Corvidism :: portfolio of Anna Frankova

Selected works created during my studium at Faculty of Fine Arts, Brno University of Technology [ARCHIVE]

[corvidism]

My Code/World

Artistic research project, presented as an installation.

The goal of this project was to use creative techniques and conceptual thinking to explore the digital “space” I inhabit in my other profession of a programmer/developer. The result, a losely connected series of “experiments” or “etudes”, was presented as a whole, to elicit creative reading and free associations by the viewers.

I have based this project on several aesthetic theories about art creation and perception. One of them is the theory that artwork is a form of thinking which is intrinsically connected to creative work and which brings unique insight. That was the goal of my explorations.

Another says that art is a failure in communication, which results in ever increasing sum of meanings being generated by the viewers, as they try (and fail) to discern the “true”, “original” meaning of an artwork. This is what I was trying to put into action with my installation.

[corvidism]

“Anna Frankova” - a conceptual twitterbot

@my_art_bot

Exploring my art practice and the underlying motivations for it via twitter bots. 

More (rambly) explanation at the bot’s homepage: my-art-bot.corvidism.com

[corvidism]

Series

Gather photographs you've taken, as many as you can.

Select those in which you return to something. (What do you return to?)

Name your selection.

Choose your audience. (Do you need an audience?)

Place your photographs so they will be seen by your audience.

"Series" is a script for an activity in the style of "fluxkits" of Yoko Onno or George Brecht, which was created as a companion to the exhibition of Václav Jirásek "The World of Ironym Cool" (Dům umění, October 2015). Its goal is to help the participant to understand the creative process behind projects like Jirásek's extensive photographic collection of car wrecks - the art of context, finding relationships between singular objects. The form, presentation, and even the produced outcome is secondary - the real art lies in the experience of the participant.

[corvidism]

MG

Created for an open assignment to improve the visual identity of The Moravian Gallery in Brno. I designed a short PR campaign with the goal to attract visitors to the permanent exhibitions of the gallery.

My intended audience was a person who is (or potentially could be) interested in culture and history, but doesn't have much artistic education. For such a person, going to a gallery might feel boring or intimidating, because they don't have the necessary theoretical knowledge to appreciate the painting from a technical standpoint. I focused my message on the fact that a painting also represents a moment in history, and seeing it in context might be just as valuable and attractive as its aesthetic qualities.

As an output I designed a set of posters for outdoor lightbox display, and a tumblr blog which would contain additional content and serve as a place to interract with fans. When writing the theme, I used a few tricks to render the painting and illustration atop each other, creating a fade-in-out effect when mouse hovers over it.

[corvidism]

This Is Art - a conceptual twitterbot

@this_is_art_bot

What is art? Who has the authority to decide? Or is it just a question of self definition?

This twitterbot automatically reblogs one tweet tagged “art” every day, creating a random sample collection of “art” - or, at least, content labeled as such.

More explanation at the bot’s page: this-is-art-bot.corvidism.com

[corvidism]

Extreme Focus

Short fanzine about women in WWII. My own illustrations based on historic photos and my own writing (sourced from multiple publications).

The title hints at the underlying idea of making this into a series, which would would continue with other obscure, deeply-researched topics - unfortunately, that never happened.

Full fanzine (PDF)

[corvidism]

Tribute

final semester project - 6 posters, B1 format

This year's prompt was easy for me :) I took the prompt as a chance to pay tribute to the great historical women I admire, whose names deserve to be as well-known as "Einstein" or "Hemingway". I selected these six because they relate to the things I love. (I also tried to have some diversity, although I could have definitely done better).

Visually, I played with flowers as the stereotypical symbol of femininity - because yes, damn you, these women were women, and they were awesome, neither despite nor because of that.

(credits for images used: 1,2; 1,2; 1,2; 1,2; 1,2; 1,2)

[corvidism]

This wordpress plugin is something I developed for the company I work for right now, and we decided to release it to the public. It's a replacement for one function of Role Scoper, a significantly larger plugin that was recently discontinued.

It enables the administrator to create lists of pages and limit user access (editing, deleting and optionally creating other pages) just to these pages. Typical use would be on a company site that uses a lot of shortcodes the administrators don't want the users to mess up (eg. gallery shortcodes and the like).

I'm hoping to polish the plugin's current functionality in upcoming versions, and then start adding new features - I'm thinking about tag/category based filtering, for example.

[corvidism]

TOLERANCE

(English site) (Czech site)

TOERANCE is a way to teach people about "microaggressions" - casual racism, sexism and other -isms that fly below the radar because they're not as flashy or outraging, but that are still harmful and make things worse for the affected people. 

