an update of sorts

I am looking forward to next Thursday.

Ed and I will be attending a BFA show opening exclusive to the transfer students who were recently admitted into SAIC. We will take a look at what current students are doing, discuss art and school, and tour the campus.

That evening, we will attend the student show at Oakton (OakArt). Our dream drawing assignments are on display. My mom has been wanting to meet with us, so I’ve invited her to attend.

Of course the best part of this is that Ed and I have the day off of work.

Photoshop Portfolio

This is a selection of images from our Photoshop class final.

Ed and I enjoyed Photoshop. As soon as we got into class and learned where a few things were, I think we understood the logic of the program. We then knew how to apply our PSP and general program knowledge to the confines of this program. The same thing happened for us in Access, Illustrator, Quark, and InDesign. The teacher knew that we were moving ahead and were fairly disinterested in what she was doing. It was also pretty obvious that she knew nothing about computers and believed in computer magic. Basically, she asked us to work together on a project.

I’ll start off by saying that I’m pretty happy with these. They have a theme, but there is no higher message or secret code. I expect there to be continuity in a final portfolio. I was looking for a formula that would still allow the images some individual personality in a limited set. Obviously, if I continued with this theme for much longer, it would be too easy and worn out. I think for a limited set, this works. The abstract of the theme centers around unsettling images. The positioning of everything was very intentional. The images were cut off abruptly. Each image starts to focus more and more on the wallpaper pattern (the negative space). There is repetition of wallpaper, a person, mundane objects, and ornate objects/frames. The story theme is loosely strung together from the ideas of a Grimm fairytale or Mother Goose (think of the pre-cleaned versions) or a haunted house full of self-reference and repeating moments (psychic imprints).

Resonance

The purpose of learning to write is to understand how language fails. Language fails to express those things that are contrary to its nature. Excepting those of us who can experience synesthetic reactions, language cannot create a duplicate of the thing it describes. A language cannot do anything without people, frankly, but that is separate from the point. Language cant tell us how any person among us feels, so much as it can tell us how a society feels about an idea, or more precisely, a word. Part of the art of writing is misusing the social construct of language to create a personal experience, and then share it with your audience. The issue with having an audience is that you assume a passive and static group who is unable to or unwilling to interact. Or does it? Perhaps that is an assumption on my part. I dont think beyond the point of consumption, because that is not how we all work: we consume and shit, but never digest. The issue with using a social artifact to create a personal artifact, which becomes a social artifact, is just that: it is a personal social act, and so personal expression fails to express those things that are contrary to its nature, expression artifacts of social importance or relevance. The exception to this is personal social expression artifacts that are resonant, resonant being the quality of the ability to perform an internal transderivational search and come up with a relevant application of the expression artifact that is encountered. Things that have the greatest relevance are retroactively referred to as parables, or metaphors, or in some unfortunate instances, allegories. These things are relevant because we can add them to our ad hoc instruction manual for life. This does make it difficult for non verbal art to have resonance, and even more so for non-narrative art, because non-narrative art is a comment, not an instruction, and so while it is not so pretentious, nothing ventured nothing gained, a well placed comment can never live up to a well received instruction.