Modular Madness Crits

I don't really remember everything that was said. Really I just remember nervously babbling about my piece for about a minute before letting people tell me what they thought. Among those, I remember:

- "I like how it stands on little points instead of having a flat surface"
- "I'm always surprised when artists use geometry and calculations in their pieces because I'm terrible at that stuff"
- "Should have used lighting to create shadows since you have all of that negative space"
- "I would've liked to have seen the small part on the inside of the tower built up some more"

I really only remember that I was showered with praise, which I wasn't expecting since my piece was so much smaller than the others and less visually impressive, too. I may not remember everything that was said, but I'm pretty confident that nobody really gave any critique beyond the lighting bit. Oh well, I don't really care about sculpting anyway.

With Apologies to Mom...

I present markmaking mach two. Not much to say as a preface except that I made a gigantic mess and burned through more than half of my charcoal... My poor wallet ;;_;;

(OH WAIT I DO HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY, WHY DOES MY STUPID GOT-DANG CAMERA KEEP FLIPPING MY PICTURES TURNWAYS THIS IS INFURIATING okay deep breaths phew)

These first three pictures were done while listening to "The Stars" by Jukebox the Ghost.

Then these three were done while listening to "Only in Dreams" by Weezer.

And then these three were done while listening to "Cardboard Room" by Math the Band.

This last one is my favorite by far. I listened to "Float On" by Modest Mouse. I did the first draft, then wiped it all off with a sock, then the second draft, then wiped it all off with a sock, then the final one. I think it came out pretty nicely.

And here are some pictures of said sock after it was finished being used (sorry mom).

Menil Trip

.... Well, I already turned the papers in.... Uh.... Placeholder post I guess.

My problem with anime

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eloe6zhs6bE

Oh god my "s" noise sure does drive the mic insane. My bad!

Story LINE

Emailed to Kathy.

Markmaking Part 1

This assignment was pretty refreshing. I didn't really have to worry about making everything perfect, or craftsmanship - it was just making marks on a piece of paper according to some basic instructions. However, the marks on a few of them are really light, so I'd like to apologize in advance for the crappy cameras. I probably should've used a sharpie or something.

100 Parallel Lines with my eyes closed

 Two hundred lines, one hundred with each hand drawn at the same time

For this one, the paper was crumpled up, and then smoothed. 

After doing that, I made marks on it for four minutes.

This one is similar to the above, only I neatly folded the paper

instead of crumpling it up.

For this one, I wrote my name one hundred times.

 It turned out kind of creepy looking, I like it.

For this one, I wrote "STOP HITTING YOURSELF"

over and over for a bit more than ten minutes.

Well, this photo turned out. 

I attacked the page with a piece of charcoal.

552 Toothpicks

Information as per the handout posted on the main blog:

MATERIALS

1. I feel that the overall form of the final piece does, in fact, resonate with the toothpicks from which it was constructed. Toothpicks don't want to form a solid object: they want to be something more architectural.

2. The piece could be made from another object just as well. For example, it could easily be made with pencils, and then it would be even bigger and more impressive (though it might be harder to fix them together).

3. The difficulty in the material usage came from the sheer tediousness of the work. Toothpicks are tiny. I used hot glue, and each toothpick was glued at both ends of itself. That's 552 toothpicks being glued twice each for a total of 1104 globs of glue.

4. I didn't discover anything in particular about the toothpicks that was "shocking", aside from how much time they can consume if you use them as material for a project (hint: the amount of time is A LOT).

PROCESS/AMBITIOUSNESS

1. I feel that while the piece did not rise above the ordinary in scale, it did rise above the ordinary in effort. As I keep repeating, the process was long and grueling. I spent several sessions of staying after class in the wash building (twice for about two hours each, and then one time for three and a half), and that was constant working. I also two 5 hour sessions working on it in my dorm room, and none of this even includes time spent working on it in class.

2. The piece changed a little from the original concept. The legs were initially going to be jointed, and a lot more spidery. Also, the bottom part was supposed to extend downwards and form a dome before the legs came out from that. However, after I realized how long just creating the base was taking, I deemed that creating that would be impossible with the amount of time I had.

3. The initial idea was more ambitious than the final piece, but I think my decisions were reasonable and justified. I spent enough time on the project without driving myself insane trying to overcomplicate it.

CRAFTSMANSHIP

I feel that the way the piece is put together helps the viewer understand the amount of effort that was put into it. Since the piece focuses more on the architecture of the object rather than what the object itself actually is, I feel that my vision for it doesn't obscure its meaning. (Fun fact: you can lift it by almost any single toothpick without it falling apart (THAT DOES NOT MEAN I AM GIVING YOU PERMISSION TO TRY IT (SERIOUSLY))).

FORM

1. The dominant formal elements in this piece are line (the toothpicks) and space (all of the gaps between the toothpicks). I feel that space is important to the piece, because it wouldn't be as interesting if all of the negative space was filled in with toothpicks. As far as line, it's really not so much important as it is inherently guaranteed to be involved in a piece that is made out of hundreds of toothpicks.

2. The dominating principles of the piece are scale, repetition, rhythm, unity, and space. Scale is because I was partially inspired by the Bacteriophage, which is infinitesimal compared to my sculpture. Repetition and rhythm are obvious: the squares and triangles are repeated over and over throughout the piece. Unity is because of the way all of these tiny toothpicks combine into something much bigger (as well as aforementioned fun fact), and space has also already been covered.

CONCEPT

1. The piece doesn't really relate to the history, function, or purpose of toothpicks. After all, toothpicks aren't generally used for making crafts. Well, I mean, they are, but most people don't use them for that.

