Author: legoh419

What is Barnes and Nobles?

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One of the first observations I had of the Union Square Barnes and Nobles was the collectible editions of classic books. There was an entire table on the first floor covered in these deep colored, hard covered, and gold accented books, like Wuthering Heights and the complete works of William Shakespeare. This type of rebranding of books, that people do not voluntarily like to read, is an obvious attempt to make these collections more appealing to the customer. At first this could be seen as a good action on the store’s part, as they are trying to make more people excited about classic literature, but in my opinion this seems like an attempt to make people buy things they do not truly need. These collectible edition will most likely go unread, instead being a nice coffee table accessory, or a pretty addition to a bookcase.

Barnes and Nobles also makes other attempts to provoke unnecessary purchases from the customer like with an Illuminated Bible, that has gold lettered words and illustrations, or the wall of Essential Journals, which do not seem essential in actuality.

Barnes and Nobles is just a small piece in the capitalist market America has created. The store might not necessarily want to make these eye-catching, accessory pieces, but in a way they probably must in order to compete in today’s economy. But by doing so, they take away from the credibility of the store and the books too, as they are seen more for their new features rather than their original content.

Photos of Message:

General Observation:

Notes:

-Collectible Editions

-Vinyl

-Nook (where they are displayed takes up a big space in the store, but the nook is supposed to be space efficient)

-Blue and Yellow Wallpaper with Traditional Columns

-Everyone is Silent –> music is playing –> what does the music do ?

-Promoting Website

-Essential Journals –> what does that even mean?

-Marketing Teen Depression

-Movie/TV Covers for Books

-Rebranding Old Books

Bridge 1-Part 2

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Cy Twombly’s “The Four Season”

For this project I was influenced by Cy Twombly’s “The Four Seasons”, a series of four large vertical paintings that include abstract expressions of the seasons through rich paint and difficult to read poetry. I wanted to create a similar self-investigation to the one that Twombly makes by having other people read aloud four writings from my personal journals, journal entries that span across the four seasons.This piece relates to identity as it is an expression of my personal emotions. I found myself taking a liberal approach to my project, unsure of how it would turn out or how it would make me feel. While filming, I found myself seeing parallels between my and Twombly’s work. One of the most prominent similarities I saw was how we both incorporate a sense of juxtaposition; in Twombly’s work it is seen in his dense and beautiful colors being contrasted against his sketchy line work and in my work it can be seen in the seriousness of the writings contrasted with the friendly and casual relationships I have with the people reading the texts. Personally, during and after the creation of the project I felt highly uncomfortable. Having people read my personal thoughts made me feel incredibly weird and exposed. The intention of the piece was to create a true expose of myself, and I think I accomplished that. The fact that I am uncomfortable is understandable, but more importantly, pivotal for my own personal develop. I hope other people will see the piece and feel more comfortable with their own personal thoughts and feel less fear when sharing them.

The use of video supports the thematic content as it shows a real life, in the moment, unscripted interaction between myself and the person reading, and in a sense the interaction between me and the past “me” that wrote in the journals.

I could see this piece inside of a gallery projected onto a wall, where all can observe and almost have trouble turning away from it. I could also see this as something that each person could experience individually, whether it be on a mobile phone or computer.

Here is one of my originally highlighted images from Part 1 of Bridge 1:

Andrew Wyeth’s “Christina’s World”

What If Questions:

Asia asked: What if the medium was different?

This made me think about taking the concept of Twombly’s piece out of a fine art context. It made me think of a way to make it more personal for not only me, but for the viewer

I asked: What if the piece was based outside the context of the four seasons? What if the medium created an even more personal experience? What if there was less abstraction? If everything was more direct and literal?

At first I questioned the use of the four seasons, but I think that it was a good structure to base the progression of my mental health over the years through the symbolic values of the seasons.

I also decided to make this piece more open, to make it have an impact that was more striking than the subtle and deeper experience one might feel with the abstract piece of Twombly.

Here is a link to the final piece:

Bridge 1-Part 1

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Each of these images represents the general topic of identity. Each one relates to identity, as they deal with anonymity, proud statements of self, or a tell of the current moment we are in.

This piece compositionally and through color highlights the main subject, Christina. The piece also tells the story of Christina’s struggle with illness.
This represents identity as it is a street artist’s original expression of their name in a way that mocks the traditional “Hello my name is ” name tag.
This piece deals with anonymity, but is also a strong statement of the musician’s identity.
This relates to identity as it shows people the exact moment in time that each person is in.
Similarly to the Madvillian album, this album simultaneously expresses anonymity and a strong sense of pride for the band’s name and identity.
This album also deals with anonymity, but constructs a scene that demonstrates the musician’s identity.

Project Deconstruction

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The project I chose to deconstruct was the final project I did for my senior year art class. In previous assignments, my teacher gave us strict guidelines to follow while constructing our pieces, and as a nice gesture, she decided to give us complete creative freedom for our final project. In the video attached I describe the conceptual framework and emotional process of the piece:

This project was my first one using copic markers. I was in love with their blending abilities and the wide variety of colors available, but I do believe that the material attributed to the many, small, mistakes I had made. If i were to do this project again I would possible do it as a multi-layered screenprint to get saturated and clean colors and lines. I still enjoyed using the markers as I love having the control of doing art completely by hand and hope to use them more in the future.

I believe the conceptual side of this piece I continue to explore, as most to all my pieces center around my own thought processes, ideas, emotions, and memories. I enjoy creating art about myself because I believe that it is cathartic and can help others feel what I feel and have a similar emotional experience.

Project 7 – “Grayscale”

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For my project, I decided to show my images on two axises: from left to right is the body on a scale from feminine to masculine, while from top to bottom is the body as a genderless form. The middle image shows femininity and masculinity together, while still being abstracted enough to show a level of genderless-ness, the intersection of my concepts on gender.

Bridge 4 – Chinatown Soundscape Haiku

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Abstract

While observing Chinatown, my group and I found that the objects that comprise the area make the soundscape of the diverse area. The various shirts, trinkets, and Chinese instruments create a capitalist atmosphere in a traditional setting. That is why for our project we decided to paint with some of the objects we found to make the most interesting noises in Chinatown. We chose plastic bags, shoes, various papers, and more: the little objects that make a larger impact on the community than one would first realize.

 

Project 7 – Project Proposal

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Concept Phrases

Photographic map of male and female bodies oriented in ways that oppose their sexes.

Gender norms being transformed and blurred by the ways of acceptance and a refreshing eye for beauty.

Paragraph

For this project I would like to explore the technical uses of a film camera, using the 2-D medium to show the reality of gender norms in today’s society. Using four subjects, two biologically female and two biologically male, I will dress and position the subjects in such a way, with the use of clothing, make-up, and posing, that will blur their gender lines and make them look as if they were of the opposite sex. I will experiment with the use of lighting and staging, as well as the proceeding steps of developing the film.

Image Collage

These images show some of my ideas for lighting, angles, and expressive body language that I would like to emanate in my photo series. I especially would like to focus on poses that explore the range of motion of the body and the extent of its ability to abstract the human form. My lighting and camera positioning will highlight these qualities of the body.

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Action Plan

This up coming weekend, with the help of a friend majoring in photography who is also well versed in film cameras, I will take photos of myself and one of the other subjects to see how the camera works and experiment with posing and lighting. I will then develop this film and see the results, after reviewing the photos I will either move on taking photos of the next two subjects, or photograph all four subjects with information gained from the first set of photos. I am hoping to do everything as soon as possible as I have to take in to account the time to develop the film and then assess whether or not the developed photos demonstrate what I want to show.