Heather's Blog

Thursday, February 26, 2015

Dada Notes

· What is Dada and why did it come into existence?
People, mainly artists, resented the war and wanted something to rebel against it. This became the Dada movement because they strived to make anti-art work to mock the war and anything used for it.

· Discuss Duchamp’s notion of “Readymades”. What are they?
Duchamp would take already made items and turn them into something unusable and call it art. One of his most famous ones is taking a normal clothes iron and making it unusable by adding spikes to the bottom of it. This was his dada art.

· How do they change your expectations about what art can be?
They aren’t necessarily beautiful, but they’re interesting to look at and have meaning behind them and are more meaningful than just the first glimpse you get of the piece.

What did they embrace?

Chance, accident, improvisation

Why did they take this approach?

This expressed a form of personal protest against the war and criticized the violent world that they were living in. it depicted the predictableness about their lives at that specific point in time.

· What is the value of art made by Dadaists?

It was not the artwork or how it looked, it was about the act of creating the artwork and collaborating with others to create a new vision of the world.

· How and why did Dada artists work with words?

Dada artists saw that at the heart of order and reason was language. So to symbolize the way they felt the world was crazy and chaotic at that time, they cut apart words and letters to create a completely new letter which showed the chaos. They would also put phrases together that were rather risky for their time period, creating phrases to put on their artwork such as “She has a hot ass” pictured on the image below.

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Dadaist Poem

"We must constantly look at things in a different way."

"Things different look way constantly in at must we a."

Friday, February 13, 2015

Social Issue PSA

billboard

poster

My social issue was water pollution. I chose this issue because I feel like a lot of people in the world don't really know how big of an issue water pollution really is because they are not forced to be subjected to it while people in other parts of the world have no choice but to drink dirty water and contract diseases from it. I hope that from these ads people will really see how horrifying the issue of water pollution really is in the world today. It's not just an issue for the future, it's extremely relevant now! and we need to do something about it. My target audience would be adults mainly, but also teenagers. Basically any person that has control of recycling, pollution control, or cares about the issue. My unique selling point is me putting actual trash in water instead of making an ad showing how clean the water could be. My slogan is "Make a cleaner tomorrow by recycling today" with the world emoji as sort of the period on the sentence. I had a lot of fun making this project and I'm hoping it will actually make people think about the trash they throw away and where it might end up. I really like the results of my project, I think it looks visually appealing and also stunning to the issue I'm trying to portray. Some tips I could give to another person doing this project is have a definite vision of how you want the piece to look, and then when trying to make the project change your vision to fit what will work realistically. What's really challenging is having a vision you like a lot and not being able to really make it how you want it to turn out. That was my problem with my billboard design. However, I think the photographs I took really represent my social issue nicely.

Monday, February 2, 2015

Advertising Shooting Assignment

Social Issue: Water Pollution

Personally I liked this shooting assignment. Usually the assignments in photography class are about making beautiful images, but this one was about sort of an ugly issue and taking a stand on it. I liked having to think outside the box on what to shoot and how to go about taking the shots. I think some of my shots could have been better, like the plastic floating in the water, but I really liked the shots of the trash in the cup of water. It was challenging to get the ideas and turn them into something that looked good and not overly photoshop because thats not my style of photography. I would probably retake all the shots. I would retake the plastic bag in water shots because the water didn't get to the color I wanted it to be and it's hard to tell the plastic bag is in the shape of a turtle. The only thing i would change about the glass of water shots is that I didn't shoot them on an infinite black background and I photoshopped the black around the cup and I think you can tell if you look close enough. But in the end I liked the assignment and my shots.