Michael B Art 118 Digital Arts: Culture, Theory, Practice

Iterations

Culture

Warhol is one of my favorite digital creatives. I love his use of complimentary and vibrant colors that just pop on any medium. I also love food which a lot of his work demonstrates, and more specifically; donuts. When I saw the requirements and examples for this project, I immediately thought Warhol. Not sure if there's a better artist to be inspired by for this project. In my own iteration, I demonstrate my own personal aesthetic by using vibrant and complimentary colors based off of one color I was originally drawn towards. Along with the film grain texture effect applied to the whole image which is similar to the idea behind my remix iterations. I also prefer the aesthetic of the donuts with horizontal lines for frosting leading me to edit the fourth donut differently.

Theory

Value: perceived quality, importance and usefulness. Economic, creative, technical, social, cultural, etc. external, and dependent on context. Andy Warhol's work demonstrates American cultural value as we can see with his key themes of celebrity, identity, money, death and time. I chose to replicate the donut image because I love donuts and they have a perceived quality of importance to me :D

Edition: a defined number of identical artworks. Often 2D, traditionally printed on paper, and edition size influence value. Andy Warhol is notorious for using this critical concept in the majority of his works. He either uses identical artworks repeated with different colors, or slight variations of the same image, like with the donut. His work has a flat, graphic quality similar to that found in the media. For the sake of the project and practice, I wanted to go the second route, creating slight variations of each donut.

Practice

While surfing the web for a color palette, I came across this color that I wanted to incorporate: #00f59b. I went to Adobe color wheel, made the primary color #00f59b, and set it to double split complimentary and got five vibrant colors that I knew would pop. Using the rulers and rectangle tool, I created my four workspaces and grouped them together adding a film grain effect. I used the ellipse tool and made two ellipses, one inside of the other. Using the shape builder tool, I deleted the center ellipse. With the pen tool, I added a few more anchor points and used the direct selection tool to adjust the curvature. I duplicated this shape and shrunk it down a bit for the frosting, also adjusting the curvature. Grouping these two shapes together, I duplicated it three more times for the remaining donuts, customizing the shape of each one with the direct selection tool. Each donut has the same stroke width and profile. Each donut has it's own unique drop shadow effect. I used the curvature tool to shape the glaze frosting for donuts one and four. Both have the same outer glow effect. I used the pen tool to create the sprinkles on donut three, each with the same weight and round cap, along with a drop shadow effect. Same thing with the star sprinkles for donut 2 but obviously used the star shape tool. Last, I added the same film grain effect to all four donuts.

Remediation

Inspiration: Mark Neal

Iterations

Culture

Mark Neal photographs and captures the beautiful architecture of buildings from a familiar 'ground up' perspective as if you're physically standing on the ground looking up at the sheer size of these buildings. Being Italian, I was immediately drawn to Neal's photograph of the iconic Roman Colosseum. I was not only inspired by this image because of all the different lines, arches, shapes and shadows that could be drawn; but also because of how iconic the colosseum is. Once modified to match my personal aesthetic of creamy and earthy tones, the iteration is still easily recognizable.

Theory

Representation: something that stands in for and takes the place of something else. Sensory information described in a medium, may resemble the thing it corresponds to, or not, and organizes reality by constructing meaning. In my own work, the hand draw looking image on left represents the infamous building of the colosseum in Rome, Italy. The pen tool is used as a medium to represent the architectural reality of the colosseum giving meaning by being able to instantly determine what the building is.

Mimesis: representations that mimic the real world. Art imitates nature, simulation technology improves, and increases accuracy of representations. In my own work, the image on the right mimics the real world with the use of the live paint bucket. Sampling and copying the identical colors from the original and then being able to accurately represent those colors all over the image shows how simulation technology has improved.

Practice

I started off with cropping the image to 5"x5" which cropped out the bottom part of the image that originally contained the street with cars, people, and construction fences. Moving to the first artboard, I started tracing the major defining lines, arches and shapes of the colosseum. Making sure to close off shapes was difficult with some of the straight lines and took an absurd amount of time to complete. From there, I used the stroke width tool to create a custom stroke of a line and applied it to all the lines to give a more hand drawn look. Moving to the second artboard, I used the live paint bucket in sync with the eyedropper tool to copy the appearance of every individual shape and fill it in with that color so that each shape had a unique color. Finally, turning off eyeball on the underlying image displays my iterations.

Remix

Inspiration: Design Syndrome

Iterations

Culture

Design Syndromes work demonstrates remix culture by creating a collage in the design of posters, reworking other creatives images and modifying it with text, textures and colors. I was inspired by the textures used and wanted to emulate it giving my iteration the vibe of a postcard. This aesthetic of textures used in design syndromes work influenced my selection of images from artists from the renaissance era; Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci. While also appreciating the ancient architecture of the city of Firenze.

Theory

Remix Culture: a tendency to emulate, appropriate, and rework creations. Builds upon others' work, adds and modifies new components, and retains traces of the original. Design Syndrome's work builds upon others work with the use of images and modifies them with cropping and color change, while still retaining traces of the original, creating a new component in the form of a poster. I wanted emulate this same idea in my iterations creating a new component in the form of a postcard.

Derivative Works: legal term for new content created in full or in part from one or more pre-existing works. Builds upon others' creative work, adds and modifies new components, retains traces of the original, and is a product of remix culture. My iterations created new content from pre-existing works from two major renaissance artists from Florence; Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci. While adding and modifying new components from Design Syndrome's textures and vector images.

Practice

The technical workflows of my own iterations and Design Syndromes work are very similar. After watching our class tutorials and then a demonstration from Design Syndrome, the workflow is almost identical. First, using the object selection tool to create a new layer mask of Michelangelo's famous hand mural and duplicate that into the background, changing the opacity and blending mode to multiply. Then repeated this with a cutout of Mona Lisa's face, created a new layer cutout with the quick selection tool and created a clipping mask to insert her face, changing the opacity and blending mode to match. Same clipping mask process for the two textures added on top of everything. For the text, I modified the Michelangelo selection and expanded by 100, smooth by 100, make path work by 10, then with the text tool, wrote out the text which also has a texture clipping mask and used the eyedropper tool to grab a color from one of the buildings. I then added in some vector images that I thought gave it more of a postcard look.

Myth

Inspiration

Junya Watanabe (jungraphy_)

Iterations

Culture

Theory

Culture: the human development of knowledge, beliefs, and behaviors that depend upon social learning (collective experience based on place and time, accepted, often without question, a way of life).

Myth of Photographic Truth: the assumption that photographic representations convey reality, but due to subjective framing and editing decisions there is an inherent lack of accuracy (editing in post-production, what to represent / how to frame content, idiosyncrasies of capture device).

Practice

Used the following Adobe Photoshop tools on original (left) to create the iteration on the right: Clone Stamp, Healing Brush, Content Aware Move, Spot Healing Brush, Content Aware Fill, Generative Fill.

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