Artsvis 54

For some reason, when I first heard about this project, I immediately thought of Yoplait yogurt and the ad campaign they used to use with angels in heaven. I thought that I could create kind of an absurd, ridiculous, lighthearted representation of heaven and hell. I was thinking about creating a story either through a diaporama or through digital animation, although I’m not quite sure how difficult that would be. The story is food, or more specifically, yogurt-centered, focusing on the taste of heaven, with Yoplait whips yogurt representing a slice of heaven and other yogurt brands leading the path away from heaven.

This idea also got me thinking about tastes and how people always say the common expression that something “tastes like heaven,” so maybe I could create an animation about that as well, taking a more literal translation of it.

Another idea I had was from the fact that Yoplait used a representation of heaven in their commercials. There are many other ads that have used the concept of heaven and hell and have referenced them in their campaigns, and I was thinking about maybe meshing these ads together into one cohesive form or story.

Update: So for the project, I have decided to use many advertisements and pop culture references of angels/heaven and hell/the devil from movies to Philly Cream Cheese, and merge them into kind of a fairytale about the stereotypical corruption of fame and getting caught up in that whole lifestyle. I want to create a typical fairytale starting off with the innocent and naive Kraft angel from Philly heaven who gets caught up in the supposed City of Angels—Los Angeles, with some ad references in between, and narrate it like a storybook using either a diaporama, which I think might be easiest, or white board animation. I think my biggest challenge will be that if I use a diaporama, I will have to come up with a lot of images that I might not be able to create without either Photoshop or a lot of props, so maybe a white board animation will be kind of fun too, especially since it will create a whole storybook effect that way.

storyboard

Update: For my animation, I’ve laid out a storyboard and created a narration to go along with it. I still need to figure out how to record my own audio into iMovie so that the animation will read like a storybook or a typical fairytale because that’s how I’ve made my story to mirror, but I will also incorporate background music as well. I’ve decided that a form of a combination between a diaporama and claymation will probably be the easiest way to go, so I’m going to be using some easy modeling clay to form my characters and merge pictures of them, because given the settings of my story and the costumes that would be involved, using real props and people would most likely be more difficult than modeling them out of clay. One of my main concerns is that the animation as I have it planned out right now might be a little too long, but I think that once I get started, it won’t be too difficult to make sure I stay within the time constraints.

Update:

Here are some production stills of my final animation video. I actually ended up doing mainly a stop motion animation with figures made out of modeling clay and cotton balls for the clouds, but there are some aspects of it that seem like a diaporama, because I included pictures as well. The figures were especially hard to get to stand up and photograph at the same time, but I managed to get them to stay upright for the shots that I needed. I narrated the story to go along with the pictures like a storybook, and there is background music as well to fit into the mood of the scene. I actually ended up going over the alotted 2 minute time requirement, and I did manage to cut some of the video, but not enough, and it would be difficult to shorten the video without cutting out some of the narration now. But, hopefully I will be able to find a way to fix that and shorten the video a little bit to fit under two minutes.

Update: So I was able to shorten my animation! It’s still about 7 seconds over the 2 minute requirement, but I redid the narration and tried to say it as fast as possible without rushing too much, and I edited the video to fit the new narration. It came out to 2 minutes and seven seconds.

For my installation, I cut off all of the tops and bottoms of the soda cans, and I cut the rest of the cans into strips, which I curled into curlicues. I am going to arrange the tops and bottoms into concentric circles with one top in the middle, almost like a ripple effect when a pebble or drop of water drips down into a lake. I’m going to attach these to the wall, and it will create a pattern. I am attaching the curlicues with wire and I’m going to sculpt the wire to flow freely outside of the circles, like rain or a wave, and one of the soda can tabs, which will be attached to the curlicues will serve as the droplet, and the repeating lines of curlicues will add to the repetition. The entire sculpture is going to come out and bulge outwards toward the viewer, almost as if the viewer is looking at a ripple effect straight on. My space is in a very narrow corridor, so hopefully, the viewer will be able to get the feeling of being very up close, almost like they could fall in. I do have a railing on my wall, so I will try to incorporate that into the sculpture as well somehow.

