mikaelajonsson-blog

[mikaelajonsson-blog]

Project #4:IDENTITY ZINE- Putting it All Together

Zine Project Summary:

(four images above are an example of the final Zine.)

I thoroughly enjoyed learning about the history of Zines as well a being exposed to them as a medium for the first time. I worked hard on the process of creating the Zine and I felt really happy to have way of expressing my photography into a printable medium as away of expressing my visual identity.

Digital Art Class- Fall 2017:

What were your favorite & least favorite projects & why?

My Favorite project was the Zine Project because it allows me to produce an outlet for my creative works in a creative way. I honestly didn’t  have a least favorite project as I love working and discovering different digital art skills.

Which project(s) were most successful & why?

I believe my Digital Collage and Zine Projects were most successful and I was able to create professional looking works which showed a good execution of elements and principles of art and design and present them neatly.

What did you learn about digital art this semester?

I learnt that its history is much more extent then I had ever imagined. Also thats it’s future possibilities are infinite.

What more would you like to learn about digital art?

I would like to lear how to develop skills in web design as well as combining science to create game design.

How has working with a computer as your medium enhanced your creative practice?

I really enjoy working on the computer as it allows for infinite possibilities and nothing is really an error as you can manipulate an erase everything.

How does your final book relate to digital art & what does your overall design say about you?

It uses the the Adobe InDesign program which is a form of digital art creation. It expresses my nostalgic and classic approach to design.

How does the overall book design relate to the design of your online tumblr portfolio?

The book design relates to my online Tumblr portfolio as it is also monochrome black and white just like my logo. I often use simple line work in my portfolio, this can be found in the zine too.

How do they accentuate each other?

They accentuate each other by being similar in color pallet and overall design. The logo is also present on the zine which visually links it to my online portfolio.

What grade do you expect on your final project & why?

I expect to finish with an A as I believe I met all of the project requirements and was able to create an interesting and original Zine which consists of only my work. I did not take any images or text from another source.

What grade do you expect in this course & why?

I expect to finish with an A as I believe I have shown my potential as a digital artist and have timelessly put in the effort to complete all exercises and projects, often beyond expectation.

[mikaelajonsson-blog]

Reading #5 : MY CHOICE

Art, Design And Gestalt Theory.-  By: Roy R. Behrens

Gestalt psychology stems it’s origins from Germany during the year 1910. This psychology explains how the characteristics of stimuli cause us to structure or interpret a visual field or problem in a certain way.

Max Wertheimer (Czech Born) as well as Kurt Koffka and Wolfgan Kohler (both Austrian), were the founders of the Gestalt Theories. (Image above)

Their Theories argued that

 “A whole is not simply the sum of its parts.” But rather a synergistic “whole effect,” or “Gestalt”.

Figures are never seen alone, rather, only dynamic figure-ground relationships.

The appearance of color is legitimate because we always experience perceptual wholes, not isolated parts.

The Gestalt Theories included the Laws of:

Proximity

Similarity

Continuance

Closure

Figure and Ground.

What arose after the discovery of the Gestalt Theories:

A mutual interest between artists and psychologist instantaneously began.

Artists used the information from these studies to improve their understanding of creating artworks.

Color theories arose from the Gestalt ideas.

“Gestalt Theory Became associated with the modernist tendency towards “aestheticism,” the belief that like music and architecture - all art is essentially abstract design.” -Behrens

[mikaelajonsson-blog]

Assignment #4: Show Me What You Know

Person, Thing, Place. - Mikaela Jonsson

Medium- Digital Collage: Found Imagery (Internet Sources) & Own Original Photography.

For Assignment #4: Show Me What You Know, we had to create a piece where we somehow showed a person, thing and place we liked.

The subjects I chose were as follows:

Person: Johnny Depp (An actor and artist I have admired and looked up to since I was a child)

Thing: Vinyl Records. (My mum had a record player and thats what I grew up listening to music on. I miss this kind of authenticity and the smell when I took the record out of its cover.)

