Representation

It really took a long process to arrive at my final product, as you see the above photograph of it. Looking back at these whole three weeks, the time, the passion, and the painstaking effort I made and put into it, I found it has been far more than a simple collage, but a proof of my imagination and perseverance.

The Idea
It is always the first step that costs most troublesome. I remember I expressed my huge interest in cars at our first class (I was majored in automotive engineering in my college). And at the very beginning of this final project, my plan was to create a digital car related map. I had been thinking about the content of my map for a long time before I reached the cool idea of making a completely hand-making collage. The decision of doing this is absolutely a challenge for me, because I am majored in interactive design and almost all of my degree related projects from other courses are digital… It is becoming kind of boring sitting at a computer every day. And I am eager something different! I believe everyone has a natural impulsion of creating something by hand ever since we are kids. When I got the chance to see many interesting collages in and off our class, this idea budded. I felt the challenge of exploring a totally hand-making work, since I seldom got chance to do that. This time, I was going to seize the chance!

No doubt the collage would still be about cars. Then, the content became another question. I know the theme of this project is about “representation”, thus my collage would be my visual representation about a car(s). Because I was working on my MA’s project during these months, which is about a timeline of world car brands (it is now hung in the show window right outside 246 McNeal), I got a great chance to make a closer touch to car brands and logos over the world. One day, when I was working with those amazing logos, the idea came out: a collage totally by car logos! I still cannot conceal my excited feeling of this stunning idea today. It definitely would be a perfect way to involve my interests, my personal hobby, and my professional skills well together to create a most “own” representation. I drew a Hummer-like car as prototype of my collage, while it is not necessarily to be a Hummer. Anyway, that is one of my favorite cars, which I believe I will never own (not that useful for common people…). So, I will create one for myself.

The Process
I am not going to say a lot about how I collected those logos, as James has seen I had browsed over all magazines in those cabinets in our classroom, which was only a small part of all the magazines and newspapers I have used. The process was really painstaking because I know I would need more and more logos. I never feel satisfied when I was looking at my product before the day it was done… I struggled and almost gave up… However, I should again thank my imagination and creativity and perseverance. Eventually I made it. It totally takes nearly 100 brands, more than 500 pieces of logos in my collage.

“A Car Made in a World”
I am guessing my collage to the others might only be a graphic design work, with some slight or strong visual impact of course. But to me, it is much more valuable. I think it is successful because I overcame the challenge. I love it because I enjoyed the process. I named the collage “a car made in a world” (in the form of “xxx made in US…”), which means it was made by car logos throughout the whole world. In the real world, those logos belong to a same family: cars. In my collage, they are the composition of a car. Any philosophical meanings here? I am not quite sure, only feel excited. And I always believe some art works are just for visual impacts and appreciation for any reason from their audience. At least for me, enough.

Han

Posted by zhang631 at 4:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I have to admit that upon completion of this final project, I feel completely brain dead, but very pleased with the results. Originally, James had suggested our project focus on “representation of the body,” which spurred ideas of dress, specifically swimsuits. Perhaps it was because summer was on my mind, but most likely it was because I was in the middle of a textual analysis of women’s magazines, specifically Cosmopolitan, as well as looking at studies on young women’s self-image and media consumption. When James stated that he wanted us to use the project to experiment with generating images, and trying different techniques, this seemed like the perfect opportunity to do something I had always wanted to do: make an alternative magazine. I believe it was Ashley who suggested that I use Cosmo for a template for my magazine, and after examining my issues with the publication (1. it provides useless information for your life, 2. it sells you stuff you don’t need and 3. it makes you feel like, for lack of a better word, shit), it was clear that utilizing Cosmo’s layout for my project would be a great way to comment on not just Cosmo, but mainstream magazines’ portrayal of women in our society and consumption in general.

My intention was to produce a “magazine” that both commented on the content of a typical Cosmpolitan, as well as experimented with different forms of creativity, in terms of execution and ideas and images presented. One of the most exciting aspects of the process was getting my friends and family involved in the process. They were instrumental in providing a photo shoot that was not involved in selling designer clothes, but which came out of their own creative interests (my youngest brother arranged it for his birthday), as well as providing “alternative” texts on sexuality, including lists on what is “sexy” (decidedly unsexy things by Cosmo standards) and a surprisingly graphic lesbian erotic story (I don’t even think that Cosmo has ever acknowledged that a relationship has existed outside of their heteronormative standards). Personally, I loved taking out my anger towards the narrowness and stupidity of Cosmo on this project, in terms of consumption, its obsession with men and looking “hot,” and having no information outside these topics.

I think the project was pretty successful. My biggest frustration has been the actual execution in terms of materials. The magazine certainly is not professional looking. Most of the ink, both stenciled and letterpressed ink, leaked through the pages. Almost completely handmade, with digital and polaroid photos, hand-written, stenciled, letterpress and typewritten text, I had to piece together the entire thing by doing a lot of cutting and pasting (literally). I am dubious in terms of how well the magazine will hold up, as the thickness (about five times thicker than a real magazine, given the materials (I stayed true to the page count)) prevented me from being able to bind it in a more professional way. I think the content, however, provides for a much more interesting read, and a decidedly different representation, of the usual world Cosmopolitan provides you with.

I am very excited about my final project and could talk about it for pages and pages...tried to sum it up above though.

