Sound art is usually set as an installation, because they’re not really a better way to appreciate this type of artistic discipline by discipline ourselves before the medium. Just like any other art, sound art does not required to be publicly-accepted-melodious conventionally, we can find its inspiration from daily routines, places we can’t experience as we like, or places we will never be. Whether or not the sound art is engaging is what we can appreciate from the piece. What’s amazing that sound art can be appreciate with and without our vision, or more like, the audio experience are the main body of the art but enhanced by the visual aesthetics of the artwork.

Since the visit to SAM, I’ve encountered several pieces of sound art, such as

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Raising Spirits and Restoring Souls (left, 2015) by Zulkifle Mahmod and Too Far, Too Near (right, 2015) by Ong Kian Peng. The two pieces are the first two sound art I’ve ever encountered, and they have always stuck in my head for sometimes after the visit. However, since I’m able to research for more sound art overseas, I decided to surf the web and explore this medium.

Among the results I found, I find Lola Gielen’s Neo (A music instrument everybody can play.) more interesting than others.

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Lola Gielen, a newly graduated product designer from the Design Academy in Eindhoven, created her instrument named NEO with a Raspberry Pi computer running on Python script. The python allows the Raspberry CPU to process the sensors for both the instrument and extra attachments’ sensors. The instrument is simple to play by placing the beads contained in the center onto the little pits on the main body, a rhythmic looping music will then start playing accordingly to the placement of the beads. This music are just composed to simple notes and the tighter the beads are placed apart, the faster the rhythm will be.

The piece resonances with people who are not talented in musical instruments like me. The intention behind this piece are clearly claimed in the title, a musical instrument which everyone can play. The artist wanted to give a musical experience for people who don’t regularly have time and talent to play instruments. Viewers are able to interact with the instrument while create a unique piece of music through different arrangement of the beads. It is similar to computer coding/looping software but the users can make the simpler version of digital music on the spot without any computing devices. This blurs the line between the touchable traditional instruments and digital instruments.

I find this piece interesting as it has an attractive interactivity and functionality. It also breaks the limitation of music creation as creating music won’t be exclusive to people who can play instruments. It can be educational for children or music amateurs and introduced the wonders of sound and music effectively to both groups of people.

Thanks for reading.

When it comes to 18 of them, which one should I add the s? POINT? Or VIEW?

How to think of 18 point of views of any subject? First, start with something not specific. Then, find something everyone can related to, so perspective ensured to exist. Followed by something I have different point of view from the common point of views. Thus, I came out with something I extremely relied on as much as my computer, le PEN.

My definition of a pen is, it produce lines of any ink, it can fill up any given 2-dimensional space, it has a hard tip for user-friendly, and it is not a pencil. Yeah, this is somehow a little unnecessary explanation but I just want it clear before I put out my list of POVs. Feel free to read and I’ll see you at the bottom of the list.

A PEN from the point of view of CIVILIZATION is TOOL OF COMMUNICATION

A PEN from the point of view of CHILD is PENCIL YOU CAN’T ERASED

A PEN from the point of view of CALLIGRAPHER is MUSIC INSTRUMENT

A PEN from the point of view of WRITER is PAINTBRUSH

A PEN from the point of view of MONK is MEDITATION

A PEN from the point of view of DRUMMER is DRUMSTICK

A PEN from the point of view of PENTURNERS is ART

A PEN from the point of view of CRITIC is SWORD

A PEN from the point of view of PHILOSOPHER is ENGINEERS TO SCIENTISTS

A PEN from the point of view of PAINTER is CHISEL

A PEN from the point of view of BUSINESSMAN is SEAL OF APPROVAL

A PEN from the point of view of LAWYER is GUN

A PEN from the point of view of STUDENT is BOW AND ARROW

A PEN from the point of view of GAMBLER is CHANCE

A PEN from the point of view of SCIENTIST is CAMERA

A PEN from the point of view of POLITICIAN is WMD

A PEN from the point of view of INVENTOR is IGNITION

A PEN from the point of view of MUSICIAN is ACRYLICS

A PEN from the point of view of PROCRASTINATOR is MOTIVATOR

A PEN from the point of view of ME is MIND PROJECTOR

Had fun? You may heard of some of the sentences as they are universal facts. What I am trying to do express is I focused on human occupations since pen is such an important tool to these particular aspect require a civilized system of communication we called written language. IT is fun to explore and conclude generically how such small tool can be a great deal when different users is holding it.

