In some other world, these pieces were placed for someone to find them! One man’s garbage…is another mans treasure. Hopefully all of my discoveries find a home soon.

Ambiguous

#1: At one point in time, I believe there was nothing but dirt planted in the area of this photograph. I took this photo of the ground around a tree. Someone maybe saw that just soil wasn’t as enticing to look at. So they decided that small chippings of wood made the tree more appealing. The shapes here are organic. When looking closely, you can see overlapping. The shading gives a sense of chipped wood. The figure/ground relationship is 50/50. That means this photograph is ambiguous.

Obvious

#2: This is a picture of the floor at the Utica Avenue station in Brooklyn. The shape really caught my eye. So I angled it in a way that made the picture obvious. The darker shape is the 30 percent of the picture. The light grey is the 70 percent of the picture. Thinking of the color way to the train gives me an understanding of why geometric shapes were chosen. I also feel like the school and playground located exactly above the station could have made an impact on the geometric feel to the station.

Ambiguous

#3: This is a picture of the baseboard to the MTA bus wall. In person, the baseboard looks like its a metal border that is painted black. The reflection of the light on the paint makes the texture look like leather. I consider this to be ambiguous because of the 50/50 ratio between the light and shade in the photo. After I transferred the photo to tracing paper, you could tell a lot easier that the figure/ground relationship is ambiguous.

Obvious

#4: This Con Edison plug looks like a button. I honestly believe that it is a plug on an electric pipe that possibly leads to the power plant on 14 street in Manhattan. This photograph has a 70/30 figure/ground relationship. When I look at the picture, I can easily distinguish that there’s a Con Edison plug first. Then I notice that there’s a bunch of background area that takes up most of the photo. What catches my eye is the Con Edison.

Ambiguous

#5: This is a zoomed in photo of a subway train wall. At first glance, in person, you’ll notice that the wall looks like a smooth, solid grey surface. I’m thinking that the interior designer put a lot of thought into a sort of pixel version of their design to get the desired look. In the photograph the shapes are organic. There’s a flow to the shapes rather than a bunch of purposely paced circles that would have given a geometric look. The photograph’s figure/ground relationship here is 50/50.

Obvious

#6: These are cigarette buds found on sidewalk. I would say the shape is organic because they once were cylinder shapes. In the hands of either a man or woman, the form of the cigarette became distorted. To me, the distortion came from the pressure of the forefinger and the middle finger as it was smoked by the person. The figure/ground relationship here is definitely 70/30, making the photo obvious. My focus is to the cigarette buds first, then towards the background.

Walking around Queens, I found the objects/fragments below that I considered to have either an ambiguous or obvious figure/ground relationship.

1. Ambiguous
2. Obvious
3. Ambiguous

We live in a world of tidiness. Homes are tidy, the people in the homes are tidy, the streets surrounding are gleaming. The year is 2030, and the trash and recycling bins they’ve placed on all the corners are finally doing their jobs. When we walk down the streets there’s no litter or marks in sight… Until we come across this estranged stain on a particular corner of a particular street. They must have missed a spot. Or maybe they left it there because it was too difficult to remove.4. Obvious

I’ve lived here for two seasons of spring and the purple plastic remains. The leaves sprout and inevitably fall off again, and still it stays, as if it’s a neighborhood resident too. No matter the weather it’s frayed limbs catch the air. It’s color is bright and cheery but it’s current state makes it dark and dreary.5. Ambiguous 6. Obvious

Obvious Image #1

Walls of the dirty subway station

The stains of sea salt drip down

leaving marks from the salty sidewalks

Dirt, layer upon of layer

Leaving the debris thickening

To make the project a little more fun, I wrote a free verse poem of how I thought the organic drips of white salt got to where it is, displayed in the picture above. It is obvious in the top half of the image is on a flat surface. There are no shadows along the white stains that affect the relationship the relationship of the figure to the ground.

Obvious Image #2

Layered in Lacquer

Shattered by a mean thump

Did someone bang the table?

Or was it the decay of some cheap paint,

that no one cared for?

I really like this image due to the organic lines that spread out through the whole image. The cracks along the painted surface reminds me of ice beginning to melt after the winter cold. I also did not notice at first, but the two “dot” figures on the left appear to look like eyes; eyes giving a side look of curiosity.

Obvious Image #3

Splat on the ground

Worn away from wonderers

It appears ghostly

This obvious image is in a sort of geometric-organic shape. One can see that it is in a circular shape, but it is also not a perfect circle/oval. This stain on the ground is probably from a piece of gum left on the floor and all the dirt probably did not get removed. The relationship of the figure to ground is very apparent and clear. It does not confuse the eyes with the different shades in the photo.

Ambiguous #1

This image in color appears to be obvious, but I know once I start to transfer this image it will become ambiguous to the eyes due to the binary colors used for the project. The colors used in the project will make the figure to ground relationship very ambiguous to what the figure truly is.

This image shows a left over piece of gum left on the subway grounds. It also looks like a dead butterfly on the ground.

Ambiguous #2

This is obviously an ambiguous image due to the relationship of colors. It is 50/50 in both white and black, making the figure here very ambiguous to viewers.