My original idea was to create almost a water ripple, but when I went to install my pieces, the wall was much harder than I had expected, and the nails were very difficult to puncture into the wall. I hung the can tops in concentric circles, and they dangled very precariously on the nails, looking like they were close to falling off. I had made a lot of curlicues with strips of soda can material, so I punctured holes on the tops of them and wrapped them around pieces of wire. Then wire strips then curled themselves up as I was wrapping the curlicues around them, creating almost barbed wire-like strips. I hung them in front of the can tops and created a fence-like obstacle in front of the can tops, like the wire was protecting the can tops from falling down by creating a sharp, complex barrier.

For my maya can sculpture, I decided to create an abstract, almost bird-like shape. I really like pattern and repetition, so I employed that in my creation of the can textures. I used repeated feather patterns for the wings’ cans, and I used a pattern of a bird’s eye for the body. The wings came out looking a little finger-like, but I tried to layer the cans to create the texture of feathers on the wing, and it ended up looking like a hybrid between a bird and an insect, which fit with the color scheme of a very dark, nocturnal body, but with tropical-colored wings.

Title: Face-off

By using the contrasting images of two of the main figures associated with the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall, Erich Honecker and Ronald Reagan,  I tried to represent the two sides, one advocating its building and one tearing the wall down. Many families were torn apart when the wall was built, and when people are separated from their families, it leads to the deterioration of themselves, which is why I used the texture of the globs of paint on Honecker’s face, using his image to show what happened to many individuals during his time. I then used the same texture for the background on Reagan’s side, depicting how instead of the self crumbling, it was the wall being torn down, and I tried to recreate the same texture the wall had when it was being torn down. Honecker’s image is slightly darker than Reagan’s, and I tried to provide a further contrast that way as well. Also, behind Honecker is the bricks of the wall, illustrated with charcoal, and the barbed wire poking and prodding into the hand reaching out towards the other side for help and for family at the top of the piece. On the other side, I used more digital techniques for the background, as opposed to the painting of the faces and use of other media like pen and ink and charcoal for the other side’s background. I blended newspaper articles and a ghost image of a lone boy into a picture of the crumbling wall, as the lonesomeness faded away at that point. Lastly, I was interested in the graffiti on the walls, as well as Reagan’s famous quote, “Tear this wall down!”, so I cut out from pictures of faces graffitied on the walls the words “Reißen Sie diese Wand nieder!”, the German translation for the quote, interweaving the two sides into this one quote.

My two main images for the collage will be Ronald Reagan and Erich Honecker, who were both very public figures in regards to the Berlin Wall. I have split each of the two portraits in half and plan on combining the two to create a kind of face-off effect and presenting a contrast with dark shadows and light. I was originally thinking of gridding them out and playing a little bit with some digital techniques to make up the faces, but I have decided to paint the faces and make the background through digital methods. I plan on working more on both of the faces and making Honecker’s a little bit more robotic and disintegrating. Through these two famous representations of the past with the Berlin Wall being put up and the future with the tearing down of the wall, I wanted to represent a more generalized aspect of the fact that the wall separated families, and through this, being apart from family leads to the deterioration of the individual, and this is an image of the past when the wall was still up, versus the deterioration of the wall instead when it was being torn down. I also hoped to play around a little bit with all of the graffiti images on the wall, and especially with German characters as well as Reagan’s famous “tear this wall down” quote. I want to use different media that I am already comfortable with, such as charcoal, pen and ink, and paint, as well as digital techniques that I am not quite as familiar with but hope to learn more about as I continue working.

