#LSAD Seminar

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LSAD Seminar 01: Colour Theory with Sylvia Shortall

What is Colour Theory?

In it's most basic form, colour theory is the study of how colours relate to one another and how this, in turn, affects our perception of them. The feeling or emotion evoked by a colour or combination thereof is of particular interest this field of study.

Above: An old RTE test card from 1978 recorded by Andrew Walmsley on Youtube.

The Medium Affects the Message

An important consideration when discussing clour and colour theory is through what medium the colour is being perceived. For instance I have two desktop monitors; A pen display for digital art and an old Dell monitor from a million years ago. Due to differences in technical specifications and calibration they display colour slightly differently. The pen display is marketed toward artists for its colour accuracy, whereas the Dell monitor was basically made to for looking at spreadsheets. If I slide a picture across from one monitor to the other, I can observe the colours change in real time. In this sense, the accuracy of colours is something we can take for granted.

Above: A video which explains digital colour and how images are projected onto monitors.

Enter PANTONE

So if we can't even trust a colour to look the same between two different monitors, how on earth can brands like Coca-Cola or Starbucks slap their logo on every conceivable product under the sun with one recognisable colour?

Well for better or worse the answer is Pantone LLC and their proprietary Pantone Matching System (PMS). Basically Pantone have a specific formula to render any given colour in any given format. For instance an average computer monitor recreates colour through backlighting hundreds of tiny pixels varying shades of red, green and blue. This is known as the RGB colour model, which is considered "additive" as the colours "add" together to create their intended effect. Print media on the other hand, uses the CMYK colour model. The is a "subtractive" colour model, where the cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (K) mask one another out gradually until the desired tone is created. Pantone somehow they were able to copyright this process and have people pay them for it. If it's not obvious, I hate Pantone and here's a video that should explain why:

Above: A good video about a bad company.

Janine Antoni - Loving Care, 1993

Sylvia actually recommended I research Janine Antoni for my project, so I was happy too see her work show up in this seminar. Personally I feel colour is one of the less important aspects of this particular piece, but all the same, it's roll can't be diminished either.

The use of commercial hair dye, Antoni's long hair and the act of mopping play into stereotypes of women and their gender defined "roles" in life. The gallery floor becoming covered in dye and the audience being gradually forced back out the door they came in can be seen as an act of reclamation. In this sense Antoni is challenging gender roles by using the traditionally feminine to accomplish the traditionally masculine. For me, it brings to mind the contrast between how men and women sit in public spaces, the phenomenon of "Man-spreading". Something that is seen as a faux pas for women but normalised for men. Antoni makes the viewer confront this kind of everyday sexism.

I think she choose a monochrome colour palette here for the contrast. The deep black on the brilliant white. The Yin and Yang of those shades is often said to represent men and women. I'm gonna move on now cause I'm really just rambling about a piece of art I enjoy.

Above: Hair dye charts bear a striking resemblance to Pantone swatch booklets.

Colour for Legibility

Many maps, such as the famous London Underground map designed by Harry Beck, use abstracted visuals and colour to distinguish between and make clear what might otherwise appear as confusing and arbitrary.

Above: You can tell me which one of these two maps is more legible...

Similarly road signs are specifically engineered in such a way as to be legible under any given time of day or weather condition, regardless of colour.

The Politics of Colour

Colour can mean a lot more than simple aesthetics. As Sylvia points out in the lecture, there can be strong political associations with specific colours. A powerful example of this is how our public post boxes in Ireland were mandated to be painted green after the country achieved independence from British colonial rule. In fact the shade of green was entirely arbitrary, one could argue the act was more about the removal of the distinctly British-associated shade of red, which itself speaks volumes of the power of colour.

A similar example of the political power of colour was the #Blackout campaign to protest against racism and police brutality following the killing of George Floyd.

Copyright and Colour

Left: Yves Klein, Center: Anish Kapoor, Right: Stuart Semple

A bit similar to Pantone and their patented method of matching colour, a number of artist have gained infamy for their roles in legal ownership and exclusive use of colour.

Yves Klein, an influential french artist and pioneer of performance art. Klein, in collaboration with Edouard Adam, created a vibrant blue, reminiscent of the lapis lazuli used in medieval paintings of the Virgin Mary. This shade was dubbed International Klein Blue or IKB. Klein registered this process with the French patent institute in 1960 but never formally patented it.

Renowned British-Indian artist Anish Kapoor, known for sculptures such as "The Bean" and Sky Mirror, was granted exclusive artistic use of the super-black coating Vantablack by it's creator Surrey NanoSystems in 2014. This provoked widespread criticism across the art world.

