Project Two; Task Number One

The first task of this 3D design project was to build a 'seat' out of one sheet of 4x4' cardboard. Simple? No. Lets go ahead and make this fun; this structure had to support my own body weight, and no fasteners were permitted in the construction as well as no removing pieces of the cardboard. Challenging? Yes! Without these specifications I feel like there would have been too much leeway, and that forcing myself to abide by this set of rules made me pay more attention to detail and the material itself to maximize the potential of the cardboard.

Project One; Suplementary Images

My previous post was the out come of the first project of this Spring semester, but due to my ever present procrastination I failed to mention my process in achieving the final image. Below are some of my models and ideas I had prior to settling with my cubicle office desk.

Why It Didn’t Work:

Short explanations on why my previous ideas failed.

1. Facebook. Face It.

This idea ultimately failed because of its inherent lame-ness and my inability to take adequate photos of a computer screen. I found that no matter the distance, flash, or shutter speed the computer screen was always rendered as pixilated or lined. Also, taking on social media and defining its ever- changing news feed was both overwhelming and boring. The idea was to photograph my Facebook homepage on my laptop while I was in various places around campus, my apartment and friends’ apartment’s.

2. With The Band.

My next idea was an attempt at creating a stage from various pictures taken throughout an evening of live music at the Granada. This idea was destined to fail as I was not able to spend the duration of the show taking snapshot close ups of the stage due to the masses of people.

3. Soundboard= Bored.

I really enjoyed the colors in these photos taken while I was Djing one Friday morning, but when they came together as a collage it became overwhelming as a whole. There was too much color and chaos to convey a sense of space or time and the idea was scratched.

4. The stove was by far the second most successful,but it lacked a more personal touch. ( Although it is my kitchen, dirty counters and all) I tried to incorporate too much of the surrounding area other than the stove whose solid color and lack of detail made for a dull monotone outcome.

Project One; Photomontage

The objective of this project was clearly stated as “To build an understanding of photography’s unique relationship to time and space by intentionally compressing, extending, and altering both. To build an understanding of how a 3-dimensional space is rendered on a 2-dimensional plane and how it relates to perspective.”

Personally, I find photography to be one of the most difficult mediums to work with and I completely reject the notion of photography being easy or just a matter of point and shoot to render a three dimensional object from two dimensional pieces of paper is one of the most difficult challenges I have faced as an artist and designer. I am not a photographer and have seldom worked with the medium.

All of the photos that I have compiled to create my final work have been rendered using a single iPhone. No editing, no effects, and no Photoshop. Since I was lacking a sufficient means of taking photos I decided to make use of what I did have and present it in its raw original, untouched form. From this I developed a theme to my project. I began to navigate around one word; raw. What better way to understand time and space than delving into a personal aspect of ones own life minus the theatrical effects?

To take the objective and skew it to conform to an emblem of a city or a campus was too broad and too overwhelming as well as too much of an un-relatable experience. For this project I decided to focus on myself (selfish, I know) based on the simple key word ‘understanding.’ I cannot say that I have gained much more of an understanding of myself or of my job from the subject that I chose to photograph for this project, but I do hope that this college; this arbitrary array of objects from my everyday life can impose a sort of stale excitement in the mind and eyes of those who look upon my work.
For this project I chose to photograph my workspace. Technology is evermore present in our lives and as time persists it only gains more momentum and we, human beings, are destined to succumb to its power and overwhelming sense of animate presence in our world. With my photo collage I hope to convey this presence. I work Monday thru Friday in a cubicle office with white walls, grey-blue fabric covered dividers, and windows that grant viewing privileges only to those who stand at a mere eight feet in height. The sun does not shine here in this office and when it does it is either too bright or too dull. There is a constant influx of phone calls from angry professors and irritated mothers that only amplify the clutter and chaos of the divided space. In my college I have incorporated various mediums (although this was not advised by the parameters of the project) because I felt that to convey this insanity, I would have to fill the voids with the objects I encounter on a daily basis. The phone calls and emails consistently pervade my life and as time passes I find it harder and harder to ignore their presence. From this project I have learned to accept the fundamental values of photography, but to also accept what the eye sees and what it means to the individual, attempting to exploit or explain its presence. It would have been simple to photograph a building and express its three dimensional persona and how its presence in space can be rounded out and expanded upon with numerous photos, but I abandoned this thought early on because of its lack of meaning in MY space and in MY time. My desk is where I spend my time; It is my space from 9am-5pm (as indicated by the Times New Roman name tag that reads ASHTON CAPPS a619c533) and this college is how I have rendered that space and its meaning in time.

