CART351: Week 4 (Holzer)

Review/Reflection on DHC ART, "Jenny Holzer":

Jenny Holzer, for thirty years, has created analytical work combining typography and installations. Her recent exhibition at DHC ART pairs text with US government documents of war and digital mediums. Seeing the exhibition twice helped get a better and deeper understanding of what her work is about. Without reading about her series before seeing them, it leaves the viewer lost and confused.

For the first part of the exhibition presented, she did not use her own texts. The "Redaction Paintings" were not eye-catching except for the purple painted canvas' representing wounds and bruises. She could of done more with the data and information she had. The second series was the "Water Board" and "Thorax", both placed in the same room but made with two different mediums. This made me question her use of analog works versus her LED pieces. Why overpower a painting with a brightly flashing LED thorax? Thorax catches the viewer's attention in an instance while Water Board was forgotten in the back. Still today I don't understand the meaning of the Water Board painting.

Following this is "Ribs" which is identical to the Thorax piece but presented vertically rather than horizontally. I do like how she repeated the tints of purple in her works as the idea of human bruises and wounds. Also, briefly speaking, there was the series "Lustmond Tables" which in previous exhibitions people were allowed to touch. Not being able to touch the bones did make the piece more personal and really make the viewer have to move around to understand it. The two last pieces in the other building are "Monument" and "Chicago" which were bigger than the other series but not much different.

All of her LED works, I thought, got really repetitive in terms of colour, shape, and motion. Likewise, her analog pieces lost my interest and lacked a personal touch or connection to the other works. I felt as if she had run out of ideas for her two last LED projects: Chicago and Monument, where she just programmed them to do anything and change paths after an hour or so. In addition, I'm not sure DHC ART had spaces large enough for her LED works which may have affected the way we look at them. Though these series are just a quarter of Holzer's entire exhibition, I recommend to see it no more than once or else you will be prone to getting a heading or nausea.

CART345: Week 5

Responses to reading:

Blackwell -

David Carson, the most influential graphic designer of the 1990's. His work was so different but everyday typography that nowadays everyone creates works similar to his without knowing who he is. I wish I had known this guy before because his work is beautiful - they resemble more an art piece than text. The article was a little difficult to follow since everything was all over the place but nonetheless, my focus was on the visuals. Thus, I would respond and state my opinion on the text if I had really payed attention to every word, but in all honesty, the visuals were too powerful and I could not resist looking at that.

Bellantoni. Ch. 1 Precedents -

The first thing I noticed reading this text and the previous one was the visuals; it caught my eye before I even realized there was text. No doubt, their main focus was mainly on the visuals of this reading and kept the writing as minimal as possible. It is up to use the reader to decide how we want to read the text and which comes first since it is not structured like usual articles or texts. Now, my response to the text, it discusses the use of film titled over the years and how artists began with more analog versions of titles to then experimenting with digital. I find a lot of the art pieces are very simple but very effective, and are done step by step. The way the title of a movie is presented has a large impact on the viewers who then have an idea of what the movie may be about or simply keep their interest and make them part of this title. These artists use typography not only as letters and words but as images and objects. I found this to be very interesting because of the way it is presented and explained step by step on how film titles are created.

Here is a link which shows a variety of different typographic treatments created digitally or analog:

Typography Served

Here's another fun link: Typography

This is a short video of typographic works from Ray Gun created by David Carson

CART351: Week 3

"Data Knitting" by Arjen Mulder :

This text, if I am understanding it correctly, discuses about programs and softwares where data is organized into a complex knowledge system. The body, mind, and language is an archive of experiences, and that our history is a database where facts can be retrieved. Relationships between individuals data are now being stored and analyzed. I find this article is confusing and talks about multiple ideas at once. I am not sure about the relationship between archives, softwares and data as one.

Gerhard Richter's "Atlas" :

Without searching about his life or background education, I analyzed his work by making assumptions and using my imagination. His work is quite beautiful and well structured. He seems to be documenting older photographs maybe of his ancestors or just found ones. I like how they are shown in chronological order and the colours are kept the same, no photoshop seems to have been used on the photos. It is a different way of collecting data, it looks very similar to a scrapbook. Though they are photographs, the title of the data- Atlas- suggests that he may be collecting pictures of people around the world over the years.

CART345: Week 3

Fonts and Expressions:

Today in class we had to take pictures of ourselves and show the specific emotion through the photograph of course but also through the font. Katherine and I decided to both do it together to make it entertainin, and used the effects on the Macbook Photo booth to express in a more obvious way the emotions. Here are the emotions and the pictures:

Sad-Mistral
Surprised-Eccentric std
Angry-Cracked
Happy-Hobo std
Embarrassed-Baskerville Old Face

Confused-Webdings

CART351: Week 2

Response:

The work of artists in a databased society: Net.Art as online activism. (Features).(Internet standards and a Free Society)(Excerpt) by Richard Miranda Zuniga

- I found this article to be quite interesting because it is hard to define the limits of the Internet and it's pros and cons for keeping it public or controlled. The term data is presented in both this article and the following one because of the wide range of information being presented that has a great importance and impact on today's society. He also mentions that present day art in our generation is generally all digital and reflects this idea of avant-garde, socialist works. Thus, artists continue questioning as well the idea of having digital media public or controlled. Do we really want a society like the Panopticon suggested by Jeremy Bentham in 1785?