Kapoor drew particular criticism from Biritsh artist Stuart Semple. Semple, in retaliation to Kapoor's exclusive licensing of Vantablack released a shade of pink paint called "PINK – the world's pinkest pink paint" with the specific legal caveat that it could not be purchased by or for Anish Kapoor. This spurred him on toward a movement of democratising colour, creating affordable alternatives to patented shades such as the aforementioned Vantablack but also to Yves Klein's IKB and even an alternative to Pantone's matching system.

If it's not obvious I think artists have legal exclusivity to materials of any kind is an affront to art itself, and I'm happy to see people like Semple challenging the practice.

Above: Anish Kapoor's now iconic reply to Stuart Semple after getting his hands on PINK.

Stanley Whitney and Colour

Stanley Whitney is an American painter known for his use of colour and politically motivated art. I included a video above where he talks both about important political causes like contraceptive rights and also his feelings on colour.

What I admire specifically about Whitney's work is his persistent use of a loose grid as a composition. It highlights just how much emphasis he places on colour. What speaks to the viewer in a Stanley Whitney painting are the colours and their relationships between one another.

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Disrupt project 03/12/23

(seminar)

I viewed the Typography seminar on this day. I also took some notes while watching it (see collaged picture below).

I found it very interesting, to learn how typography can be a very powerful part of art and why it is needed in everyday life.

Learning about how it can be both 2D and 3D, interactive and have movement excited me, as I would only ever relate it to 2D work.

I also really admired the illustrations artist Nate Williams. I really like how his typography fits well together and makes the work appear very fun and positive. I also love the pattern element that it has too.

I also really like the artist Stephens Powers. The use of big, bold and colourful work that both balances positivity and sarcasm is very enjoyable and inspiring to view.

I am hoping that I can include some typography elements into my project work, after viewing this.

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Colour Theory Seminar {Part 1}

Hey Tumblr,

Today I went back and watched the colour theory seminar, I had watched it before but decided to re-watch it to take notes on and post about it.

Colours can be perceived differently depending on what you're looking at it from, for example it will look different on a laptop or phone from a piece of paper. There are different factors such as the calibers of equipment, if your printer is running out of ink or even the lighting your looking at it from.

Test cards are physical cards which are held in front of cameras used for calibrating alignment. They're made up of patterns to adjust the receiver in televisions and to make sure it's displaying the colours correctly.

The Pantone Colour Matching System (PMS) is used to communicate through colour and to keep consistency throughout various materials and finishes. People and manufacturers use it to refer to to make sure they're colours match one another. It uses the CMYK process which is standard for most printer worldwide.

Each year Pantone pick a colour of the year, which in 2020 was Classic Blue 19-4052 which is seen as "a restful colour" and "brings a sense of peace and tranquility".

In 2021 they picked Illuminating 13-0647 and Ultimate Gray 17-5104. They grey is a flat colour in the middle of the spectrum, where as the yellow is an artificial florescent colour. By putting the yellow next to the grey it enhances the viewers perception of the yellow, giving it a metallic taint,

Fine artist Janine Antoni made a performance piece called 'Loving Care' in 1993. She mopped the floor of the gallery with her hair soaked in loving care hair dye colour natural black. This act was linked to mopping but also to abstract expressionist painting.

The London Underground map, made in 1908, uses lines of different colours to show different train lines. The map shows how the lines actually look throughout London so it doesn't show the Metropolitan line fully. In 1933 Harry Beck redesigned the map. He used vertical, horizontal and diagonal lines to simplify it. It shows individual stations and connecting stations. Although easy to read it looks like nothing the city of London.

Another example of colours being used is in road signage. Signs today look different to how they did back in the 30's and even the 80's, with todays being simplified. Brown indicating area of historical interest, white signifying placenames and yellow showing roads. Between 1957-1976 two british graphic designers created signage for the UK motorways by asking themselves, 'what would I like to see when I'm driving?'. At night the signs are slightly illuminated and are made so the letters are still visible. The colours help indicate what's ahead even if the driver didn't read what the sign said.

Colour is also an indicator of identity. In Ireland post boxes used to be painted red to show British rule over Ireland. In 1922 the Irish government ordered all post boxes be painted green.

This is all from part one of the seminar, I'll make a separate post about part two as I feel it would be too long of a post if I did them both together :)

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Creative Recording / Seminar Notes

Time Based Art

Visualizing time

Recorded as photography or video

Temporal work

Capturing the temporarity of the moment.

Vito Acconci Following Piece (1969)

Documenting the movement and routes of strangers on the streets of New York

“Scrapbook” art pieces

I find these pieces very inspiring and helpful for my project on temporary. Adding recording of route and what seen on the routes would be fitting for the scrapbook piece that I am currently working on.

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Exploring ideas seminars:

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CLAY FORM DEVELOPMENT SEMINAR (:

The clay seminar was a good introduction to working with clay. I wish I was able to watch this before I was humbled making my car. The material is very sensitive to touch, it’s possible to overwork the clay and then it dries out. It was interesting also seeing how other artists incorporate the use of clay into their works. Ceramics isn’t just about making mugs and bowls, you can make sculptures and many other things too, a decorative or a functional medium.

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Colour theory seminar

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Relief Print Seminar

Ahead of my Mono-Printing Workshop, I watched the Relief Print Seminar to see if there was any information I could use ahead of the workshop. This seminar was interesting as it covered multiple types of print as well as factors that would be useful to consider in the future such as; Scale, Material, and how to display prints. I also thought it was nice to get an insight into how Printmaking can create such a strong sense of community as well as how versatile it is.

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Composition Seminar (12/12/22)

Today I watched the composition seminar and here is what I learned :

Composition is in everything.

It determines the meaning and look of an image

Composition is the arrangement of visual elements that work harmoniously as part of the principles of art and design to produce the desired image

How to use composition:

Experiment different possible formats for your image by using thumbnails

Every decision be it the size of the paper or the use of light and line make an impact

Artists use space and colour (or lack of) to tell a narrative

Artists should take inspiration from the natural and man-made world in order to develoup an artists instinct that they can use to make effective compositions

Artists replicate sompositions from their predecessors if it works

I will definately keep all of the principles of composition and the elements of art and design in mind when I am developing my future image compositions

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Form Development/Clay Seminar

This afternoon, I watched the form development/clay seminar. Though I've worked a little bit with clay in the past, it's not a material I'm hugely confident with, so this seminar was a nice overview.

Clay can be used for a variety of processes, and how you work with it changes based on its stage of dryness. Ceramics incorporates elements of art, design and craft, and the ceramics department in LSAD actively encourages students to explore an inter-disciplinary approach.

The different techniques applied to the surface of a piece transform how we see the form. Form development can also be figurative. Form can be developed using a number of different techniques, such as 3-D printing. This can be useful for creating plastic prototypes that can be later made from clay. Installation can be a useful way of creating narratives through clay. As with all media, ideas development and research is really important.

Though I'm not particularly interested in pursuing ceramics for semester two, this was still an interesting seminar in terms of exploring the possibilities of form. No matter the material, certain elements remain the same, such as the importance of scale, surface, ideas development etc. As I am interested in sculpture, I, too, am concerned with the transformation of my ideas from two dimensional drawings to three dimensional forms.

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LSAD Seminar 02: 3D Studies with Elaine Riordan - Part 2 (I ran out of space edition)

This was originally all included in my last post on the 3D Studies seminar, but I ran up against the "30 images per post" limit that our cruel overlords imposed upon us. Basically I want to run through the seven elements of 3D studies outlined in the seminar and share an artist, found through my own research, who I feel exemplifies that particular element.

Form

Louise Bourgeois

Louise Bourgeois is so renowned it almost feels like cheating to include her on a list like this, especially given the breadth of her work, incorporating many disciplines and techniques in her work. I chose Bourgeois for "form" as I feel she pushed the boundaries of what could be considered "form" as much as any artist ever has. Utilising mirrors like canvases, for example, makes us question where the form of a given piece lies. Similarly incorporating other elements such as structure, location, and space allowed her to express ideas in an entirely new way, unburdened by a dogmatic sense of what form "should" be. In this way Bourgeois' work broadened our understanding of what form.

Structure

Georges Vantongerloo

Georges Vantongerloo was a Belgian abstract sculptor and founding member of the "De Stijl" or Neoplasticism movement. Proponents of De Stijl advocated pure abstraction and universality by a reduction to the essentials of form and colour; they simplified visual compositions to vertical and horizontal, using only black, white and primary colors. This idea of using reduction to find an underlying meaning led him to explore structure in his art. Vantongerloo never achieved major success in life and is often considered to have been too devoted to his movement. But through his sacrificial nature we gained insight into the pure structural nature of art, and the truth and beauty found therein.

Texture

Anni Albers

"Besides surface qualities, such as rough and smooth, dull and shiny, hard and soft, textiles also includes colour, and, as the dominating element, texture, which is the result of the construction of weaves. Like any craft it may end in producing useful objects, or it may rise to the level of art."

A quote from the woman herself sums it up better than I ever could. Anni Albers is one of the most important textile artists there ever was. Her work elevated the standing of textile work in the art world and paved the way for the many artists to appear in her wake. Like many who work with 3D, she blurred the lines between art and design, gaining recognition for the traditionally feminine world of "craft" often excluded from the wider art world.