Know What You Think, To Think About What You Know...(and then throw it in the trash)

I want to introduce this post by starting off with a summary of Plato's Allegory of The Cave. I have included a claymation video adaptation of the excerpt from his manuscript The Republic.
(www.youtube.com/watch?v=69F7GhASOdM&noredirect=1)
This interpretation does a well enough job of conveying the just of the story's moral fiber, but I do highly suggest reading the actual text or finding certain scholarly examples or interpretations.
I first came across this story in my freshman year of high school. It was required as were other worldly and depressing literature ( Dante's Inferno, 1984, Night, numerous Shakespearean writings and of course the infamous Flatland). Although these are typically college level reading I do appreciate my high school's literature department on overshooting the development of our pre-frontal cortex's at the time. The Allegory of the Cave, however, began to invade my life on many levels years after that class discussion. I have found various examples and ample situations to apply these ideas of perspective and truth. One of my favorite examples of this is Rene Magritte's surrealist painting the Treachery of Images (as seen above). The interpretation of the text states that "This is not a pipe," when in fact that is correct and Plato would most certainly agree. This is NOT a pipe, it IS, however, a painting of a pipe. Which, reflecting on Plato leads us to question whether or not the actual physical object is the real pipe or, rather, the idea that furnished the making of the physical object it the real pipe. (Dramatic pause to ponder....)
I will let your mind runaway with that though on your own blog time, for now I may make one more comparison. If we were to place a photograph of a pipe next to the painting next to the real thing next to the definition next to a man in a bathrobe holding a newspaper contemplating a mid-morning smoke; who is to tell us what is the actual pipe.
To formulate a definite opinion on this matter for the sake of time and reality we will say that the actual pipe is the 'real' pipe. This is to say that the photograph is the closest most tangible interpretation we human beings can achieve. This is not to say that this photograph of the pipe is in anyway a mirror of the object.
In the text On Photography by Susan Sontag, she elaborates on the factors that may skew a photographers attempt at mirroring reality. The most basic factor is life itself. Our capacity for emotion and feeling inherently skew reality on an individual level, although it may not be warped to you in particular, Johnny Shroom over there in the corner is interpreting this photo of a pipe as a living organism breathing fire and ready to destroy the human race in its entirety. Now, I may be exaggerating the analogy, but the point is clear. Just as emotions may change the look in your eye as you walk down the street thinking your anger is going unnoticed, this outward expression is able to prevail itself in photography as well as in other artistic mediums. The moral of this story is to attempt to view, at first, objectively and to take another person's interpretation with a grain of salt (or a dash of pepper, to each his own taste) and then attempt to view the same image or object from five other perspectives to gain a holistic understanding.

Perspective; The Art of Visualizing

The first thing that comes to my mind when linear perspective and neoclassical artists are mentioned in the same sentence is probably the same image that every other college student who has ever taken an art history class, visualizes.
That is (figurative drum roll)...
David's Oath of the Horatii. Whether you were consciously taking notes or drooling, sponge-like, on your armrest knowledge of David's sharp use of linear perspective was probably retained through osmosis or something like it. Maybe by the sole fact it has been beat to death. A master piece, created by one of the greatest painters of the neoclassical era, my require more than one look. As my intro to modern architecture professor said " You would never say 'I had sex once, it was great' don't think I'll be trying that again" in reference to a student who questioned why we have to examine the same works as we did in the previous semester. A valid point. David uses repetition of the number three, three arches, three men, three women, and three diagonals, to define the space and create depth in the image. the light source in the painting also parallels these lines that radiate from the upper left hand corner. The receding lines of the tile floor converge at a singular point in the background and create the illusion of depth on a two dimensional surface. Here shadow, light and detail aid in this perspective, but those modern/ contemporary artists such as David Hockney use minimal detail and minimal shading and still create the illusion of depth. Linear perspective is key in his work. He notes in the video ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIfDdW9GKmA&feature=related) that he paints the background lines or outlines of the ground, pathways, and horizontal surfaces prior to doing anything else; establishing a plane.

Thanks, Thom.

We loved each other so much that sometimes it hurt, even when we were close. I wanted to be her and she wanted to be me. Sex never felt complete, and afterwards we talked carelessly about easy subjects to avoid discussing the ache that bruised us both. So one day, in the kitchen, she cut me and I cut her; gently, slowly, too easily. It was the knife we used for onions and our tears were painful but expectant. We dripped the blood into coffee mugs, then bandaged up and went to bed. We fucked and there were stars but we saw different constellations. The next day the blood was dry and rusty in the mugs. We scraped it diligently onto sheets of paper. We looked at each other silently and lowered our heads to snort each other's dust. Afterwards we both carried a pouch of powdered blood, and when we were low and apart we would retire to a restroom and sniff, sniff, sniff. Oh my darling, we went on and on. Our blood was there always, red and viscous, burnt ochre and blowaway. My blood in your nasal membranes, filtering into your capillaries, finding its inexorable way to your heart. Your blood. My nose. My heart. We belonged to each other and we had made our love tangible, real; something that could be weighed and consumed, taken and enjoyed. It wasn't a surprise when we used the scalpel to shave flesh from each other's upper arms. We dried the flesh, though it was difficult to dessicate it completely. We used the airing cupboard. The powdered flesh was better ; cocaine to blood's speed. Did it end badly? Did we go too far? Was our love replaced or deleted by want or need? In losing ourselves in each other did we lose the essence in ourselves that the other loved? Did time simply bore us with its slow wearing-down? I have no answers to any of those questions. But now, sitting here in the kitchen, I admit I am scared of the knife, that I can't dig deeply enough to draw blood, that I will have nothing in the morning but red, raised scratches on my arm. I don't want her to cut me. Did we kill each other, or are we living happily; but only as happily as you are?

Let there be lamp!

These are a few pictures taken of one of my mock lamp shades that I will be revising for the finial project.