10 ways data is changing how we live (article from the Telegraph)

- After reading this article, I was surprised and amazed at finding out not only was data does but how it affects us in our every day lives. Shopping, relationships, business deliveries, maps, education, politics, society, war, advertising, are a few of the categories chosen to discuss in details the data implied in each and its function(s). I do agree with the article when they mention that most data is useless or unconnected. The one that shocked me the most was online dating websites where the data calculates the most absurd information for "data-based date advice". I don't really see how data calculating the perfect profile picture or how most users make themselves appear taller and/or richer, has changed how we live. We are almost being reduced to numbers if we actually count how many pin-card numbers we have, how many passwords hold all our information.

CART345: Week 2

Response:

rucker. The Visible Word, Chapter 2 Visual and Literary Materiality in Modern Art

Bringhurst. Chapter 1 The Grand Design. Recommended: Chapter 7 Historical Interlude

Spiekerman. Chapter 3 Looking at Type. Recommended: Chapter 4 Type with a Purpose

CART345: in class

5 typefaces:

I like: Zoom in

I liked the 3D ascept of it as well as its simplicity and calm shadows.

I like: Santa font
It adds a touch of uniqueness since it looks like the persons own writing and not as much a digital font. The sketchiness of it makes it easier to relate to.
I hate: Blazed
I don't like the cheesyness of the fire added and it looks like really cheap hotwheel stickers vput on toy racecars.
* This one was choosen in our group for the most dispicable since it was boring and not appealing.
I hate: Heartland
It is as cheesy as the above font and very boring. The hearts overwhelm the letters too much and make it almost impossible to read.
Not sure: 3D let
I liked the 3 dimensional view of it but at times it seems hard to read especially if it is too small.

The one font the group agreed on as the most interesting is: Ice Baby because of its texture and depth. It looks realistic and very different from other fonts we have seen.

CART351: Week 1

Mapping Project:

The idea of the project is to map out something and produce it visually - except from presenting a world map. We had a project to do in the previous CART211 class where we had to map our surroundings in an interactive way. A few of the examples shown in class I was already aware of so it inspired me to do something with physical layers rather than have it digital. Using these physical layers brought forth the idea of mapping out my family and how we are connected by DNA. My family and I are relatively close - by family I mean my mother, father, and brother - and by being very close, we constitute to a whole as well as individuals outside of home. Hense, this is why I used transparent layering. I used my hand print, my mother's lips, my father's finger print, and my brother's foot print. They are each printed on a single acetate and when they are combined, they become a whole like DNA.

The way I did this is I put the prints on paper and scanned them largely enough to print them bigger on an acetate after. A few complications arose; it was either too pixelates, too blurry or not dark enough. After wasting 10 sheets of acetate, I managed to come to an end result which I am fairly happy about. If I had more time I would of done a better job.

After having my project criticized negatively, I decided to change it a little by adding pins and putting space between each acetate to almost show a discectomy of my family. It was very hard to keep the sheets perfectly straight and not have them wiggle. Taking pictures of it was also a challenge because of the flash that kept reflecting in the sheets.

CART345: Week 1

Lupton - Type Workshop

On Ellen Lupton's "Thinking with Type" website, she touches interesting points by explaining the anatomy of letters, the spacing and alignment of text, and the grid or structure of paragraphs. Never have I deeply analyzed typography which is why I am amazed at the fact that the height, width, and baseline are precisely measured and always placed in the exact same manner. Size of a word can really differ from screen to print; for example, one may have a higher x-height. When it comes to text, I find the spacing between letters - called kerning - is sometimes impossible to notice. Tracking is another term I am learning while reading these texts, which adjusts spacing across words, texts or columns. Depending on the text, it always needs to be structured a certain way to have effect. Weight, size, spacing and placement are relatively important to express part of a page. Lastly, if grids were not used to structure text on a page, it would be a mess to read.

Type basics are composed of exploring basic issues in type design. It seems to be a repetition of what was previously explained by Lupton but with a few additions such as caps, italics and bold, and digital texts. I thought the sketches to be more useful and easier to understand on this particular website because of its simplicity. I have seen many different kinds of typography in my years but never have I taken the time to appreciate the detail and differences of each. From graphic novels to billboard advertisements, they may seem identical but they aren't always. I have explored typography a little but mainly calligraphy by making tattoo sketches for friends. I went with my naked eye and not by measurements.

Typography Animation:

I stumbled on these videos a while ago and I thought they would be relevant to show the difference use of text and placement. The voice is perfectly synchronized with the text appearing.

Not only does this video use words, it also uses characters and symbols which relate to the first assignment we are given for this course.