The system is simple:

there is a set of minimal rules for a tolerant society. Or, things you shouldn't do. It's very "d'uh", but it's written down so we can reference it.

when someone doesn't follow this set of rules, they get a ticket. You can even mark what did they do wrong. It has a link to the rules, too, so they can learn about their mistakes. Talk about it with them. Maybe they don't even know the word, yet. Maybe they don't even know they did it. 

then, there is the three-strikes rule - if you gave someone a card on the same thing three times, you're alowed to be as hard on them about it as you want (laws permitting, of course). Be snarky. Publically shame them. Use profanities. Prank them. Because if you told them once, they probably didn't know; if you told them twice, they're forgetful; but if you have to tell them tell them three times and it still doesn't stick, they're either really not paying attention... or they just don't give a shit and want to be assholes, and so you're entitled to be an asshole right back. 

I'd love it if you could share, spread and maybe start playing this little social game with me. I didn't get too far with it yet, but even on the small sample of my schoolmates, it really worked. It was a conversation starter. People went up to me and asked about terms they didn't know before. We spent two weeks catching each other on problematic things with "this should get a ticket" - and I hadn't even started to hand them out then!

Links:

English version of the TOLERANCE site

printable English poster, printable English ticket sheet

Czech version of the TOLERANCE site

printable Czech poster, printable Czech ticket sheet

[corvidism]

The Myth of White Europe, As Docummented by the MedievalPOC

"There were no People of Color in medieval Europe. Inserting non-White characters into stories based on it is just "political correctness gone mad".

Do you agree with the above statement? Then you might be in for a surprise. 

It was a forgone conclusion what topic I will do for an assignment called "Myth and reality". I don't think I could find a more suitable topic than the blog MedievalPOC. I decided to create a physical version of the blog, combine the fascinating visual content with the many discussed issues.

The structure of the book is inspired by the binding style - every signature consists of four folios of reproductions on standard offset paper, and one of text on a structured grey paper. Same grey paper is used on the covers. The signatures are sewn on the covers without adhesive, and the visible thread is a part of the design.

The design of the book is a play on mainstream academic publications, with their sedate serif types and minimum of ornamentation broken up by huge sans-serif exclamations of "normal people", readers (and critics) of the blog. The reproductions are all in black and white, save for the "important bits" - the People of Color, who are overlooked by the white-centric view of art history. 

The Myth of White Europe is very much just student work, with all the mistakes that go with it...  but, in the end, I hope it will be seen as what it is meant to be - a "thank you" to a great blog that taught me a lot about social issues, and shown me a lot of great art while doing so.

[corvidism]

Redesign of propagation materials for Kino Art (competition entry)

The students of AGD2 FaVU VUT were asked to come up with a vision for the new look of propagation materials for Kino Art, the oldest independent cinema in Brno. 

My idea takes inspiration from DIY esthetics, using type-only design and special folding (the entire brochure is two double-sided A1 sheets, each one with a poster on one side and the content of the brochure on the other).

[corvidism]

Asane.eu 

link (Czech only)

this interactive website is a part of a big inter-disciplinary student project called Ašané, focused on urban development of Aš, the west-most city in Czech republic - other parts were a publicising campaign, two exhibitions and a printed newspaper/publication. We (The Atelier of Graphic Design 2 at FFA BUT I study at) worked on it with students of architecture from the Faculty of Architecture, TUL.

Read more about the project.

[corvidism]

Cursor cleaner

Well, the usual preface about "anoyance is the best motivator": I wrote myself a cursor cleaner. It's a bookmarklet to reset the cursor image to default and strip off that flying mess used by some... let's say, enthusiastic designers. (Not that I am judging or anything. Okay, maybe a little.) 

cursor cleaner

(to use: pull it onto your Bookmark Bar and click on the offending page)

It's not perfect and I can't tell if it will work on every page (the flyers are especially hard to get rid of), but still, there is only so much butterflies one can stand, is there.

[corvidism]

Experimenting with Processing.

It's a love/hate relationship. I love what it can do in hands of artists (and by "love" I mean "fangirl faint over")... but I hate how, well, math-y it all is. 

(Math and me - not friends. We have a history.)

I think I'll always need the crutch of a decent scenegraph, but I'm not giving up just yet. I guess I do hate to lose now and then.

[corvidism]

How Fast Does It Tumble?

Sometimes the only thing that makes you finish a project is that you really need it. Me, I really wished I could easily find out how often a blog posts before I follow it and find out it completely drowns out all the other people on my Dashboard. So, I've learned the Tumblr API and made that app.

[corvidism]

Certificate for DZS - competition entry

The comissioned certificate was meant to comemorate the ten year anniversary of the Czech membership in the LLP (Life-long Learning Programme) and given out to every successful participant. I wanted to do something more personalised than the generic fill-in-the-blanks diploma design. My solution was computer-generated graphics - I would create a program that would use supplied data (probably delimited textfile and a folder of photos) and create a unique certificate for each recipient.

This project wasn't realised, but the research I've done to plan the program - from color theory to specifics of Python graphic libraries - was totally worth every minute.

[corvidism]

IT Milk

When your school assignment is to create a milk carton design, you have two options. You can take it seriously... or you can decide to have fun and make something you would love to find in the grocery shop.

What's the idea? A milk brand for programmers, styled after the  stereotypical white-on-black console, with a quick tutorial on a different featured programming language every month. ASCII happy cows included!