Bella Peter @bellapeteradad1002-blog - Tumblr Blog

Final Project

Edit to final work

I decided to take out the ‘food’ image piece - I thought this was a bit random and not very meaningful and unique

Concept Statement

Art and design often explore relationships between humans and non-humans, the environment and ecology. How can contemporary art and design propose new possibilities for imagining the ‘human’ and the environment?

In my first task I explored the ecology of ‘humans’ and the ‘environment’ as broad, separate entities that weren’t coexisting equally. In this project, I wanted to dive further into the question and focus more on the word ‘ecology’. Ecology deals with the relation of organisms to one another and their environment. This made me want to look into the more personal ecologies of humans.

I thought photography was an appropriate medium to capture one’s surrounding environment. After some research, I found Andreas Gursky to be a good influence. Gursky takes amazing images of humans and the environment, which I thought were great captures of human ecology. I especially found his ’99 cent’ photo interesting, as a supermarket is a common place for many humans to go, thus part of our ecology.

This led my interest to doing a series of images that represented parts of human life. But firstly, I decided to take images of my own environment and things I see in everyday life, making me notice and appreciate my own surroundings. I then cut a small slice out of various images an edited them together as a whole. This was an attempt to create a representation of some of my own ‘ecology’. I thought this experiment was interesting but needed further development to be more meaningful.

In a different direction, I also decided to look at how our own personal ecology is so small and insignificant in the big scheme of things. In attempt to portray this thought I imagined it like stars in the universe. So I cut out pages in a book, and using the redaction technique, I painted the page black only leaving first person, personal pronouns in little squares. I used these personal pronouns to show how we (‘I’ and ‘me’) and our ecology are just miniscule parts of the earth. I did this to about 20 pages, and once they were all put together, it did allude to my vision of stars in the night sky and had a nice aesthetic. However, I did worry this would be a bit clique and wasn’t sure of the best way to present it.

After looking at David Haines Transmission to the Sun (2016), who uses similar techniques, I thought the best way to further my project was to incorporate both elements of my experimentation together.

Firstly, I chose some of the ‘scenes’ in my first experiment and took more images in these places. These include; my home, Bronte beach (my favourite beach), Bronte gully (a park I always go to), art and my family + friends. I chose these things as they are all part of my own ecology. Like my first experiment, I used the same technique of cutting and gridding these images together. Each of these ‘scenes’ were then layered, using photoshop, on top of a picture of my blanked out pages. I turned the opacity down on the gridded image so it became a subtle projection that didn’t take over the image and allowed both elements to be seen. The meaning behind my choices was to allude to how each of the gridded images are just a small part of a whole ecology, which is further developed by the blanked page, highlighting how our whole ecology is just a small part of an even larger ecology.

Haines work also inspired how I would present the work. I like the simple layout of the images against the white wall. So I printed my images in A4 paper and lay them out in three by two. I intend my audience to step back and look at my project as a whole, considering the way I am not only showing part of my own ecology but also how I am looking at human ecology as a whole. Hopefully they notice the way it looks like stars in the sky and also look at them as separate things, each with their own meaning and ecology, but also all related as well. I believe in this project I have created a new way of imagining the ‘human’ and the ‘environment’.

Bibliography:

TIME 100 Photos, 2018, The Most Influential Images of All Time - http://100photos.time.com/photos/andreas-gursky-99-cent

Andreas Gurksy - 49 Artworks, Bio & Shows on Artsy, 2018 -https://www.artsy.net/artist/andreas-gursky?medium=*&page=3&sort=-partner_updated_at

Vimeo. 2018. Justin Trendall in conversation with Daniel Mudie Cunningham on Vimeo - https://vimeo.com/111593260

Transmission to the Sun 2016 - Haines & Hinterding. 2018 - http://www.haineshinterding.net/2017/04/03/transmission-to-the-sun/

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Options for Display

As said in a previous post, I was inspired by Haines’ Transmission to the Sun (2016) for my display. Originally I was going to do it in rows but after looking at it I decided it looked best as one row ass placed next to each other.

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Reflection of materials

In this task, I enjoyed using different mediums to create the final piece. I thought my book page experiment was interesting and I enjoyed using something random I had in my room to make art. During this process, I found it challenging to figure out how I would bring my final work together, but photoshop was a great way to experiment and try out different techniques. I definitely want to keep learning about photoshop as it is a very useful tool.