Since we’re in a course that emphasized on conceptual results, it’s never too troubled to think of another idea. I thought of the most used color in human civilization, or rather this continent of the world, RED. Due to how much man-made culture had utilized it, red is almost everywhere. As a matter of fact, RED is in our blood. So, spare some time to read through my POVs of the color, RED.

A RED from the point of view of KID is LEADER

A RED from the point of view of TEACHER is AUTHORITY

A RED from the point of view of CLOTHING LINE is UNISEX

A RED from the point of view of TECHNICIANS is DANGER

A RED from the point of view of PARENTS is VIOLENCE

A RED from the point of view of CHINESE is PROSPERITY

A RED from the point of view of ALCOHOLICS is WINE

A RED from the point of view of FEMINIST is STRENGTH

A RED from the point of view of DOCTOR is BLOOD

A RED from the point of view of NATURE is SEDUCTION

A RED from the point of view of ADVERTISERS is EYE-CATCHING

A RED from the point of view of CHEF is DELICIOUS

A RED from the point of view of DESIGNERS is FF0000

A RED from the point of view of EYE is ATTENTION

A RED from the point of view of FRUIT LOVER is SWEET

A RED from the point of view of FOOD LOVER is HOT

A RED from the point of view of SCIENTIST is 620-750

A RED from the point of view of LOVERS is COMPASSION

This time the POVs are covering different aspects in cultural phenomenon instead of focusing on human occupation. This is because I found RED was already part of the universal, therefore I inserted other object to interact with the color, like the nature and eye. I’ve also included specified groups of people like alcoholics, feminist, advertisers, and lovers to give it a different tone to the collections.

However, as an unspoken and unexplained law of the human mind stated, when you are able to think it, someone else must’ve thought it. Apparently, there are other fellow course-mates had the same idea. So, in order to let my work stand out, and not a “just-another-similar-thing”, the style of execution is vital.

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In terms of style, I’ve looked through the web with websites like 9gag and a modern artist related site call the Illustration Web, which is like a dating site, except, this is for freelance graphic artist/illustrators and commissioners.

(Feel free to google the names in the collages.)

stylised characters

The medium I have in mind are illustration, which was greatly (almost over-)used by everyone else. Perhaps it is because many point of views included human characters, and illustration is the most practical to express human figures. So, I would like to try some stylized designs of my human characters. The styles I found interesting is these particular artists, as they did their characters in an unconventional ways to prove their styles are unique and hope that they’re recognizable. Although like how classical art were considered common in their time, (I heard there are plenty of artist had the same styles as Vermeer in his period.) their names hardly stand out, but their efforts and attributes of creating a special characters are worth to learn.

attractive lines

Next I have to consider about lines and how to shape out my compositions. There are plenty of illustrators love to used insanely intricate lines to wow their viewers, and yet some of them can do by performing instant strokes to form a figure. Less is more? It can’t be decided objectively.

interesting composition

Compositions is the key to this project. There’s a need to be abstract yet able to communicate with audience instantly. Even if the work cannot show a literal context, it must at least keep the audience interested. At least, this is what I see from the art above.

unique coloring

Lastly, the color. For either subjects I had in mind, I planned to use different coloring methods. For PEN, I planned to use digital coloring, or the complicated coloring styles from the images. As for RED, I intended to make the compositions black in white and only color the red objects, or maybe VICE VERSA.

In conclusion of my research, there are still a lot more to test and possibly I can decide once I came up with the experimental drafts. My fellow classmates have given good advice that ended up into my explanation above. Since I love illustration works too so I am excited to see what will be the end results, or at least, end decision.

Thanks for reading and see you next time!

My concept for typography portrait has finally progressed and an idea worth anticipating is formed. YAY! My new concept is: CITY-BOY, where my personalities are shown in the forms of urban facilities illustrated by various traditional mediums.

