♡♡♡♡♡ – Page 4 – welcome to my page, i am nad!

Image Making Through Type – FINAL

My final 4 compositions!

To reiterate, my concept for this project is “CHILDHOOD“. The occupations chosen come from the perspective of a child. Thus, some nonsensical, non-existent and fairly childish jobs. Read more on why I chose that concept here!

ONE – TOY FIGURE

This idea stems from the notion that children do not know what purpose a job serves. I’ve heard kids saying “When I grow up, I want to be a lion”. That’s not possible now is it? This basically works around the same idea. It’s not possible to become a toy figure but that’s what they want to be. So, here we are. I manipulated “nAd” into looking like a doll-like figure. This composition is kind of like a game of “Spot the letters” which is why I did not make the letters too evident. The letter “n” is represented through the hair, “A” through the dress and “d” subtly through the shoes. I want to keep the figure as the main focus thus I kept the accessories around it pretty simple.

TWO – PRINCE/PRINCESS

This is similar to the previous “occupation” in terms of its craziness. However, it is possible to be a prince or a princess. Even if you’re not born into a royal family, it is possible to marry into one sooo hehe. Sign me up! Anyway, as you can tell, this illustration depicts the famous scene in the classic Cinderella movie where she finds herself to fit the glass slippers. This idea was suggested to me by Mimi. I manipulated the glass slippers into looking like an “n”. The prince kneeling down also shapes into another “n”. Together, it makes up “nn” which is my initials. I chose to present the job as both a prince and princess because hey, equality!

THREE – BASKETBALL PLAYER

In primary school, I knew of a lot of my friends who aspired to be a basketball player. Not relatable HAHA. Sports CCAs in primary school were very limited in my school at least. For me, it was between soccer and basketball. I chose basketball because I thought the hoops would make quiet a decent letter “d”. I gave the ball a bouncing effect by drawing the trace behind it which I shaped into the letter “N”. Basketball players are generally really tall and have long legs so I thought the legs can be manipulated into a big capital “A”. Put it altogether and you get “NAd”.

FOUR – GAME DESIGNER

I used my initials again as a platform for the rest of the elements. I connected both letters with a mini waterfall so as to avoid them looking too distant. I emulated Crossy Road’s block-shaped items into my game design depiction. It took a lot of extruding and beveling in Illustrator. All games consist of a setting and characters. Here, I set the game in the world of a princess hence, the castle and a beautiful little garden. In the garden sits a prince which if you notice, is the same one in my previous composition because of the same colour of clothes. In front of the castle is actually the toy figure who is accessorized as a princess. If you can’t tell already, I wanted a little bit of all my other compositions to be in this “game” that I designed thus the additional basketball hoop on the top “N”.

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Image Making Through Type – PROCESS

CONCEPT

From the start, I knew I wanted my illustrations to have an over-arching concept. So, I came up with one. The concept of childhood.

I wanted the occupations that I decide on to be from the perspective of me when I was a child or of children in general. Most of children or me when I was a child at least, have no idea that a job is something that is suppose to garner me income to support my life. Well, that’s subjective still but I really used to think that jobs were something that you just decide you want to become and by something, I mean anything. That made me come up with nonsensical and non-existent jobs such as a princess based on the TV shows and books that children are surrounded by. Below, we have more weird ideas that I thought of:

All boiled down to my favourite 4: a toy figure, a princess/prince, a basketball player and a game designer.

ONE – TOY FIGURE

To start off, this is my most nonsensical idea. First of all, it’s not even humanly possible to become a toy, what more be one for a job. That exactly proves my point about how children have no sense of what an occupation really is. They want to be whatever they find interest in. In this case, a toy figure that they really like.

I wanted to make a toy figure that was still in its packaging. I was deciding between using the typical doll boxed packaging and the hang-able packaging as you can see in the two images above. After much sketching, I preferred the latter. I manipulated the letters “NAD” into a doll-like figure to depict the toy and this was the result:

Nice.

I then went on to digitize the packaging. And of course, I wanted my toy to have a brand. So, I created my own logo and all. How extra.

Putting them all together with a few adjustments, details and rendering, we get this:

TWO – PRINCESS

Why do children want to be princesses/princes? Disney. Of course! My personal favourite is the Cinderella movie so why would I not depict it in my composition. This was a tough one though. The rest of my compositions are pretty “block-y” while this one, I decided to make it look more like the real Cinderella movie itself. Credits to Mimi for giving me the idea to do something with glass slippers. The heel portion of the glass slippers in itself looks like the letter “N” so why not take advantage of that? Ta-da!

And I digitized it:

Can you spot the “Nn”? Yup, as mentioned, it’s the heels and also the space between the prince’s legs. But can you also spot the mistake? The colour! It turned out so ugly so I had to take the appropriate measures. I experimented with a few:

The colours were honestly just not working. The yellow… But I worked something else out:

THREE – BASKETBALL PLAYER

This goes out to all the sporty children out there. With the pretty limited amount of CCAs back in primary school, my knowledge of sports careers were pretty limited. Basketball was really popular though and thus this choice. This was really quick to make as I really laid down the exact sketch of how the illustration would turn out.

