El Anatsui Portrait

Soon I will be creating a piece of art work that will be placed in a national Museum of art. My Portrait will follow around a philosophical view that I have. Simply put, "The world wasn't made in black and white, man made that" is what my theme will be for my barriers piece to go into the AGO. The barrier that this philosophy creates is the inability to see situations for there true nature. They also make it so you cannot see yourself properly and encourages bias and irrational thinking. This view will be represented through black and white paint splashes making the piece hard to see through, accept where it lets you. The splashing of the paint also reflects the erraticness of the persons perception. This effects me personally because I like to fill my life in black and white. I like to make a bad and good out of actions and it makes it difficult to understand all aspects of a situation, when you are focused on only the morality of the situation. Letting yourself get bogged down by moralities can sometimes be a hindrance. In cases when there is to much morality to consider, you should just follow your heart. Hitler is an example of over morality. Wait one second, I am not saying the Holocaust was a good thing, just that Hitler got so twisted in morality he couldn't see the truth. Hitler allowed for his sense of justice to kill thousands of people. Looking too closely to morality made him see this. He saw the Jewish people as an unseen terrorist that everyone would turn a blind eye to. If he looked back and saw the conclusions of committing such horrible acts he would have seen that justice isn't always the right answer. People also seem to only see a one sided justice, where there justice outweighs those of others. To see Hitler's point of view look here. All means of intent can be achieved in a logical sense of justice. The blindness justice creates to peoples perception of true right and wrong is a barrier to all that wish to follow a certain, specific path.

Sprocket's Film Festival

I went to the Sprocket's Film Festival which was pretty fun. The Sprocket's Film Festival is a place our Cyber Arts group goes every year to check out some up and coming film designers and there films. They had around 10 or so short films that where all different in there own special way.
Out of all of the short films, there is one in particular I enjoyed the most. The film I enjoyed the most I think was called Animal. They had this small ball thing pulling it's self off of a twig. It finally pulled it's self off and landed next to a dead animal. It then got scared and ran away. Then got eaten (-_-). The reason I like this film comes up next. The animal that just ate it dies and then within it's belly you see the creature grow and turn red. It burst out of the animal and after a couple of seconds, plops out another animal just like before, and you are to presume the cycle continues. I like it because I thought it was going to be obvious, and then it was unexpected but still foreseeable, and then went completely unexpected. When the creature was transforming in the animals belly, I thought it was just going to get bigger and get eaten by a larger animal. Instead and it turned into a plant, and before I could say to my self "oh I was wrong" I had the creature plop out of the plant (which I didn't expect either).
After all the short films, they played this full film called "U". It was French and "U" was the name of this unicorn that was like a friend with this princess (all the characters where animals). The film was done in a cartoon animated version but the difference with this compared to normal animated cartoons is that it had a slight sexual undertone to it. The movie was based of relationships and the relationships where more intimate then an normal animation. The one thing you have to know about me is I am pretty prudent and kind of feel sexual undertones from things other people probably wouldn't feel from. They still had French kissing and people lying on top of each other and dirty references. This is the major difference between Hollywood animations and Non- Hollywood animations, they are more "free".
Warning!!! Spoilers / Ranting
I hate the ending!!! This bloody thing ends with U disappearing to nothing and her friend forgetting about her in a matter of seconds. I wish I could have timed it so I could tell you how short it was. And what's worse is that they tried to fix the ending by having U stay because one of the characters "loved" her. . . . . "AAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh" are my exact words. Don't even try and fix the ending, I hate you! When characters disappear with no meaning or no acceptance I hate it (unless that is suppose to be the meaning of the story). That's all I can yell right now. See you when I'm less angry.

James Cameron Avatar Trailer Revised

First I have to talk about the original trailer before I talk about my revised trailer. The original can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1_JBMrrYw8 if you want. I found the original video to be very tense due to the music. I kind of wanted the notes to move faster because they take too long. Of course that is because of the suspense they were trying to create form it. It had a kind of eeriness in the beginning but right after the suspenseful part where he gets into his avatar, I don't know what I am suppose to feel. It almost seems like the audio is skipping. 