City culture is one of the things that KL and Singapore had in common. It shows how far human being had advanced and how human community thrives for a better living. The city shows a more distinct variation of forms and views for me. Don’t get me wrong, I like natural sceneries as well but natural landscapes shows the trails left by the elements; cityscapes shows the trails left by the human society. Therefore I find the city interesting when you can deduce human nature in through their physical creations.

I wanted to explore subtleties again in this project after inspired by Ji Lee’s “Word as Image”. Subtleties wasn’t shown in my last concept even though Ji Lee was one of the artist I’m trying to refer. Therefore I want to make sure that his subtle manipulation of words was in my new concept. While doing so, I also want to try out more traditional mediums since the LINE project in order to step out from my photography media.

vernacular typography

Vernacular Typography

I searched for a few sites related to my new ideas. Most of the city/urban typographies shown are the ones produced by citizens for occupation/marketing purpose. Vernacular typography.com and The Journal of Urban Typography tumblr documented many handwritten signs, sprayed signs, billboards, and gold signs in NYC.

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The Journal of Urban Typography (tjout@tumblr)

There’s a form of city typography created with special fonts on beautiful city photos. These Instagram-worthy photos did not fit my concepts very well. Later, I caught a glimpse of collage typography which impressed me with its dada-ish and constructivist style.

city typo 3 city typo 2 city typo 1

collage typography

Collage typography, advanced? version of Constructivist Typography

Some of the G-1 folks also gave me some instant suggestions. (As in what pops up in their head after hearing my title.) Since my arrival in Singapore, I’ve always feel that every outing trip to the cities is like going into a new world. There’s a different atmosphere for each city so I have to think of something that conclude my explorations along with traits I hope to show. I shall choose the aspects of the city that I approached the most. Therefore I picked the following aspects.

visual journal 1

  1. Street signs
  2. Public transport
  3. Architectures
  4. People
  5. The public paths: Pedestrian roads, escalators, and tunnels.

street signs escalator

These aspects are the ones that show up in every of my trips, and they represented some new traits I’ve never presented. I’ll explain their relevance in the future.

I match these new traits with the traditional mediums’ specialty. Collage making is paired with STREET SIGNS; Sharpie art with PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION; water colors will be the execution for PEOPLE; fine tip suits best with ARCHITECTURE; and print making is matched with THE PUBLIC PATHS.

visual journal 2

I wrote the properties for the designs only as I haven’t figure out the details until I have enough resources and experiments. Other problems included my demand of traditional materials, (tools and paper types.) how I plan the color choices, (again) and how to fit/cut my concepts into the newly announced 4-frame-format. Despite all of the above, trials and execution time will be the greatest challenge for this project. Perhaps my future post for this project will include a lot of my fails attempts. Hope not. (Crossing fingers.)

Thanks for reading my renewed conceptualizing stage. See you in my next progress post!

Two weeks in and HELLLLLLOOOOOOO project number 1!!!

Remember what we do about projects? Research! This time, we get to do Typography, the area of art that I’ve seen a lot but still being strange about it. Initially to me, typography are art pieces with fonts that had been created by the mass and was decorated with or immersed into forms, shapes and colors to give the words an eye-catching properties. Usually this kind of art are seen in webpages that likes to quote famous figures, or simple short do-you-know facts. Not only it’s eye-catching but also effective for netizens with short attention span.

Personal views aside, the lesson I had been on last Thursday had opened my eyes to the diversity of Typography. After listening to all the researches my classmates did, I saw the subtle side of the genre, that Typography doesn’t have to be literal, yet being contextual in the meantime.

SO, back to my research. Technically, they’re not intended research materials, but originally typography posts from the Internet that I was impressed of.

ji kee

The first artist I wanted to talk about is Ji Lee, a Communication designer in Facebook. You know this guy has some talent in him to be able take on an important position in one of the biggest company in the world. The series that impressed me the most was his Words as Images. Most of the words in these images use the same font and were only tweaked a little to match the properties of the words. However, viewers got its point almost instantly as it’s not too obvious, yet not too subtle for the public. I admired its brilliance of balance both and the entertainment it gave. Also, the minimalistic style it possesses certain is a plus from distracting the viewers compared to other over-exaggerated typographies.

