Guggenheim Visit response

Because I could not go on the class trip to the Dia Beacon, I went to the Guggenheim Museum in New York City.  I loved the museum—I had never been before, and it was such an interesting space.  I went to the museum by myself, which is also something I have never done before, and I was able to take my time and appreciate the work more because I was alone.  The exhibits were really interesting and a lot of them were relevant to Digital Imaging.  The Third Mind, American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860-1989, the show that was taking place when I went in March, featured over one hundred different artists, and contemplated how philosophies from the East have influenced art in America.  I thought it was interesting how Asian ideals, especially religious and aesthetic ones, such as minimalism, have influenced American artists for well over a hundred years.

My favorite piece was Teching Hsieh’s “One Year Performance 1980-81”.  I think the reason I was able to appreciate this piece was because I had seen another of his one year performances at the MoMA earlier this semester—not only was I able to compare the two, but I feel like I have a more solid understanding of Hsieh’s work after seeing more than one of them.  Like the piece at the MoMA, this work was about unfolding time, a concept that definitely relates to the Digital Arts.  In this work Hsieh punched a time clock in his studio once every hour of the day for a year, and took a photo after each punch.  Because he was doing this action every hour, he couldn’t leave the studio or sleep for more that 50 minutes at a time, or he would miss the punch for that hour.  For documentation of the project, the museum displayed the photographs from each punch, as well as the time cards from the punching.  These were hung around the walls of the gallery in chronological order, and like his work in the MoMA, the pictures not only demonstrated the passage of time, but they show the repetitiveness of this project in their own repetition.  In addition to the photos was a six-minute long video that showed the artist, with each hour of his time during the year he spent on the project seen in less than one second of video time.  I find Hsieh’s fascination with time and this display of time passing extremely interesting; the documentation of the work through photography and video is how I can most relate the piece to the work we have studied this semester, and were very effective.

Nam June Paik’s “Zen for Film”, another video work I saw, was part of the “New Media Movement”.  On display was an empty film projector as well as a film canister.  The projector is playing, leaving a white square of light on wall.  The idea of this pure white light contrasts with the truth of what the viewer sees—the noisy projector and the dust on the film contrast with this supposedly pure, empty light.

Although there were not a lot of digital works using techniques we have used in class, such as Illustrator or Photoshop, I was still able to relate much of the work to other concepts we have used on our projects, such as composition and mixed medium pieces, and many of the artists used older forms of digital technology, such as video, in their work.

Project 3, Poem Visualization: Project Statement

In my poem visualization I wanted to emphasize the calm tone of Hopler’s poem by using soft images.  I altered the transparency of each picture in order to make the words of the poem stand out more, but also because I believe that it gives the book a softer feel.  Had I left the images at full opacity, the colors would have been very bright, and I felt that bright, vibrant colors would be wrong for this poem that is very soft and quiet.  I also wanted to use simple imagery, which I believe goes with not only the simple descriptions in the poem, but also the simple diction and syntax of Hopler’s voice in the poem.  The images I chose literally illustrate the poem, but they also portray the simplicity of the poem itself in their minimalism.  Although the poem is simple, there is emotion and a deeper theme, and I hope that my images allow the reader to connect to the poem’s emotional content in a visual way. 

To create the images in my book I began with photographs.  I edited each photograph in Photoshop, including cropping, changing brightness and contrast, altering light levels, often adding a filter, and finally editing the transparency of the photograph.  Some photos were more complicated to edit, for example, to create the porch photo I added the light fixture from a separate photo, and then created a spotlight to make it seem as though the light was actually shining from the porch.  For the image of the drain, I had to transform the flowers individually from a separate photo and then add shadows in order to make it appear that they were floating in the water.  After working with each image in Photoshop, I placed them one by one into Illustrator documents.  I then formatted them to the proper size for my book (six by nine inches), and locked them in place.  Once the background was set, I added the text on top.  I did this by typing the poem, and then creating outlines and ungrouping the words so that I could move each letter individually.  I chose to use Myraid Pro font because it is clean and easy to read, but it is also an interesting and modern looking font.  I felt that all I needed to use was one font—there was no need to complicate the poem by using multiple typefaces.

I chose to create a very traditional book because I believe that this simple poem is best illustrated in traditional ways.  If I had chosen to make a very complex book form, with many folds or pop outs I think it would have detracted from the simplicity that makes this poem so effective.  The feeling of quiet and calm that I tried to portray with my images works with the traditional book format.  To construct the book I printed the images on thicker drawing paper.  I cut out the pages to the proper size, then stacked them and glued them together one by one.  I then constructed a cover from Bristol board, and glued that to the binding on the packet of pages.  Finally, I trimmed the cover to the proper size.

Project 3, Poem Visualization: Final Images

Here are three pages from my Poem Visualization book.

Project 2, Self Visualization: Final Image

I could not save a jpeg of the Illustrator file, so here is a photo of the actual project, hanging in Holman.

Word Visualization exercise

Project 3: Poem Visualization

Jay Hopler

OUT OF THESE WOUNDS, THE MOON WILL RISE

Now that the sun has set and the rain has abated,

And every porch light

in the neighborhood is lit,

Maybe we can invent something; I'd like a new

Way of experiencing the world, a way of taking

Into myself the single light shining at the center

Of all things without losing the dense, eccentric

Planets orbiting around it.

 

What you'd like is a more

Attentive lover, I suppose-.  Too bad that slow,

Wet scorch of orange blossoms floating towards

The storm drain is not a vein of stars...we could

Make a wish on one of them; not that we would 

Wish for anything but the impossible.

For my poetry visualization I have chosen this poem by Jay Hopler.  I am a Creative Writing major as well as a Graphic Design major, so this project is very meaningful to me.  I have studied poetry in many classes, so it was interesting to pick a poem that I would respond to visually, rather than for poetic analysis.  I hope that with this project I will be able to capture the emotional weight of this poem.

Project 2 Concept

After speaking with Professor Miller, I've decided to do a collage in the form of a mural for my self-visualization project.  It will be short in height, but long in length, looking like a long, rectangular mural.  The images will be somewhat random, a combination of photos edited in Photoshop and drawings done in Illustrator, all which relate to me or describe me.  Right now I am working on taking photos and editing them, as well as sketching more specific ideas about arranging these items on the mural.