I know our intermedate class have been trying to solve the problem or show a way of exposing our dire situtuation associated with the fiscal wakeup tour. Do you think this could speak to our generation about this growing issue of our countries dept.
Noticing and Problem assignments
Franki Starr
The two images I thought were successful were text and the over looker. The ones that I thought were unsuccessful were the ones of Willy at the bar. The text I thought was successful because was it highlighted the beauty of the letters. The text becomes images more so then a words. In the over looker I didn’t want to overkill the creepiness of the picture. So I thought this was subtle but still leaving something to the imagination. The contact of Willy I think is lame. When I was noticing ‘Willy’ I thought that the pictures would portray an unglamorous bar scene. They look more like random pictures then noticing. In the text and over looker represented problems for me. The text problem was typography class, which I dislike. But by making a problem by finding the beauty and humanizing the text I feel like I can enjoy typography class more. In the over looker I was having a problem with ambiguity, over killing horror scenes in my work. So by leaving more to the imagination you are left with implications, which are scarier then a bloody figure running at you.
on looker
beauty in text
Contact of Willy
Flash art
Franki Starr
This Flash Art edition highlighted the top 100 emerging artists. One artist that caught my eye was man named Had Carlo Mollino that lived from 1905 to 1973. But how was he an emerging artist then? He was influenced by Futurism and in his lifetime interested and experimented with interior design, photography, writing, the occult, and the patenting of fifteen heteroclite inventions. His pictures are very sexualized emphasizing seduction not sex. The scenes would be set on his own furniture he would make. They said that he helped free the modern man in his desire. He stared to use a Polaroid and there was something about the readymade images that emphasizes the ‘tense’ of the staging further.
What inspired me was that when he took a photograph everything was planned in detail, down to the scene and furniture he would make. He was influenced by Futurist because to the speed and technology of the 20th century. This movement was important in many great artists lives.
What was frustrating when you look up some of his Polaroid’s of women they are being objectified. The pictures they showed in Flash art are very beautiful and dynamic so I was pretty disappointed when seeing those pictures on the Internet. In Flash art it had also commented on post war consumerism that he had contributed to this. What? Was saying that Mollino contributed to pornography consumerism? How disappointing. We learned about the horrors of post war consumerism in Graphic Design history. Some of the images are disturbing this is where controlled obsolescence came from which is a desire to always have the next newest thing, which our culture has a big problem with today throwing away old technology for the newest thing.
I will take with me from Malllino; his strong attention to detail and hard work that went into the pictures. He carefully planned and thought about how he wanted in his scene.
It seems that the more attention and thought you put into an image the emotion and aesthetic will stand strong, which is what I desire in my photographs.
Aperture
Photography
Franki Starr
In the most resent edition of Aperture there were several deep articles about photography and what it can mean. How many times did you walk by Joanie on the Stony and just ignore it but when it got defaced how many of you were upset? In the article about ‘Notes on Photography and Monumentality Roland Barthes had said photography has replaced the monument as the site of collective memory. Which I take that to mean is the way Hiroshi Sugimoto took pictures of his building series. It was a photograph taken as a memory and when that building or ‘monument’ crumbles we still have this memory through seeing a picture. It also shows the stability of the building but more deeply the stability of our society. What was even more moving was a photographer Lynn Davis works of icebergs, which can be conceived as many things like a beautiful landscape. Now we live in a generation of global warming, this represents a monument of ‘global apocalypse.’ Now with more contemporary photographers the move is toward people and they becoming monuments. Wodiczko says that in a lot of European countries there isn’t a town square that hasn’t been ruined by a pompous figure in a monument. People walk right by ignoring but when you take a picture it creates a contradiction.
In the article The Civil Contract of Photography Ariella Azoulay says the “ ‘civil contact’ of photography is a role as a means through which citizen can be viewed, conceptualized, and established. She talks about how photography can blur the lines. Private intimate moments now splattered everywhere or deterioration between oppressor and oppressed all the way to event and history. Another way she says photographers take pictures is the production of images always sexualizing violence. We have impaired forms of citizenship.
What I think Ariella was trying to say is we have an ethics and a job as photographers to portray the truth. But that is hard to do without having an opinion. Look at the FSA photographs by Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange. They were told what to photograph and would set up scenes.
