologists have theorise this process. The table below show a summary of the most important theories and the process they use to explain creative process, some very accessible, with three or two process other more complex.

(Marion, Franck and Todd, 2018)

The article is interesting, but I did not feel any of the theories explain the process of creativity successfully. If you applied the Occam's razor, the theories with less element does not explain all type of creative behavior or all the stages people in creative professions tent to go through.

The more complex theories are, well too complex that does not really help to study creative process.

I think the problem is the everyday use of the word and the professional term is the same and carried the same definition (Which is also very ambiguous) this led to a confusing field of study.

It is my opinion that creativity applied to art and creativity to solve problems are two different process. They might use the same avenue or process, but they are not one and the same. Also, there is a tendency to include all craft in the creative process which sometime is not.

Infinity Net. The Autobiography of Yayoi Kusama

This book adds to my understanding of identity, personal identity no socio-economic identity. I have this crazy idea when I started this journey that you need to paint, draw, illustrate outside yourself. I piece everyone can relate to like I was a politician try to get votes. I also struggle with the idea of my personal journey can be interesting to anyone but me. Yayoi Kusama is the opposite to that. She embraces everything that she is. The speak openly about her like, mental illness and how all those things impacted in her life, making her who she is and on top of that permitting in her work in a profound and healing way. “My intense hatred and fascination with the naked human body, and in particular the male and female organs, are mostly certainly rooted in this childhood experiences” ( p112 Yayoi Kusama, 2011).This is a clear example of how interesting the transformation of trauma into art. The other side is the social responsibility that creators have in society. No to manipulate, no to brainwash but to expose the inconsistence, the cruelty, and the injustice of the word we live in Kumasa, through the book, shows the word with pride her point of view, even to issues that did not affect her directly. She believed that by doing so she will make society better. She was an ally of gay and lesbian at the time and she perform a gay wedding and comment. “It is the abnormal reaction of many people to homosexuality that makes homosexuality abnormal” (p126 Yayoi Kusama, 2011).This is just one issue that she was involve but this shows you the importance to take a stand for the things you believe. She did the same about war and the importance of peace. If I need to take something from this book is Kusama respect for her own experiences and believes. These enrich her work and were a driving for in her work. 

Independent Learning log 08

I have seen this video on a lop. I do not like Picasso as a person (It is painful how forgiving people is) but I do like him as an artist. In this video of 5m you can see Picasso painting but more than that, you can see a flow of ideas (I think he might have explored them more if he has more time to finish)

The stream of consciousness as my husband calls it, it is quite interesting, he does not stop to he moves forward. I think he knows when something is pleasing or interesting visually. He followed an instant. He was not afraid to paint on top and change it when he did not like it.

Technical part

This is specific to the animation frame by frame.

I did a gif last year and it was a mess. I did the frame randomly and it was too chopped so I want to do it properly so I looked into more technical issues to approach this exercise. 

Animation is an illusion of movement by organizing the still images in a way that create the idea of movement when they change fast.

Frame rate

This is how often the image change 24FPS is what with see in movies. 25 -30 is on television and gifs made by hand is between 5 to 15 FPS

Animation lineal or in a loop

Animation in a loop is what made a gif work and the lineal animation is the introduction for the 007 films.

Note: 

I used the idea of under the water to create a loop but the moment I added a man it makes it difficult to it so I will do it a linear one.

Independent Learning 0.6: Resources available for illustrators and writers. 

I am doing an online course of writing for illustrators so I can do assignment 3. These are part of my notes.

Basic elements of the story

 A summary of the research.

I already research most of these elements on my other entry I will focus on the invented universe and genre.

A universe that is constant during the story is crucial to be an interesting story but also it need to be congruent with the genre. the rules need to be explicit from the beginning so the reader.

Nonlinear structures.

It is easy to explain, it any structure that happen in a different order that is not beginning, middle and end is a nonlinear structure.

The most interesting structure is the contra punto where different beginnings happen, and you do not know how they connect until the end or the middle. I did this intuitively in the exercise 3.3 but I struggle in seeing how to merge the two stories in a way not too predictable.