This past week, I’ve done most of my work on photoshop, altering newspaper clippings and newspaper strips, along with the image of the torn down wall, and integrating the two together to form a part of my background. I’ve used the blending tools and ghost images a lot with that. I’ve also drawn this hand in pen and ink in a kind of stylized way, which I am going to cut out and I think will help it stand out a little more, since it has a different style to it than the rest of the piece, and it’s not very big, especially compared to the two face halves, but it is an important part of the collage, because it sends out the main message of people being torn apart, and reaching for Reagan’s half and trying to cross that division between the two figures I’m going to be presenting on my piece. I’ve also gotten images of regular faces of people who lived during the time the wall was being built as well as torn down that I’m thinking about manipulating and playing with on photoshop and eventually cutting out as my graffiti letters, working with negative space to create the shapes of each letter. I think this next week, I will finish up my work on photoshop, as well as continue to work with the more hand-created pieces of the collage with charcoal and paint.

When I first saw Barbara Kruger’s works, I wasn’t completely sure whether I liked them or not. Many of her pieces, much like You Are Not Yourself, incorporate cliche sayings and slightly unoriginal words. Yet, there is a deeper meaning to the pieces involving gender issues and womens’ roles. She uses her own artistic style to portray the need for society to reflect upon female individuality and freedom from limitations placed by stereotypes and traditional ideals. Kruger’s use of photographs and juxtaposing them and fitting them together into a black and white poster-like piece of art is very recognizable as her work, and I think that the way that she put together the images with the text is easily understandable to the viewer. This piece is straightforward and not too complex, and I think that the simplicity speaks volumes for itself. The area of emphasis with the center where the lines radiate out from is key to the meaning of the piece, and the lines create a symmetry and pattern with each piece sectioned out into a whole. The viewer focuses in on the glass breaking first and then the leading lines moving out from the bright circle allow the viewer’s eye to move throughout the piece to the woman’s fractured face, her hand holding the broken mirror. The “not” in the dark middle stands out among the rest of the text, which is important, since it is the most crucial part of the words, so the placement of it was well thought-out. Furthermore, Kruger did a great job of placing the pieces of each part of the woman’s face so that the viewer can easily see the expression on her face, especially with just the eyebrow on the left curved in such a heartbreaking way. The texture of the broken glass can be easily imagined, and while I am not the biggest fan of the words framing the piece like that, they certainly add commentary to it. Finally, the lack of any color and the fact that Kruger chose only to use black and white values and a red frame made the piece stand out more to me. I think that if it had been flashy and brightly colored, it would not have been as real and honest of a work of art, so Kruger was able to capture the pain of being oppressed through this simple, yet emotion-evoking photographic collage.

When I went down to the first floor of Smith, these were the first two pieces that jumped out at me. The first one immediately reminded me of a pen and ink piece I did of acupuncture points on a body. The branches of the tree are reminiscent of fingers, and the lines throughout are like a framework connecting the various pressure points together. Similarly, the pattern at the bottom right reminds me of scientifically represented nerve endings or the figure lines on posters in doctors’ and acupuncturists’ offices. The lines on the tree also looked like the veins on leaves, so the piece is also like an inside look or more detailed perspective of one small part of the entire background. The jagged edges of the piece really added to the whole of it as well, as they are also somewhat like the edges of a single leaf. I also really like the natural background compared to the more structured foreground, and the light shining on the tree creates an absolutely beautiful shadow on the ground, which in itself looks like interlocking nerves or veins, whether they be of a human or plant body.

The second piece is also incredibly interesting, because it is so vertically oriented, with the stone structure, trees, and individual gate posts all standing upright. It adds unity to the piece. Yet, what makes it even more interesting is the middle post that is bent with a slightly skewed tip. To me, this makes the piece even more eerie, and it makes me think of a barren cemetery, especially with the fact that the tips of all the posts are so sharp and the colors are all so dark and toned down. While I like that there is harmony in the piece, I think that I would have enjoyed it more if perhaps the gate posts in the foreground stood out a little more, especially the middle one, because it is so different, and everything blends in and is cluttered together a little too much. Overall, I chose these two pieces because they evoked the most thought and reflection on my part.