Place: The Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.  I visited it over the summer. I fell in love with this place. I almost cried because I was so overwhelmed by all of the artwork. This a personal Photograph I took. 

1. My Concept:

I wanted to create a surreal collage which was pleasing to the eye and showed my understanding of design elements and principals as well as creating flawless masking and photoshop abilities. 

2.  The formal elements and Principles Of Design:

Color: Mostly neutrals with splashes of red & a few hints of oranges, yellows, blues and greens in the ceiling fresco.

Shape: Many circular shapes from the use of the vinyls in the foreground.

Greyscale: Used in the figure to isolate his importance in the piece while still allowing for an overall balance.

Reppetion and Rhythm: Caused by the use of overlapping Vinyls. 

Depth: Created by the realist and high depth background architectural image.

3. How my work exemplifies what I have learned to execute, in Intro to Digital Art:

My work shows my understanding of the importance of using design elements and principals as well as how to develop skills in the Adobe Industry Level software.

[mikaelajonsson-blog]

Reading #4: Beyond Pong: why digital art matters by James Bridle

“Beyond Pong” by James Bridle is a highly informative article which elaborates on the rapid pace of the ever-changing digital world and the role of artists within it. From Documenting the progress of these changes to creating their own individual styles. The points of interest include:

1. The computers haven't really got smaller; they've got much, much larger:

That this computation is less visible than it was in Reed's day, doesn't make it less pervasive. This is due to the facts that:

Yes indeed the physical form of the modern Computer is much smaller than the Original ENIAC Computer.

But the use of systems such as the satellite of windowless sheds on ring roads which we have chosen to call "the cloud" show infinite potential in size. 

The digital is both the infrastructure and the mode of our daily communication.

HenceIt shapes our culture at every level. It is the foundation on which our personal lives are built on in the majority of the developed world where it establishes global communications and global wars. It is, in essence, in everything.

2. If technological literacy is going to rise, it's going to need the help of artists to enlarge its vocabulary:

Digital Revolution aims to walk a similar line through the entire history of digital creativity.  Digital Artists are needed to showcase not only some of its signature events and works, but also the stories of the creators of these technologies. 

According to the curator Conrad Bodman,

"It's not a show that just looks at contemporary art, but film, music, video games and design, the way they relate to each other, and sometimes merge into one."

[mikaelajonsson-blog]

Digital Exercise #5: Watch & Complete Adobe InDesign Tutorials.

Above are the designs created during this exercise, as listed in this order:

How to create and print a postcard Design: (Front and Back)

Exercise Replica design and 

Personal design,

     2. How to Create and Print a Brochure Design. (Front and Back)

Exercise Replica design and

Personal design,

What Is InDesign:

Adobe InDesign is a desktop publishing software application produced by Adobe Systems. 

It can be used to create works such as:

posters, 

flyers, 

brochures, 

magazines, 

newspapers, 

presentations, 

books and

 ebooks.

Graphic designers and production artists are the principal users, creating and laying out:

periodical publications, 

posters, and 

print media. 

[mikaelajonsson-blog]

Assignment #3: Create 3 Identity/Obsessions/Interests GIFs

Identity Gif. 

Obsession Gif.

Art Interest Gif.

[mikaelajonsson-blog]

Project #3: MUSIC VIDEO = Story + Image + Sound

“In The Sun.” 

Directed By: Mikaela Jonsson

Music: Coastline-Hollow Coves.

In The Sun is a video which was made to express my feelings towards life, to highlight the things I value most, which are nature, people, experiences, travel and the feeling of happiness.

Questions to Consider:

What aspects of your identity do you want to explore through music & video?

- I explore my feelings towards life rather than showing myself physically. These are the ideas I value an see as important.

What is your main idea or concept?

-My main concept is “living rather than simply existing”

What process & materials would you like to explore?

- I explored new effects and researched these further as well as watching tutorials on how to preform them on Premier Pro.

Is there a good balance of clarity & mystery?

