Time - ART1107
ART1107 is the final class in the Foundations course sequence of the SPU Art majors. This class focuses on manipulation of time in art while exposing its students to working within common Adobe products. The applications introduced include Lightroom Classic, Photoshop, and Adobe Premiere. While the Surface class taught its students the use of many other central elements of art, Time specifically targets the intentional use of time within the creative process and time-based mediums.
Class Description
Click to jump to each of my projects!
Project One - Expressive Line in Motion
For our first project, we explored the emotions that can be conveyed through the movement of a line. This was inspired by the power of emotive line in comic art.
In phase one, we began by brainstorming a list of twenty different emotions or feelings we could express using the movement of a line. Next, we were instructed to choose five of our favorite options from this list and sketch out very basic versions of what animation we would create of those emotions. The states of emotion I chose to sketch include joyful, enraged, scared, surprised, and relaxed.
After reflecting with my classmates on my brainstorming, I decided to explore the state of being joyful, but I wanted to express a more specific emotion than just “joyful”. Off of this idea, I thought of the emotion “elation”. To me, this feeling is more extreme than joyful and expresses a state of full and complete joy. Once I had gone through a few phases of brainstorming animation ideas, I settled on the sketch shown to the right.
Once we moved into our final iteration of the project, I began to sketch out each frame of my animation. After creating about 60 frames, I scanned each one of them and pulled them into Adobe Photoshop. In Photoshop, after some trial and error, I learned how to use the animation tool and created my final two versions of the GIF animation.
“Elation”
I chose to draw my lines so that they resembled the trail of a shooting star, because that lightness resembled elation to me. As I planned, I had the line emerge from the bottom left corner and playfully bounce back and forth, gaining momentum as it goes. The line then flips and begins to swirl into a tight ball which explodes out with excitement. The explosion then slowly falls, showing the continued state of joy after elation that is more relaxing and long-lasting. For my colored version, I chose to create a version that incorporated the bright and saturated colors which represent the emotional state of elation.
Project Two - Photo Montage
This project was inspired by the photographer David Hockney. Hockney created photography that was reminiscent of cubism because he would take photographs from many different angles of one subject and edit them together to have all angles visible at once.
We were given two practice assignments: one focused on photography and one focused on editing. To the right is the creation from my practice with editing in Lightroom and Photoshop.
When we moved into creating our own artwork, I wanted to create a photograph which encapsulated an entire movement into one moment in time. To do this, I had my cousin Alyssa model for me while I took upwards of 40 photographs of her. Then, I took these photos into Lightroom and Photoshop and messed around with cropping, opacity, and placement, until I felt every iteration of the movement was visible.
Project Three - Serial Sequence
This project was inspired by the serial sequence film La Jette.
For this project, we switched up our normal routine and did a group project. The shots we would use to create our short film we photographed and collaborated on. We all brainstormed a similar plot-line, but made sure to capture enough photographs that each of us could take our own creative approach to editing. Below is a link to be able to watch the short film I editted on Adobe Premiere.
Click to watch the film I edited and my team and I filmed!
Project Four - One Minute Sculpture
For our final project we created a series of three One-Minute Sculptures, inspired by the artist Erwin Wurm. One of these sculptures would be performed by the people in my class on a collaborative performance art day, whereas the other two were privately created and performed by me.
During the first phase of brainstorming, we were asked to come up with three words or concepts that we valued or found interesting. The three words I came up with were openmindedness, longing, and positive-mindset. When I moved into the next phase of brainstorming, I decided I wanted to explore longing, or more specifically the longing humans have for the “beyond”. After brainstorming many options of how to perform this idea with the human body, I decided on “Reaching”, “Tear for Truth”, and “Connect to Past”.
One-Minute Sculpture #3 - “Connect to Past”
One-Minute Sculpture # 1 (Live Performance) - “Reaching”
This One-Minute Sculpture was preformed by many of my classmates during a live performance art day.
One-Minute Sculpture #2 - “Tear for Truth”
Human’s have always intrinsically longed for something beyond ourselves. This is seen throughout history, in our religions, architecture, art, writing, etc. My One-Minute Sculptures are representations of this longing performed by the human body. The black rope exists as a motive across the three One-Minute Sculptures, representing the way our human form holds us back from the knowledge we persistently seek.
In “Reaching”, the person engaging with the sculpture is prompted to draw a symbol of their current beliefs surrounding the “beyond” on a piece of paper. They then tie themselves to the banister with the black rope and use their paper to lean as far as they can towards the lamp, which lingers just out of reach. The person engaging thinks about how this applies to their beliefs and while this sculpture asks them to reflect on their longing.
In “Tear for Truth”, a ball of clay, which represents the creation of earth and all living things, is tied with a black rope. The person engaging with this sculpture is then asked to dig within the ball to see what they find. The search is futile, because no matter how far the participant digs they will never see beyond the physical ball of clay.
In “Connect to Past”, a torn piece of Michelangelo’s “The Creation of Adam” is taped to the wall. The only figure shown is God’s hand reaching down. The participate is asked to engage within the painting as Adam, but with their hand tied with the black rope. This One-Minute Sculpture asks the viewers and participants to reflect on the fact that humans as a whole have had this same curiousity and wonder about the beyond for thousands of years, and it is clearly shown within popular historical artworks like “The Creation of Adam”.