Research and choose a well-known art work (any era) or cultural icon (pop or not) to copy (reproduce) and modify as a two-sided T-shirt: on the front of the shirt, make your copy as faithful to the original as possible, given the limitations of the printing method you choose. For the back, design some kind of visual “intervention” or alteration that also changes the meaning.
No words, no text to this one. Image only!
There are several ways of getting your design onto a shirt. Easiest is to cut a stencil and use spray paint or fabric paint and a stiff brush or foam roller. (Follow safety instructions for all materials and use spray paint in a well ventilated area.)
You can do it high-, low- or medium-tech. There are several websites (see blog post) that include instructions for turning photos into high contrast designs that can be printed or drawing onto freezer paper (waxy side can be ironed to the t-shirt for stenciling) or stiff cardboard or mylar. Many ways to do it.
You can also use one of the iron-on transfer print papers made for T-shirts. This method will allow you to get more elaborate with your design but you will need computer/printer access and some basic digital skills.
Most important is to consider the graphic impact of your image and it’s alteration.
Work from photo/print sources you collect. Brainstorm to come up with more than one idea and choose the best.
Due: 5/14
Monday, May 4, 2009
Sunday, May 3, 2009
For Week 6
For Tuesday, May 5th, bring in your finished movie posters and read pp. 183-203, "Visual Technologies, Image Reproduction and the Copy" (the first half of POL Chapter 5) for class discussion.
Thursday, May 7th, finish reading Chapter 5, pp. 204 - 220. Bring in images for "Copy Cat," the next project: a well-known art work or cultural icon (pop or not) that you will copy and modify as a two-sided T-shirt.
Thursday, May 7th, finish reading Chapter 5, pp. 204 - 220. Bring in images for "Copy Cat," the next project: a well-known art work or cultural icon (pop or not) that you will copy and modify as a two-sided T-shirt.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Extra Credit!!! Artist Mark Dion Lecture Monday, May 4th
Up next in the MFA Monday Night Lecture Series is internationally-known artist Mark Dion. The lecture will be held on Monday, May 4th at 7:30 in PSU's Shattuck Annex.
Dion's work relates to our final project and extra credit will be given to ART 112 students who attend the lecture and post a blog summary.
Dion’s work examines the ways in which dominant ideologies and public institutions shape our understanding of history, knowledge, and the natural world. The job of the artist, he says, is to go against the grain of dominant culture, to challenge perception and convention. Appropriating archaeological and other scientific methods of collecting, ordering, and exhibiting objects, Dion creates works that question the distinctions between ‘objective’ (‘rational’) scientific methods and ‘subjective’ (‘irrational’) influences. The artist’s spectacular and often fantastical curiosity cabinets, modeled on Wunderkabinetts of the 16th Century, exalt atypical orderings of objects and specimens. By locating the roots of environmental politics and public policy in the construction of knowledge about nature, Mark Dion questions the authoritative role of the scientific voice in contemporary society.
Dion's work relates to our final project and extra credit will be given to ART 112 students who attend the lecture and post a blog summary.
Dion’s work examines the ways in which dominant ideologies and public institutions shape our understanding of history, knowledge, and the natural world. The job of the artist, he says, is to go against the grain of dominant culture, to challenge perception and convention. Appropriating archaeological and other scientific methods of collecting, ordering, and exhibiting objects, Dion creates works that question the distinctions between ‘objective’ (‘rational’) scientific methods and ‘subjective’ (‘irrational’) influences. The artist’s spectacular and often fantastical curiosity cabinets, modeled on Wunderkabinetts of the 16th Century, exalt atypical orderings of objects and specimens. By locating the roots of environmental politics and public policy in the construction of knowledge about nature, Mark Dion questions the authoritative role of the scientific voice in contemporary society.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Week 5: Movie Posters and Midterm Evals
I will be doing mid-term evaluations from your blogs beginning Friday, May 1. Please have everything up to date, including reflections for all assigned readings, your Image-Text Hunt, your Mail Art project and your movie poster research.)
On Tuesday we will finish our discussion of POL Chapter 4, Realism and Perspective and take a look at a couple of the "realist" movie clips mentioned in the text (see Resource Links on sidebar) and survey some of the sample movie posters you have collected.
Then we will work in small groups to brainstorm an imaginary movie that would for you embody an episteme (or two) of our time. A good way to start is to make a list of things (events, trends, issues, technology, images etc.) that you think are respresentative of the end of the first decade of the 21st century. Then use these to cobble together a brief summary or synposis of your movie. (Be democratic!) These do not need to be very long but should have basic information about plot, character, setting. Looking at the online summaries of the movies we have viewed in class may help. Synopsis due on Thursday, 4/30.
Once you have a synopsis to work from, each one of you will design your own movie poster (11"x17") to visually represent your group's proposed film. You may use collage, drawing, painting, photo, digital means or any combination. Think about what our text says about how the manner in which things are reprsented says something about the era that creates those representations.Consider how each element in your poster conveys something about your "film truth" and, by extension, the "truth" of our era.
