January 2020 – Puentes Works

parallelUniverses

Alright, this title feels much more relevant to the subject at hand. The idea of geometric projections on to a 2D plane. For someone brand new to this way of conceptualizing, I think that the idea of a hyper-cube could have been incredibly confusing. While I don’t feel it necessitates more explanation in class, it could probably use another link out to more examples.

In regards to chapter 5, I think Bauspiel was quite interesting. I love disassembling things, and simplifying things down to their absolute forms is always a fun exercise. In that same vein, the fact that all those boats could be compressed down to a rectangular prism is quite amusing.

Part III + Ch.10 didn’t really help me all that much. However, that is because of my background in 3D printing and having a base understanding of representing points in space via 3 measurements. It’s incredibly easy to picture the LxWxH like the volume of a block.

Part IIII + ch.13 were a long but also interesting read. It gave me the perspective (pardon the pun haha) to see how the relations between parallelism and angular measure helps determine the type of projection. I’ve known how to visually distinguish ortho and perspective viewports for a while, but I hadn’t considered the actual relation between them.

pointToLineVinylFabrication

The primary point of the wiki title is to inform the reader of the topic at hand: making an object using vinyl as a medium. I think on the whole, the wiki is quite self explanatory and easy to understand. There are plenty of instructions and links out to other resources to learn more.

The live demonstration worked out well enough for me personally, but I had a clear view and could see pretty much the entire time. Until I go through the process myself however, I think there’s just gonna be a little bit of uncertainty for myself.

The greatest threat posed by the vinyl cutter is 2 fold. The diamond blade should only be touched by a staff member, and loose clothes or hair needs to be kept clear of the rollers.

The greatest danger posed by x-acto knives would counterintuitively be a dull blade. They’re surgically sharp, and a dull blade takes a lot more force to do its work. That extra force is a danger to the one using the knife in case it slips.

personalLogo Concept

The artwork itself is annotated with my thoughts as I was working on it but I’ll comment on a few additional things here.

First up, my initial design doc:

My initial plan was structured. I had artistic principles and motifs I wanted to try and incorporate, but I also had the idea of simplicity in my head. As such, I iterated into a 2nd document.

I wasn’t entirely happy with how things were turning out and I was getting kinda burnt out after a couple hours of working and thinking about this. So I moved onto the requisite 2nd and 3rd concepts.

Right off the bat you can see how I felt about these. With a days worth of sleep on these, I think ultimately these were along a better design path for a logo than my initial attempt to create something more akin to a header image or something. With that in mind:

I ended up thinking I’m gonna go with a design I originally had no intent of using since in the medium it’s gonna be presented in, it will serve much better to have the line art simplified down to its bare essentials.

readymadeRDNA: Conceptual Development

I was given the word “Material” in order to develop into a narrative presentation. So I started with a mind map:

Branching out into just about 50 different terms, I kept having my mind wander back to my specialty: 2D video. The presentation needs to be entertaining so naturally I turned to 4th wall humor because nothing is original and I might as well since it’s fun to write for. Writing away a story board, I came to these concepts:

Remains to be seen how well I can incorporate all of this into a Keynote presentation with no background in it, and the fact that I really just want to edit it all together in final cut pro. I’ll try my best though, and just fudge it slightly where I really need to.

pointToLineLineArt

This line art is an exploration of the very basic concept of lines within art. Using Adobe illustrator, the left column show both red bezier curves, and black free hand curves. On the right, a combination of the 2 was used to emulate a set of professional line examples.

pointToLineGestaltPraxis

Shown above is an exercise in an art concept called gestalt. Gestalt has to do with the idea of perception of groups and the play between positive and negative space in an image. For example, this piece here is perceived as a group of 6 all together, even though each individual square is unique piece in and of itself.

pointToLineGestaltTheory

Ignoring the pointToLine part, Gestalt Theory is essentially the idea that humans looks for order in the chaos. The fact of the matter is that the universe is chaos, and will only continue to become more and more chaotic, but as humans we see patterns in everything. I think overall, the concepts explored were quite self explanatory and need no further exploration in class. The 4 principles of perception were quite illustrative of the concepts.

readymadeKeynote

So my thoughts on slide ware… I lean much closer to powerpoint being an evil creation with very little actual good use during class time. The reading was correct: a large majority of people just slam as much info as possible with lots of text and bullet points, and it always ends up just being boring. However, I am a believer that this format can still work in certain cases. Conveying lecture notes with a powerpoint while giving relevant examples via auditory explanations works fine.

With LinkedIn learning, I finally found out how to implement slide transitions and that theres both a manual and a times transition option. In keynote’s defense, I had never actually sought out this information. Additionally, I never knew how to implement build in/out animations! Those are some of the nicest options available over on software like Prezzi. Lastly Magic Move looks like a super cool transition I hadn’t actually see before. Much more akin to something key framing in an animation or a video editing software.

pointToLineDynamic

Shown here is my first usage of Adobe illustrator. I’ve used the block tool in order to essentially posterize a base image that was a painting.

Parallel Universes

I’m honestly not sure I understand the point of these titles. To me they just come across as vaguely relevant to the topic being covered. In this instance, parallel universes? I see the concepts more like adjacent universes. Geometric concepts like Point, Line, Plane, can be applied to reality, but the fact is we live in an analog world and nothing is that absolute.

Other than the module title itself, I don’t think and of the headings in the reading are that hard to understand. Solely the overall heading could really use a proper explanation for me.

As for examples, I was quite impressed by Figure 4.6, the painting of a park using only “Points” of color. Figure 4.2 was also particularly impressive in the way that student got the volume and form of her face to show up using only “line.” In the same vein, Figure 4.15 too is impressive just due to the sheer scale of the line work done on the Nike shoe. As for the “Plane” works, I didn’t really find any on the page overly impressive. Andrew Mccollum’s shape project certainly peaked my interest though. A unique shape for every person on earth is just such a weird and cool concept to aim for.