Posted by hilge106 at 1:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

At the beginning of the semester I said that I was interested in creating map imagery in this class. For my final project I decided to make a personal map of the landscape of my childhood, which was my neighborhood in the small city of Monona, WI (within Madison, WI). As a child I spent most of my time outdoors exploring our neighborhood, which was blessed with good neighborhood design, beautiful natural features, and a safe and quiet mentality. I cannot separate my memories of my childhood from the neighborhood I grew up in.

Looking at a map of the neighborhood, I identified what large and/or natural features were most important to creating the space: the lake (Monona was built on a natural peninsula surrounded by Lake Monona), the green spaces (the neighborhood has lovely rolling topography, woodlands, and wetlands, some of which were preserved in a somewhat “natural” state within parks), and the streets (the grid upon which everything else was placed). This created the framework upon which I could start to call out areas of special importance to me. While I was familiar with every part of much of the small city, there were places that I would visit repeatedly because of certain qualities they had or certain feelings they gave me.

In the end I have four screen prints, a series, each with a different title: Trees of Significance, Places of Discovery, Places of Imagination, and Places of Reflection. Each print has the same background showing the lake, green spaces, and roads, but each one has a different final layer consisting of a number of dotted lines circling the areas indicated in the titles.

While I enjoyed this final project and loved working with my concept, I am not satisfied with the final product. Working with seven different screens was very challenging for a beginning screen printer like myself. I certainly learned a lot about the process! In that way in was successful but if I could do it again, I would have been more careful with color choice, making sure to keep the first layers lighter and the final layers darker. I would have put the titles onto a screen (I thought I was going to letterpress the titles on later, but then decided - after it was too late - that that might look too different from the screen printing). I also would have been more careful about printing a lot more pages so that I would have a lot to work with, and I would have found a better way to register the papers to ensure a correct line-up.

Personal mapping, as a concept, intrigues me. Maps seem to be a very objective practice, but are in fact very subjective. The map-maker chooses what is shown and how it is shown in a way that communicates a specific idea to the viewer. My maps are very personal on one hand but appear (especially at first glance) to show an objective view of a certain area. The bottom layers are fairly objective, showing what is indeed actually there. The top layer is purely subjective, but even so it does not give the viewer any info about what is actually in that space. It merely identifies it as of special importance to the map-maker. In this way it gives up a limited amount of information to the viewer, in a way keeping the viewer at a distance. Thus I am interested in not only how personal maps are interpreted by the map-maker (me) but also how an outsider (anyone but me) might see them. To me they are a reminder, and an invitation to reflection, but to others they may be nothing more than an interesting-looking graphic.

The landscape of my childhood was the beginning of my understanding of space. The passion this landscape instilled in me led me, in part, to my current pursuit of landscape architecture. I feel like I could take this project and push it to other levels in the future, perhaps getting down to a more immediate scale to look at each of these spaces and explore what made it so special to me, and how I might represent that.

-Adrienne

Posted by bockh004 at 11:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For my final project, I decided to continue working on the subject of representation and identity. In thinking back to the beginning of class on what I had said I wanted to get out of the course, I spoke more about exploring the relationship of representation to what I do at work. Since I’m not currently enrolled in a specific grad program, a lot of the work I did this semester involved things that relate to the work that I do with the Diversity Programs Office in CFANS. Identity and theory around identity development are often key components in training around intercultural development and competency. In being part of a staff that does a great deal of training on these topics, it’s a subject that I have had to think a lot about outside of class, particularly during this semester.

It is often said that in order for you to understand and work with difference, you must first start with an awareness and baseline of understanding yourself: what is your culture, what are your values, where do these values come from, and so on. In my last project, I pieced myself together with images that I chose to represent different parts of my identity. In this project, I chose to take two of the largest pieces from my image and draw them out further by making a book for each piece. I chose the cow from my lower body and made the book V is for Vegetarian. V is for Vegan: Eating with Emily. I also chose the starry pink background from my head and made M is for Misadventurous: a Morning with Emily. I chose these pieces, not only because they were two of the largest images, but also because they are most likely the most uncommon pieces.

I used digital photography and digital fonts to create the images for the inside pages of my book. I used the letter press to produce the cover text and one page within one of the books. I tried purposefully to use letterpress text that would give the covers of the books a formal appearance, even though the subject matter and the photos were much more crude and informal. I wanted these books to have a storybook like appearance and a simplified narrative that would touch on these two ideas of identity: my past and present dietary restrictions and a scattered distractible mind. These are two pieces that I consider a definite part of my identity, but they are also two parts of my identity that I try the hardest to hide, particularly in the office culture in which I spend most of my day.

In some ways I do feel that the books are successful; they turned out mostly the way I was hoping. I don't necessarily think it's obvious that these books are about identity, or that they convey my discomfort on both topics. I do hope that they maybe act as a window into myself, which obviously I think they do. I really enjoyed the process of thinking this project through, thinking about how I would convey these ideas/themes through a narrative, using the letterpress, setting up camera shots, and making all of the adjustments. I think book making is something I would like to explore further in the future.
*Emily

Posted by udel0005 at 9:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Below is a link to my solution for the course's final project. It's an extension of the exploration I did for the second project. As part of this phase, I put together a theory paper to describe my rationale. It is still very much in draft form. A brief synopsis of this paper is available from the link contained in the composition's title.

Click here to view composition.

Posted by Robert Fraher at 9:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)