Ariellas writing says that photography is a profoundly political act and public. Photographs are powerful tools that can affect countries. In an analysis of the Civil Contract it is about he relations between photography and citizenship in disaster contexts.
What was frustrating is at first it seemed like she was talking about the ethics of photography and how we should take pictures. I had to read an analysis that explained that it’s about photographs and making them speak have become a part of civil practice. Our duty is toward one another rather then toward the ruling power.
These articles were related in that its was explaining the past through monuments and photography and now how we should take our skills and use them to show the real truth.
The way I take photographs is lying on thick narrative with false story line. Next time I will take pictures in a political situation I will focus on the people. Now that were in school it is hard to capture these types of images because we are sort of confined to a safe campus bubble. But when I do take pictures I do like to deconstruct the scene finding the realness in the situation.
Surfwise
Franki Starr
This documentary was astounding. It was about this man Dorian Paskowitz and after two failed marriages but a successful medial practice started to realize that money was the root of all evil. It showed how he was a great surfer and when he would feel like he could just die from life, he would go into the ocean and come out rejuvenated, the water was very important to him. So he decided to drop everything, materialistic and medical practice. When he meets his third wife Juliette they started there journey in a studibaker and move through used 24 ft campers as their family grows to 9, through out the 60s and 70s.
As each of the members of the family members are being interviewed you learn of the great experiences their kids had traveling the US and Mexico, but without schooling. Dorian said that there is a difference between education and knowledge. You could graduate like he did from Stanford but still not have any knowledge. His kids always won surf competitions and there baths were the ocean. I couldn’t help but want to be part of this family, but that’s were David said it had to be all or nothing, this lifestyle wasn’t part time.
These kids really held some resentment for their father now being in the real world. They weren’t prepared. They said he had a temper but there was something that I will take with me from Dorian when he says that our culture is so oppressive that sex is taboo that leads to sexual frustration when can cause wars. He also says that it’s not a great person on how well you control your kids its how well you can control yourself. He really wanted to be with his family, that meant more to him then anything else he said without family and health you are nothing.
What inspired me was how I can relate to Dorian, I too am a lifeguard, and there is something about the water that cleanses your soul. I wanted to be like him and take off, and live at the beach, live healthily and quite smoking cigarettes. There is something that I have really thought about when I have kids. How I can raise them in the best environment, with loving and nurturing parents? In a way that Dorian did but not so extreme, kids have to have an education. There were parts were Dorians children looked back fondly and said they didn’t have to grow up by 16 like most kids.
What was frustrating was to hear how much his kids are struggling still to cope with the real world. They held resentment because Dorian never taught them the evils of the world and how they can get screwed by other people. Not having any schooling has really affected them as adults today. I don’t understand they did read books but couldn’t they have been home schooled. It was heartbreaking to see one of kids say he wanted to be a doctor every since he was little and couldn’t because it would take 10 years to get to a normal level to start to take classes to be a doctor. But now he is stuck cooking at a restaurant. It was hard to hear one of them say that you have to have money, it is evil but we need it to survive it has control over everything.
It was sad to hear that they haven’t talked in 7 years because of tensions between the brothers and Dorian. They had hated him that much and also the oldest brother David because he was like the captain always against his brothers and sister. That was something he really regretted. My self having 2 brothers and 1 sister we were all pretty close but it did seem if we were going to get called out to our parents, it would be from my oldest brother. I can also relate with the kids because my father was pretty strict and overbearing.
The concept of the film was a documentary style. With the montages of live interviews and old videos and pictures you get a see inside the Paskowitz. It showed the rise and fall of a pretty famous surf family that is still recovering. It is revealing up to the present about this close bohemian family and lifestyle. New York Times said it had a narrative arc from happy to sad to happy. The ending did give it hope but I think that this was a good place for us to leave this family you become so attached to. It was more about the dynamics and relationships of Dorian’s family then it was about surfing. Surfing is what leads him to go off the grid and in the end surfing can bring this family back together.
