Post Modernism Progess

          Pictured below is my current state of my Post Modernism project. While it does not look like a lot, it took a little while to get it to this point. I painted a Bristol sheet purple, yellow, and blue and painted other pieces of Bristol with black ink. With these three colors, I hope to make a compound color scheme. The black pieces are laid over top of the other piece of Bristol in order to create some contrast. I still have some painting left to do on the background piece, but the smaller pieces are all done. Cutouts from my Photoshop image are going to be glued onto the black pieces of Bristol. The images are going to be in color in order to make them stand out. I am still trying to figure out how to connect the three images so you can see the relationship between them. When this project is all done I hope to have projected a mysterious aura from the piece of art that clearly relates to my quote of choice. 

The Art of Data Visualization

          The general idea of this video was Data Visualization, but it was broken down into individual parts throughout the video. The first quote that caught my attention was, "visualizations are a by product of the truth and goodness of the information." This means that the root to all the images and visualizations in the world are truthful facts and valid information. If the data is bad and not valid, then it is going to be difficult to make an image that people can understand and trust. This plays of another idea that was presented: the history of visualization data is a history of science. Science was used to come up with the data. If there was no data then there couldn't be any visualizations to go along with it. I agree with this statement because you can always make visualizations, but if they are not based off facts or data than the viewer has no content to go with the image. Another major aspect I found interesting was that these visualizations are built in a way that our sub-conscious brain activity can make split decisions off of them. Even though we don't know it, we interpret images in a certain way before we can even form words about them. Having linear patterns in these visualizations makes our decision making easier and faster so we can process more information in a shorter period of time. The quote that I thought was most powerful in the video was, "See to learn not to confirm." What this means is that you should look at data visualizations and learn new things, not confirm things you already know.  Maps, trends and pie charts are just a few examples of data visualization that people use. We do not think of these things as data but all three of them help us interpret a large amount of information with ease. There is so much data in the world that data visualizations help us learn new things in every day life whether we realize it or not.
          Data visualizations are similar to art because there is information behind them that drives the image. In art, it is often an emotion, a story or history. In data visualizations, it is obviously data. Even though art and data visualizations don't look the same on the surface, they are much more alike than you think.

Jameson and Baudrillard Readings

Jameson Reading 

            Reading the first article presented some difficulty for me. I was able to understand the general concepts about how the conversion to postmodernism changed a lot about how that art was set up and what it meant. The example used in the article was images of shoes. The first one was painted by Van Gogh. In his image, there is more detail which presents more emotion, depth and interpretations of the simple frame. Because of the detail you are able to create a background story for the image. Unlike Van Gogh's shoe painting, Warhol created a much simpler image. This image represents the postmodern era. Because Warhol's image is so simple, it takes away the emotion, depth and multiple interpretations of the painting: it is just a snapshot, not an elaborate story like in Van Gogh's painting. I find it interesting how the era you are in effects the way you interpret art. It also makes me wonder why certain eras occur when they do, and what brought about the changes in art to get to that specific era? 

Baudrillard Reading 

            Disneyland was the example used in this reading in order to showcase the ideas of hyper-reality and imagination. The reading talks about how Disneyland is a place where you can let your imagination come alive. Because you are submerged in a world that feels so real, you understand the things going on around you to be your reality. The things outside of your reality (Disneyland) become unimportant and feel like they don't even exist. This idea showcases that reality and the imaginary can be switched. I believe that the take home point of this article is that the basis for most art is the ability to find a balance between our imaginations and our realities. Our imagination is the creative aspect of the art, while reality is the ability for us to translate our imaginations into art for others. Adding a little creativity and imaginations to our reality allows us to stay youthful and experience things as if they are actually in our reality, like Disneyland. 

Subvertisement

Below is the subvertisement I made for a nutella ad. In the original ad there is a list to the right of the jar that says all the things that one jar of nutella can go on. In my subvertisement I added another list of item to the left of the jar: these are the "bad" things in nutella. I also added a question at the bottom which states: What's more important: what's in it, or what you put it on? These changes were made in order to expose the fact that nutella is not as healthy as the company says and just because you put it on something "healthy" doesn't make it good for you.