Industry vs. Environment

In our class we have been assigned to do a project showing the relation of Industry and Environment through photos and sound. Now I don't want to talk much about what I did for this project but I'd like to envelope a little bit on my concept. I am really looking at a unique side of this battle. I do believe that yes, the inevitable cause of human life on this earth, industry, does have a negative affect on the environment. But today we live in a very unique time that finds the perfect balance. My concept for this project was to believe that we are not destroying our environment, we are creating a new one. Look around Toronto even; the countless parks, high park, queens park, the Humber river, not to mention it's situated next to a great lake. We live in a very odd time where we see these two forces intertwine, we sit in balance waiting for ourselves to be able to control nature, and completely shape the environment to our will. Until then we live in a world undefined by it's principals against nature, but it's virtue towards growth.

Too Much Work

Look at the way we live our lives; our society replaced the problem of dealing with biological necessities by giving us a plethora of other problems. Instead of having to worry about three meals a day and a roof over your head nowadays you have to worry about taxes, school work, the economy, war; the list goes on. Some would say isn't it better to worry about these "small little details" then having to worry about starving? You know what I say? We'll never know because we're too proud. Humans are too proud of our accomplishments to even look at our faults. We will never know how peaceful our lives would be if we lived thousands of years ago. I imagine it would be peaceful at times but rough, which is all you can really ask for right? I mean come on, I'd deal with having to fight jaguars away from children rather than having to worry about gossip at school, or how my future's gonna work out, or when i'm gonna be married or etc. I'd have to worry about living, and I know that's the only thing that is worthwhile to worry about. That's why people these days just need to look at the bigger picture of everything. In the end we're all humans trying to survive, so why complicate things?

Burtynsky

The other day we watched the movie; Urban Landscapes by Edward Burtynsky. This movie really showed us Edward's "larger than life" photography. It also really taught us the importance of audio working with imagery to give us that overall mood. You can look at the same image twice with two completely different feelings and ideas just by switching the background noise you hear. An exciting loud boisterous sound can be put next to a depressing, sad picture and brighten it up a lot, or vise versa. This really gives the artist maximum control over the impact they have on the viewer. We can give multiple feelings to a viewer through multiple senses. Taking control of all sensory intake would be the ample situation every artist should look for; and combining pictures with sound is a great start. You should never look at art listening to your own music, first always ask the artist what he thinks would work; because what you're hearing affects the way you intake what you are viewing. And proper intake is important.

PHOTO EXERCISE

Here is our first exploration in photography; now we are beginning to play around with aperture size and shutter speed, giving us maximum control of how an image comes out. First what I was starting to discover is how easy it is to over expose and image. Here we see a sunny day landscape shot by our school. The top image was over exposed on f/5.6 and 1/250 shutter speed, so by making the aperture hole smaller and shutter speed faster, less light was taken in and a successful picture was produced.

The next thing we began to play around with was the shutter speed and catching a moving subject. Having a quick shutter speed is essential for catching a crisp still moment of something moving, but a blur effect is achieved by using a longer shutter speed, as visible in the over exposed top picture. The bottom picture was shot on f/16 with 1/3600 of a seconds if exposure. This quick shutter speed really captured that crisp exact movement of the jump, and really goes to show how many different looks you can get by playing with camera settings.

Finally the last thing we decided to experiment with was the focus change the aperture gives you. We tried first capturing the foreground and background in a crisp clean matter. Seen on the top picture you can point out that the dandelions in the front are in focus but the fence behind them is not blurred or out of focus, where as in the below picture there are only a few dandelions in focus, and anything more than two feet from the camera was out of focus and blurred. This really emphasizes the flowers in the front and makes them stand out very well. Just by making a few adjustments on your camera a plethora of image qualities can emerge.

