Design and visual arts has an immensely broad scope because it covers a wide range of media beyond the obvious, and can even create a blend between them. The way we approached this was by beginning with the obvious and gradually seeing how different media may be blended. In Will Taylor's presentation we began with what most people think of when they think of visual arts: painting. Eventually we moved on to seeing how film and digital media may be incorporated into this and vice-versa. In Lindsay Bierman's presentation he discussed several factors of composing in architecture that are the same across multiple design fields, including film.
Starting Points
At the beginning I already knew that visual arts stretched across multiple forms of media including but not limited to paint, drawing, sculpting, film, and animation. As a prospective filmmaker I appreciate all the various forms of visual storytelling, even the stationary ones. I knew something of abstract paintings, but didn't fully understand the purpose behind many of them except perhaps that they were interesting to look at.
What I Learned
I learned a little more about the purpose behind the more abstract works, though I must confess some of what Will Taylor said looked like mere scribbles at first glance still looked like mere scribbles on the third or fourth glance as well. That being said, in some of the abstract works even if they seemed amateurish at first, I could see where real effort an talent had come into play. Though it at first seemed haphazard there was definite composition and purpose to the images on the page. Through Lindsay Bierman's lecture I learned that architects themselves think about buildings in the same terms as filmmakers have to. Namely that one of the biggest factors in design is taking into account how people move through space.
I also learned through our readings that context is important for any composition. For example an architect must take into account what surrounds the building he or she is designing and if a musician were to compose a piece to be played in that building they would have to take into account the acoustics of the venue. This can be applied directly to my field of animation because where you expect your film to be show can affect the level of detail or number of frames necessary. Playing a 60fps video on a screen that maxes at 30fps is just wasted frames.
The images project was interesting though I confess I don't exactly love my diptych or my double exposure pieces.The boundary blend, however, I though had an interesting duality to the light and dark of the two different hallways and creates an intriguing contrast while also being seamlessly merged.
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| Hallways Diptych |
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| Hallways Double Exposure |
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| Hallways Boundary Blend |
The new media images intrigued me and it's interesting to see the possibilities that digital media opens up. Even more intriguing were the examples of videos shown by Will Taylor. This is a new form of film-making that is more akin to traditional visual arts than narrative film-making, at least in terms of purpose. Creating a visually appealing set of images meant to played on a loop rather than a film with a beginning, middle, and end is a fascinating concept and I may look into doing something similar on my own.
Conclusion
Visual Arts encompasses many forms of media and it's a shame that we couldn't go into more detail on it because it's easily the most interesting to me personally as I tend to like working with visual media. Even if I incorporate sounds (and I often do as they can drastically change a piece), I generally focus mainly on the visual aspects. I am looking forward to when we get into discussing film specifically.