- Tried to avoid placing to many images of the beach as I believed the lyrics conveyed this idea pretty clearly.

What does the final music video look like & why?

-The final video looks modern and alternative. I prefer to use imagery which conveys feelings rather than practical thoughts.

[mikaelajonsson-blog]

Digital Exercise #4: Watch & Complete Adobe Premiere Tutorials

Adobe Premier Pro is a timeline based editing App which allows for the following editing options:

Supports high resolution video editing.

Supports a wide variety of video and audio file formats.

Easy Workflow integration with both Photoshop and After Effects.

Aimed at the professional market but still easy to use.

High bit-depth rendering, 

Multicamera editing, 

Time remapping, 

Scopes 

Color correction tools, 

Advanced audio mixer interface

Exercise 4- Video as per instructions.

Exercise 4- Own Personal Video Creation using skills learnt in tutorial.

[mikaelajonsson-blog]

Extra Credit | EXHIBITION VISIT: 2017 Biennial Faculty Art Exhibition.

It was really interesting visiting the Anual Biennial Faculty Exhibition especially being able to see what our professors do in their professional capacity.

1) A piece I am fond of.

Artist:Amy Broderick

Artwork: Holotype (Monument).

I enjoyed this piece due to the subtle blue and yellow tones used. I found an interest in the juxtaposition between the two frames in terms of their positions and color choices, yet they still created a beautiful and balanced final image .

2) A piece I did not like.

Artist: Corey Lamb

Artwork: Threshold (Instilation )

I found it hard to engage with this piece as the object looked as if they had been arranged kind of randomly to me and I saw them as not really fitting in with the place on the floor where they were layed out.

3) My photobomb :)

[mikaelajonsson-blog]

Reading #3 : Allergy to Originality by Drew Christie

fter reading Drew Christie’s post, and watching his short film, entitled “Allergy To Originality.” one is instinctively left with a feeling that perhaps nothing is original or ever has been , in totality.

1) Nothing Ever Has Been Original:

If we really think about it this is true. How do our ideas come to us. They are all sparked in our sub conscience by thing we see or have seen around us.

“Our creativity comes from without, not from within. We are not self made, we are dependent on one another. Admitting this to ourselves isn't an embrace of mediocrity and derivativeness -- it's a liberation from our misconceptions, and it's an incentive to not expect so much from ourselves, and to simply begin.” -Kirby Fergus

2) Appropriation in modern society.

The use of appropriation in the modern world has become very common, one may even say, almost trendy. The Art’s especially give evidence to these ideas.

“Appropriation in art is the use of pre-existing objects or images with little or no transformation applied to them. The use of appropriation has played a significant role in the history of the arts(literary, visual, musical and performing arts).” - Wikipedia 

Above is an example of appropriated art by adding a “Simpson” twist to Dali’s famous piece.

[mikaelajonsson-blog]

Assignment #2: Individual Research on Digital Art & Artists.

Artist: Timotheus Tomicek

Title: Glass Girl

Year: 2011

Medium: Photography (Forms part of a multiple piece Video Installation)

Timotheus Tomicek is a contempory Austrian artist, he was born 1978 in Vienna.He has studied extensively internationally and been exhibited throughout Europe, most recently with a solo show at C/O Editions in Berlin; he was also recently awarded the 15th Welde Art Prize in Photography, and was a 2010 Finalist for the Arte Laguna Prize, Venice, Italy.

Glass Girl is seen as a single item of many in a multi piece installation. The installation includes;

-Photographic portraits

-Landscapes

-Cityscapes

-Video 

This piece is where he composes visual architecture in set sequences that create subtle and haunting movements in the mind of the viewer. 

These fragmented installations often bringing into play historical painting brought to life through the subtle use of

movement, 

action, and��

narrative. 

The piece, The Glass Girl specifically shows these elements of: 

A Juxtaposition of movement and stillness.

References to:

 traditional photorealism.

 Dutch genre paintings.

 and the Renaissance.

