The seasons

Here's a representation of the 4 seasons according to illustrator and the color settings in CMYK to replicate them.

Assignment 4

     I wanted to focus on something we all do but may or may not acknowledge. Deep in our mind we all develop mental shortcuts that allow us to stream through the overwhelming amount of information in our everyday life. I'm getting to the idea of judgments we pass on people we do not know based on appearance. We are taught not to do it but it still happens. We all make split second decisions about people based on observation the moment we see them for the first time. I wanted to take advantage of that and show many versions of myself and play on that idea.
     I decided to focus just on the clothing and kept my face and background context out of the series entirely. I feel it is easier and faster to pass a judgment about someone when their face is obscured. This forces the viewer to base everything solely on appearance rather than any definable facial expressions.
     Each image is a picture itself but for the idea to be most effective I needed to lump them all together into one large picture. My ideas changed little from the start but I found myself running out of unique outfits. It made me feel more to blame because I only have a few different personas to display through my outfits so harsh judgments are partially my fault in the first place.

Metal Map

    


     Metal music is chaos. It is organized but still chaos. I took all of the metal bands from my music library and linked them to their appropriate sub-genre(s). I wanted to display my personal interest in music that may seem alien to others. The music is very hectic and often layered and composed in such a way that it is impossible to hear everything in a single listen. I wanted my project to reflect the tendencies my music follows.
     The general process for creation was to split circles to make the connections in order to display a uniform line size and shape. The idea behind everything was to cause extreme confusion and overlap and force the viewer to focus much like how I have to focus when listening to music. Everything was done from scratch in illustrator.

Assignment 3 WIP

This is just the list of metal bands from my music library and the classifications I give them based on the sub-genre(s) they fit into. I may scrap the current image to a larger one with more space between each band as things are getting a little chaotic. Below is a music video from one of my favorite bands just to top everything off.

Assingment 3 Proposal

     Music has always been a very large part of my life and a major interest and inspiration for a lot of my work. Since middle school I started to deviate away from the classic rock hits my parents and the radio spoon fed me into obscure metal from all over the world that rarely sees the light of day. Artists experiment more and slowly new genres of music start to pop up the longer you spend away from the top 40. I want to explain a little of what that is to me. I want to show a visual map of the bands I listen to and the genres they are tied to. I might even be able to depict the 300 sub-genres of metal that I always joke about. The plan is to mostly use text and line to link everything together while showing connections on the amount of influence a band has to a genre based on visual thickness of the lines connecting them. While classification of music follows some rules, there is a lot of debate about specifics so most of my project could be objective depending on the view point.

Mess

     Most people want to document their homes or lives in the most tidy or cleanest conditions possible. We tend to forget that our homes are usually only that clean when someone important is coming over or a big gathering is taking place. We don't want visitors to see how messy we can be for fear of being shunned by our peers. Everything must be clean and spotless in the eyes of those around us or they might think we're secretly a slob living in shambles.
     I'm not a slob but I come pretty close at times. The above photographs are what becomes of my living quarters after a week of projects, papers, and midterms roll over me all at once. I wanted to document the mess I made to show what my place really looks like, not what I want it to look like. Sure, I wish it was the pinnacle of cleanliness but I know that isn't going to happen. This is real and unedited life shown by the most truthful device I own. My place is a mess and I want you to see it.
     I focused on a few close up photos of my desk to show how bad things have gotten. A messy bed is bad but a messy work station is worse. I wanted to show the accumulation of dust and fingerprints that came about over the week. Zooming in also immersed the viewer in the mess better than showing the entire perspective in a single picture. I used the last slide to show the entire room in order to convey a better sense of scale and impact of my lack of maintenance. There isn't much purpose behind these images other than showing you that I'm pretty far from perfect and I'm OK with it.

Project 2

     Black metal brunch. Appropriating images usually comes down to sending a message or social comment on the wrongs of the world. I just wanted to throw a bunch of black metal musicians into a nice cafe and laugh. There wasn't much of a purpose besides a little joke.
     The problems I had was most of the images were in stage lighting or from album covers. Each person had to be cut out from a dark background and the amount of hair and spikes made the process quite tedious. There was also the issue of image quality. There is an unspoken rule of black metal about always looking serious.
     Overall it was fun to do but as always I wish I had more time and a larger scope of images to pull from. I restricted myself too much by only placing black metal musicians rather than metal musicians. I was also quite bias by trying to place people from bands I like rather than all black metal in general.

Project 2 WIP

I think I may have bitten off more than I could chew with this one but it's coming along. I plan to add more people from black metal bands and add food. I'm thinking about changing some pictures to album covers but that may take away from the "fancy" atmosphere that I want.

Old News

     The Old News exhibit at the gallery really took me by surprise. I came in expecting photos that were straight on, non objective depictions of events around Ohio. Instead I got some masterfully taken photos of events from interesting perspectives and angles that showed more than just the story. One photo in particular caught my eye because of the human dynamic it displayed.
     Ohio Coal Miners was take in 1980 in a coal mine in southern Ohio. It depicted a close up shot of two men standing in a mine and not much else. The special aspect of the photo was the grins on their faces. It was similar to a child's expression after doing after playing a particularly mischievous prank. They both have their mining helmets on and are covered in dirt and grime from the labors their job entails.
     The photo goes beyond just showing the viewer two dirt covered men. It shows a comical relationship two men have while working deep under the surface of the earth. It feels like there is a special bond being show that we can understand through the unorthodox facial expressions. I would expect these men to be tired and angry from the hard and deadly work they do just to live but instead I'm faced with two faces that seem to have little understanding of where they are. It's like watching two children playing in the mud I would imagine. Covered in dirt and filth but enjoying their time making a mess of themselves.

Questions: Was photography a job or a hobby to you?
What do you think of the impact the digital images have had on the art form?
What is your most sentimental photo taken in the show and why?