Jellyfish
Franki Starr
Jellyfish was an interesting movie. I watched the special feature with the interview with the writers and directors of Jellyfish, which were a husband and wife team. They talk about how it is a surrealist film. They wanted the lines to blend on what is real and imaginary. They seem to think that in their world of writing fiction it is not such a tall order to have that blending. It was great to get their perspectives after watching the movie. How they described the wedding photographer always trying to find the realness in weddings, she was essentially deconstructing the weddings, finding the realness not the cookie cutter fakeness. If I was in her position I would shoot weddings in that way too. Batya the main character is unhappy and envisions a child that represents her child hood where she might have been happier in that time. There was a sense of irony with the caregiver Joy that she had to leave her son with a caregiver to take care of somebody else, the elderly which there kids have left to someone else, how twisted was that.
What was frustrating is that I knew the little girl wasn’t real when I started to watch it. So through out the movie when the police officer and the taxi driver were talking directly to her it didn’t make since. I loved that little girl she was an essential part of Jellyfish, I wish she could have been real. There was even a picture that was taken of her in the movie.
The visual imagery throughout the movie is fantastic, the scene where Batya escapes the hospital in her gown in the rain and ties her shoe, even though what difference does it make, but when she stands up in front of her mother’s charity poster. The mother in the poster is doing this gesture with her hands that signifies something else but at that moment it represented shelter that Batya never got from her. All of these three women in the movie have a connection with the sea. This was where Batya came to mope, where the newly wed bride strived to see on their train wreck honey moon and Joys present of a ship to her son. They all find a comfort in the sea.
In the Village Voice review they said that the movie’s title suggests that its principles are amorphous creatures subject to the ocean’s mysterious currents. From what I can take from that is jellyfish are not solid shapes and seem to flow with the ocean currents, which is seems that’s what the characters do, just exist through life not having any control. The filmmakers said that the sea for people in Israel is a place where people can just be as they are, unconstrained by nationality and class. The sea is to be thought as another realm of the unconscious. That’s why through the movie if you didn’t realize the little girl wasn’t real you did when she and Batya had their moment in the sea at the end. There were moments where you start to realize the little girl is Batya like when they drink from the ceiling at different points in the movie. Everyone kept asking Bayta if she was okay, she was out of it, where maybe the police officer and taxi cab driver were humoring her. When the officer gave her food and the taxi cab didn’t charge her, I guess they felt sorry for her. Where it only seemed like some people could see the little girl.
Your formal logic is being questioned all the time with surrealist imagery that seems like reality. This movie takes analysis to a whole new level. I wonder if non visual people would get this movie.
Sourcerer’s choice artist
Kyle Cooper
Franki Starr
I know that everyone has seen Kyle Cooper’s work it just may not be so obvious. He does opening sequences to movies in very conceptual ways. One of his most famous openings was Seven some others are Dawn of the Dead, Incredible Hulk and Spiderman. I will have some YouTube links you should look for his opening movie sequences. He has been influenced by Saul Bass, a famous designer you might have seen his openings on Vertigo or North by Northeast http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIlqatMQSgI&NR=1 or Anatomy of a Murder http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLtRcd-BXQ8&NR=1 . It was said that they way he made the opening sequence to Seven sets the tone and showed how the murder’s mind works metaphorically. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEZK7mJoPLY There is something known as the Cooper effect that the opening title sequences are so good the movie fails in comparison. Not that Seven was one of them because this opening revolutionized movies but one the one I’m referring to was Flubber.
All the prints in his life he wanted to give motion to he saw them as freeze frames. He started Imaginary Forces a motion graphic company in California. He thought movies were behind typographically, he set out to change that. Conceptual design or art is the idea or subject is important which gives the viewer the meaning. Imaginary Forces philosophy was as long as it’s a solid idea and solving the problem successfully, no matter what the business or platform they would take it on. He reads the script and thinks about the idea and looks around for images that he can use. His company does a lot of research about their projects in movies; they my get a ruff cut or script and work closely with the director for the openings.
Kyle has moved on from Design Force choosing a smaller setting in Prologue having no more then 8 people on his team and only choosing to do limited movies. His ideas seem to be moving away from computer graphics, which is the trend now. It was all hand done work before the computer and now it’s coming back with more humanistic qualities. What it seems to be now is images done by hand and the computer is only there to help those images come to life with using programs like adobe flash and after effects. Kyle Cooper try’s to limit the computer with the title sequence of Seven, he cut the text directly onto the film frame by frame.