My video is more darker than the trailer. All the images are the same but I added some dark techno music. I know that is weird but it fits with the mood. I cut the music so it would fit in with the song because it is around four minutes and the trailer is two minutes. The only thing I had to force to fit in where it was not suppose to is the very end with the avatar kiss scene where it was important to make the mood more romantic even if it was dark music. I kind of made it mystical at the end so it didn't look like a romance. I made it so the piano's first appearance into the trailer was between the view over the forest and the military base to hint that there is mystery behind both the wild and the base. I had the drum come in with the armaments of the marines to create that "up" in tension and make a possibly normal thing turn into a race to arms. You then get set uneasy because nothing else seems to be violent until the organ comes in and the avatar smiles. You can't hear what he says, but you know it is malicious. The rest of the video is fighting and it fits the disturbed, eerie music. I used sound effects in the same areas as the trailer's maker did except for the roars of the monsters. I used a lot of subtle sounds like the helicopter and the bubbles in the tank to create and atmosphere when I thought it was necessary. I think the Trailer's creator used the helicopter too much and didn't allow enough scenes to create there own suspense from lack of noise. I felt the roars brought a person into the trailer, and if I could increase there volume compared to the music I would. The roar of the avatar (which is my own voice so see if you recognize me, probably not) kind of acts as a sudden realization that you are just watching it and not part of it. My whole video makes things seem like it is an image with no sound (which is different form a video without any sound) and makes you enter yourself into the trailer to hear there voices. 

El Anatsui

El Anatsui  is an artist that was born Ghana, Nigeria in the year 1944. El Anatsui got his Art Education Postgraduate Diploma at the University of Science and Technology in Kumasi in 1969. He later went on to do many solo exhibitions, two person exhibitions, selected group exhibitions and international exchange workshops. He worked as a teacher and curatorial still staying close to his art. He has accumulated 8 award so far, the last being in 2000 from the Forum of African Arts. 

El Anatsui's art revolves around physical objects. El Anatsui makes art out of the style of natural or common things like sticks and bottle caps. He is not known for making paintings that hold a lot of meaning made by every brush stroke he takes. He has recently created a blanket out of bottle caps that is now going to be part of the Art Gallery of Ontario. His art has a great deal of texture and sleekness to them. They also produce a kind of aww at the way they are positioned and to there scale. 

His art does help the re-use of objects but that does not fit the goal El Anatsui is trying to fulfill. The message El Anatsui is trying to portray is that even small useless objects can be converted into art. It is not a matter of reusing but a matter of converting things into art, and the aww of a blanket made of bottle caps. 

Personally, I don't have a real connection to his art because it is just a blanket to me. What I do feel is the ascetic his blanket has. I prefer very clean things that are (if a physical art/architecture) unified and connected to interesting things. The positioning matters to me a lot and although his pieces don't pull me in on that sense, the wonder of the materials and the suspected maneuverability of the object is what interests me. 

The Fine Line

I call this piece "The Fine Line". It is a collage of beauty, growth life and of death dirt and wilting. The piece is meant to bring your eye in a triangle between the woman leading her eyes to the mummy and the mummy leading its eyes to the woman drowning and the drowning woman leading you back to the face of the large woman. It moves slightly into the rule of thirds but not dominantly enough to create a large effect. Line and shape are used in a unique way compared to any other median because it uses many shapes (and in turn lines) to make a larger shape in which the whole background uses this technique. This piece also has many little connections with different parts of the art work. The mummy's eyes use the color of the lake to bring itself closer to it and the woman's eyes are used to bring the dirt closer to the woman. The largeness of the woman’s and mummy’s face helps bring your eyes to them first, and emphasize the difference between life and death. Along with all the pieces that make the background, the value and hue is varied between how far away you look at it. It has a line in the center to balance out the picture and creates a lot of contrast between those two lines.

Piano

This is a little experiment I did a little while back. I did it just to familiarize myself with illustrator. I took a photo off the internet and put it as a an illustrator image. It was pretty fun but nothing to go crazy about.

Self Portrait

This is an illustrator version of myself. I did use photoshop to cut off the extra of the picture this self portrait was based on. I was trying to create a feeling of being squished but I think it fell short. It took me forever to got the background but I don't think that it helped making you feel squished but instead irritated which is better than nothing. I did the portrait in Art Deco style which I think I did a pretty good job on. I wasn't truely inspired by anyone, I just started thinking of how I could use the requirements to my advantage. The square frame made my think squished, and the Art Deco came from having to do a painting version, and the hard man made curves of Art Deco on the computer would have good contrast with the natural curves of Art Noeuvou that will be my painting. As a pair, I think they will go well together.