Artist: Timotheus Tomicek

Title: World

Year: 2015

Medium: Photography (Forms part of a multiple piece Video Installation)

Link to full instillation here:

https://vimeo.com/75857152

This second work of Tomicek shows his artistic variety as there is quite a change in style between the Glass Girl work and this piece called, World.

The elements of Art and Principals of Design which are found in this piece include:

Bright colour and light from the centre fading darker towards the edges of the frame.

Emphasise of centre and the word “World”.

Special interest created by the backwards spelling of the word “World” - it is as if someone or something on the outside of the plane wrote it,

Artist: Lui Di

Title: Animal Regulation Series

Year: 2008

Medium: Digitally Manipulated Photography 

Lui Di, a Chines Artist who shows his idea  “By violating the rules of common sense, we can break the hypnotic trance induced by familiar reality.” very strongly throughout his works.

Liu Di got the idea for his Animal Regulation series on a bus ride through the crowded suburbs of Beijing.  He felt the urge to add something that would make people take a fresh, long look at these familiar scenes. The extra thing should be “powerful and impossible to ignore, but not something that would make people panic.

Process:

Used Photoshop.

reproportioned a panda, a rhinoceros, a monkey, a rabbit and a frog.

and inserted them at gigantic scale into shabby urban settings. 

By adding these bottom-heavy animals into back streets, construction sites and tenement courtyards, he highlights the relationships “between nature and human society, between the material world and the intellect, between obedience to and violation of the laws of nature.”

It is only when our preconceptions are jolted, Liu Di concludes, that “we wake up and truly see”.

a) In your opinion, what is the role of digital art today?

I believe that digital art is an import way of emphasising the issues and cultures of today by means of a graphically universal language.

 b) What kinds of personal connections can you make to your selected artists works?

I can make a personal connection with Di’s works especially as they express some of my own feelings towards animals trapped in captivity or small space. I am really against this. 

c) What are the subjects, issues, and themes important to each of your selected artists?

Through his work,  Timotheus Tomicek forces us to examine our expectations of the familiar while he makes alterations to the reference of Dutch Style art and the Renaissance . 

Lui Di on the other hand tackles the modern issues of animal captivity, crowded living spaces and the industrial living conditions his own country, China.

[mikaelajonsson-blog]

Project #2: Digital Collage/Montage - Exploration in Multiple Media.

I decided to create a highly graphic collage using simple shapes and lines to create a balanced digital artwork.

The central piece of the collage is a visual representation of my self portrait.

- I created a low poly portrait which is very time consuming and involves sub dividing the face into hundred of triangular facets and then giving them the appropriate colour choices to represent the natural skin/ hair tones of the face.This is done on Illustrator to create a vector image. 

-I then converted this into a black and white image on Photoshop.

-I then placed a variety of circular shapes around the image at different layers to create an interesting element of dimension in the piece.

-I created complexed curvature shapes with pattern which I later scattered across the piece.

-Lastly I used simple lines, placed horizontally, vertical and diagonally across the image to add a minimalistic approach to the design.

I enjoy the chiaroscuro created by the vast difference of light and and dark in the collage. This is especially prominent in with the brightest yellow against the dark lines and facets of the face.

The art work as a whole represents my sense of design and personal identity. The curved shapes with are organic forms, show my attachment to nature, while the very geometric shapes show my other side which entail discipline and control when it comes to training for my sporting endeavours. 

[mikaelajonsson-blog]

‘Edit your first photo in Photoshop’ - Created as demonstrated. 

‘Edit your first photo in Photoshop’ - Created on My Own. (Using one of my Original Photos, Taken In Vienna this summer.)

‘Create your first design in Photoshop’ - Created as Demonstrated.

‘Create your first design in Photoshop’- Created on my own. (Using photographs taken by myself.) 

(el·dritchˈ(eldritch)  : weird and sinister or ghostly.)

Digital Exercise #3: Watch & Complete Adobe Photoshop Tutorials.