We were talking today about conceptual design in graphic design history. We are communicators and have to display our work conceptually. The Swiss International style has changed us for the better. They were the ones that moved Graphic design from designers to communicators.
His quote, he says artist process there issues through there work says there is a release of whatever you have to get rid of, once its accomplished He is solving his along with the movies issues. He is a visual artist just like we all are, no matter with photography, graphic design, or printmaking we express our selves through our work wither
Just take a look on the opening to catch me if you can and look at the classic 60s movie beginning. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVEgK3nCkao&feature=related
What better way to move toward the future as designers and photographers then to put motion and sequence to your work.
Pod cast Oct 30
Franki Starr
The subject was Halloween, talking with horror legend George Romero. Curt Anderson says this is the Golden Age of Zombies. He says why now? This is satisfying in a way when you see blood and splattered flesh. There has always been an underlying humor and all the different ways they have been killed. Romero never called or thought of them as Zombies at first. Zombies were always considered a voodoo tradition that is associated with the Caribbean. Romero called them flesh eaters that were associated with apocalyptic situations. They were only referred to zombies when critics would write about Romero’s movies and it has stuck since. Romero’s zombies were always the standard up until more recent zombie movies which now are able to run. What’s scary about them is they were once people that could be one of your family members that are dead that become reanimated and are coming to eat you.
Another part of the show talked about a graphic artist Noah Scalin who created a new skull design every day for and year and posted them to his blog Skull-a-Day. They were created with everyday objects like cereal, paperclips and whatever he had available. He was explaining why it is an important object. You see an instant recognition they are apart of our culture like on poisonous materials. Skulls have a long history and were used far back before written language. Momento mori which became popular in mid evil time period is you have to think about death, we have such a short time and we need to cherish our limited time we have on earth. He made some skulls with bullets and army men that had inspired soldiers in Iraq. This project for him was about being forced to really pay conscious attention to his world and really be present in everyday and every moment. He says you can’t help but look at a skull and realize that’s me too.
There was a old pod cast I saw that I got really excited about, it was Tom Savini and his school of special effects up in Pennsylvania. I have already looked into the school because the macabre interests me and I am always trying to include it in my work. What was really interesting was Tom Savini was a combat photographer in Vietnam. That was some thing I never knew, that has really affected his work. He has seen the real gore but he says there was a safety behind the camera and treated like special effects. If he didn’t get the same feeling when he created fake things like he did when he saw the real thing it wasn’t good enough. Curt Anderson put it this way; you can see through out his movies a replay of the horrors Vietnam and it is like therapy for him because now he has control of the horror.
The graphic artist Noah Scalin really spoke to me about his creative process. At one point he said he really pays conscious attention to his world. The photography assignment we are doing now really represents this. You almost have to become obsessive and think of new things to use or watch for. Also the fact that he is a graphic designer and he used everyday objects and not the computer really encourages me.
What was inspiring was to find out Tom Savini was a photographer before he got into special effects. My love of photography is equated with my love of the macabre. Usually great horror writers like Steven King or horror creatives like Tom Savini have gone through something really traumatic that they need to express through film or other mediums which transfers to the audience. When you can transfer your vision of horror, which really shakes audiences to the core you are successful. But what is frustrating to me is I have never gone through something so traumatic. So can I ever be a good horror creative without having something horrible happen to me?
This pod cast really relates to the way I make and think about art. In each class I take I always take one of our assignments and make it scary. Even in paper making I paper casted sculls with gruesome pictures wrapped inside. There is just something about the reaction you get from people, you know when you are watching a scary movie or have a bad dream that sinking feeling you get, and there is nothing else like it.
I thought the show was great; it really got good interviews of great people. I did a comparison of a George Romero film night of the living dead compared to a recent movie 28 days later. George had talked about a rift in the zombie community about how now zombies are able to run. Romero had said there is something scary about a slow moving thing that is hard to stop. The director of 28 days later said that a slow moving zombie is just dated and when something is running at you full speed it heightens the intensity. My opinion is no madder slow or fast it is still scary because it seems like a hopeless situation, but I guess zombies have to evolve to keep us scared I think the running zombies have raised the bar. I also have looked into Tom Savini School of special effects because I might be interested after I get out of school. Some of the classes are very interesting one that got my attention was the psychology of personalities.
