#place project

[its-kenziewright]

Place Post-Critique

Some strengths of my project were that it was recognized what my project was about. Also my peers were able recognize the bright colors and warm feelings that I was trying to compare against the colder images from the empty house in the Zillow ads. My weaknesses were that some of the textures in the trees were out of place and needed some more love. I was told that using a cotton swab and alcohol to fix the texture in the trees, which I will probably implement after some experimentation. I learned more about using alcohol markers and how to use more layering.

I can imagine continuing this line of research since I want continue to use alcohol markers. I think that they are really fun to use and almost like using watercolor. Next time, I would like to do more portraits.

[its-kenziewright]

Place Proposal

Each project begins with a proposal/statement of intent. Your statement should be a short declarative description of what you intend to do for the project. In your description, you should include details of the intended FORM, PROCESS, and CONTENT of the project. Your statement should be at least 2 paragraphs long.

My project would be to take pictures from a Zillow ad of my great grandmother's house and making a separate drawing of how I remember the house from memory. Both pictures will be 6x8 inches. I will be using printer paper, Strathmore marker paper, Studio 71 markers, and Micron fine-liners. I will be displaying the pieces along with different items from her house that I have.

The process would be to copy the general room shape onto the marker paper and then coloring it with markers. By creating this, I would be continuing to deal with grief I have from her death. Even now I still cry when I drive past the place. Whenever I would go to my great grandma's, I would always play with the little toys, color, and watch movies.

[its-kenziewright]

Place Project Research Journal

A project Research Journal is three artwork images that relate to your ideas for the project in form, process, or content. Artworks can come from one or multiple artists. Think of this as doing research that will aid in the completion of your artwork. Try to find artists you're inspired by and try to avoid obvious/cliché/ubiquitous artworks (like the Mona Lisa or the Statue of David). I would also prefer you to find more contemporary-ish artists (1900-present), unless there is a compelling reason that historical artworks are relevant to your project. This is a great opportunity to find new artists!

For each artwork selected, list the artist’s name, a web link to the location of the image, and answer the following: Describe the form of the work. Make an attempt to discern the content of the work (what is the message?). Describe the artist’s process as you think it might have been done (how was the work built?). Why did you choose this work?

Doug Aitken - Mirage

- The form of the work is a house that is built in the desert. After building the house, he covered the outside in mirrors, the house blends into the surroundings, even through out the day.

“Like a human-scale lens, Mirage works to frame and distort the evolving world outside of it. There is no single time to view this work, as each variation provides something new…There is no fixed perspective or correct interpretation. Each experience of this living artwork will be unique.” - Aitken.

Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen - Spponbridge and Cherry

- It is the vision of a spoon holding a cherry, but the spoon is larger than the average kitchenware. Meant to draw attention in from a distance. It is located in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. The cherry is 30ft long and the spoon is 50 ft long and is located around a small pond in the park.

Spiral Jetty - Robert Smithson

- Spiral Jetty was made using mud, precipitated salt crystals, and basalt rocks and is 1,500 feet long. It was made for the 1970 film Spiral Jetty. Smithson combined his interests in geology, paleontology, astronomy, mythology and cinema for this project to capture "earth's history".

[summerlangford]

Post Critique Response - Place

There were both strengths and weaknesses pointed out for this project by my peers. For strengths that it had was the usage of animation to help tell partial of a story, along with the strength of displaying the different homes in the different styles and animating them to go away and appear. Although the work did hold weaknesses as well. For the first weakness, it was hard to follow for many of my peers to follow what exactly was going on due to many weak areas. Some said the lack of audio made the narration fall apart while others said there was not enough within the animation to give information about the story.

There was feedback for the animation as well. One of the tips given was to add more visual information for telling the story of moving from location to location. Another suggestion was to add the dates to each home to give an idea about the time period. Another idea given for narrating the animation was to actually do a voiceover and talk about my family during the animation.

With choosing to make this an animation, I learned a lot of new tricks with both Adobe Illustrator and Adobe After Effects. I also learned more about the speed of working with these programs and also understanding how time-consuming it can be.

But overall, I could see myself doing something like this again in my own free time. It would be more spaced out and more thought out as I feel the limited time to create this was a major factor in many of the flaws that it had. I would use the same software again, but possibly try adding in some other ways of animating, like using the gif system in photoshop or making a page by page animations in Open Toonz. Next time I try this, I will definitely also make sure to not overload myself with work to do as well.

[summerlangford]

Place Proposal

For my intent for this project, I aim to have an animation that depicts different homes and transportation throughout generations of my parental family bloodline, the family crest present in each home location and transports shown. It will be in standard widescreen format for digital devices and be presented by being projected onto a blank surface. The work will show visuals from all areas my family has recognized as home for them over our many generations: an English farm, a ship to the New World, a large plot of land in Virginia with a farmhouse, a farmhouse in North Carolina, a farmhouse in Tennessee, a 1920s car, an attic, a home in Michigan Center, Michigan, my home in Jackson, Michigan, and then my current location, Ypsilanti, Michigan. All these locations will be animated with simple up and down movements and left to right movements.