Digitized it and BAM!

FOUR – GAME DESIGNER

This one honestly was not planned. I initially created this illustration with the depiction of a princess in mind as you can see in the planning sketches here:

As seen in my research post, I emulated the work of Astro Oscar where he stacked letters over one another in an isometric manner. At first, I chose to work around “NAD” but I realised it was a little too much to only represent a princess.

I didn’t like it so I changed to “NN”.

Much better. Here, I added the mini waterfall to connect the letters so that it does not seem too distant.

Now, this was what I showed Mimi during my consultation. What she got from it at first was a game designer and not at all a princess. Children of today do aspire to design and create their own games, if you ask me. Example being my younger brother who loves playing games and hopes that he will one day get to make one of his own.

The isometric elements made it look like games such as Crossy Road and Habbo. So I thought, why not change it?

If you did not notice, I designed a game space that had a little bit of everything. Observe closely and you will see that the princess is actually the toy figure in my first illustration. The figure sitting in the garden area is actually the prince in the princess/prince composition as told by the colour of his clothes. More obviously, the whole space depicts a castle setting paired with a garden which is pretty representative of a princess. Additionally, there’s a tiny hint of a basketball player through the basketball hoops in the illustration.

This illustration made for a good conclusion for all my 4 illustrations which I will be explaining more closely in my finals post. Stay tuned! In the mean time, check out my research post! ♡

Image Making Through Type – RESEARCH

For this project, we were tasked to create typographic portraits using our names according to different jobs that we choose. Thank God the letters in my name are pretty easy to work around with. I’m going to be using “Nad”, my nickname and “NN” which are my initials. In hopes of becoming a graphic designer in the future, I have decided to dabble with the unfamiliar Adobe Illustrator. But first, of course, how can I start without taking inspiration from the ever so reliable Pinterest?

ONE

ALFABETO 02 — Alphabet City by Ranganath Krishnamani

Alphabet City consists of illustrations that depict different urban landscapes. The artist manipulated each letter in an isometric manner to look like a space which I think is what I will be experimenting on for one of my illustrations. Although it seems a little complicated, there is no harm in trying right?

Creatures of the deep on Behance — Creatures of the deep by Astro Oscar

In this illustration, the artist stacked each letter over one another leaving just a little bit of space. At the same time, he connects each letter using different elements i.e; the stairs or the building. Also, doesn’t this illustration look like the game “Crossy Road”?

Image result for crossy road — Iphone Game: Crossy Road

This inspired me to choose Game Designer as one of my jobs.

TWO

This illustration plays around with hollow space which gave me the idea to do something associated with a construction worker because we all know how construction works do take place underground.

We've recently blogged a big illustration by Adam Simpson. Here some other ones: — By Adam Simpson

In this hollow space that takes the shape of the letter “L”, the artist places furniture in it to make up a mini apartment.

THREE

Sieh dir dieses Instagram-Foto von @battery_full an • Gefällt 1,584 Mal — By John Ed De Vera

Although I said that I am planning to do this project digitally, this papercut piece inspired me to do something similar to it. It looks taxing I must admit, but I will consider.

1486743_612097872170148_81611836_n.jpg (500×647) — By Matt Chinworth

Here I found something that looks like paper but is done digitally. This made me think of newspapers which inspired me to do perhaps a newspaper article writer.

For now, I will be looking for more inspirations and consult Mimi and my friends on my ideas before I settle on 4 occupations to carry on with my project. Wish me luck! ♡

New Language Of Form

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Hello World!

Screenshot of the video diaries playing simultaneously

“Hello World!” or: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP LISTENING AND LOVE THE NOISE is a video installation piece put together by Christopher Baker in 2012. First-time video diaries of over 5000 people all over the world taken from Facebook and Youtube are stitched together on a large screen as seen in the image above.

From afar, it just looks like blinks of colourful video squares and accompanied by a cacophony. That is in fact, the goal of Christopher Baker. He wanted viewers to be immersed in the cacophony while viewing an array of random personal video captures.

Audience member closing up on the installation to view an individual video

At the same time, viewers are also able to take a step closer and turn their focus to an individual speaker. This is possible because he plays around with the volumes of each speaker where he would raise the volume of one voice above the cacophony as heard in the video.

In an interview with Dazed Digital, Christopher Baker states that today’s technology which allows for people of the everyday to be heard is what inspired him for this project. He was interested in the feelings of a “vlogger” (video blogger) which made him question:

“Do they feel like they are contributing to something? Or, is it simply enough to speak and have one’s voice heard?”

In a platform so wide, it is difficult to be sure if you are contributing to anything through the vlogs that you make. You can be putting in the most effort in it, crafting the message you think is best and gathering up courage to post it but in a sea of videos so similar, are you really heard? “Hello World!” represents this. The world of internet reduces everyone to just average. One would need to vigorously stand out to truly be heard.

