Sculpture

 

Almost all the sculptures complete, I just need to assemble them into frames and mount them.

Postcard

Finishing up the other sculptures today... will post pics later.

If only I had more time...

Saw this again today:
http://testroete.com/index.php?location=head

If had more time I would definitely use 3Ds Max and photoshop to make my own head.
Gotta work on sculpture now.

Materials bought

Bought the perfect TV from Goodwill in Bonita for $4.99
got all the spools of PVC string for around $30 including shipping

also, found another great artist:
http://tebe-interesno.livejournal.com/

More great artistic inspiration

Robert William's had a painting in Juxtapoz magazine that both angered and amused me so much. Angry because I was thinking of somthing so similar and amused because he had painted it in an amazing way.
http://www.robtwilliamsstudio.com/

Another artist I have admired for his inspirational paintings for a while has been Richard Coleman.

I have intensely studied his use of colors and geometry for many hours in order to be able to replicate and understand why it looks so uniquely amazing to me. His compositions and figures always leaves me guessing and the sheer amount of geometric colored patterns keeps me staring.

http://www.richardcolmanart.com/gallery/

Mass media's influence on society

http://hubpages.com/hub/Mass-Media-Influence-on-Society

Interesting video that looks how public opinion on drug control has been shaped by the media

How media influence public opinion

For example, after the attacks of 911 the media gave a huge coverage of the event and exposed Osama guilty for the attack as they were told by the authorities. This shaped the public opinion to support the war on terrorism, the same happened with the war on Iraq. The problem is that if media received un accurate information then the public opinion supported a wrong cause, this is the power of public opinion influence.
Other ways to influence are with polls and trends, especially in political campaigns. The candidates that can pay for more tv and media exposure have more influence on public opinion and thus can receive more votes.

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Cool websites

Creating a vector TV:
http://www.aivault.com/?p=706

An interesting research paper:

Social surrogacy: How favored television programs provide the experience of belonging

Abstract

The current research examines the Social Surrogacy Hypothesis: parasocial relationships in favored television programs can provide the experience of belonging. Four studies support the hypothesis. Study 1 demonstrated that people report turning to favored television programs when feeling lonely, and feel less lonely when viewing those programs. Study 2 demonstrated that experimentally activating belongingness needs leads people to revel longer in descriptions of favored (but not non-favored) television programs. Study 3 demonstrated that thinking about favored (but not non-favored) television programs buffers against drops in self-esteem and mood and against increases in feelings of rejection commonly elicited by threats to close relationships. Finally, Study 4 demonstrated that thinking about favored television programs reduces activation of chronically activated rejection-related words. These results yield provocative preliminary evidence for the Social Surrogacy Hypothesis. Thinking about valued television programs appears to yield the experience of belongingness.

Finally got the mosaic going.

After many hours of work I was finally able to get the parameters correct for displaying the mosaic the way I want in the image synthesizer. The next step would be to gather more frames for the indiviudal pieces so that I can have more color. I want to get a total of 256 frames because that would provide a good variety of color and commericals.

Also, I ordered the PVC wiring today. I should be getting 2 spools of each color red, green, blue, and white. I need to get some plexiglass for both the sculptures and graphic pieces.

Additionally, I want to work on another mosaic that will be facing my self-portrait. I plan on using a television set as my subject which is created out of smaller tiles comprised of people from my community. I will use photos of people from facebook to create this. Depending on how many frames I end up using on the self-portrait I will add or subtract he number of frames from the tv set. 

Sculpture started

Found the right material to use finally. I will be rubber-cementing this PVC string (called S'gettehi (TM) ) to the head form.

At first I tried with actual ribbon cable and a hot glue gun. The cable was too small and the wires made it too stiff. Also the hot glue melted and deformed the head.

hahaha, this one looks exactly like someone I used to work with:

Buying supplies

I bought a Styrofoam head from a Halloween store for $2.65. I figure I could use this as a mold for the ribbon cable and heat the cable with a hair dryer to mold to the form. Maybe cover with tin foil and heat?


Also, worked on photo mosaic today and finally made lots of progress, just need to be able to change the sizes of the mosaic for different parts. Thinking of using the brush tool with different parameter presets to achieve the desired sizing effect. Lastly, I need to get 256 frames from 24 hours worth of commercials as my tile material. I'm choosing 256 as it seems like the perfect range of colors and images to represent the mosaic accurately.

Influential Books

Both of these books have been the influential crux of my project. Through Graphic Design, Sculpture, and possibly Video-Art I will examine the unintended consequences of information derived from television. If there is one thing I want to point out, it is that we as a television viewing society have traded depth of knowledge on subjects for breadth of knowledge of subjects.

Photo Mosaics

Another idea for a graphic design peice was to make a photo mosaic. The work of Charis Tsevis and Chuck Close have inspired me to create photo mosaics because I enjoy the idea of how perception changes when you look closer to the piece.

 

When I saw these works by Charis Tsevis I was immediately inspired to do the same and got my hands on a copy of the software to create these. The software, Studio Artist 3.5 is only for Mac and EXTREMELY frustrating to use because of the literally millions of variables that can be changes and the very non-user-friendly interface. It took me two days of working on the program to create something similar to what I wanted, but it still needed lots of tweaking.

Thanks to relentless Google searching I found a clear tutorial on how to create a photo mosaic with Studio Artist 3.5

Additionally, another collage artist I admire is Johnathan Yeo. He creates collages using images from pornography. This is my favorite:

Skull Sculptures

I saw an artist who makes skull sculptures out of wire and rope. http://www.jim-skullgallery.com/





This got me thinking of how I could use the rainbow ribbon cable as a sculpture. Using a Styrofoam head (bought from wig store) I could cover it and use ribbon cables glued or heated together to make a form. Additionally I may be able to use LED plastic tubing. The final artwork may be placed inside a hollowed TV frame. The idea is to create an artistic reply to Edward R. Murrow's quote regarding TV:

This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and even it can inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it's nothing but wires and lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference. This weapon of television could be useful.

Materials needed:

rainbow ribbon cable
stryofoam head
led light tubing?