Project 4 Research

Feng Zhu Design

Feng Zhu is a concept artist who has worked on movies such as Transformers, Star Wars, TMNT, and videogames companies such as Electronic Arts.

The overall design of the site is relativly simple. There are six main pages. The gallery page is broken down into projects Feng has worked on. Each page is accessed with roll over tabs. Text is used when necessary on the main pages except on the About Me section with would require a larger amount of text.

The site has a fall color scheme, two-tone brown and orange with text being either white or a very dark blue or black. The contrast of the text to the background makes it very easy to read.

In the gallery section the pictures are divided up by project. Each project has between 5 and 60 thumbnails and when clicked on the picture zooms in via pop up window. The pop-upalso gives option to view the pictures in sucession by clicking a next button; instead of selecting them individually.

Research for Project 3

 Vladimir Tatlin (1885-1953) was a Russian painter and architect in the constructivist movement. His most famous piece was a design for The Monument to the Third International, which is now known as Tatlin’s Tower. The reason I chose Tatlin is because I’m familiar with his piece Tatlin’s Tower as architecture. The tower would have been the tallest s structure in the world, dwarfing the Eiffel Tower. While some would argue that the tower is a mess of steel and glass I believe that there is a minimalist beauty to it.

Alexander Archipenko (1887-1964) was a Ukrainian avant-garde artist, sculptor and graphic artist. He used negative space or voids to create a new way of looking at the human figure, showing a number of views of the subject simultaneously.

Tony Smith (1912-1980) was an American sculptor, visual artist, and a noted theorist on art. He is primarily known for his influential Minimalist sculpture. In the early 40’s he worked for Frank Llyod Wright and introduced him to module concrete blocks.


 

Mark di Suvero is an American abstract expressionist sculptor. He specializes in oversized metal sculpture. His sculptures can be found all over the world. I find his sculptures interesting because despite the fact that they sculptures are bare I beams he manages to arrange the pieces in a way that still keeps them interesting and engaging.

  

Joan Miro was a Spanish Catalan painter sculptor and ceramist. He has been classified as a surrealist, and regularly voiced contempt for conventional painting methods. Miro famously declared an “assassination of painting” in favor of upsetting the visual elements of established painting.

Proposal

For project our objective is to create a 2-5 minute video using a video camcorder and iMovie. This piece should give us some kind of insight about YOU - your personality, your world, your ideas, how you see things, how people see you - What is YOUR identity, or how do you INTERPRET identity? (Ideas: Who aren't you? Who is your alter ego? How do you see yourself in connection to digital technology or society? How do others see you? Where do you come from? What is your history? What is your future? Tell us a story. Explore the physical – your body, your "space".)

I have decided to attempt to take on a stop motion film using LEGOSs or similar small figures. The video will portray a small story or maybe small battle. The video will be taken in my basement using furniture and created objects as props and landscape. The film will be for pure enjoyment with no particular meaning behind it. Audio will be dubbed in after the video is assembled. I will provide any voices if necessary.

If that falls through I can always get my friends together and stage a sword/lightsaber fight in a field somewhere. Which of course would showcase my nerdyness to unheard of levels. 

Video Art Quiz

1) Name an early artist mentioned in the article for Conceptual Work performing in front of the camera. Describe a work.
- Gary Hill, used language and text as integral fashion as others use music in video art. In Electronic Linglll'stics he attempts to interpret the shape of an electronic sound visually by picturing in fact succession moving electronically generated shapes on the screen.

2) Name an artist mentioned who deals with Personal Narative. Describe a work.
- Phyllis Baldino -  Cosmetic/Not Cosmetic - performance tapes in which she constructs and deconstructs everyday objects in front of a continuously recording camera. She questioned the stereotypical female preoccupation with make-up when she destroyed a vallity case with a power drill even as she is all 'made lip' and dressed in a satin slip.


3) Describe a piece that you were most interested in viewing after reading this article.
- Selected Works: Reel 6 - William Wegman - Wegman became known known for photographs of his pet dog, Man Ray. In an early body of work, Man Ray and another dog become fixated on an off-camera object that makes the two seated dogs move their heads from side to side in a synchronized rhythm that mimics the crowd at a tennis match.

4) What do you now understand better about video art?
- Video Art can be achieved through many means. It all depends on the skill, imagination and sometimes bravery of the artist.

5) Based on Rush and this article, what makes video art vs. and "artful video"?
- Its seeming endless possibilities and relative affordability make it increasingly attractive to young artists who have been raised in an era of media saturation. Video is a way of participating in and reacting to media overkill; it is also a manageable means to communicate personal messages.
- This to me means that Video art is a way for artists to express themselves real-time to their audience. Whereas a painter completes the work ahead of time and displays the finished product. But with video the artist takes the audience on the journey with them. that way the audience can, in a way, experience the process the artist took.

Some reference images for project 1. Wasn't entirly sure what was required but took a stab at it anyway.

Assign 1

The methods in computer science before the war were primarily related to the development of military tech. This was because the computers of the day were extremely large and required a significant amount of money to maintain. After the war however methods and theories began to surface in order to make things easier for some people. Designers dreamed about making these early computers more compact, so that they could be sold to the general public.

The artist I chose was Scott Fisher. He was responsibe for pioneering Virtual Reality at NASA.

http://itofisher.com/sfisher/portfolio/files/index.html

Fisher's virtual world was possible with the help of a head mounted display for visual interaction, stereo headphones for realistic 3D sound, a microphone for voice recognition. Later with the help of one of his colleagues, he added a "Data Glove" so the user could actually interact with the objects in the virtual world.

I enjoy Fisher's work because for me it represents the beginning of where we could go with this virtual tech. This type of tech is in a way the precursor to Matrix style environments, or even things like Avatar or Surragate.

I found interesting that even as far back as the 90's and late 80's these artist were working to invent and use these technologies to make amazing pieces of art and advance the technology fields as we know them.