[mikaelajonsson-blog]

Reading #2 Digital Divide: Contemporary Art and New Media by Claire Bishop

“While many artists use digital technology, how many really confront the question of what it means to think, see, and filter affect through the digital?” -Claire Bishop

After the early 1990′s there was a strong sense that visual art was going to become digital, too, harnessing the new technologies that were just beginning to trans- form everybody's lives. But somehow this venture never really gained traction—however it is not to that digital media have failed to in ltrate contemporary art. Most art today has aspects of new technology at most stages of its production. Multichannel video installations, Photoshopped images, digital prints, cut-and-pasted files.

Christian Marclay’s The Clock, 2010 -An example of Cut-and-pasted files.

Digital Art come and many ubiquitous forms, their presence facilitated by the accessibility and affordability of digital cameras and editing software. There are plenty of examples of art that makes use of Second Life, computer-game graphics, YouTube clips and apps ect.

Therefore, the questioned to ask as Bishop puts it, “So why do I have a sense that the appearance and content of contemporary art have been curiously unresponsive to the total upheaval in our labor and leisure inaugurated by the digital revolution?” 

Two main topics of interest referring to this topic will be discussed below.

1) Numerous software programs and apps effortlessly impersonate the work previously done and take away the chore of developing and processing so why do artists still choose to work with so called “real”analog equipment?

-Old media is unquestionably seductive.

-Old media is desirable because of the impression that it is scarce, rare, and precious. 

-Digital Film can be copied quickly and cheaply unlike those of analog media.

In conclusion it is the artists’ desire for face-to-face relations against the disembodiment of the Internet; many believe that the physical and the social are often more powerful against the virtual and the repre- sentational.

William Kentridge, a South African Artist is known for his use of analog media in his works of art. A type on genuine authenticity can be seen in these mixed media works.

(Examples below.)

 2) Can communication between users become the subject of an aesthetic?

Hence the question to social practice is obvious: Does work need to assume representation or an object form in order to be recognized as art?

“The Internet asks us to reconsider the very paradigm of an aesthetic object: Can communication between users become the subject of an aesthetic? “ -Claire Bishop.

This is a topic which cannot ever really be answered as it comes down to ones personal opinion in a sense. The digital realm has opened a topic of confusion which doesn't seem t be able to be answered with a simple yes or no.

Below is an interesting article asking the question, whether digital art is real art or not.

https://design.tutsplus.com/articles/is-digital-art-real-art-facts-and-myths-about-digital-creating--cms-22010

[mikaelajonsson-blog]

Project #1: Create your own Logo/Avatar & Header

1) HEADER IMAGE:

I decided to go for a minimalistic Approach to my header design to compliment my logo and visual identity. I chose a natural earth tone to project my views on the world and lifestyle. I love the outdoors and nature. I believe as humans we need to teach ourselves the magic of the natural world to avoid the trap that is modern living. 

2) LOGO

I love simple black and white logos, I believe they are timeless. Hence my decision to follow through with that idea whilst designing my own personal logo. My nickname is “Mika”so I used that as the main point of text to represent myself by name. I am also a fan of simple lines and simplified forms. This can be seen especially in the design of the “M” as well as the words “Graphic Design” which have parts of the letters missing yet it is still possible to read these. I used the two circles cutting through each other and contrasting in fill colour, to add movement and balance to the logo.I believe the logo represents my visual identity as I tried to keep a minimalistic value to the piece which also incorporates interesting design elements and creativity.

3) Screenshot of Online Tumblr Portfolio.

I believe this new online portfolio design will allow me to express to other’s my what my own unique style is all about. Having this as the first thing a customer or interested person will see will indicate my levels of creativity and balance for future projects.

[mikaelajonsson-blog]

Digital Exercise #2: Watch & Complete Adobe Illustrator Tutorials.

Poster From Exercise:

Poster of Own Design:

Logo From Exercise:

Logo- Own Design. 

[mikaelajonsson-blog]