Professor Larson told the class that the point of the exercise was not to capture objects that represented our chosen emotion, but rather images that represented the emotion. His example was a picture that represents the word "calm," with the popular representative of a calm pool of water. For the purposes of this exercise (and, I assume by extension, Visualization in general), it's not a picture of water sitting still, it's a picture of the lack of motion lines.
This is going back to the elements and principles of design that we learned last year. This also goes back to what I expected to get out of the Visualization major in general: learning to use visual elements for inherent communication as free from subjective interpretation as possible. An image of a snake might be scary because snakes are scary, but not all people feel that way--there's nothing visually about the snake that inspires fear other than that it's a snake, thus it lacks that inherent visual communication. Similarly, my picture idea for "reserved" involving a padlock wouldn't work because nothing about the padlock visually communicates "reserved" or "locked" other than that we recognize it as an object that locks. None of the lines, shapes, or colors communicate that feeling--at least, not strongly.
This makes this exercise more difficult since we cannot rely on object-based symbolism. But it's better that way. It finally feels like the studio is worthy of the title "Principles of Design." Previous studios might as well have been called "Principles of Crafting Things and Being Neat." We learned some stuff about the principles of design, but it rarely seemed that our projects were focused on those principles. You could use the principles if you wanted, but you could skate by with an A if you made a visually impressive product, regardless of what it communicated (especially first semester, where occasionally the highest grades were great works of art but weren't outstanding demonstrations of the concept the project was intended to exercise). The studios seemed to focus more on making clean and impressive final products rather than communicating ideas or solving problems, which are the two fundamental concepts I signed up for. I'm glad I had faith in the curriculum since we're finally getting the kind of training I expected in the first place.
Now that I realize the kind of things we're focusing on, I ditched my water fountain idea. It was focused on an object suspended in the air, which was too object-oriented. Water droplets at an arc apex would have been round blobs, which don't visually convey aerial suspension. Since I wanted to capture the "flying in the air" implication of "elated," I knew that, visually, I needed bright, warm colors and upward swooping lines. Perhaps the water from the fountain during its upward rise would convey that upward motion, but I was keeping my mind open to other opportunities.
I walked around campus looking for the visual elements I was looking for. I noticed that plants often have upward-curving branches or stems, and made a mental note of which ones best imply upward momentum. These were the best among them:
The first tree sure looked to spring into the air, but I couldn't quite catch it at an angle that showed that. That picture was the lowest angle I could get, and though it does seem to rise upward, it looked much better in-person.
I really like that second one since the stems start at a lower angle and grow steeper, which conveys an intense upward acceleration. Unfortunately I got a lot of roof due to the low picture angle I needed, but I had my upward swoops, so I didn't mind.
The plants in the third picture seemed very light and uplifting as they fluttered in the wind, but the way they drop near the tips creates the opposite effect of the previous picture--upward momentum decreases as they rise, which is not what I wanted. Another instance of the picture not doing the real-life sight justice.
The final plant was a difficult shot since maximizing the fluffiness of the plumes required an angle so low that the long leaves began to interfere with the photo. I also felt the plumes drooping was a repeat of upward motion problem of the previous plant image, but the fibers of the plumes still visibly flared outward, which I think counteracted the momentum issue presented by the stems.
In the interests of bright, warm, vibrant colors, I also got some shots of the long fluorescent lights on the Langford bridge:
I felt very strongly about the first and third photos, since I got a repetition pattern with the horizontal bars that gave the images a ladder effect. The lights also provided some great colors that were visible but not overexposed. I especially like the third one because of the warm colors that reflected off of the roofing that contributed to upward motion.
You may notice that all of them have a dark, black background and poor lighting. This is
Professor Larson approached me when making his rounds. He asked which pictures I thought best represented my emotion. I tossed the first and third plant images as well as the second fluorescent light image, which was taken purely for the color close-up. He then asked which I thought was the strongest composition. I suggested the second plant image since it felt the best balanced and one of the best conveyers of my emotion, and secondarily suggested the third fluorescent light image due to the great colors and ladder effect (for which I was very proud of myself). Larson, surprisingly, selected the fourth plant image, on the basis that the repeated plumes and visible lines of the plume fibers emphasized the upward motion (and the roofing in the background of the second plant image weakened it too much).
I trusted Larson's judgement, since he has
No comments:
Post a Comment