3. The presentation of the piece doesn't really alter the viewer's understanding of the toothpicks, I don't think. Unless that alteration is going from "toothpicks are for sandwiches" to "oh or you can do that".

PRESENTATION

1. Why did I put it where I did? Well, I personally don't feel it matters too much. As long as it's not sitting on the ground, I think anywhere would be okay. I also like that the viewer can walk around and see it from different angles (even if it's the same on each side).

I can't really answer these because I haven't seen what everything that's been put up around my piece looks like. Shrug.

Anyway, now that you've ignored all of that and scrolled to the fun part (I know I would!), here are the pictures!

TOOTHPIIIIIICKS

RESEARCH:

A toothpick is a small stick of wood, plastic, bamboo, metal, bone or other substance used to remove detritus from the teeth, usually after a meal. A toothpick usually has one or two sharp ends to insert between teeth. They can also be used for picking up small appetizers (like cheese cubes or olives) or as a cocktail stick.

Because toothpicks can be made of bone, thinking of making something using toothpicks made me think of making a skeletal structure, rather than something that has opaque sides. Like, it needs to be architectural. Perhaps, because they are toothpicks, they should be used to construct something food related? Or maybe teeth related? Actually, no, I think that I should go with something architectural, I think it would be less predictable than food or teeth.

I tried looking up lyrics involving toothpicks, but they're all nonsensical and irrelevant, or just have toothpick in the title without ever mentioning the toothpicks, so that's out. Anyway, let's hope I can make something worth looking at!

------

So: modular madness. Toothpicks. I think the sculpture currently is made of about 400 of em! Here are some pictures.

Photo Shoot

Okay, I'm way too tired to write too much about this for now, so I'm gonna keep this short. Remember the dot projects we did? Well, our most recent 2D project was to recreate two of them using ourselves as the subjects. Included are the two dot compositions that I decided upon using, and the two photos that resulted from them. We initially wanted to do a creepy birthday party, but that theme fell apart when we realized how hard it was to capture that sort of environment while still portraying our dots. Fortunately, the images still definitely give off a decent enough vibe of creepiness, so I'm pleased with at least that.

Repetition and Rhythm Photos

The bad news is that these were all taken with a camera phone, and a fairly weak one at that. The good news is that I'm going to be using a digital camera in the near(?) future.

 

I'll edit the fifth one in as soon as it becomes available.

Collages

Collages were made from the topographic and magnetic maps from before. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of the final products, so these will have to do.

Chinese Paper Umbrella

So after our cardboard spheres, we all selected an object at random from a box. Well, I didn't get to. I picked the same item as somebody at my table, and Valerie rolled her eyes, went "oh my god, you got it too" and gave me this instead.

A little Chinese paper umbrella that you would find in an alcoholic beverage. It was then that we were told what our project would be: to recreate the object at a much larger scale, and to integrate it to the body/make it wearable.

So of course the first thing I did was panic, because I was being asked to recreate something with a very specific functionality in a medium that largely prefers to remain a static object.

However, before we were even allowed to start worrying about this, we were told to come up with three proposals on how to accomplish attaching our objects to our bodies.

 Sort of an umbrella belt type thing. Umbrelta? 

It only got 1 vote.

 An umbrella hat. It got 12 or so votes.

Pierced diagonally through skull. I wish I had gone with this one.

 17 votes.

I wondered how I would possibly manage to make a functional umbrella out of cardboard, and after letting it stew in my head for about half an hour I decided "screw it" and just started cutting out pieces. After a while I had kind of an idea of what I was doing. I started stripping down cardboard triangles down to the corrugation so I could use them for the papery part of the umbrella.

 Have you ever wondered what the 

skeleton of an umbrella looks like?

I haven't, either.

Soooo I just kind of started cobbling all of this together. I decided after a while that making it functional was nothing more than a pipe dream, and decided I'd rather just focus on getting the umbrella look down. So I made it into a hat. This is the final result.

Unfortunately... RIGHT BEFORE I WENT TO PRESENT IT... One of the chinstraps broke. I ended up having to reattach the chinstrap to the inside of the umbrella with a huge, ugly piece of blue tape, which I was immediately jumped on and attacked over after I presented it. I kept my poker face on, but oh my God, the fury of a billion white hot suns.

In addition to the craftsmanship not being particularly popular with the harsh judging I faced, the way I presented it was also lacking. About three minutes after I walked off of the stage, I wished that I had made the "handle" part of the umbrella red, and trudged in going "braiiiins" like I was a zombie. I probably would have thought of that beforehand, but I was so enveloped just trying to finish the project that I didn't really think about presenting it.

Oh well!

Cardboard Spheres

Our first project for the 3D component of WASH was to construct three spheres... Out of cardboard. One was to be done with the "skin" being the main focus, one was to be done with attention to the internal architecture, and one was to be done without using glue, tape, or any other adhesive. This felt like kind of a rough introduction to cardboard: after all, when you think cardboard, you think of boxes, and it's hard to imagine being able to turn a box into a sphere without aforementioned box being a huge pain in the butt.

The first sphere I made was "skin". I thought about how with a 3D modeling program, you can create a perfectly round sphere, and as you decrease the amount of polygons it's composed of, it becomes less and less of a sphere until it's made of a smaller amount of large geometric shapes instead of millions and millions of tiny ones.

 

After that, I did "internal architecture". I wish I would've done more with it, but holding it together with slots was helpful practice for the next one.

The following sphere is:

-Held together by a rod stuck through the middle using no glue tape or adhesives!

-Barely Not even a sphere!

I'm sure I could have gotten it to be more spherelike had I had about five more hours and a lot more patience, but cutting out disc after disc in cardboard is a tiring affair.

Next time: