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Assessment 3

https://unsw-my.sharepoint.com/:f:/g/personal/z5205348_ad_unsw_edu_au/Et9Gwn6SFUdNpslVN7P2LQAB-1z0xO2qlZX9ZcYGSQCEhg?e=z0B2Qf

Assessment 2: Artist Statement

For the duration of my practice lead research I was responding to the topic: ‘Can creative acts be rebellious when rebellion has become canonized in art, design and media histories? What would a contemporary creative rebellion look like?’, and I decided to visualize a contemporary creative rebellion by looking at the paradox of it being canonized and continuing the rebellion/establishment cycle. Initially I wanted to look at icons of rebellion such as socialist and communist figures and symbols to try and analyze the consistent use of visual features that have been commonly repeated amongst rebellious propaganda. Visual features such as vectors and contrast and bright colors repeat themselves such as communist rebellion propaganda. However, these turned into the next establishment to topple. Rebellion in the contemporary sense differs dramatically. Having an overt message is now stumped by that message becoming instantly archived on the internet and every detail is held accountable purely because of the instant access to the work and the context of all the features of the work as well as any association. This produces a necessity to strive for a perfect self-awareness when making creative works online. This acts as a paradoxically beneficial and detrimental to creative rebellions online. Where you must account to every decision you make and every connotation. This is what spawned me to make the poster in assessment 1. It is crippled by the work’s self-awareness about it’s attempt to be rebellious but still conveys a self-awareness that resonates. Where to go from here was the next thing to tackle how to represent this further. Initially I wanted to represent an existing symbol by forming the socialist star with a coiled snake, or Ouroboros, eating itself. I chose this symbol because it represents a cycle and a paradox of consumption/destruction and creation but most importantly, in this state, it is a whole. This is the whole that a creative rebellion must form when trying to attempt.

When making this star I found that the socialist symbol would create a symbol that could be used against the message it is trying to convey (the self-awareness at play when I’m making this work). Choosing the polarizing star symbol weighs too far left for the work to encapsulate rebellion without it necessarily coming from a certain part of the political spectrum. Therefore, I returned to the raised fist symbol to hold the Ouroboros. I chose this symbol for the first work as it has been used by political movements from various places on the political spectrum, from leftists to Arians. I think this symbol encapsulates the rebellion that has been canonized, the symbol of a raised fist either empty or holding another symbol such as the hammer and sickle, fighting for freedom. However, the use and abuse of this symbol has made it cheapened, meaning users of it, currently, convey a dulled message that, formerly, could have been quite didactic. Therefore, I want to portray a fist tightly holding an Ouroboros, to represent that move that needs to be taken for creative rebellions to be successful. A holistic act of self-awareness - threatening but peaceful. A paradox manipulated to create a successful and nuanced work that is didactic without being controlling - disturbing but approachable.

Bibliography

Cushing, L., ‘A brief history of the “clenched fist” image’, Docs Populi, 25 January 2006, [website] http://www.docspopuli.org/articles/Fist.html , (accessed 16 August 2018)

Fitzpatrick, J., Che Guevara Poster Free print download, 1968, [online image], (accessed 15 August 2018)

Metin, ‘ Ouroboros, The Infinity Symbol’, Mythologian.net, 2012, http://mythologian.net/ouroboros-symbol-of-infinity/ (accessed 17 September 2018)

Sinha, S., ‘Castro’s Revolution, Illustrated’, The New York Times, 26 November 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/26/world/americas/fidel-castro-cuban-posters.html, (accessed 15 August 2018)

Assessment 2: Final Work

Ouroboros Revolt

Final Work Documentation

Here’s all the anchors and lines for the final thing!

The new fist works a lot better and the whole thing looks nice a minimal.

Assessment 2: Experiment 5

So I had a go at the rigid fist tracing using the pen tool and I’m very happy with how that style turned out. Has a nice contrast to the snake. However the snake looks quite goofy I didn’t really go off a reference and the perspective is quite off as the perspective of the hand is slanted and more back to front where the snake is a pure profile. Gonna try and us a different fist image to trace over so that the minimalism of the snake can match the perspective of the fist.

Assessment 2: Experiment 4

I had a go at tracing over the same fist image in Illustrator using the pen tool to make accurate and nice curved fist. It kinda seemed a bit too soft compared to the rigid image I used in Assessment 1. I’m impressed at myself though quite like using CAD software as my physical art is very messy (which doesn’t quite fit what I’m going for.

Assessment 2: Experiment 3

I tried again with the raised fist with it holding the Ouroboros symbol. I kinda ballsed up the overlaying of the snake but ya know proof of concept. Kinda finding the on paper approach a little less effective for this (as well as a lack of resources at the moment). I think I’ll give this a go in adobe illustrator. Bugged up the shading too so defs gonna give it a go digitally.

Assessment 2: Experiment 2

I wanted to revert to the raised fist symbol so I thought I’d try and visualise a raised fist made out of a snake eating itself however when I got upto the fingers I struggled to think of a way to make the fingers appear like snakes as well so I stopped and scrapped it.

