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Sunday, September 26, 2010

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

WASH up at the Menil Friday

Be at the Menil (menil.org) promtly @ 11 am
1515 Sul Ross, Houston, Texas 77006
(parking lot located on Alabama)

BRING
1. a picnic lunch (and drink)
2. sketchbook/notebook, pen/pencil
3. handout (download)

photo by Hickey-Robertson, Houston

Students attempt to become white space
or black dot artifacts in their human dot compositions

Bryttani and Rachel

Michael art directs shot with team for human compositions

Thursday, September 16, 2010

The Exquisite Corpse photographic scavenger hunt (part II)

Problem (challenge):
Post one photograph you've shoot over the weekend inspired by your Exquisite Corpse sentence.

Subproblems (parameters/challenge):
  1. Don't stage or setup a scene
  2. Go for a walk (dorm, library, road, block)
    as long as it takes
  3. Don't try to tell the whole story held within the sentence
  4. Consider it a movie frame still
  5. Capture an incomplete fleeting moment
  6. One instance
  7. Give us a hint
  8. When looking through the camera/phone consider
    1. perhaps a close up
    2. leaning towards abstraction
    3. to what degree of abstraction
    4. continuance, proximate, closure, similarity/difference
    5. the way the forms interrelate
      detached, touching, overlapping, interpenetration, union, cropping, etc
    6. the dominating elements
      point, line, shape, color, value, texture, space...
Timeline: Due Monday, September 20th before 9 a.m.
  1. Post to blog
  2. Include
    1. title: The Exquisite Corpse Two
    1. sentence: your The Exquisite Corpse
    2. image: ONE  (you may decide to post more images in another blog post if you like)
    3. short write up of your process -- what helped you; what blocked you?
NO NOs:
no images created by anyone else
no digital manipulation/editing

PS Get your blog up to date this it weekend.

Here is a list of posts you should have on your blog to date
beginning with the oldest posts first right up to the ones for this weekend.
  1. newspaper/first day summary
  2. week aug 27 lecture/reading summary

  3. 16 dots composition (b&w 6x6 clean sketches)
  4. final dot 4 and critic writeup (~250 minimum)
  5. cardboard nature studies (sketches)
  6. cardboard object progress report
  7. week sept 3 lecture/reading summary

  8. cardboard progress report
  9. playful and periodic image of top eight with self crit explaining selection
  10. week of sept 10 lecture summary on creativity

  11. the equiste corpse image and sentence
  12. final playful and periodic images with group critique write up
  13. cardboard critic and images

  14. week of sept 15 lecture/reading summary
  15. eight text as texture images
  16. the equiste corpse two image, sentence, process self evaluation

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Visual elements as sound

Laurens WASH Blogg: Explaining design through sound, umm what?: "Hey guys, heres all the videos of everyone doing their element of design by making some kind of noise. ..."

umm, what? point, line, shape, color, texture, value, and space...see if you can identify the element each group tried to create via sound. it was very difficult to truly isolate elements into sound alone, almost all include a bit of visual cues of space/position or mood.

Thanks Lauren.

Museum of Fine Arts Houston looking for student volunteers
to help with Houston Portal Project, Cai Guo-Qiang’s Odyssey

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Portal Project, Cai Guo-Qiang’s Odyssey needs student helpers.

 Photo by Seiji Toyonaga, Courtesy Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art
Cai Guo-Qiang producing a gunpowder drawing titled "Unmanned Nature," Hiroshima, October 2008

Artist Cai Guo-Qiang (at left, in a portrait by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders) will create a permanent, site-specific installation for the museum’s new Arts of China galleries, which open in October 2010. The project -- a monumental landscape mural to be created in a Houston warehouse just prior to installation and rendered by igniting a gunpowder drawing over multiple panels -- will line the walls of the Ting Tsung and...