This project is a great example of a collective narrative. A collective narrative refers to the “sharing and open exchange of conversation, ideas, information, and media that leads to a synthesis of voices” (Packer, Randall, Open Source Studio, IEEE Spectrum, 2015). In “Hello World!”, Christopher Baker did not create any new content from scratch. Instead, he collected readily available videos of people worldwide and pieced them together. This essentially means that the art of the project itself (the cacophony and abstract image of the collective videos) is made by the owners of those videos. He compiled the videos as they are and left it for the audience to view which creates a collective narrative. In a way, he collaborates with the audience to create a message from his project. It depends on how the audience views the piece. Thus, it is no longer the individual opinion in a personal form but “a collective activity that is highly collaborative” (Packer, Randall, Open Source Studio, IEEE Spectrum, 2015).

Telematic Embrace

Telematic embrace is honestly my favourite micro-project so far. It was actually the highlight of my day. I feel that it is an interesting way to actually understand better, the concept of a third space which is the integration of the first space (local/remote space) and second space. The whole class was tasked to enter “Adobe Connect” and switch on our webcams. While seated on our individual seats, we were able to see one another live through our little camera screens collected in the application despite not being in view of every one of us in real life itself. As seen in the picture above, we did different movements together at a time to create a beautiful image as such. The coolest thing about this experiment to me is the fact that we were all in a first and third space together, at the exact same time and this is the art of social practice. It depicts the quality of communication which enables us to carry out synchronous acts. In order for it to work, negotiation is key. Participants would have to know how to compromise and cooperate. How wonderful it is to make possible, the witnessing of the juxtaposition of two spaces. Here is another screenshot of us showing pink items that we own:

Facetime in 1980

Back in November 1980, artists named Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz (K&S) dabbled in the functionalities of satellite technology to create one of their many remarkable works. Hole-in-space was a 3-day project which involved the connection of people from across two distant areas. Two big screens were respectively set up in front of Lincoln Center for Performing Arts in NYC and “The Broadway” department store in LA. Random public members who passed by were able to interact with each other through the screens in real-time. Given that the screens were large, it gave the feeling that the people were communicating with each other in real life as they were all of the same human size.

Passer-bys in respective continents communicating through the big screens

Hole-in-space is an engineering prototype that showcases the artists’ “vision of large screen teleconferencing”. It was funded in part by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and The Broadway Department Store, with support from many different companies.

In a matter of days, this project easily lessened the distance in emotional connection between people of different places. Given that there were no instructions or labels tagged, on the first day, everyone was confused. Some people thought that the people on the other end of the screen were celebrities. As the days go by, word of mouth went around. News channels even televised it. That reunified lovers and family members who have not seen each other in the longest time. Hence, I feel that Hole-in-space was not only experimental but emotional.

This to me, perfectly encapsulates the idea of a third space. How the people who are no where near one another are able to connect in real-time defines third space: “the pervasiveness of distributed space… in which we are constantly connected” (Packer R. “The Third Space,” (2014) in Reportage from the Aesthetic Edge). Additionally, 1980 was yet to be a time of technological advances thus I feel that this project was revolutionary and the start of something new. Today, we have face-time and webcam chats.

Kit Galloway (L) and Sherrie Rabinowitz (R)

Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz were artists that created projects relating to telecollaborations and virtual spaces. They also co-founded Electronic Cafe International in California.

ASSIGNMENT 1

The open source is an outlet that goes against propriety models as discussed in Vaidhyanathan’s essay. Open source has always been the norm before propriety models came into the picture. Society began to get accustomed towards propriety models which overshadows open source. When copyright was introduced into propriety software, it stopped users from exploiting or copying information online. With such, companies could attain more wealth and power. However, when most things are made private, there would be a loss of creativity and innovation when communal creation, revision, criticism and adaptability are restricted. Additionally, when copyright comes into play, users are bound to be selfish with data being raised for the world to utilize. This leads to a delay of useful information or perhaps none at all. This sheds positive light onto the open source model. The open source model allows for new potentialities for collaborative research and peer-to-peer artistic production amplified by the network (Packer, Randall, Open Source Studio, IEEE Spectrum, 2015 Writing). It incorporates telecommunications, social media, digital storage capacities, cloud-based file directories, and virtual desktop space with room to move and roam beyond the physical world. When the model is non-propriety, people would be sincerer in their works, producing higher-quality products. On the downside, there is difficulty in getting society accustomed to this model given our egocentric human nature. In a world where economics is being put forth, working for something lesser than money is not appealing. Furthermore, there could be an issue on hackers given that it is an open software. In conclusion, both models are decent. It depends on the consumers purpose and way of utilizing the individual models.

Experiment in social broadcasting

https://www.facebook.com/nadiahlovescody/videos/1824276644250463/

This was such a cute activity though awkward because I barely know any of my classmates and we had to do it around ADM where so many people are just walking around and staring. To be able to see all of the live videos together on the live wall so intriguing. I love it!

https://thirdspacenetwork.com/public-video-wall/