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Creation of the Final work

Editing

Next I needed to figure out the best way to edit these images together

Using Photoshop, I experimented with various combinations of the ‘scene’ images and ‘dot’ pages together - either overlaying the dot pages as seperate or as grouped together

Example:

I thought this looked a bit messy and confusing, so I decided to just photoshop the ‘dot’ page as a single page - which allows for the audience to actually see the personal pronouns in the ‘dots’ - thus the meanings more recognisable.

In photoshop, which I am quite new to, I layered the images on top of each other and turned the opacity down to 30% for the grid image as this allowed it to become faint and not take over the image and the elements I wanted to show from the ‘dot’ page.

Final Pieces:

Printing:

I then printed them on thick A4 pieces of paper

The colour images did come out darker then expected

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Creation of the Final work

Taking more images

- first I decided to choose a few locations or things that related to my own ecology and take images of them that I could edit together

- these were:

1. Bronte beach (favourite beach)

2. Bronte gully (a park I go to a lot)

3. My home (interesting items in my house, parts of my room or my house in general)

4. Art (some of my own artworks from a child and now, galleries I've been to and some art tools)

5. Food (involved in everyone’s life - used images of food in my house, food I baked, and also the supermarket)

6. Family and friends (I collected images of people in my life + past memories) - a apart of ones ecology is their relationship to other people so I thought this was an important area to do

- once I took the images I used the same cutting and editing style in my pervious experiment to create the grids

Final pieces:

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David Haines

Artwork: Transmission to the Sun (2016)

- looks similar to the redaction technique I used

After looking at this work, I decided the best way to move forward with my final project was to incorporate both elements of my experimentation - image and the ‘dot’ pages

Display: I also really like the look of this simple display and want to present my work similarly - thinking of doing a series of about 6-8 works

References:

http://www.haineshinterding.net/2017/04/03/transmission-to-the-sun/

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More experimentation

Redaction: the process of editing text for publication; the censoring or obscuring of part of a text

I used this technique usually used in publication in my art making

My experiment involved cutting pages out of a book, then painting the entire page black only leaving the words ‘I’, ‘my’, and ‘me’ - personal pronouns

My attempt for this experiment was to represent human ecology as if it were stars in the universe. We only focus on our own ecology and life but when we step back we are just a minuscule part of a larger ecology of earth which is a minuscule part of the ecology of the universe - and so on. I thought this was an interesting way to represent both ‘humans’ (the personal pronouns) and the ‘environment’

I did this to about 20 pages and once all put together it looked like I hoped it would - like stars in the night

I like this experiment and want to involve this in my final piece but not sure how to display it - maybe I could stick them all together or show them as seperate pieces of paper

Issue: may be a bit corny

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Experimentation

I went out and took images of my own environment and things I see in everyday life

I then cut a small segment of these images and placed them next to each other using Microsoft Word to crop and make them equal sizes on the page

Issues:

Bit boring

Development:

Putting even more images together so the slices become unrecognisable

Something like this below but with different and more images

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Human relations

Idea:

Family tree = way of showing relationships of people

Make a creative family tree

Artist: Justin Trendall - ‘Darlinghurst’ (2010)

a ‘map’ memorialising the people who make up the cultural life of Sydney

Interesting way of showing relationships and representing links between history + identity

Resources:

Week 6 Context + Time Powerpoint (where I found the artist)

https://vimeo.com/111593260

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Andreas Gursky

Photography

Captures the modern world + everyday experience

Detail - masses or the environments

’99 cent’ (1999)

Supermarket = area many humans have in common

visually beautiful

human ecology - endless rows of stuff + shoppers

observation

Possible Idea:

Photographs capturing the human environment

everyday experiences

References:

http://100photos.time.com/photos/andreas-gursky-99-cent

https://www.artsy.net/artist/andreas-gursky?medium=*&page=3&sort=-partner_updated_at

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Task 2

Ecology: the branch of biology dealing with the relations and interactions between organisms and their environment, including other organisms; set of relationships; complex system

Personal ecology/human ecology

everyday materials/situations

How a person relates themselves to various groups of society

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Value in art

My piece: all you need to know about 2018 - the key to change your life for the better