meganleescienceThe prints above are the second piece I’d like to talk about. Megan Lee’s  Rock Star Scientists also consist of uniformed fonts but accompanied by again, minimalistic illustrations or silhouette of achievements of each famous scientist respectively. Viewers who love science instantly recognized this names and understood its context. The design doesn’t seemed too nerdy and in contrary gave these influential achievements a fashionable makeover. Science seems so cool again! (Correction: Science IS cool.)

dangerdustThe works above are done by two anonymous students who named themselves Dangerdust. These work varies in fonts and styles, suiting the figures they’re quoting. Although some of their designs are too complicated that they sometimes covered the quotes, but most of them are well balanced in terms of scales and positioning. Most impressive of all is that they are done on blackboards, giving the context of educating the next generations with words of wisdom.

object typography

Lastly I want to talk about the methods. I came across these styles of typography and they stayed in my head as a genre. Building typography with everyday objects has interested me, and made me wonder if I can do the same. Ms. Joy later suggested me to look into whether they should be done by put together like a puzzle to form an alphabet, OR using objects that suits the content and yet has the form of the alphabets I wanted. This methods of typography is certainly something worth exploration.

In conclusion, these art works above I found impressive have the potential to influence my next project. Hopefully I’d be able to create something as contextual as Ji Lee, as mind-changing as Megan Lee, as thoughtful in terms of medium and aesthetically beautiful as Dangerdust, and possibly done in object typography. (Cross fingers.)

Side note: The reason I don’t prefer DADAism as a reference is the fact that I want it to have a meaning. The fact that it creates great effect is undoubtedly true, but this time, alongside Russian Constructivism, they’re not the right style for my current project. Although their ways of positioning the components to attract viewers attentions is marvelous and worth studying.

Thanks for reading!

Last time, I spoke about Japanese photography painters. These terms are surprisingly new to me considering I’ve read many photography magazine but none of them mentioned these innovating styles. Like George Melies, these pioneering “color photographers” are the ones who proved photographs can be colorful as well.

War photographer Felice Beato was one of the first photographers who introduced journalist photography. He shot and reserved hundreds of rare war photographs from the east where and when the Qings still reluctantly ruling China, including the Opium war between British and Munching China. Later before he settled in Burma, he opened a photography studio in Japan, teaching Japanese citizen to learn photography. And among these disciples, there are Kusakabe Kimbei and T. Enami.

2966216_orig beato beato artist-with-a-brush-photographed-by-an-artist-with-a-camera-ca-1915-28-by-t-enami-1340429480_org japanesedream4-560x403_440 beatofelice-beato-19th-century-photos-japan

Felice Beato captured a variety of Japan during the Meiji period. He was permitted to shoot many of the unforeseen Samurai Culture, reserving the image of the real Samurais and Japanese soldier, and introducing this little country beside China to the Westerners. Therefore, the viewers felt like tourists, observing Japan as a foreigner, just like Beato.

kimbei Kusakabe_Kimbei_-_Writing_Letter_(large) Kusakabe_Kimbei_-_22._Girls_Dancing

Kusakabe Kimbei’s worked in a different style compared to Beato. As a local photographer, he mainly explored the world of Japan’s female, including the geishas. Kimbei used plenty of color to create a lively atmosphere of geishas’ dancing yet with the same techniques, he depicted various woman in their unique characteristics, such as a mother was painted green as a soothing character, a young woman with pink pigments to embrace her youth.

japan-vintage-farsari-tenami FUZZY_SLIGHTLY_WARPED_AND_LAZY_DAYS_in_TENAMIS_YOKOHAMA_STUDIO.123201755_std enami6559fb9682_ot enami fuji

T. Enami or Nobukuni Enami, also captured the life of Japanese, but as a local. Through the lens of Enami, viewers are able to see the daily life of Meiji’s Japan as Enami shows not only the famous samurais and geishas but common citizens as well, giving us a glance of the working society.

enami6559fb9682_o 2966216_orig beato felice-beato-19th-century-photos-japan t enami fuji Kusakabe_Kimbei_-_Writing_Letter_(large)beato

As you can see, the three photograph painters used almost the same blue in their photographs, yet they depicted different environment and meaning in their photographs’ characters. Such as the serenity around Mt. Fuji, the symbol of honor in a samurai towards his master, the commonness in working labors, and even the intelligence of a writing woman.

japan-vintage-farsari-tenami

beato

Even depicting almost the same theme, you can see the different expressions through the use of color. Their motto was not recreate realistic colorization but sending subtle messages to people who view the photographs. Thus they didn’t colorize the skins and unnecessary items. A little color altering can go a long way.

