Ways of Seeing – FYLC Fall 2018
First Year Learning Community
These are the sketches that I had for my final two photographs that I wanted to use for the compositions. I had trouble finding out what were the ambiguous and stable figure/ground compositions. I spent about an hour on these sketches.
My name is Brianna Maldonado, currently enrolled in City Tech and majored in the study of Communication Design. I’ve always loved the way things have been designed for the public, like when you see movie posters or advertisements in the subway and I got really into it when I entered high school. Even though it is something I would love to do in my future, my passions and things I enjoy the most are reading, writing, and watching movies. Ever since I was little I would always be reading and once I learned how to write stories or even argumentative essays I would enjoy doing it. Watching films or breaking down films has also been a passion for me because each one has its own story and their own way of expressing it. I always had this personal philosophy that you should always do what makes you the happiest, even if it’s not something you would want to do as a career, you can have it as a hobby. My hobby of watching films all the time, introduced me to looking at advertisements and even the movie posters. I became so curious on how they would pick a particular design to capture the audience’s attention or just random people passing by in subways or in any public setting. That’s also how my personality is too, I like to keep myself open minded to different interests because I don’t think I can only enjoy doing one thing, and sticking to one thing. That’s how my aesthetic is, always trying to see the brighter side to a situation or a different point of view, I’m always trying to be optimistic because I don’t wanna waste my time thinking negatively. Making others laugh or smile is something I add to my personal philosophy because I think you should treat people the way you want to be treated, and you never know when someone is having a rough day so be that person that can make it a little better. So even though I might have my rough days because of my loadwork for school my goals for college is to really push myself to keep my grades up and to not underestimate myself to get a Bachelor’s degree. In 5 to 10 years I want to be traveling, teaching abroad and here in the States because I always felt like I was good with explaining myself and teaching others.
My avatar is a cartoon version of myself which is to represent how I look, and also the tiny cartoon version of myself is also a little humorous because people realize how much it does look like me. I didn’t want to put anything specific about my major or my passions represented in my avatar because I don’t think that truly represents me. My personality and aesthetic is something I say truly represents me. I wouldn’t want to change it now that I’ve explained what my passions are and what I enjoy to do. My avatar has orange-reddish hair in a little afro, green glasses, some hoop earrings, and a yellow shirt with some blue little pants. So, basically this avatar looks exactly like me because I have my hair like that all the time. My glasses are green, and I’m always usually wearing earrings because I love accessories. If I wanted to change my avatar, I would change it to a particular movie poster maybe because it doesn’t just show my love for movies but for design as well.
Overall my profile I think completes me because I wanted to show what I think means the most to know about me. My passions and my personal philosophy is something I want people to read to get me and my avatar is something I want to represent something else. I think it’s going to definitely develop by the time I get my degree, and get a better sense of what I would want to do in 5 to 10 years. I want to see how people or professors see how much my profile might change once I finish my first year of college.
My name is Brianna Maldonado, currently enrolled in City Tech and majored in the study of Communication Design. I’ve always loved the way things have been designed for the public, like when you see movie posters or advertisements in the subway and I got really into it when I entered high school. Even though it is something I would love to do in my future, my passions and things I enjoy the most are reading, writing, and watching movies. Ever since I was little I would always be reading and once I learned how to write stories or even argumentative essays I would enjoy actually doing it. Watching films has always been something that really made me happy because each one has its own stories and ways of expressing it. I always had this personal philosophy that you should always do what makes you the happiest, even if it’s not something you would want to do as a career, you can have it as a hobby. My hobby of watching films all the time introduced me to looking at advertisements and the movie posters and I was so curious on how they did those to capture the audience’s attention or just random people passing by. That’s also how my personality is too, I like to keep myself open-minded to different interests because I don’t think I can only enjoy doing one thing and sticking to one thing. That’s how my aesthetic is, and always trying to see the brighter side to things, always trying to be optimistic because I don’t wanna waste my time being negative. So, always trying to see the best in a situation and making others laugh or smile because I think you should treat people the way you want to be treated. So even though I might have my rough days because of my load work for school my goals for college is to really push myself to keep my grades up and to not underestimate myself to get a Bachelor’s degree.
My avatar is a cartoon version of myself which is to represent how I look, and also the tiny cartoon version of myself is also a little humorous because people realize how much it does look like me. I didn’t want to put anything specific about my major or my passions represented in my avatar because I don’t think that truly represents me. My personality and aesthetic is something I say truly represents me. I wouldn’t want to change it now that I’ve explained what my passions are and what I enjoy to do. My avatar has orange-reddish hair in a little afro, green glasses, some hoop earrings, and a yellow shirt with some blue little pants. So, basically, this avatar looks exactly like me because I have my hair like that all the time. My glasses are green, and I’m always usually wearing earrings because I love accessories.
Overall my bio and avatar really satisfy me because I think it represents me and what I want to specifically show to my peers.
noun
“a loud confused noise”
– Cambridge University
This word was found in a little excerpt that Professor Spevack gave each student, to show each one of us a new word. So, I got the word tumult and the sentence it was used in was, “The element smacks the sides of the hull with a sound like a gong, and the pilot can sense this tumult in the quivering of his body.” In this context the pilot can feel a noise even through his body, and the previous even describe the noise as a “gong”.
