Digital Art Exam Piece

Gig Poster

DVD cover

We had to design a DVD cover that would advertise ourselves. I chose to advertise myself as a fashion designer. 

Digital Painting

Pears :)



Pear in normal colours

Monochromatic Pear

Pear in complementary colours

Abstract Pear in Analogous colours

"I like to draw stuff sometimes..."

I learnt this technique while I was in high school, in grade 10. I really liked the finished effect, so I have carried on producing these "Word Drawings". Over the years of practice I have refined my technique and I am happier and happier with how they are turning out.
 These works are better viewed from a distance as the words group together and create the image better from afar; close up the detail is lost slightly, but the viewer is able to read the words that I have used to make up the image. This effect is intentional.

Close up view

This is my latest work. I produced it one an A2 size and I used  a normal ball point pen.

Composition Photos

Coke Bottle Girl

 Ok, so we had to take pairs of photos that had some kind of simularity; whether it was colour, composition, texture or pattern it didn't matter.
This coke bottle pair in my opinion is very avant garde. I likened the girl's curves to the coke bottle. I also found the colours that she was wearing and the colours of the vending machine a simularity.


Thembi's Doo

My friend has a very edgey and "over-the-top" hairstyle. I was desperate to find a flower that looked like her hair. I was thinking of an azalea, but I couldn't find any. I likened the rock and its colour to Thembi's complexion. The shape of the bush has a very similar shape to the shape of her hairstyle.



Fire Extinguishers

This was a very straight forward simularity, that's what caught my attention...the simplicity of this compostion.

Assignment 2

RATIONALE:

 I was very inspired by the work of Peter Fischli and David Weiss. They photographed a series of different foods and made them into characters. They had made people out of different meats and made an amateur looking city that these characters live in. I liked this idea; I wanted to experiment with food too. My other inspiration was Wolfgang Tillmans. In one of his works he photographed food ripening on a window sill. This gave me the idea of watching the decaying process.

 I developed this idea more to the effect the environment has on certain objects. How in time and exposure to the environment, objects change form and often identity.

 I took 4 different arrangements of objects and photographed them over time and documented their change. My first progression is a bunch of flowers in a jar with water. I photographed these flowers over about 2 weeks. The changes were radical. The petals started to drop and the water became less and changed colour. My second progression was of an apple and a banana. This progression I also took over about 2 weeks. My most amazing finding was the insect life that these decaying fruits attracted and how these insects contributed to the decaying process. My third progression was a jug of milk. I took this over 2 weeks. The viscosity of the milk was the most apparent change. This progression showed the biggest change of identity in my opinion. My last progression was of a bone that we feed to our domestic dogs. I always thought it was interesting how our dogs who we perceive as being mellow with us as its owner, can cause this much change to an object with the strength of their jaws and teeth. I took a photograph of the bone before the change, in the process of the change and then at the end when it had changed form.

 This decaying process we don’t actually take notice of. It’s just a part of life, but I wanted to show how interesting this process is by documenting the changes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Assignment 1

This project was called "The Poetics of Space". This project was influenced and based on the works of Gary Wallis.
With the use of photoshop I created these abstract pieces. I used three layers of different photographs and adjusted the opacity levels to get a specific effect.



These are 3 photos of my surroundings in the Old Main Building on campus. I took a photo of a spiral staircase, an abstract view of a stair railing and a courtyard. The viewer's eye doesn't really know where to focus and that was the intention.

This work is of an intersection in 50 Durban road. I took a basic view of the traffic going through an intersection, then I took a photo of the robot first going green then it changing to red. The robot is definitely the focal point and the background is very faded as it is just creating the scene, as the viewer's eye should be focusing on the robot.

 

I took 3 photos of a construction site near Scottsville Mall. I took one of just the general view of the site, then 2 other photos of the workers performing different tasks. This is my favourite photograph out of the 3 I have posted.

 

Case Study of a Contemporary Art Photographer

Peter Fischli and David Weiss:

(Artist from chapter 4 of “The Photograph as Contemporary Art”)

 

Peter Fischli and David Weiss were an artist duo who had been collaborating work ever since 1979. They were from Switzerland and were very well known for their contemporary work as photographers in particular. Their most famous work was in a film called “The Way Things Go”; their work in this film was described as being “post-apocalyptic”. Their work in this film was all about objects flying and crashes and explosions. Fischli is still alive; he lives and works in Zurich. Weiss died on the 27^th of April in 2012.   

Fischli studied at Accademia di Belle Arti, Urbino and the Accademia di Belle Arti, Bologna. Weiss, after discovering that he didn’t enjoy any type of design and decorating degree, he enrolled in Kunstgewerbeschule in Basel and for a while worked as a sculptor. He then moved to New York and this is where he discovered minimalist art. Fischli and Weiss met in 1978. They were in a rock band called Migros for a very short time. Their first collaborated work was called “Wurstserie”(“sausage series”, 1979). This work depicted scenes constructed with different types of meat, sausages and everyday objects.