Frieze
Theory
Franki Starr
In this issue of Frieze there was a reoccurring theme on theory. One of the first articles it talks about how theory in arts schools is fading away or into a more digestible form. They even mentioned Stanley Fish an anti-foundationalist as saying the end of the ‘age of theory’ was in the early 1980s. He says this because art terms like deconstructed were now being loosely used for anything.
In the next article Real Abstractions it was applying theory to the modern world. The writer was claiming we used watered down and vague anti-concepts like difference, sensation and multiplicity which he compared that to buffoon empiricism or consumerism. Empiricism means is that we gain knowledge through experience. The problem with this they say “is it makes a widespread view that making a determinate clam is dogmatic, oppressive, and even totalitarian.”
In the following article Ancient and Modern, the writer was making a comment on globalization in that with ‘theoria’ would prevent cultural differences from turning into cultural clashes. Theora was a Greek term used when contemplating or viewing as a spectator. She then pointed out that Ancients erased the traces of a crucial intercultural tradition marked by tolerant sharing and we today struggle with that removal.
The next article I saw Out of the Picture, I got really excited about because we learned about Malevich how he wanted “art for art sake” and how his red square meant so many things. In this article it talked about a great philosopher Vladimir Solovyov; without him his ideas wouldn’t have made it possible for the Russian spiritual renaissance.
Throughout Freieze the theme was theory they even got perspectives of 4 teachers at universities and art schools that seem to think that theory is dead, some thought that it is coming back because theory becomes popular at times of economic crisis.
These articles were hard to encompass because I am in the position of a student, where I think theory is taught to us through everyday through assignments. Every assignment that I have gotten this semester has been associated with a movement which can be theories. In photography the decisive moment with Henri Cartier, or Graphic design history with Moholy-Nagy with the telephone experiment exemplifying the Bauhaus movement. In typography our last assignment is we have to base our favorite movie into a poster based on a specific style like Art Nouveau or Swiss International Style. I think we receive theory at Longwood the best way through visual assignments that heighten our awareness.
What is frustrating is they are categorizing our generation into hopeless one I think this is wrong. One of the teachers in the article had said that some professors are hesitant on teaching theory because then the students would use those styles in there own work. Well I think that is missing the point of life. I am going to quote Mr. Lough a professor of graphic design who has told us this quote. We stand on the shoulders of giants meaning we see what has been done and do greater things.
this was Malevich pesent work. Look at how it is just basic shapes
Economist
Franki Starr
There was an interesting article in the Economist that has an impact on my work. It was the article about ‘The Odd Couple’, and how America should be much more confident in its dealings with its closest rival, China. It seems that I have a love hate relationship with China, which seems to parallel U.S. relations. U.S. hates Communism but the US is China’s biggest debtor. In some of Graphic design work I have used China but not in a good way. I have read and viewed pictures of China suppressing and killing the Tibetan celebration stamps monks especially in the last couple of years. I made celebration stamps celebrating Tibetans but downing Red China. But now as I am researching for a menu from a restaurant I have chose Susanna Foo’s Chinese restaurant. As I started my research I started to embrace the Chinese culture. I learned that they use the color red which we see from a western view as evil Red China but in fact it’s to symbolize happiness and prosperity, the red envelope is very important to there culture. I will use as a model for my menu after the red envelope.
The point of the article was to express the concerns about our growing economic problems and how tensions between us and China will probably grow into a cold war. Most likely from elections in both countries in 2012, and how tariffs on China exports will encourage protectionism in America. It seems that the writer thinks both countries are insecure and need to find common ground to come up with global policies to help climate and green technologies.
If I had to make a piece of art work it would have to show insecurities and how they can blow up into some more i.e. cold war. Now on the cover of the economist is showed a paranoid Uncle Sam looking at Mao Zedong as Mao looked straight forward confidently in an illustration. My art work would want to show how are insecurities grow that can lead to catastrophe. Paranoia would be obvious but I would want it to be a subtle photograph where you would really have to understand what is going on in the world. Like citizen leader art that makes a social statement. I would make it a photomontage to get my point across.
(can you see the look of paranoia on the face of Uncle Sam!)
these were my celebration stamps based on the struggle of the Tibetans under Chinese rule
this is what I based my menu on the scared Chinese red envelope
this is the front of my menu based on the Chinese envelope
