Compositions
3) Utopia 2
Comments and Feedback
Compositions
3) Utopia 2
Comments and Feedback
Quote 1) “Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.”
Keywords
Can’t be together-> distance and separation
Heart -> warmth in cold , maternal love, child
Quote 4) “Come with me where dreams are born, and time is never planned.”
Inner struggles through Project 2:
Presentation Day Comments!
Ms. Joy’s comment/feedback:
I cant remember 100% of what Ms. Joy said, but the gist of the good things she said about my Project 2 was that she liked how I used the elements and principles of design in my work to direct the viewer’s attention to areas I wanted to focus on, and the use of dark humor with the reoccurring motif of Hitler in my various warm and fuzzy quotes were well played.
Whereas things to improve on is that the 2nd composition was a rather confusing as the visual weight of the hand and Hitler’s head are very similar, hence it was rather confusing if the hand was grabbing Hitler or the Jewish sheep as, Hitler’s facial expression looked scared. Joy also suggested that maybe averting the gaze of Hitler could assist in my composition to make Hitler look less afraid of the hand. 🙂
Regarding my silkscreened tote bag, we both agreed that the silkscreen pay off was not that good and that perhaps in the future I can have more opportunity to silkscreen again, and perhaps exposing my screen for a longer time will result in a better print! 😀
Thank you Ms. Joy and my lovely classmates for your feedback and comments!! To be honest, my favorite part for presentation day is getting the post-it notes from my classmates, and obtaining feedback. For some unknown reason it makes me feel very excited! ^0^
Nonetheless, I had a really great experience with this project as I managed to use the principals of elements and design to create the design I wanted and then having to print them onto a tote bag! Having my design to be printed onto a product gave me a sense of achievement and a more tangible feeling of being a real designer.
Cheers!
Seng Yi Ling
SILK SCREENING
It was my very first time at silk-screening on the previous week and I had trouble conceptualizing the process because I simply couldn’t fathom how our printed designs on TRANSPARENT PLASTIC (Correct term: Transparency Paper) could be translated onto printed designs on tote bag while using this sieve looking tool (Correct term: Silk Screening frame).
I had to see and have hands-on experience to believe this amazing invention created by mankind!
Firstly we were told to wash our silk screen frames and use a hair dryer to blow dry them, to ensure they were clean!
Then we went into this enclosed red room ( Red light was present) where NO LIGHT was allowed to be present as there might be some chemical reaction with the medium we were going to use. We then coated the netting of our frames on the back and front using the blue paint-like medium and then placing our coated frames in this GIAGANTIC oven (It had really smooth rolling trays…) to dry the medium !
After which we were taught by Xiuming (Work-study senior) to place our transparency and frame into this GIGANTIC MACHINE which looked like a photocopy machine on the outside, but had like reflective metal on the inside which made it look like a tanning machine. After which we locked our designs in the machine, it made a whirring sound and the cloth above our designs was like sucked in!!! I was super amused at this point because I had never seen anything like this before!
After which the machine did it’s job, we took our designs to the back of the room to wash the residue off using this jet spray (It was fun… pretending that the jet spray was a rifle )! But in all honesty, I was rather upset at the amount of water wasted in this process of washing… considering that all of the students in ADM Year 1 had to do this, it is bad for the environment by wasting so much water. :'(
After cleaning up our designs on the frames, we used the hairdryer to dry the frame and apply a layer of thick ink over the top of our frame and pushed the ink across the designs using a wiper tool to ‘print’ our designs onto our tote bag!
I wasn’t very please with the eventual outcome on the tote bag as some areas were too dark and splotchy instead of greyish, and details were missed out… As you can see it is pretty in-identical to my digital design.
<<<Original digital design after bitmap
What I regretted the most after the final printing onto my tote bag was not being able to have a good gauge of what my final print will look like based on the tonal contrast, quality of the digital image and frequency of the dots in bitmap, BEFORE printing on the transparency paper … I hope that in the future I can have more opportunity to try out silk screening again. It was really fun! But at the same time, the process of silk screening was not easy at all; and I really do commend those who could do it so well!
