The lectures main focus was that nothing is 'original' , and that every piece of design has been inspired by or has certain similarities to other pieces. however this does not mean that your designs can't be original , all it means is that we need to channel our creative process in the right direction in order to achieve this. This is become apparent as when we begin the creative process we need to take inspirations from items around us that we have already seen. Technically making everything copied.
"Those who do not want to imitate anything,
produce nothing." - Salvador Dali
The first subject of the lecture was internet Memes. this was a key example of prequel sequel as they are funny however they lack value due to the unoriginality of the work. this parked questions about plaugurism and how memes arent classed under copyright regulations.
this lead onto our next topic which was a 30 minute video. The video 'Everything is a remix' Specifically looked at music and how artists have sampled beats from other songs in there own musical creations.the film discusses different laws and regulations about these beats or could it be that people just share the same creative output?
"Legal remixing is fine, illegal copying is not -
if your work fails to distinguish itself enough then you must attribute!"
This lecture looked at sound as a basis for visual communication. the point of this lecture was to start to introduce us to the new project brief and inspire us when starting the new project. Our project brief was:
"Each week you will be supplied a short section of
music to respond to. You have a wide scope of
processes and approaches to experiment with. This
is a good opportunity to apply and further develop
your skills and critical and creative thinking gained
through the process workshops, and workshop
week and previous studio brief. In addition, you are
encouraged to think beyond purely digital work.
There is plenty of scope for traditional processes
across both print and animation. You may consider
photography, illustration, video or physical 3D or
2.5D construction." I felt that i was going to struggle with the new brief , this was because we had such limited time to produce as many pieces. I had to keep my ideas short and fast , with not much time to refine them in further detail. my main point of focus was to not get stuck on one design and let the rest slip as the most important thing was experimentation. We were introduced to the earliest know visual piece of sound , this was known as the hurrmian hymn 6 . this hymn dates back to 1400 B.C.E the piece was discovered in the 1960's in the ruins of a palace in Ugarit. there were 29 musical texts found at the time of its discovery. there was no chronological order of the texts therefore the numbers after the hymn were not relevant to the time they were written.
We began the lecture by looking into different ways of establishing a narrative. We looked at the most basic form , Freytags prymid , which involves all stories consisting of Exposition , rising action , Climax , falling action and a denouement.
"A whole is that which has a beginning, a middle, and an end."- Aristotle, Poetics This simplistic layout shows what a story should contain , this is a linear approach to story telling. Majority of stores are told this way as they all result in a positive outcome which will satisfy a mass audience. We then looked at exposition which consists of setting the scene and content for the chosen piece of work. Exposition within narratives stands for ' The insertion of important background information within a story' When a background story is given it is called the establishing shot. a famous example of an establishing shot is the opening of StarWars which quickly establishes the audience with information that they need to know about what has happened prior to the film they are about to watch.
Further into the lecture we looked at why narrative was an essential part of any story. Narratives can be a written or spoken account of events. As designers we should be able to visually narrate a series of events that successfully explain what is happening to a wide audience.
To support this we looked into the story of TOMS shoe company. This shoe company would donate a pair of their shoes to children living in poverty every time you purchased any. This story was then created in a video to visually communicate with the public and give them an insight into what the company do. The narrative was created to emotionally attach the audience to the company as it gives an establishing shot into what the company is about and what their plans for the future are.
We ended with a list of questions to trigger our mind when designing using story telling:
We began the seminar by looking at a quote from Albert Einstien. "what is 5+5? , Now , What two numbers make 10" This quote shows that you can think around a problem by using a different perspective but still get the same answer , this also shows that a wider range of answers can be created from just a simple question. This relates to this mornings lecture on perception.
Our task was to design something that could be flipped , for example writing that can be read backwards or even M.C Escher's Sky and water piece and how we can simply shift one for to another using basic techniques such as pattern , colour , type or imagery. another example is how a piece of type saying hot could transform into the word cold in 9 steps.
At first i wasn't sure what this lecture would be about as it was more based around 3D design. However I can say that this lecture was one of the most interesting and inspiring lectures so far this year. I feel that the main reason it was inspiring as it showed that there is possibility to work for huge company and on worldwide projects. In this case Territory Studios have worked on many visual projects such as The Avengers , Prometheus and The Martian. I found Territory studios work interesting as they design graphics for computer screens that are used within films. They create hundreds of animations and stills that are filled with statistics and facts that help tell stories within the films that could not be told by objects or characters , Below is an example from the film The Avengers : Age of Ultron
What is style? A particular procedure by which something is done; a manner or way A distinctive appearance, typically determined by the principles according to which something is designed. We watched a video of Cornel West who elaborates on clothing and style from his point of view. he focuses more specifically on the style of clothing , clothes are not just clothes in their style , they reflect a persons characteristics and personality. the way people dress reflects who they are and how they live as a person.
can there be content without style? How can something be created without it having a certain style. if somebody decided to wear a bin bag it would still be a certain style although it assent what most people would chose to wear. We then looked at Marcel Breuer who was a Hungarian architect and Furniture designer. We looked at one specific chair names the Cesca chair where Breuer changed the generic style of how people would expect a chair to be built by swapping out parts and re-defining its style.
Styles fade in and out , they work on intensities and the styles will fluctuate , they're constantly moving and changing and evolving with the way we live.
In this lecture we specifically looked at Perception or illusion , we started off the lecture by looking at an image of a lamp post in the dark , we then discussed what triggers in our memory it could fire and what we could relate it to , for example , a walk home after a night out. Images like this help develop a deep sense of self awareness and allows us to perceive things differently , this of which will come in handy when designing in the future as it involves looking at a theme from a different perspective.
Perception - We looked at how the human eye is a form of perception , this is because we see every reflection of light upside down , however our brain knows to flip it the right way up. Below is a basic diagram of how the eye sees reflections of light and processes them:
We then moved onto looking at colourblind tests as they showed us that everybody minds perceive colours in different ways depending on the cells that are present in their brain. Personally i am rather colourblind especially to Reds and Greens , however other students struggled with these tests even though they do not class themselves as colourblind.
Further into the lecture we started to look at optical illusions and how our eyes can be tricked into thinking things are happening when they are not , the illusion below looks as if it is moving even though it is stationary. This happens because of the contrast in colours and our eyes are attempting to sort the colours out.
We then looked at the dinosaur illusion. This illusion involves a dinosaurs head that looks as if it is looking at you from whatever angle you look at it from. This looks like this as we have learnt as human that facial features sick out and that there is no other option for the face to go. As you can see in the video the illusion is created from inward folds with card.
In this mornings lecture we watched Fear[s] of the Dark, the film is a 2 tone animated film that was released in 2008 and premiered at the Roma Film Festival. The structure of the film is that it is cut into 5 short stories that make up the whole film. The part that we specifically looked at involved a character that gets stranded in a blizzard and retreats to an abandon cabin , where we see the struggles of paranoia set in and mentally challenge him. i particularly like the film as each section focuses on different drawing styles or ways of animating , similar to the film 'Waking life'. The section we looked at was made up of harsh black and white shading with various textures.