Inspired by their work, I combine the motives I had from the previous and attempted to colorized my photos in different possible ways. In the meantime, after some research I finally found a color wheel that simply summarized how we have been using color to express different emotions and environments.

emotional-and-psychological-meaning-of-colourWith the help of Photoshop, I am able to create a few colorization style by selecting different layering of my pure colors. These methods included layering a portion of B&W photos with semi-transparent color. (Sneak peak!)

test work

This is just a test photo.

better me 4

Or tinting them entirely with the hue to create a film style from the 60s. Movies in the 60s tends to tint their whole scene into certain color to express atmospheric tension, before color correcter was invented.

better me 1

By color correcting the photo’s, we can still see the original colors, but the tint can be seen as well. This is what movies nowadays usually do, but in a more subtle way.

me 5

The color scheme used in film has to be created using real props with similar colors and software editing. Since I can’t do that much during the production, I figured why not express my concept in an eye-catching way by covering the details in the same color. This way, viewers can see the colors far ways and able to capture the details when they’re near to it.

ideal me 5

Also, I tried to recreate the effects of the mentioned photograph painters. This effects only show color of the key element in the photo, providing each of their own meaning in the image.

Lastly, the pictures below are my journal’s snapshot showing my thought process. Don’t worry if you can’t recognized my handwriting. I’ll type them in my next post when the final results are uploaded as well.

20151115_195943 20151115_195953 20151115_195957Adaptable + Stubborn = ME, a lucky sonofagun that miraculously met great friends and survived.

20151115_200006 20151115_200010 20151115_200016Thoughtful (In any aspect) – Procrastination = BETTER ME, an anti-comfort person, at least willing to be defy comfort.

20151115_200153 20151115_200035 20151115_200039Creative x Experienced = IDEAL ME, standing out in an extraordinary way, with what I am, what I do, and what I left.

20151115_200054Skilled – Stubborn = ME IN 5 YEARS. Freed from my limitation, with infinite possibilities awaits.

[To be continued…….]

color-theory-infographic-paper-leaf

Bless the people who make info-graphics, they’ve saved and produced people with short attention span like me.

Secondly, I need to personally thank Ms. Joy for providing us the color wheel so I don’t have to switch on electronic devices just to get the colors right. I think it’ll be useful in many ways.

Thirdly, let’s take a moment and appreciate the efforts of the researchers that define some thing we take for granted intellectually. Imagine if there’s a whole aspect of the world out there and we are missing it because we don’t have the organ to perceive it? (—The internet) I’m glad we had eyes.

Let’s talk about colors from the things I love, films. My fellow classmates have been doing a lot of research on colors so I don’t think repetition will be the best choice.

So first stop, monochromatic. There are great films in the colored movie decades use monochrome like Schindler’s list or The Artist. Sadly I didn’t get time to watch this masterpiece. So I will be mentioning 500 days of Summer as my point. It uses monochrome in one of the scene where the lead characters were placed in foreign European movies, saying ambiguous dialogues. Monochromatic sets the mood of seriousness, every colors are either absent or fully combined. The lack of vibrancy leads the viewers to focus on the context rather than the pictures. It also focuses meaning from the scene so viewers won’t get another idea from the color.

Analogous are be often found in unified movie settings like Harry Potter franchise, and Zack Snyder films. I found they are usually chose to set the overall mood like how chaotic and dim the wizardry world has become after the resurrection of Voldemort in the fourth movie. After Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, superhero movies tend to go dark. Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel went to the extreme and was criticized for darkening the symbol of bright and pure justice.

Complementary can be found on every commercialized franchise movie poster. i.e. Bourne series, Mission Impossible series, James Cameron Avatar, and M.Night Shyamalan shameful Avatar. The dark blue and orange makes every component stands out of one another. The combo makes them a memorable poster, and a reason to add excitement in it like fire, explosion, and scotching L.A.

