For my last major project for my Drawing and Imaging class, I was tasked to create a symmetrical pattern design involving, in some way, a thought process or aesthetic of mine– something that communicates a message or concept through the integration of different elements of design such as color, typography, form and shape, etc, that can be summarized with THREE keywords. As part of the assignment, I had to create my pattern in black and white lines, and in three variations of color, and also have an extra page detailing my inspiration for the piece and some descriptive details that explain what the piece means, and how its various constituents contribute to the piece’s meaning. The variations of color are supposed to demonstrate how the piece changes in meaning and in tone with just a change in color, hue, or saturation, and the black and white version is supposed to demonstrate how I designed my pattern or in its simplest form.
For my pattern design, I chose the three key words: Robots/Automata, Cherubim, and Cryptography, along with the themes and motifs of Deus Ex Machina and esoteric theology thrown in for added richness and interest. My original idea for this piece was combining robots and religion– machines and mechanical life forms with beings divine and holy– science with religion, to produce an interesting design that, when copied and made symmetrical, evokes ideas of artificial intelligence and our ascent into beings more mechanical and cybernetic, and thus immortal and all-powerful from our puny organic state. If you are interested, I will include below my description of the piece in further detail as part of my project. I also have below jpg files or pictures of my pattern designs that I did on Illustrator, saturated and colorized on Photoshop (to change my initial design’s color efficiently– and with amazing results), and finally converted into picture files. My initial sketches will also be inserted below for your viewing leisure, so that you may know my creative process. See if you can spot the cryptography in the designs and translate what they mean– it will engage you in the sense that my design is almost like a puzzle begging to be solved– Indiana Jones or Professor Layton style.
MY KEYWORDS AND DESCRIPTION:
Dean Dalfonzo
Drawing and Imaging: Language
Charles Ta
December 3, 2016
My Inspiration and Description for my Symmetrical Pattern Design
THREE KEYWORDS: Robots/Automation, Cherubim, Cryptography
DESCRIPTION: I was inspired to create the pattern design that I have as a result of my fascination for robots and their portrayal in various sci-fi films and novels as artificial life forms that either transcend our biological human limits, or are forced to obey the authority of their creators, my Catholic and thus religious background (which has been the foundation for my interest for theology and the mythological-supernatural– the union between the human and the divine), and my fascination with codes, cryptography, and, in general, the esoteric and the ancient. My pattern blends the archaic past with the modern and futuristic– it is a representation of what lies ahead in our future– our quasi religious ascent into a mechanical or information based species as opposed to one composed of meager mortal flesh and bone, and our search for answers to ourselves and the world by unearthing the secrets of the past. The hacker language and binary code of today lining the sides of each square of my representation mimics the hieroglyphs of the past in that both require understanding of some form of language or symbology. As for the deeper motifs and themes found within my pattern design, if one translates the binary code on my pattern into text, it will actually read “Awaken”– and, likewise, decoding the hacker speech into regular text will reveal the phrases: “Ascend and transcend” and “Become one with the machine”, cementing the quasi-religious theme of my pattern design and implying religion as a sort of mechanical system whose followers are akin to robots that follow a doctrine– a doctrine that is complete with prayers that function almost as programmed algorithms or commands (the radio tower amalgamated with the Christian cross on the corners of my design accentuating religion as a sort of mind control or programming system that affects the masses), of which we all must awaken from. This idea behind the pattern design is further enforced by the famous Latin and English translated term “Deus Ex Machina” written below the pyramid on each square, which means “God from the Machine” or, in my slight derivation “God out of the machine”. The phrase suggest three possibilities at the same time: that we have created God or any sort of religious omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent being out of the machine that is our minds as a justification or solution to explain the Universe and all unknown and strange phenomena that take place within it, that, in relation to machines and robots, they are and will become our gods as beings capable of things we cannot even imagine, such as immortality, and/or that, if we transcend organic existence, we will become the gods we worshipped in ancient times. The idea of “God” is established even more through the inclusion of the letters I, A, and M at every corner of the triangle found at each corner of my design, forming the phrase “I AM”, referring to the Abrahamic God’s name and the Holy Trinity. Going beyond the text and into color and form, the robotic cherubim that takes up most of each square of my design already mixes both technology or robotics with religion, and expresses the ideas I have already mentioned– that of mechanical gods with infinite wisdom and immortality replacing the ethereal supernatural “gods” of the past (with the exception of Hephaestus and his automata). As for the colors I initially chose, yellow and gray solidify the ancient runic aspect of my piece, making it look like some symmetrical golden tablet with inscribed “hieroglyphs” the tell of legends and theologies of mechanical angels and their teachings programmed into the heads of the masses. My design, when red and black, inverts its former sacred vibe and religious theme and turns the design into something demonic or heathenish, as if the technology of the future is somehow blasphemous to Nature, our bodies, and our souls. The blue and purple coloration of my design enhances the cybernetic futurism of our ascension into mechanical life forms, while the lines only version of my design makes it appear more like a blueprint or schematic for some sort of structure, evoking ideas of progress and the engineering of a religious system and the robot idols that represent it. The orange and green version of my design is a bonus and demonstrates the effectiveness of contrasting, complementary colors– akin to science and religion being complementary. All in all, my design mixes together my love for sci-fi and my former associations with religion, as well as my interest in mythology in between, and besides being inspired by what I have already said my project also took inspiration from this:
My most recent Intro Studio 1: Avatar project involving a topic of research that I had to express in some artistic way from Intro Seminar 1: Avatar– namely, the relevant topic of artificial intelligence. For Intro Studio I wrote an illustrated short story that involved a species of alien robots that evolved and eventually formed their own religious system that worshiped all-knowing, omniscient idols shaped like Brazen Heads and an entity known simply as “Mind”, implied to be a sort of mechanical God that spurred the Universe into motion.
Sketches:
Sketches for Pattern Design
DESIGN(S):
Robots, Cherubim, and Cryptography (Black and White)
Robots, Cherubim, and Cryptography (Yellow and Gray)
Robots, Cherubim, and Cryptography (Blue and Purple)
Robots, Cherubim, and Cryptography (Red and Black)
BONUS: Robots, Cherubim, and Cryptography (Orange and Green)