Volume

Bruno Catalano

Bruno Catalano is a Italian-French sculptor best known for his sculptures of figures with substantial sections missing. In my previous post I described the concept of "volume" in 3D studies as having to do with negative space, we must perceive an absence of some kind to truly grasp the volume of something. Much like the visual hollow of a glass informs its volume, Catalano's sculptures express volume specifically through their substantial missing portions. We as observers are forced to contemplate the "how" of a work, in such a way we would never need to with a conventional sculpture. Similarly Catalano's common practice of clothing his sculptures in everyday attire achieves the same effect in an additive manner, rather than a subtractive approach.

Weight

Sheila Hicks

Sheila Hicks is another who could reasonably be argued to define basically every element on this list. Her work is similar in ways to Anni Albers, whom I placed on this list under the category of "Texture". While Hicks works undoubtedly deals with texture, as it does sculpture, colour, and narrative among others, what has always stood out to me first and foremost about her work is it's sheer weight. Hicks is particularly known for the contrast in the scale of her works, ranging from minute to massive. What intrigues me though is how through her work, we see the minute become the massive. Common, lightweight elements like wool and string become enormous behemoths, stacked like rocks in galleries or flowing like waterfalls through ceiling installations. There are many artists who work with heavy material but few who convey weight regardless of material.

Space

Chiharu Shiota

Chiharu Shiota was my immediate pick to exemplify the element of "space". Her work is not location-specific as it can be rearranged and displayed throughout many galleries but it is absolutely space-specific. Her installations dominate the space they occupy like few others. Shiota's work leverages the element of space to create ideas around the body and flesh, territory, and alienation. I feel there's not much else I can write here other than I'd love to visit an installation of hers one day and see the sheer scale of the space for myself.

Location

Lady Pink

I chose Lady Pink for the element of "location" as her signature graffiti work is deeply tied to her hometown of New York City and her identity therein. She began her career in graffiti in 1979 after the loss of her boyfriend, tagging his name across the city. I wrote in my last post that my understanding of location as an element, is that it's deeply attached to a work's context. Something so inextricably linked it would lose meaning were it removed from it's location. From the beginning Lady Pink's work has been inextricable from her life in New York.

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Disrupt project 02/11/23

(Seminar)

I also, during the reading week, had watched the exploring ideas seminar.

I had not taken notes throughout watching this as I was in bed, watching before going to sleep.

But I had screenshotted one part(see below), as I felt it was very important and I feel too, it has helped me out with my disrupt project work.

Creating a quantity of ideas can eventually lead to one creating a great idea.

The lecturer showed us example of this, through public figures like Mozart and Einstein.

I also found it interesting to learn that to draw is to observe.

I have attached below, pictures from my sketchbook of my quick sketches. I drew most of them after watching this seminar, in the hopes of them helping me to form good ideas.

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My response to Tuesday Seminar lecture

I found it interesting to learn how factors such as shape, form and gathering are most effective in fashion design.  Each factor can shape the design into a unique fashion item.  

The lecture explained that these factors complement each other. For example, volume and shape are created by gathering materials. The materials can be turned into various shapes by techniques such as pleating and doubling. One of the most important qualities of becoming a good fashion designer is to experimental.  

@eoinmclsad

@lsad

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3D Studies 1&2 / Seminar Notes

Form, Structure, Texture, Volume, Weight, Space, Location

In the video of Richard Serra’s creation process a list of processes was presented and I found this list interesting. He did pieces using some of these processes. It is always interesting to see where artists take these processes and what they think.

Serra commented on this saying in his mind what artists do is they invent strategies that allow them to see in a way that they haven’t seen before, extending their vision. He said artists constantly come up with new ways to inform themselves by inventing tools, techniques and processes.

“I have to kind of invent new strategies in order not to go back to something that’s just a reflex action” - Richard Serra

This will inspire me to experiment more with processes and and try to create my own ways of creating when I am doing work.

Experimental play with materials and process.

Translation of sketch to 3D, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Frank Gehry

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TUMBLR SEMINAR!

After watching the seminar, I deduced that:

Tumblr is a social sharing platform in which artist and designers uses to share and showcase their artworks.

It is a connection between the tutors and the students.

Helps me great artists and designers.

I can perfectly share my progress and experiences through my journey in the college.

There is a huge difference between personal and professional blog.

It’s is a living portfolio.

Watching the tumblr seminar really enlightened me on what is expected of me as a student curating a professional blog. I’m fully aware of the rights and wrongs now.