Finished poster due Tuesday, May 5.
On Tuesday we will finish our discussion of POL Chapter 4, Realism and Perspective and take a look at a couple of the "realist" movie clips mentioned in the text (see Resource Links on sidebar) and survey some of the sample movie posters you have collected.
Then we will work in small groups to brainstorm an imaginary movie that would for you embody an episteme (or two) of our time. A good way to start is to make a list of things (events, trends, issues, technology, images etc.) that you think are respresentative of the end of the first decade of the 21st century. Then use these to cobble together a brief summary or synposis of your movie. (Be democratic!) These do not need to be very long but should have basic information about plot, character, setting. Looking at the online summaries of the movies we have viewed in class may help. Synopsis due on Thursday, 4/30.
Once you have a synopsis to work from, each one of you will design your own movie poster (11"x17") to visually represent your group's proposed film. You may use collage, drawing, painting, photo, digital means or any combination. Think about what our text says about how the manner in which things are reprsented says something about the era that creates those representations.Consider how each element in your poster conveys something about your "film truth" and, by extension, the "truth" of our era.
Finished poster due Tuesday, May 5.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Week 4: Realism, Epistemes and Movie Posters
Reading for Week 4: POL Chapter 4, Realism and Perspective in the Course Reader. (Due dates for assignment at the end of this post -- note change!)In his book, The Order of Things, Michel Foucault used the term episteme to describe the way that an inquiry into truth is organized in a given era. An episteme is an accepted dominant mode of acquiring and organizing knowledge in a given period of history. Understanding the work of signs is an important means to identifying the episteme or dominant worldview of an era. Each period of history has a different episteme--that is, a different predominant way of ordering things or of organizing and representing knowledge about things. (POL 149)
Our text discusses films such as Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera (1929), which "captured life on the streets of Russia as viewed through the eyes of this 'spinning top' [translation of the name Vertov] cinematographer," as well as examples of French Poetic Realism and Italian neorealism. These styles relied on different formal and aesthetic conventions to evoke the real. Each style of realism expressed a particular worldview that vies with other realisms and other worldviews in particular social contexts. (POL 14-149)
After viewing film clips of Vertov, Michel Carne and Vittorio de Sica in class, find at least three movies that you think carry an essence of the time in which they were made, then work in groups to write a brief movie synopsis that embodies the epistemes of our time. Once you have a synopsis to work from, each one of you will design your own movie poster (11"x17") that visually represents your group's proposed film. You may use collage, drawing, painting, photo, digital means or any combination. Think about how each element in your poster conveys something about your "film truth" and, by extension, the "truth" of our era.
Work in class on 4/23, 4/28 and 4/30. Synopses due 4/30; posters due 5/5.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Mail Art Assignment: What Are You Selling?
Reflecting on the reading, "Viewers Make Meaning," and the variety of ways that meaning is negotiated, produce and send into circulation (i.e., mail to other people) five postcards that reflect the role of the image-viewer as "manager, marketer, and bricoleur of visual culture's products. (POL 89, Course Reader)
Note that the reading goes on to state that "[t]he viewer who makes meaning does so not only through describing an experience with images but also through reordering, redisplaying, and reusing images in new and differently meaningful ways in the reordering of everyday life." (Italics added.)
With Ray Johnson and the New York Correspondence School as inspiration (see post below), appropriate, alter and redeploy culturally familiar images to "sell" something important to you. Cut-up, juxtapose, fragment, draw-on, edit-out.... Use text (questions, aphorisms, claims, slogans, exclamations) to sharpen your message. You may ask your recipients to "add to and return" as Johnson did. (Check out the new mail art resources in the resource links bar for further info.)
Scan your postcards before you send them (scanners available in the MAC Lab in Neuberger Hall, 2nd floor) and post images along with documentation of your process on your blog. Bring your finished cards and info about your mailing plans to class on 4/21. (Ask your recipients for a return response by 5/5.)
Note that the reading goes on to state that "[t]he viewer who makes meaning does so not only through describing an experience with images but also through reordering, redisplaying, and reusing images in new and differently meaningful ways in the reordering of everyday life." (Italics added.)
With Ray Johnson and the New York Correspondence School as inspiration (see post below), appropriate, alter and redeploy culturally familiar images to "sell" something important to you. Cut-up, juxtapose, fragment, draw-on, edit-out.... Use text (questions, aphorisms, claims, slogans, exclamations) to sharpen your message. You may ask your recipients to "add to and return" as Johnson did. (Check out the new mail art resources in the resource links bar for further info.)
Scan your postcards before you send them (scanners available in the MAC Lab in Neuberger Hall, 2nd floor) and post images along with documentation of your process on your blog. Bring your finished cards and info about your mailing plans to class on 4/21. (Ask your recipients for a return response by 5/5.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
