Exercise on conveying words using expressive lines.
The following words I have chosen to interpret are:
Proud,
Severe, Neurotic, Savage, Dynamic, Honest, Hostile and Anxious
My interpretations are straight forward as I wanted to
approach the task with the simplicity of creating expressive lines that can
visually describe the words as much as possible, though keeping it to a
minimum. Words such as Hostile, Savage and Severe are generally easy to my
understanding as these words convey the themes of frantic, chaos and
frustration, which led to the decision to make the lines all frantic and
chaotic, such as scribbling or crossing out. The other words I have chosen –
Proud, Neurotic, Dynamic, Honest and Anxious are a little harder, and the
expressive lines I had interpret each one can be questionable, because the
lines are straight forward or curve in a bend, unlike the others that are more
frantic which conveys the word more.
Compositions using stickers are fairly easy and did not
have much trouble in visually presenting these compositions to convey the
words. Each one are fairly straight forward and simplistic to the point where
it visually communicates for each word. No hard thoughts were put into these as
these compositions were my first initial ideas when I had read the words for
the task to create. I did not want to overcomplicate the visuals and had used
these stickers to the bare minimum as I can otherwise the piece will end up
cluttered.
Creating abstract compositions using limited colour palette
was somewhat hard and I chose the 4 phrases to help ease the creation of the
abstract works. A calm morning. An uncomfortable silence. A loud conversation.
A long day.
I used cool colours to suggest “A calm morning” and decided
to play with the composition to create a scenery of the morning sun. It was
slightly difficult since there can only be 4 colours to visualise the phrase so
I decided to go for a simple approach of a scenery, otherwise I do not know how
else I could describe the phrase.
For the “uncomfortable silence” I simply approached it by
giving dark colours to represent the ‘silence’ and a red line to represent the
“uncomfortable” part as a way to express that there is something stirring in
the dark/quiet that gives off an uncomfortable vibe, as if there is a unknown
presence.
“A loud conversation”. The composition was to use shapes
that resembles a lightning bolt, as well as to create some sort of speech
bubble to indicate a conversation, and use striking colours such as the yellow,
red and white to convey the emotions of being loud. Using shapes helps to
create the speech bubble-like thunder shape is probably the only effective
outcome I could think of that can represent both ‘conversation’ and
‘loud’.
“A long day” was given warm colours to represent the
evening of the day, to express the relief and warmth of relaxation after the
day of work or travel. A very simple approach using colours to create a scenery
or a ‘horizon’ over the distance.
Chosen this piece by Edward Hopper “Openings” and to
reflect the phrase “Nostalgia” by giving it some alterations that can somewhat
reflect it.
I chose to only alter the colours of the piece, as I
believe colours can really influence/visualise a particular emotion or theme,
regardless of what image it is. “Nostalgia” is actually a really hard word to
break into using just colours, and this is the outcome of the alteration I had
given the image with the theme of nostalgia. The colours of the blues and
purples are to represent the dream-like quality to it and to feel otherworldly.
The grainy feel is to indicate the ‘past’ like with all photos and videos that’s
aged and the quality of them gets watered down as time went on. It’s really
hard to try and convey the emotions of “nostalgia” and this is the only
alteration I could think off that is able to showcase in my opinion, but
overall I think something else could work better than this, but I struggle to
figure out what it could be.
Task 2
Analysis of one of Edward Hooper’s ‘Nighthawks’ painting.
Within the image it appears to be people in a lone American
downtown diner late at night. There seems to be no narrative structure going on
and the bleak, empty space around the diner, particularly outside, feels unnervingly
empty, considering its suppose to take place at a busy road in downtown America.
There doesn’t seem to be any messages that the image is trying to convey, although
there might be a small narrative going on, depending where you are looking
into. The couple, the lone customer and the person working there can
potentially offer a small narrative individually and I think it’s mostly up to
the viewer how they interpret/deconstruct the image as there is no solid ground
of what is happening. There may be some subliminal messages with the image’s conceptual/symbolic
visual of the scenery, but and I am finding it slightly difficult to pinpoint
what it is trying to say. From my personal point of view on the image I think it’s
more to do with the visual atmosphere that makes it interesting. The colours
and the composition with the space and lighting somewhat makes this piece feel
mysterious, yet eerily soothing at the same time. I feel like there might not
be any narrative at all, and the painting is there for visual pleasing to the
audience. I could be wrong, though this is what I interpret from this work.
Director - Stanley Kubrick.
I will be looking into Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey for visual
language and cinematography and apply its theme and messages by rearranging
Edward Hooper’s “Nighthawks” painting by putting in subject matters from the
film to see if there could be any potential impact on the image’s visual
connotations by creating a quick rearrangement sketch of the same scene.
By adding one of the metaphors, the ‘monolith’, that represents the otherworldly and the mysteriousness, from
Stanley Kubrick’s film into the visual imagery of Edward Hooper’s Nighthawk,
there has been a significant impact in terms of narrative. Now we have an
unknown subject matter in the scene, which creates a sense of mystery and
unknown between it and the lone character in the diner. The loneliness feels
more eerily uncomfortable as we see this unknown object looming over behind the
lone man in this seemingly empty place gives off an otherworldly vibe.