Split complementary, triads, and tetradics, schemes that used more than 2 colors are usually found in Marvel movies, animations, and light-hearted genres. The combinations create richness to the scenes and emphasized on their aesthetics. They don’t intentionally imply the mood, but try to achieve realism, so you can feel that you’re in the settings and related to the environment.

These just show how important is color grading/correcting.

(The research is based on generalized knowledge and personal analysis. You, who have a better knowledge of the aspect, might disagree with some.)

To be frank, I am not a colorful person at all. Emotionally, I don’t express much. Verbally, I can’t express much. Technically, colored media just isn’t my best tools. Since I was young, I felt that the god of color materials must have something against my pass-life and cursed my ability to use His creations. Just kidding, but I’d always screw up in coloring. I have the sense of color but my last art exams screwed up badly due to my color practice. (Yep there’s other reasons too.) That’s why I’ve always envious about how my sister who’s an artist too utilized her color so well in her works.

But thanks to our eyes, we’re able to appreciate color. So I am not going to repel it but to work with it. THIS is one of my challenge for this next project. To be honest, I never realized or understood how these theory exist. Maybe I’m oblivious about them even if I found some combinations of them in various media and thought, “this is nice.” So the discovery for the theories fascinates me and makes me wonder how will I apply them into my Project 3.

I’ve once read a book about color psychology. The author made her point well on how colors affect us. As people who uses color as tools, artist possesses great power to affect people. Why reject it just because I not good at it? And to start with painting myself is indeed a good way to learn to control the colors.

Whether to stand out like complementary, or harmonious like analogous, or as vibrant as triad, or less tension like split-complementary, the overall goal of my colors will have to be balanced and making sense, and more importantly, represent myself. Either way, it’s all going to be determined by my concept, my ego equations, which will be revealed in another post next time.

Thanks for reading!

POST-BLOG

The awkward feeling when everyone did an incredible job in conceptualizing their project in such amount of time, even though they’ve told you they’re just getting started. Damn productive guys….They just can’t stop making me think I didn’t write enough 😀

First and foremost, I would like to admit I do not possess the knowledge and experience to appreciate abstract art. I agree most of the paintings are visually stunning, and I do feel the impacts conveyed from the components on the canvas, such as its shapes, lines, compositions and colours, instead of its hidden emotions. At least, it made me realise its own beauty and brilliance, which is what art is supposed to be able to do.

Among the artists that have been shown in the last session, I found interest in the following artworks, or furthermore, impressed. These artworks are Cai Guo Qiang’s gunpowder drawings, Andy Warhol’s Oxidations, and Yves Klein Anthropometries.

2012-chaosnature-a3034-001h

Let’s start from Cai’s drawings. Gunpowder is known as one of the four great inventions of China which symbolised wars and chaos throughout the histories of any parts of the world. Yet Cai used it as his painting material. However, Cai managed to create fine arts without just burning up his canvas but using different types of (mostly traditionally made) gunpowder to produce various textures and colours. Some of the patterns created were peaceful, still and sometimes dynamic, which create a conflict with their material. Gunpowder finally has a new function besides destruction in the hands of Cai Guo Qiang.
Andy-Warhol---cropped

Next, we have Andy Warhol, the pop artist who won’t stop redefining the popular art culture of his time. When I first saw Warhol’s oxidation painting, I thought the series were his attempts to move on to other types of painting. After reading the fact that these oxidised stains on the metallic paint were created by his and his friends’ urine, I was shocked. A lot of thoughts ran through my mind at the moment. Was he trying to imitate the motion of liquid but he couldn’t thus the method was thought? Were there buyers who wanted to buy the series solely because they have urine on it or they have Andy Warhol’s urine on it? One thing for sure is that he did managed to create a unique pattern that can’t be done by merely paint brushes. It may not impressed me for its artistry, but it certainly made itself unforgettable.

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Similarly, Yves Klein created art in his own non-traditional way. By directing models to paint with their body, he created a unique series of art that acted as performing art as well, the Anthropometries, with the blue he used so much that people named the blue after him.

