Six Days to Go

All I want to do is register my domain and design my site, redesign my blog, and this silly "finals" thing is following me around like my own personal dark cloud. Blegh.

Three Papers
Two Websites
Six Photo Prints

Spring Cleaning

...of projects that is. For my 20th Century Art History class the final assignments were a choice between writing a paper on modern design and how it takes its influence from previous art movements during the 20th century, and creating a chart that illustrates the flow of movements and how the evolution of artistic principles occurred as a result. I usually always take the write the paper option just because I know that a paper is about 4 hours of work and I generally need to use as much time as I can gather to focus on my core classes and their end of the semester projects.

In this case I chose to make a chart, but only because it gave me the much needed opportunity to practice more with Flash and AS3. The chart as assigned was basically explained as paper, glitter, and whatever other art majors use. I asked him before embarking on my knowledge quest.

Before really settling on the format and design, I revisited a beloved concept for organization: mind maps. I spent a few hours researching on technology to construct an interactive mind map and completely fell in love with the spring graph that I found on Ruben Swieringa's blog. As I explored his source code and the references he provided for his own project, I discovered that I don't have access to Flex Builder 3 at school (or so I thought... but that's another story) and attempted to figure out how to use the Flex SDK provided by Adobe. I don't even know how much time I "wasted" trying to understand using the SDK and the terminal in sync. So, I abandoned that concept and devised a new layout for the information that I was trying to design for.

I was drawing my own mind maps on paper laying out the movement of art and it's concepts, and stumbled upon a fantastic diagram by Alfred H. Barr Jr. Barr was an art historian and the very first director of the MOMA NYC. I used the arrow concept (and some of his placements) to build my interactive chart.

I used the Tweener and Web Devils classes for all of my movements and interactions.

Here are some screen shots:

Science of Sleep - Website

In the works is a redesign of Michel Gondry's Science of Sleep movie web site. So far I have a great storyboard, and am excited to finish it in flash. Mmmmm Action Script 3.0.

"Hygiene" Carousel Book

"Mechanics" Puzzle Box

This was made over the summer. The box is constructed from Davey board, and plexiglas. The interior is glass marbles, and rub down transfers on paper. It's an interesting juxtaposition of our working parts, and industrial working parts. Mostly parts from a door, and skeletal bones and organs. My intention was to align the concepts of open door policies and the complexity of the human condition.

"Tidal"

So voila, c'est fini. A week early, and I am really pleased with it. Going home to sleep, and seeing it the next day and not wanting to make any changes excites me. As I mentioned yesterday, there is an edition of five, so I have only constructed this one.

I might hold onto them, or put them on to my Etsy so people can have the experience (I don't want to say "fun,") of constructing their own piece.

Now, I have to delve into After Effects and complete my Motion Graphics final.

"I knew"

Better photos of the final construction tomorrow, but here is a preview of my final for silkscreen. I went to a gallery opening for Katy Stone last month and fell in love with her work. She creates three dimensional space with transparent and opaque layers. I wanted to explore that concept and silkscreened hand-drawn type and autographic shapes onto acetate and tissue paper. Well, Grafix Dura Lar. Using a limited color palette of light blues, warm gray, near black, and white I replicated my screens  to have five runs of each color. There are enough runs to create five of these sculpture/books. The one I sewed together today is approximately three feet long. 

It's layers create tension because the components are loosely rendered by hand and the textures and colors keep the eye moving back and forth in the space between them. The acetate allows the viewer to peer through the piece, but also keeps it dynamic by reflecting light and changing the appearance of the individual layers. The ink is completely matte, and the contrast between ink and substrate is high.

These pictures don't do it an ounce of justice, so just consider yourself teased.