Emotion in Digital Art

“Lucy there is some great reflection here - im not sure I agree with some of your premises about Art. Expression assumes some sort of knowledge - intuitive a priori or otherwise. I think many artist make art as a way of trying to understand the world / themselves. Maybe its useful to think about the distinction between the art work and the artist?”—James

I’ll agree that expression does have some knowledge behind it. Here I define knowledge as reaction/understanding of stimuli. For example, you eat a jalapeno and find that it is extremely spicy. That’s knowledge. There’s this artist I follow on DeviantArt, `yuumei, who is a great example of this knowledge behind expression. She has an animation series that deals with the reality of divorcing parents and how the children of these parents deal with their emotions and come to terms with the split.

The first of the series is a flash game, which is actually an interactive storybook. I went through every possible scenario and it’s quite depressing for me. You can really understand the feeling she expresses inside the story. It doesn’t matter what scenario you choose the story always ends the same way: The child can’t do anything about their parents splitting up and must accept that there’s nothing they can do. When the player goes through the game you feel really frustrated because you want the parents to get back together but it never works out.[1]('yuumei, 2011) I think this is how many children feel about their parents splitting up.

The second is more like a manga, but in a different format and with a few stylistic differences. This one’s really depressing too. The story is structured very much like a manga and the characters are typical in manga, which keeps with the style of the art. The art inside it is really beautiful.[2]('yuumei, 2009) Even though it’s digital art it conveys the emotions really well. I’ve seen a lot of digital art and when you’re exposed to vast amounts of it you start to see the differences because you’ll have more to compare to. From what I’ve seen, it’s rare to find a digital art piece that really moves me. This is one of those rare ones, by the end of the story you’ll be bawling your eyes out.

Her parents are divorced and she receives many letters from other people who follow her who also have divorced parents. So in her artworks she expresses those emotions according to her own personal experiences and the experiences of many other children. It has been a key theme in several of her pieces. This is really off topic but people should really think twice before getting married. It’s never just about you.

Back on track. Her art with the theme of divorce fully expresses her feelings and the feelings of others towards divorce, which comes from her understanding and knowledge of what divorce is like.

If it were me I don’t think I can make art as effective as hers about divorce and what it’s like for the child because I haven’t experienced it myself. I could ask my friends as many questions as I want, but I still wouldn’t be able to capture the feeling.

I think the flaw in my last post is that I sort of cut out the artist in my consideration of what expression is. I probably cut out the mathematician as well. This makes me think though. For some reason art feels more human than mathematics does for me. There will probably be more on that in a later post.

Anyway, fast forward to today’s lecture.

In today’s lecture there were quite a few topics that caught my attention. I’ll talk about the two most important ones that stood out to me. The first is digital art missing human qualities and the second is constant analysis versus intuition in art-making.

I disagree with the statement that digital art lacks human qualities. I think it depends on a few things. How the art is made, the purpose of the art, and the meaning behind it as interpreted by the viewer. Some digital artworks do lack that sense of humanity. There are scores of examples for that where you have a perfect, hyper-photorealistic digital painting except that it’s made to look extraordinarily beautiful and perfect. Problem? It’s only trying to be beautiful and doesn’t really convey any emotion. I don’t want to mention any names for negative examples in case the artist finds it and sets their fans on me to flame the page. But an example is one particular artist draws exceptionally beautiful people. All the time these beautiful people look directly at the viewer, trying to look as beautiful as possible. The purpose of it is to simply be beautiful, digital eye-candy with no other deep meaning behind the artwork. As much as I like my eye-candy it does get boring after a while because the interaction and sharing of emotion isn’t there.

`yuumei’s art definitely doesn’t lack human qualities as shown by previous examples of her work. I think a lot of the emotion there is conveyed through the types of brushstrokes in her pieces. Even in the interactive storybook where they’re just silhouettes there are brushstrokes in the child’s silhouette to show what they’re feeling. For example, at one point there are really scribbly strokes where the child has to choose which parent to go with. It shows those feelings of not knowing what to do because what’s actually happening conflicts with what you want. I think in that one the use of typography and its movements showed that emotion really well too.