Fischli and Weiss’s work was described as being ironic and humorous. Their work seemed like it was influenced by Marcel Duchamp, Dieter Roth and Jean Tinguey. Fischli/Weiss’s work was described as being “parody bearing”. They used photography, film, sculptures from different materials and installations. They took objects from everyday life and arranged them into art pieces in a humorous and ironic manner.

“Wurstserie” was a very interesting piece of Fischli/Weiss. They created normal and ordinary scenes which no longer appeared ordinary as they created these scenes with sausages and meat. They created scenes in the city with buildings made out of cardboard boxes, cars made out of mini sausages (that have been cut to resemble cars) and sliced gherkins to resemble sidewalks. Another part to this piece shows people that have been made out of sausages and thinly sliced meat. One that caught my attention in particular is of one sausage that is stooped over with a thin piece of ham wrapped around it. To me it looks like an old man with a shawl around his shoulders. This is so original and very clever as the items of meat really do resemble what they are intended to look like (i.e. cars, people and shawls).

In a point in their work Fischli and Weiss experimented a lot with balancing daily objects and making them into art pieces. My favourite of these “balancing works” is “Equilibres – quiet afternoon”. This was a series of balancing objects that Fischli and Weiss photographed. They are arranged in very precarious positions and in very Avant-Garde ways. Dull, mundane backgrounds were used as shadows could be cast on them and they were fully visible in the photograph. Fischli/Weiss used harsh shadows behind their objects, but this created another dimension to their works. My favourite photograph out of the series is of 5 shoes that are interlocked and are balancing in that position. It’s so dynamic and geometric.

These contemporary artists who create art works using everyday objects intrigue me anyway, so Fischli and Weiss’s work intrigues me to no end! They take these daily objects and not only create an art work, but they position them in such a way that their works can never just be glanced over. Their work is extremely attention grabbing, dynamic and original.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Fischli_%26_David_Weiss

“Equilibres – quiet afternoon”. “Wurstserie”

Précis of "The Photograph as Contemporary Art"

Chapter 4:

“Something and Nothing”

The following chapter refers to ordinary, non-human, daily objects and viewing them as being extraordinary, and admired as art. These daily objects are objects that we as humans over look and would never normally admire as art. The contemporary artists/photographers mentioned in this chapter arrange these seemingly normal objects in such a way that the viewer conceptualises it in way they wouldn’t normally, and admire the photograph as a work of art.  This type of photography pushes the boundaries of what is considered art and what isn’t.

Many of the artists juxtapose ordinary objects in an extraordinary way and this redefines the reason and point of the object. The photographers balance and stack objects; they take still images of corners of things, unoccupied spaces, rubbish and transitory forms such as snow, condensation and light. The way that these objects are arranged and photographed makes the viewer contemplate the world around us.

These conceptual photographers go by the saying of, “how the object came to be there and what act brought that object into focus”; the attention is not on the artist and how they created the work. Marcel Duchamp was a strong influence for these conceptual photographers. Peter Fischil and David Weiss are examples of conceptual photographers who have chosen to balance and stack ordinary objects to create an artwork. They used mundane objects against dull backgrounds and agonizing shadows. Quiet Afternoon is an example.

A Mexican artist, Gabriel Orozco experimented with found objects. His piece called Breath on Piano is an example. It is of a corner of the piano and on the piano is a section of condensation where someone has breathed onto the shiny and smooth surface.

The artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres experimented with the mixture of domestic and public environments. He photographed an unmade bed to show the absence of a couple. It shows the imprints of where the couple lay and this implies an intimate moment. This image was then placed in a public area.  This induces the public to think   about their own personal and similar experiences.

Jason Evans’s work entails a black and white series of photographs. New Scent is an example of one of his works. This photograph is of an odd sculptural form induced by weather conditions. It is of silt and sand build up after coastal rainstorms.

Nigel Shafran’s Sewing Kit invites the viewer into an imaginary investigation of the room. Shafrans uses objects of daily life such as grass cuttings, scaffolding and washing up on a draining board. He wants to show poetically how we live our lives and how unconsciously we display and order objects in a specific way.

A German artist, Wolfgang Tillmans is an artist who with found objects creates abstract photography. He also photographs landscape, portrait and fashion. He photographs simple, but affecting scenes such as fruit ripening on a window sill, sparse kitchen cupboards and clothing that has been abandoned by its owner.  Suit is an example of his “discarded clothes” subject matter. This shows the item of clothing was once worn by someone and the shapes of their body is suggested.

Laura Letinsky photographed still-life’s with a different dimension to them. She shows the relationship of humans and the suggested presence of humans in her still-life’s.

These are only a few artists mentioned from this chapter as most of them all have the “daily object representation” subject matter in common. This chapter shows the evolution of contemporary photography and the innovativeness of the artists mentioned in the above précis.