Shapes 1

Cinematic Space - "The Awakening"

Story board for cinematic space

For my cinematic space my plan is to create a hand drawn animation. My original intent was to have the whole narrative within this piece but unfortunately I had to cut it down because of the time frame. (Read the pictures left to right) The narrative starts out with this person waking up in his own drool and awakening to a blank environment. He observes his surroundings and notices that there is a quadrilateral structure near by and chooses to head towards it. Once he arrives he opens the door and heads in. Once inside he notices a pyramid cut out of the ground and picks it up, afterwards he looks around to see if anything had happened as a result of his interference though nothing occurs. He then proceeds to head out of the structure; this scene is important for the whole animation itself because it symbolizes thinking outside the box. He sets the pyramid down, soon after an eye appears on the pyramid: a reference to the all-seeing eye. It attempts to communicate with the person so he picks it up to observe it closer though unfortunately he can not comprehend, so he sets his head on the point of the pyramid in disappointment. Suddenly the pyramid is gone and a third eye appears on the forehead of the person; this is how the all-seeing eye chose to communicate with the person, through its thoughts. The person is overwhelmed at first, throws up, and quickly transitions to a jubilant state of mind. He proceeds to manipulate his puke (without touching it) and throws it into the sky, it then becomes the sun. With the new presence of the sun the drool from the beginning gradually grows into a tree where all-seeing eye pyramids bloom; a reference to the garden of eden and the forbidden tree of knowledge. He picks one off the tree and sets it on his tongue, it evaporates, sizzling as it dissipates, and becomes smoke which he holds in for a moment. Afterwards he blows out letters which spell out "hye low brutha." These words rise next to the sun and circling it, ending my original narrative. Unfortunately I had to cut it to the part in which he opens the door due to the fact that hand drawn animation takes FOR EVER. Once he opens the door it will show his shocked face and loop back to the beginning so it's as if he gets knocked out and wakes up each time through the video. I wanted to get the sense of creation through destruction through this narrative, though with the cut narrative I think it will be more of a short narrative in which the viewer wonders what was in the structure rather then getting my original intent, which I'm satisfied with because this is just part 1; presented as if not which I feel must be made evident.

Oscar Tuazon's Lecture at the Henry

I would say his art would be a mixture between sculptural and architectural. They are architectural in how he builds each piece, though artistic when he intends to have the piece create its own space ; much like a building might do actually, now that I think about it. The fact of the matter is that he bridges the two concepts by making the piece speak for itself rather than him speaking for it as if saying that the piece itself needs no introduction because its self explanatory on its own, though the concept may not be so evident the fact that these pieces stand out so much on their own make it say "Hey notice me i'm existing," in a sense I mean.

Inspiration for cinematic space

30 Minutes of observation for cinematic space

For my 30 minute observation I sat across whole foods and tried capturing the motion I saw in front of me, such as people walking,running, biking, conversing, etc. This exercise made it evident to me that it is very difficult to capture motion in a mere second, photos would have been easier but this was more of a challenge. Through this process I was able to take notice to the bends of the body as they move as well as how weight is distributed as people move which will help my stop motion be more "life like."

1st Thursday

My favorite gallery that I visited was 4 culture. The video's towards the back of the gallery were what really got me. The artist had 3 videos, one on a wall in which he walked backwards through a forest with the help of mirror that was attached to his torso and two other videos that were projected onto the same structure but on opposite sides so the viewer was able to see what was going on in the obstruction that he was wearing as well as an external view as he walked down a trail. The videos themselves weren't quite exciting (though the presentation of the two pieces was) but it was the concept that sparked my interest. In his artist statement he stated that his pieces were an exploration in self and how we view ourselves as well as others. The concept of self is a very reoccurring theme throughout the art world, and has been ever since the modern era has past, though it's always great to see a variety of approaches to the same concept; just like it was when we had the same prompts for our books.

My least favorite gallery was the punch gallery which had the pieces of the cracked landscapes. Although it was visually cool it just became too repetitive to me, I understand that cracked landscapes may be this artist's thing but I would have liked to see more coherence within each piece if they all had the same theme. If I were the person I would have made all the pieces part of a panaramic view of a landscape that would have been awesome! It was a good concept, visually appealing, but personally didn't grasp my attention to want to further my interest in each piece, it was more of a glance over each piece and then on to the next one to see what they had done different from the previous one.

Artist Lecture: Jonas Wood

Jonas Wood is prominently a painter on canvas. He starts off most of his pieces with either a collage, a photo, or a drawing of a photo or collage he has made. His subject matter varies from abstract paintings of plants to realistic portraits of people and their environment. One thing that is constant throughout his pieces is the fact that he focuses more on how color takes up space rather than an object taking up space, therefore he does not really portray shadows in his pieces making his pieces rather flat. The process in which he creates his work tends to be quite tedious though rewarding. From his presentation it seemed like he would usually start out with some sort of rough draft, or initial idea, and then work from that and move it onto a bigger format, which usually seemed to be canvas. Through his presentation I got a sense that his paintings were simply just paintings of observations in life he thought were amusing rather than portraying some crazy concept,. Jonas Wood portrays strong composition throughout his pieces and a variety of interesting shapes through his abstracted still life pieces though they lack that conceptual background that I personally crave for.