Final Project

What Defines Us?

Admittedly, when I started with this project, I had an extremely hard time defining a direction to go in. I knew I wanted to make something visually appealing but that was about the biggest lead I had. My first thoughts centered around the idea of “upsetting the norm,” doing something out of the ordinary that people would be a little confused by. I wanted to go in the direction of one of my favorite artists and defy convention. The more I thought about my ideas, the less I came up with. It took some talking through to come to a conclusion… I couldn’t make this idea work because it seemingly wasn’t “me.” I was trying to mimic some one else’s work instead of make something that defined who I actually was.

Once I came to this realization, I started to think about what exactly defined whom I was. I started looking at the forms of media that I use in everyday of my life – computer, iphone, Facebook ect. I decided to explore one of these areas and make a piece about it. Ultimately, I settled on Facebook. Then I started to think about this in a different way. Facebook is not only something that can define me, it’s something that can define almost everybody in our generation. We put our lives on this thing and spend hours looking at the lives of others. I wanted to ask everybody how exactly he or she was defined in Facebook, an online profile that publicizes them to the world and that will be with them forever.

In my final work, I wanted to create images that portrayed certain ideas about Facebook: 1) the time we put into them, 2) the public aspect of it and 3) how they will always be there. The picture in the top left describes the first point. We probably spend more time than we should in Facebook and often are distracted from things like class. This shows me sitting in class (the one I usually don’t pay attention in), but instead of taking notes on the material, I was “taking notes” on Facebook. The second point is described by the bottom picture. At a movie theater, the movie posters are replaced by Facebook pages. This symbolizes how Facebook is like a presentation of our lives to whoever may want to watch. Lastly, the third point is described by the top right image. It is supposed to be an arm with a tattoo of “Facebook” on it. Like a tattoo that will, more or less, be there forever, data put on the internet is extremely difficult to get rid of completely. Our Facebook pages will be with us basically forever. This thought may make you reevaluate what all you put on there.

As for my final image, I guess you can say I’m pleased with it. Of course as I look at it I see some things I would change. The contour of the Facebook page overlay on the notebook could better follow the lines of the page (I used GIMP on this project and couldn’t, for the life of me, find the equivalent tool from PS), the movie posters do not have the glare on them that should be there, and the tattoo could wrap around the arm a little better (again, couldn’t find the wrap tool in GIMP). Also, I should have moved the bottom picture to the right a little. Overall, I think it gets my point across and I do like it. It follows my style of clean, straight lines and minimal clutter with a fair amount of negative space. I probably should have budgeted my time with it a little more, but sometimes life is busy. 

And for the last song of the year.... Heres an artist that went virtually unknown until one of his songs become the official song of the World Cup. This is not that song but it is one of my favorites by him. Heres Knaan with "Take A Minute."

Final Project Pre-Blog

So, its time for the final. As always, i have the most trouble simply coming up with an idea for these things. I spend most of my time staring into space not knowing what to do and then take about 5 mins to do it. So for this project i decided to look at some work of my long time favorite artist, banksy, and see if i can't get some kind of idea flowing through my mind.

Banksy's art appeals to me because it is not conventional to anything. In comparing it to fine art you will find that it is not "fine," but is rather rough like graffiti of often is. On the other hand, it does not conform to the usual idea of graffiti either. It isn't big, stylized, colorful letters like most people would think of. His works are these incredibly artistic pieces, but are not "classically artistic," if that makes sense at all. More or less, this is where i got the idea for my big idea - going against convention.

All of our life we are told what to do and how to act, we can't do this, we can't do that. Where is our chance to challenge that? Banksy was told he would never have his art in a museum so what does he do? he sneaks in and puts it up himself. After adhering to the rules for so long, it makes it hard for me to rebel. Out of fear, out of morals, i don't really know. I wish i had the courage (and artistic ability) to sneak something into the wexner center and make my own exhibit. Instead, ill find something a little less drastic to do, just to get my rebellious fix in i guess. It seems I've been in a structured life for so long, its gotten boring and all i want to do something to make it a little more exciting. Now because we aren't supposed to do anything illegal, ill have to find something that doesn't push the boundaries as much. more or less I want to do something that goes against convention to see what it feels like and also see peoples reactions to it.

I want to test peoples reactions (more in simple observation than including the reactions in my final piece) to see what people think of a simple act of rebellion. Anything out of the ordinary seems to make people stop and stare. This is just something that interests me so i figure i can make a sort of side project out of it. worst case, it will give me a little amusement.

So ideas for this project.... I want to do something mainly focusing on the photography with maybe some slight editing in photoshop. i was thinking i could make a narrative of painting a little something on a dumpster in my alley. I don't really have the skill for a picture, but maybe something as simple as a phrase. I was also thinking about doing a series of photos documenting weird places to sit. I would have to find a willing participant, but then i would have them sit in places where people don't usually sit. The center of the oval, the middle of the library, etc. Just something innocent that would make people think "now why in the world would he be doing that?" Part rebellion, part social experiment.


And for music. Heres a song by "you me at six" and chiddy (from "chiddy bang") titled "rescue me." It's a little depressing but i like how the contrast in style from the chorus to the verses works together. Not a huge fan of the video. Don't really think it tells any kind of story. but oh well, here it is.

Micro Project 5

For this project, i had the word "fold." At first i struggled to come up with an idea for this word. Eventually, i thought back to my childhood and remembered the origami my mom showed me (my family is part japanese). Seeing that origami is the "art of paper folding" i thought it would be the perfect thing to base my project on. I decided to make three things: a boat, a crane, and a rose. The crane was the first thing that i ever learned to make when i was young. The rose was a new one for me and took about twice as long to make as the other two combined. As for the final image, i wanted to just show the initial and final states of the paper and leave out all the intermediate steps and just describe them with the word "fold" and the arrow. I did not want to show the intermediate steps and make this look like an instructional image. Instead, i wanted the middle to simply show that it was the act of folding that took 3 plain pieces of paper and transformed them into these things.

Heres a song by Childish Gambino that samples some more Adele. His voice and style take some getting used to but in the end its a different sound and a solid beat.

MIcro Project 4

I decided to choose this situation because i had just been Waldo for halloween. I thought, "why not play hide and seek with the real Waldo?" So this is me running away to hide while he counts. While brainstorming, I just listed out all the possibilities for both a super hero situation and a cartoon situation until i landed on something i liked enough to pursue. As for the work itself, i think it is effective in  conveying the situation but i wish i could have made myself look a little more "cartoonish."