Monday, September 6, 2010

Some excellent WASHER posts!
if you're at a lost for what to blog, here are some well done posts

NEWSPAPER/CINDERBLOCK
Ryan records his first days actual and mental process with a sense of humor.
If It Can Go Wrong: Newspaper / Cinder Block Project: "...the last thing I had expected as the first thing I'd be doing on the first day... I suppose I expected something a bit boring, the standard "This Is What You Will Be Doing For The Rest Of The Semester" speech*...."
CRITIQUES
Michael's critique with the bonus sense of humor.
W.A.S.H. Chronicles: Thursday, 9/2/10. Final 4 Dots and Critique.: "...My obsession over these dots uncomfortably reminded me of the detective that goes nuts in the  "Dark City" movie. I may yet play with the size ..."
Adrienne posts an informative, useful write up of her critique
Mmmm...Candy: Critique and Top Four: "At first the group said I did not have very many large circles and then they flipped and said I had a large variety of the size of the circl..."
Kelsey communicates slow clearly even if her roommate was a math major, they would understand both the process of critiquing this project as well as Kelsey's compositional strengths and why she believed they were choosen
Kelsey Faubion: Circles, circles, everywhereeee!: "The finished 2D circle project is right around the corner ... Wednesday morning we were asked to bring in 40 6'x6' sketches. From those 40 w..."
SELF EVALUATION/PROCESS
Melissa discusses her process, habits, and experiments.
laundry day: Wednesday, 09/01/10: 2D & 3D progress: "The 2-D project is going pretty well so far I think.  When Kathy told us to look for patterns in our thumbnails I immediately looked for the..."
 Michael's cardboard progress reports
W.A.S.H. Chronicles: Wednesday, 9/1/10. Cardboard Organic Project - Pro...: "Top Left Image: Cardboard sketch missing from previous analysis. Other Images: Update on Progress - I decided that to make the piece..."
W.A.S.H. Chronicles: Saturday, 8/28/10. Cardboard Organic Project - Bir...: "Upon research of my spindle-like seed pod looking object, I've made some observations: -I found that the pod/core is split and frayed in i..."

SUMMARIES
Hunter gives an excellent summary of week 1 readings. It is fine to present these as notes from your reading, but Hunter's is a good example of summarizing the main ideas.
WASHBLOGGER: week one reading synopsis: "The reading assignment for this week focused on the critique and how the principles of Gestalt theories subconsciously affect our perception..."
 Paige's point of view on the first week's lecture.
Artist Vision: Gestalt Lecture 8/27/2010: "2D When someone give you the word composition and asks to define it, you think, ' Oh, that's so simple.' But breaking down the word compos..."
When thinking about WRITING A SUMMARY of reading, lecture, or even a critique, think in terms of how you might explain the information or what you learned to your roommate who was not there. A short narrative of your experience/learning.

Lauren takes a different approach which is just as valid and useful solution for considering our readings. She points out key words and concepts.
Laurens WASH Blogg: Reading Assignments, week of August 27: "Gestalt- entire figure or configuration, whole is understood to be different from its parts, exhibits high organization 4 aspects of Gestal..."
Dang I am proud of you guys! What a great start to our semester.

__________________________________

Posts that should be on each of your blogs
prior to Wednesday, Sept 8.
  1. Newspaper/Cinderblock experience and image (if you have one)
  2. Week of August 27 lecture/reading summary
  3. Any process shots with a little bit of narrative
  4. Image of selected 16 dot compositions
  5. Image of final 4 images selected (both image of crit group selection and new group if you deviated from their choices). Critique write up (~250 min on words)—include list of patterns or habits of problem solving (both what the group observed and any you are self aware of), summary of groups evaluation as well as ways in which their understanding of your compositions differed from your intent. And if you swapped out any images from the groups choices, you must justify your reason for the change(s).
  6. Cardboard and nature object studies
  7. cardboard object progress report

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Attacking dots with gusto,
constructive arguing,
and a sense of humor.


Alina, Hunter, Mark, Jasmine, Amber and Kelsey professionally argue about the application of gestalt theory within their visual explorations



Daniel, Henry, Edith, Michael, Geoffrey and JD do the same as did the rest of the WASHers. YES!



Then there was the aftermath of mental and sharpie exhaustion. Thank you Alina for a laugh and smile. It is good for the soul.

Ha. I do like the WASHers. Not only are you guys throwing yourselves into the tasks, you are doing it with gusto and humor. I am proud of you guys. It is and is going to be an awesome semester. I can't wait to see what you guys produce and your insights!!