If my personal experience with silk screening is not detailed enough, do check out this video on how silk screening is conducted!!
Cheers!
Seng Yi Ling
Before I dive into the project, some research and reference artists required to get my creative factory to start its engine~ But as of now, I am pretty uncertain about this project because it is rather abstract and lots of limitless imagination is required which I am rather worried about. ( Sounds familiar to my Project 1 woes…) And because I am a technology caveman, I predict that I going to have a hard time using the Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. :'( Wish me luck~!
Surrealism
Surrealism is a 20th-century avant-garde movement in art and literature which sought to release the creative potential of the unconscious mind by using irrational juxtaposition of images.
To my understanding, surrealism is to create meaningful images that are illogically possible in reality.
DADAISM
Dada was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century. The beginnings of Dada correspond to the outbreak of WWI. And the movement was a protest against the bourgeois nationalist and colonist interests, which many Dadaists believed were the root cause of the war.
Many Dadaists believed that the ‘reason’ and ‘logic’ of bourgeois capitalist society had led people into war. Hence they expressed their rejection of that ideology in artistic expression by embracing chaos and irrationality. Dada was not art: it was “anti-art”. Dada represented the opposite of everything which traditional art stood for.
Based on my own understanding, Dadaism is ‘Anti-art’. It’s purpose is to reject any logical and reasonable thinking, going against whatever traditional art stood for. It seemed like a mass rebellion against traditional art. Fighting Art with Anti-art.
Russian Constructivism
Russian Constructivists had the intention to reinvent art and reconstruct art from level 0. Constructivism was primarily an art and architectural movement. It rejected the idea of art for arts’ sake and the traditional bourgeois class of society to which previous art had been catered. Practicality with beauty was the main thrust behind the constructivists.
Instead it favored art as a practice directed towards social change or that would serve a social purpose and be practical in its nature. Developing after World War I, the movement sought to push people to rebuild society in a Utopian model rather than the one that had led to the war. Art, music, architecture etc. were influenced by constructivism.
Based on my observation, I realize that Russian Constructivism has minimal colors in its artworks. Variety is added by using basic element of design such as contrast of color and lines.
Chinese Political Pop art by Wang Guang Yi’s Great Criticism Series instantly came to my mind when I searched for ‘Russian Constructivism’.
As you can see, there are some forms of similarity such as red is the dominant color, and use of lines draws the viewer’s attention to an area of focus.
Hannah Hoch
At first glance into her works, . I assumed she was a modern artist initially as Hoch’s work seemed timeless and is applicable to the present times.
Hannah Hoch was an important member of the Berlin Dada movement and a pioneer in collage and was one of the originators of Photomontage. She also consciously promoted the idea of women working creatively more generally in society. She explicitly addressed in her pioneering artwork in the form of photomontage the issue of gender and the figure of woman in modern society
Surrealism and Dadaism seems to be heavily involved in her works. The effect of her work is initially one of visual confusion, and yet a kind of nonsense-narrative begins to develop. To me, she is like Picasso who used magazine cutouts to create collages instead of paint!
John Heartfield
John Heartfield was a pioneer of modern photomontage. Working in Germany and Czechoslovakia between the two world wars, he developed a unique method of appropriating and reusing photographs to powerful political effect. The process of cutting and pasting together elements to form a brilliant cohesive image became the foundation of Heartfield art.
To compose his works, he chose recognizable press photographs of politicians or events from the mainstream illustrated press. He then disassembled and rearranged these images to radically alter their meaning.
Heartfield’s strongest work used variations of scale and stark juxtapositions to activate his already gruesome photo-fragments. The result could have a frightening visual impact.
I felt that Heartfield’s work are rather heartfelt as his ‘Anti-Nazi’ and ‘Anti-politics’ works held significant meaning behind the photomontage of satirical humor.
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From this round of research, I am inspired by a few concepts and methodology of artists, which I may use for this project:
Cheers~
Seng Yi Ling.