Dawson, Jaylen, Kevan

Here i present our latest project from cyber arts. We were assigned to design a chair that would be both functional, and artistic. This chair would also need to exude our personality. So here I presented the solution to that problem called the "Wall Chaise". This chair saves space in tight spaces by conveniently flipping up and tucking itself together; also leaving a convenient space for something on the bottom. I really believe this chair emphasizes my personality as well. Making things easier while staying sleek and organized is something i like to pride myself on. As much I do bug people, I like to believe that I'm really good at helping them as well; just like my chair does by saving space. My chair is also very straight forward, and quick to the point which is something I know I am. I don't like to play around, or "beat around the bush", I'd prefer to just get it out bluntly.
Looking at my chair at a closer perspective really brings out the artistic side to it. It's clean sleek diagonal lines bring your eyes all the way down, like a diagonal composition of a painting. These smooth lines are complimented by the blank and non-cluttered surface of the chair, only interrupted by a cushion of flat white. It's extremely simple, and strives to bring that simple, easy feeling into the home.

PUNISHMENT

Here we my definition of human outcome, demonstrated in a romanticism artwork of mine. In this collage I have used paint, magazine paper and gel-medium to create an image of a spaceship attacking earth. First i coated the wood board in a purple to darker purple gradient, resembling the contrast of light to dark as most romanticism pieces do. I created this gradient through dry-brushing, painting the lighter colours over the darker ones. After this was finished I dry-brushed clouds in above the earth, to resemble the heavens. The next step was to create my spaceship and place my picture of earth that I found in a magazine. I needed to used various pieces of paper in different colours to create my spaceship. I think it works well as the focal point of my piece. It also really balances the composition well with all the "eye candy" in the bottom part of the piece. This was created with orange, yellow and red lines, creating that triangle composition down the piece. The only thing I would have done differently if I were to redo this is to flip the triangle composition, and make only lines coming from the spaceship touch earth.

I was trying to convey a big message with this piece. Romanticism is always based off of a message, or an opinion, and I did this to match romanticism. The clouds resembling heaven show that the spaceship is coming from what we think of as "heaven". I believe that the traditional outlook on god is incorrect, and that people were visited by aliens in the biblical era. "God" and "Aliens" are the same thing; and people do not realize this. In my piece I'm showing the aliens punishing humanity for their ignorance and corruptness. Just as a picture of Jesus or "God" coming down from the heavens to punish earth; but I'm showing gods and aliens as the same beings. The lines show the punishment on earth, and the dark purple being on the side with earth resembles humanity's darkness.

Overall I am proud of the piece. I believe it shows what I intended to convey, and still gives much room for self-interpretation. The photo shown has glare on the top portion, due to the lights in order to photograph it. I believe it made it look better actually and i would try to add that effect through paint or some such if I were to ever do this piece again.

Bideos

Video is an extremely beneficial type of media. It incorporates visual and audio stimulation to get it's message across. For music, video is used a lot to emphasize meaning. The meaning is already in the song, but the video really visualizes it's meaning. The music video, in concept, needs to symbolize what the song means, and reflect the feeling the music gives. A bad video gives redundant visual diarrhea, a lot of moving craziness that doesn't have a lot of meaning, or point. This is sometimes done because of lack of knowledge, or even on purpose. A bad video can have you grabbing at your eyes, saving yourself from an epileptic seizure. It's important to try and avoid too much crazy movement or flashing of colours. Having a good plan for a music video is essential. Just going at it with a camera isn't going to be very successful. You need to focus your idea, really make it show what the song means. This is how to make a good music video, and how not to make a bad one.

2 Paintings

Art class has been giving us challenging work lately. Our last assignment was exploring the difference between mediums and canvas size. When moving from a larger canvas size to a smaller one, much changes. Brushstrokes need to become more controlled, and precise. The composition needs to be more exact, you have less room to work with as well, making it difficult to really express yourself with the paint. With me i much prefer to be working on a larger canvas. It gives you more room to work; to breathe. It feels less isolated and trapped, and finding this out about ourselves was the purpose of the assignment. Here I have painted quite a simple clash of colours. I decided to go with a diagonal composition, really emphasizing the fluid change from green to red. With these colours being so different I really needed to be careful not to blend them, making a gross brown. With this being said, i had to let all layers dry before i painted any other colour on top of the green or vice versa. Eventually this becametedious, but i believe it turned out well. I really decided to focus on the direction of my brushstrokes. I tried to keep them broken, and spurratic, giving a very impressionistic feeling to my painting.