Through the artworks mentioned above, I realised that the methods to express have absolutely no limitations in art. Not only the outcome on the canvas can be an art, but the process of making it as well. These act of creativity inspired me to think out of the box and be willing to express my ideas and emotions, regardless the methods of painting. However, one thing for sure, urination is not on the list.

blue masksI have a habit of saving 9gag (and other interesting site’s) quotes on my phone so I can scroll the favourite part of my favourite site offline in hopes of using them the future. It’s a wonderful news that this project enables me to use my saves since it doesn’t specified the types of poems and rhymes. That means I can use modern poems which seems to be more relevant to our lives today.

 

I like the three poems on the sides as they are interesting enough to stand out equally with the modern song which are rhymes that is widely appreciated nowadays. Among all the choices, I’ll be using The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. It’s beautiful and inspiring, but long enough for me to have the other two as just-in-case.

the road not taken<Click picture for full size.>The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost, illustrated by ZEN PENCILS.

 

Opinions aside, back to the topic– my searching on the reference artists and styles recommended by the notes given. The first impression I got from the styles I searched — Surrealism and Dadaism is visually impact and attract. In my opinion, The two styles sort of work in similar ways. They capture your curiosity with the images, collages, dingbats, forms, and photos we can resemble to, then the art hold them all together regardless of their habitat (where they supposed to belong.) forming something that what we (in the absence of knowledge of art) called abstraction. Similar to how impressionism is to renaissance art, surrealism and dadaism stood out of the crowd of expressive art.(Non-depicting and recording art.) To me, surrealism is more in the expressive side, but dadaism is more in a form of mockery. (what the artists said.)

The_Ghost_of_Vermeer

I don’t think Salvador Dalí wanted to mock Johannes Vermeer but probably to express his admiration to the artist in The Ghost of Vermeer of Delft Which Can Be Used As a Table.

Surrealism usually was explained as expressing the artists’ dream or non-reality on the canvas or just to express a purpose in an unconventional but still showing their skills in making art. (Modern art probably ditched the latter.)

Hannah Höch. German, 1889-1978 Cut with the Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany (Schnitt mit dem Küchenmesser durch die letzte Weimarer Bierbauchkulturepoche Deutschlands). 1919-1920 Photomontage and collage with watercolor, 44 7/8 x 35 7/16” (114 x 90 cm) Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie © 2006 Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin, © 2006 Hannah Höch / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, photo: Jörg P. Anders, Berlin

Hannah Höch. German, 1889-1978
Cut with the Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany (Schnitt mit dem Küchenmesser durch die letzte Weimarer Bierbauchkulturepoche Deutschlands). 1919-1920
Photomontage and collage with watercolor, 44 7/8 x 35 7/16” (114 x 90 cm)
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie
© 2006 Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin,
© 2006 Hannah Höch / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, photo: Jörg P. Anders, Berlin

Hannah Hoch, on the other hand, created her art with collage of images from paper publications. Seemingly this style of art appears to be closer to what we’re going to do in this project. Her art, instead of being symbolic in the components, portraits her ideas and criticize in the whole picture, like Cut with a Kitchen Knife Dada through the Last Weimar Beer Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany (1919). (A really long name though.)

This artwork is said to be referring to the decadence of pre-war German culture, metaphorically criticizing humankind’s lack of humanity. (theartstory.org) The mockery component of dadaism and Hannah Hoch can be seen by reproducing art with produced images.

russian constructismLater came Russian Constructivism. Which style was depicted by the google image results above.

First word popped into my head, communism. The soviet union used this style for so long that people from other parts of the world used as a style of art/ poster. Russian Constructivism attracts my eyes with sharp colors and lines, simple figures and dingbats, as well as the standardized font. The attraction is a success and can be continued with presenting their message. (Whether indirect or not.) Probably it is what sparks the idea of this poster.the-interview-movie-poster

In conclusion, what the reference artist helped in my creation:

  1. The images I construct don’t have to be direct or literal. The presentation in the structure don’t have to be conventional. (As shown in the student’s work.) It doesn’t  have to be like Dr. Seuss illustrations. My orientation is yet to be decided and attempted.
  2. Any dingbats from anyone can be used as long as it’s coherent to what I need to express the lines of my poem.
  3. Since it’s in black and white, so color of Constructivism can’t be imitated. However, its striking image structure is impressive.