I really loved this work, it was called “Portal Soundscapes”. It caught my eye when I was walking towards it because I didn’t really see that it was a speaker, it just looked like a ceiling lamp or something. I really enjoyed this particular piece because I don’t know how but because the speaker was emitting sounds above me I felt like I was really hearing these sounds in person. What I mean by that is each sound was a different place and different sounds so I felt like I was right there witnessing all these sounds, I think if I would’ve closed my eyes I could imagine being in the scenarios they put down and watching all this noise and sounds happening. This piece was made by Shared_Studios, an organization that creates two-way audio/video connections between dozens of cities around the globe. Made in 2018.
I think a lot of people missed this one, it was one of the works that had to do with smell. There were five glass domes that had those little cups that had a particular scent to them. These glass domes had a tiny indented opening that would allow you to sniff, I think a lot of people didn’t really like the smelling pieces, even though there were a lot of them. This piece was made by Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello in Oakland, California. Made from 2015–17. Everything was 3D-printed.
noun
1: tedious sameness
2: sameness of tone or sound
(Merriam-Webster Dictionary)
or
“without variety or change, excessive repetition (or no repetition) can lead to uninteresting compositions.”
– COMD1101 definition
This word came up while learning new words for our project having to do with line & rhythm. This word stood out amongst the other words because I didn’t recognize the word. This word has to do with our project, now knowing the definition, it has to do with rhythm and how in some artwork there is no variety or just nothing going on in the composition. The main definitions aren’t applied to like an art definition however, the one given for our project is. So, many other things can apply to this word because it describes how something can be so boring because there is no change.
This project was very different and interesting from any other art projects I’ve done. The whole process was a little stressful for me because it took such a long time and a lot of steps but it was good to see my final product and my classmates’ final products. I did learn how to visually achieve ambiguous and stable compositions, which I think a lot of other people achieved, I just don’t think I achieved that. However, I was fine with going into class to present my final compositions and getting the constructive criticism that I did. Now that I know what to do for upcoming projects, like posting everything and trying to rework certain things, which I look forward to future projects.
For this part of the project I worked about an hour for both to come out how I wanted them to. I picked two different pictures, and they both ended up being stable compositions. However, the reason why I chose those two pictures which were both paintings. One was ribs and the other a human heart, they both showed organic, natural curves and I really wanted to show that. I decided to really make the shapes stand out by having them both contrast each other which is something i recieved positive criticism for.
In the video Ways of Seeing/John Berger, there are many things he points out but they all contribute to one main idea. From 7:00 to 20:00 of the video, the main idea is shown by different points, which is that even though the modernization of viewing art has grown, you can only get the true meaning and experience of art by seeing it with your own eyes. John Berger expresses this by giving you three different ways of how viewing art isn’t as impactful as looking at in person with your own eyes. The three ways are the camera, sound, and movement.
John expresses how the invention of the camera took away the inability to experience looking at art with our own eyes, and also just the value of looking at them in person. “The camera, by making the work of art transmittable, has multiplied its possible meanings and destroyed its unique original meaning. They have lost and gained. The most important thing about the paintings themselves is that their images are silent, still.” (11:16-11:31) So, in this he’s saying how because of a camera and producing duplicates of artwork, for the convenience of people it creates people to believe a painting has way more meanings than what the artist intended, “unique original meaning”. Now at the end of that quote, he talks about a painting being silent. This is where he transitions into sound, and how it affects the viewing of art, and what he’s saying is that you’re meant to look at art silently so you can process everything going on in it. Adding music or sounds while viewing a painting or piece of artwork, makes it feel like you need to feel a certain way about the art because of the tone of how the music or sounds make you feel. From 16:23-16:53 they show a painting of Van Gogh that he did right before killing himself, they show the painting in silence, and then they show the painting with very slow rhythm music. “This meaning is liable to be manipulated and transformed,” (18:48).
So then the final way he talks about the being manipulated so that people can’t experience its true meaning is movement. This more has to do with an actual film camera where you can look at art on television or video. He talks about how camera movement makes the viewer only see what and where the “main point” of the painting. Which excludes the whole experience of looking at the artwork with your own eyes and taking in every detail instead of zooming in on a detail with a camera. “The camera moves in to remove a detail of a painting from the whole,” and, ” You have been waiting impatiently for the camera to go in to examine details” (13:39 & 15:03).
John Berger expresses how there are main things a camera can do to manipulate the ways of seeing art by duplicating, movement, and sound. A camera deletes the human interaction of looking at a painting, original and in silence. The modernization of viewing art made it convenient for people to view art but not experience the true meaning that these artists tried to convey.
Past participle verb
1: “to establish an order”
2: “to issue an order”
– Merriam Webster Dictionary
The word ordained was found in the reading: “Wind, Sand, Stars” written by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. The sentence the author uses the word is, “It is as if there were a natural law which ordained that to achieve this end, to refine the curve of a piece of furniture, or a ships kneel, or the fuselage of an airplane, until gradually it partakes of the elementary purity of the curve of a human breast or shoulder, there must be the experimentation of several generations of craftsmen.”
The reason he uses the word ordained in this quote is that he’s trying to explain that there isn’t a law that is forcing these craftsmen to perfect the ultimate perfect project. After this quote, he explains that to achieve perfection is not to add more and more to their work but when you stripe everything to its purity that is when it’s absolute perfection because of the simplicity. So in this, he’s trying to say as if there is some natural law that enforces these craftsmen to keep and keep trying to refine their work when it doesn’t need to be.
The word ordain or ordained is used a lot for religious reasons like saying: “So the gods have ordained these new rules,” or “Now she will become an ordained minister.” So, the word also has another type of definition in the Christian community which is to make someone a priest or minister. However, the definition I put for the word goes with how the author was trying to use it.
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