The process of creating this piece starts with looking at my Langford genealogy and finding the records of where my family lived and where. After gaining the necessary information from the ancestral records, I will go in pursuit of finding homes from the region they lived, being careful to match it with the produce and livestock on the farms. With help from my father and also looking at some old photographs, I will also be able to depict the attic my great grandfather and his family lived in and the home my grandfather owned. After this period, I will be able to easily create images of the homes I have lived in. Once all the imagery is done, they will be taken into Adobe Illustrator, turned into a cartoonized style and rigged properly for animation in the next process, which is animating in Adobe After Effects. Once all of this work is complete, I can then think about if sound effects or music will be added along to give more depth to the changing over time before finalizing everything in Sony Vegas.

My intended meaning with this piece is that no matter how long ago it was, a home is your family’s home. I’ve gone to locations my family has been in history, whether it was where my grandfather worked, where my great grandfather moved to in the Great Depression or even the home my father grew up in. Every time I’ve been there, I feel a connection thanks to knowing my family before I was here, knowing there is physical memory of them in the soil, floorboards, on old items, even in the paint on the walls. To me, it’s a place I have been, but as DNA, so there is a moment of feeling an experience even if it is from someone who I never met but am blood-related to. I choose to do animation to show the journey my family took through time as it’s a way to remember where they have been quick. The movement is to signify change as well, saying no location is permanent to a family or person. But overall, this work is to give meaning that these locations are in our blood, of where our family has been. We have indirectly experienced these places at different points of time but now extend into our future lives by adding more locations to ourselves and our family.

[summerlangford]

Place Ideas

Idea 1

My first idea is based around a specific location on the property I have grown up on, the back corner where my swingset stands. The swingset holds a lot of meaning to me due to how it was and still is majorly used by me in life. For the first idea, I would be delving into animation and not only depicting this swingset in motion, but different variations of me throughout my time growing up, showing how a specific spot to this child (me) is a place to escape to have fun or come down from negative emotions. It will be a video in the end, all of it animated.

Idea 2

Another location of significance to me is a mini-golf course, mainly one hole in particular. It is one my father and I customized for the park as he and I were artists who attend the campsite a lot and also used their mini-golf course a lot, especially when my grandparents came. This work would be a 3D miniature model of when this hole was originally painted and recrafted by my father and me but with a few touches of my own. It will be made to be interactive despite how tiny it will be.

Idea 3

My final idea is a combination of locations, localized in the medium of animation. It would consist of everywhere I know my paternal family has lived over the generations. Starting out with a farm field in England, a ship crossing the Atlantic, farm fields in Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, a ruined farm from the Great Depression, then have moved to Michigan (possibly show a car from this time period in between), following these cities: Pontiac, Michigan Center, Concord, Jackson, and my current location, Ypsilanti. These will be pop up animatics and may also show some economical and political tones as they affected the Langford bloodline throughout time.

[summerlangford]

Place Research Journal

Artist: Edward Hopper

Artwork: Queensborough Bridge

Link: https://www.edwardhopper.net/queensborough-bridge.jsp 

Form: The artwork is a painting of the Queensborough Bridge in New York City with it fading into the background, all painted onto a canvas.

Content: After reading about a bit of Hooper’s opinion on engineering, I can get the idea this painting is only to portray the size of items made from engineering. Or, for a better way to perceive it, that modern engineering is extremely overexaggerated for what it is worth.

Process: For this work, I believe Hooper had to have had a portable easel to set his canvas on and find a suitable place to sit and observe his subject for the painting. I also feel if it wasn’t an artistic choice for the fading into the background, then Hooper also waited for a day where there was enough fog in New York City to help set a mood for this painting.

Artist: Bedrich Fritta

Artwork: A Transport Leaves the Ghetto

Link: https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/media/5641130/fritta-20180117204941104_web.jpg?width=1000 

https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2018/26-january/features/features/the-art-of-remembering

Form: The imagery depicted is a drawing of a propagandized location, meant to be the “ghettos” where Jews were being taken away from. There is a long line of people within the drawing along with one figure dressed as a nazi soldier.

Content: From reading a bit of the article this artwork comes from, I find this piece is depicting two sides. The first is the view the nazis desire to show: driving people out of “poor housing” into a “better” location, these being the concentration camps. While that is the appeal Fritta is forced to draw, I believe he put in his own meaning since he is a Jew himself. The way the atmosphere is painted is much of a feeling of anxiety and dread, not a “hopeful” piece as the nazis would have desired.

Process: For this piece, I believe Fritta started off with a simple piece of paper and first did a sketch with pen before coming back in with a wash before finalizing the work with ink and a brush.

Artist: Philipp Schmitt

Artwork: Location-Based Light Painting

Link: https://i0.wp.com/geoawesomeness.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/lightpainting-dot04.jpg?resize=640%2C426&ssl=1 

Form:  The artwork is based on geolocations with programming into specific apps to take photos at specific locations and set off a flash as well while all being caught in a long exposure photo.

Content: These areas where there was a flash are to indicate when people take photos and upload them online, as all photos, even when a location is turned off, have a geolocation on them.

Process: I believe Schmitt first started with developing the flash system he would use with the phone, then after this made an app that would work with an image-based app to set off a photo taking sequence that also activated a flash. Once this system was set up, Schmitt would set up his desired locations, test to make sure they work, and then set up a camera for a long-exposure photograph. Once the camera is set up and going, Schmitt would walk around in front of the camera and set off the flash in the areas where he had it programmed to go off.