Cast Away, Wilson

This assignment gave me and many of my classmates technical issues. We were to take a movie trailer, re-cut it and change, mood, plot and even overall feeling of the movie. I first decided to make The Jungle Book into a horror movie. This was quite difficult; between all the technical errors i encountered and just plain lack of clips work became hard for this. I decided to re-plan my strategy for this assignment. I needed a concrete plot to follow, that really affected the beginning movie's mood, and feeling. Cast Away is a movie about a man trapped on an island, and his physical and psychological struggles as he attempts to survive. Going a bit crazy he be-friends a volleyball, which he names Wilson. My trailer looked closer into this companion, and I really tried to humanize Wilson. I attempted to give it a nostalgic feeling, like a love story almost. This proved quite challenging but after a lot of playing around with the movie's clips and even adding whole new audio it was achieved pretty well i think.

Dependency

Blogs are quite the amazing thing. Me, a student in a high school can post things here people anywhere in the world can see. This is ridiculous. This wasn't even conceived as possible one hundred years ago. But today millions of people blog everyday. Never mind ranting about blogging, just look at the internet! I can learn any language, watch any movie, read any book all in one chair. This innovation of technology is really taken for granted by today's youth though. This ridiculously huge outlet to information at our fingertips is amazing, and i think a lot of us would be lost without it. Which is kind of sad really; now we have a whole race of beings dependant on the things they created. Kind of sounds like a religion story no? Either way today's technology and the potential for more technology is mind boggling. Like right now you might be wondering why I added this picture to the blog post. I haven't mentioned it yet, it has relevance to my point though, can you see it? Humans today are growing up with machines. Machines and gadgets are a kid's new best friend, who needs a dog? Can you're dog play music, surf the web, stream movies, and calculate tips? I didn't think so. Humans today are simply born with it, it's a part of us. Thirty years ago almost none of what we had today existed, but yet it's as if it's always been here. We're growing up in a sick time. Where every human has become detached from humanity. An average person might look at the screen of their phone texting collectively a half-hour to an hour a day. Thats twelve straight days of texting a year. All of this time spent staring at the same individual 3x4' screen. People need to snap out of this dependency.

Sound Effects

With technology these days being so advanced, humans need for advanced entertainment is more than ever. With our senses being such a ticklish outlet for stimulation its not a mystery why humans are entertained through movies. Many things attract the viewer to a particular movie. People may like the story, or the actor or the previous film in the plot but what people forget is that they are 100% dependant on sound and video. If you went to see the last Harry Potter movie and it didn't have any sound you wouldn't care if they're at Hogwarts you can't hear them! Sound is such a necessary component of media that people take it for granted or don't even acknowledge it's effect. You might be scared by the murderer jumping out of the closet in a scene but its the sudden jolt of loud music and the door crashing open thats gonna get you to jump out of your seat. This video I posted here (click here) shows a professional Foley artist as he gives some insight into the art of making lifelike sounds out of everyday objects.This essential behind the scenes work needs to be greatly appreciated, because without it we'd get a lot less enjoyment out of the things we do for entertainment on this modern day planet.

Whad Up, Johnson

Okay so my name is Dawson B (AKA Bossmans). Cyber Arts is something that i don't involve a lot of my personal efforts in. I love the class, I enjoy the doing the work, it's a really nice change to the usual work we do in school. But still to an extent work is work and not everything is hop-to happy-go-lucky with me. If anything were to be my "favourite" in this class (favourite would intail that I actually enjoy doing it, which doesn't always happen in school, because education does not chase student desire, it chases teaching needs) it would be more along the lines of animation, always from the tech-portion of the class. If I were to explain "who" I am without relevance to school or education I would tell you that I am a stubborn, teen-ager who thinks I'm always right. I have my very own distinct beliefs about the world and stand by them like a religion, this is also portrayed in my attitude. If I don't agree with you I won't listen, If i think you are of lesser mind, your words are empty. These attitudes sometimes get me in trouble but I stand by them, because after all they make "me", and I stand by me.