Assessment 2: Experiment 1

So for my first experiment I traced over a simple 5 point star printer with a pencil and then an art line marker, and a light box. I then made a pattern of a coiled snake (cropped by the star itself) with the head eating its own body with line based shading.

I then refined the shading to make it look less basic.

I then had another go to make the snake head more centralised and another attempt at making the shading neater.

I liked the aesthetic quality of this experiment but I feel using the star is targeting is a bit specific to criticising only leftist rebellion (as it was a spin on the socialist flag), and the annoying “the left is eating itself” argument in debates in the ‘culture war’. I wanted to address rebellion a whole and how paradoxical it has become regardless of political alignment. I feel like this one would take on a meaning against my message with the neutral criticism of rebellious action. I feel like it would only add to the polarity of it.

Assessment 2 Thought Dump

So as a result of having an extremely busy assessment sprint. I haven’t been able to start this assessment until the week it’s due.

I initially had this plan to have a revolutionary shitty robot spouting out propaganda that would charge so fast into the world that it unplugs itself from the wall. This plan would of had to have quite a few logistical circumstances to have been achieved, such as ordering parts, before accomplishing this so I have decided to take an approach that will still be executed properly but with less waiting.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how it has become more apparent that rebellion falls into the same patterns and has become a paradox in the contemporary developed setting. For a rebellion to be successful and not dismissed instantly or not fall into the same patterns of becoming the new establishment, it has to awkwardly wrangle a crippling amount of self awareness for better and for worse. So my new focus is to represent the paradox that is a contemporary rebellion.

The image of the snake eating itself, or Ouroborus, comes to mind with this idea of paradox. The snake itself creates a whole but out of self detriment. Though it is structurally sound it is going in a cyclical direction.

(http://mythologian.net/ouroboros-symbol-of-infinity/ )

Fittingly to linking it to the contemporary sense of rebellion the search results for “snake eating itself” is videos on the internet of suicidal snakes that seem to be stressed out.

I might tie this conceptually to the digital realm so imagery of tangled cables feeding into each other or just imagery of revolutionary symbols being built by snakes entangled and eating themselves.

Final Work and Statement

Artist’s Statement

My research process when creating this process was looking at historical examples of posters and other art that surround the idea of rebellion. Examples that I used were Cuban propaganda as well as Jim FitzPatrick’s Che Guevara Print. I cynically analysed them looking for similarities in terms of visual technique. I also researched the symbol of the clenched fist and looking at its use in a variety of causes, but noticing that it just gets tacked onto various causes leftist and right winged.

In line with the question I wanted to represent what a rebellion would like in this day and age. As the last few years have been pretty turbulent politically we have seen that the methods of old no longer work. For better or for worse this need for self-awareness as a result of the post internet information age. I think a contemporary rebellion would be hyper analytical of itself which may or may not result in a paradoxical and messy stand still to over come the polarising times. At this stage this will come with having an analytical look at the iconography in the propaganda of old. This idea is presented in Bon Iver and Eric timothy Carlson’s work as they analyse the iconography of old and develop a new set of symbols and use minimalistic text and formatting to represent the lyrics.

In my poster this comes through as I have created a poster using the raised fist iconography and vector techniques of communist revolutionary propaganda and replaced the blocked-in colour with the word describing the cheap visual techniques to garner our attention. This creates a fuzzy look, for a fuzzy and nuanced rebellion. It’s quite paradoxical in a sense, although it is ticking the self-awareness box that social change needs these days, it’s not as effective.

Assessment 1: Existing Work

A Screenshot of an Eric Timothy Carlson Instagram Story from 2018

One of the more obscure examples I’ve dug up from my iphone back ups is this screenshot. It came to mind when thinking about how the Clenched Fist and Che Guevara get reused and abused. The imagery is leading people rather than people leading their own ideological outlook

Assessment 1: Experimentation

Yay i figured out how to use clipping masks. In this one I made the background the word CONTRAST and the fist clench SYMBOL. I also used a creamier tone as the background but upon this result I have decided to turn it back to white as i’m looking at a contemporary rebellion not trying to have the intent of emulating the past (though I am in other elements).

Assessment 1: Similar Artist

Eric Timothy Carlson and Bon Iver

22, A Million, Lyric Videos (2016)

What I think is very accurate about these videos is the way that it talks about discourse, relationships and knowledge in a contemporary society, where for better or for worse, have to require immense self awareness. They look at self awareness in both a theological, social and political sense but represent the paradox of self awareness through, theological symbols of Carlson’s creation and the similar symbols explored in Bon Iver’s lyrics. It also, more importantly to my cause, look at this in the form of minimal text. A medium that i think represents the objective and concrete in a social media ridden society. Where even a changed person is still there old self.

Assessment 1: Experimenting

I didn’t know how to use clipping masks. I figured out how to make the vectors themselves but didn’t know how to make the text change colour so my first try ended up like this.

I used a chinese propaganda poster amidst the cultural revolution to get the particular orangey red.

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