Constant analysis versus intuition in art-making; this really caught my attention. It caught my attention because I think this is a key point in studio which I find hard to balance. In the lecture, I think it was James who said that when you constantly analyse it’s hard for the art to grow and develop. I fully agree with that, and I think that’s one part I struggle with. I tend to plan everything out meticulously and make sure that there’s enough time for everything to go wrong. I have to be in control and know exactly what’s happening at every point along the way. I think I analyse too much to be honest. By over-planning it stunts the development of some of my projects. I need to let go and go with the flow; just let things happen. I want to improve on this aspect because I think it would benefit me greatly in the studio.

NOTE: There are no pictures of `yuumei’s work directly on this blog out of respect for the artist. You can click on the links to see her amazing work though.

The artists we were shown had cool art too. My favourite one was Yayoi Kusama’s. I didn’t know it at the time, but I’ve seen one of her mirrored rooms on the internet before when I was looking for mirrored rooms.[3](Bunyan, 2009) I love the infinity effect in mirrors facing each other. I actually have a dream mansion, in which there is a mirror garden which gives infinity in all directions. The mansion changes all the time when I change. Enough about the mansion, here’s one of her fantastic mirrored rooms!



I’ve been thinking about our literary review as well. I’ve looked up on how to write a literary review, which is a start. I’m now thinking of topics and according to my plan I should have chosen a topic by next Monday at the latest. Things I’m really keen about for the review are infinity, Islamic art and math, golden ratios and golden spirals, Renaissance art and math, Leonardo da Vinci—and I’m sure there’s more that I haven’t picked out yet at this moment.

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[1] 'yuumei. (2011). Rumination. Retrieved July 25, 2011, from http://yuumei.deviantart.com/art/Rumination-215250277?q=gallery%3Ayuumei%2F100590&qo=1

[2] 'yuumei. (2009). 1000 WORDS. Retrieved July 25, 2011, from http://yuumei.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d23ifgd

[3] Bunyan, M. (2009). Exhibition: 'Yayoi Kusama: Mirrored Rooms' at Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA). Retrieved July 25, 2011, from http://artblart.wordpress.com/2009/03/14/yayoi-kusama-mirrored-rooms-exhibition-at-museum-of-contemporary-art-mca-sydney/

What is Mathematics and what is Art?

I didn’t contribute much in class today while we were having an open debate on the definitions of mathematics and art. I don’t think I agreed with most of the points most people came up with though, so I spent some time afterwards thinking about what I think makes more sense to me. Note: I have a tendency to not share anything unless I’ve worded my idea into a neat, concise, and cohesive argument. That should change, because I want to share more of my ideas in the future more openly like some of my other more outspoken classmates. I need to understand that nothing needs to be perfect.

Anyway, I think mathematics is the human understanding of the world. Art on the other hand is the human expression of the world.

There is a distinct difference between understanding and expression. Understanding is cold logic devoid of emotion. Let’s say I have an apple. All will have the understanding that this apple is red, sweet and white on the inside, has around six black seeds at the core, and so on. It doesn’t matter what language you’re using, every culture, every person would have an equivalent in their language that matches your understanding of this apple. Expression on the other hand is applying a meaning or association with this understanding.

Expression deals more with abstract things such as feelings so it is more subjective and differs from person to person. Using the apple again the apple could symbolise temptation and sin linking to the Bible. On the other hand it could mean good health and perfection to some. The red of the apple could mean anger while the white means all that is pure and fragile, thus when combined gives the idea of a defense mechanism of an innocent, but traumatised child. In another perspective the red could represent blood giving its association to life while the white represents the good in life and the black seeds are the obstacles we overcome during our lifetime. You can get different meanings of the apple with different people. Although there is a difference between Math (understanding) and Art (expression) that doesn’t mean that the two can’t be related.

In the case where Math and Art are combined, you get a mathematical interpretation of beauty and an artistic interpretation of truth. A great example of this is fractal art.

The arrangement, colours, and form of a fractal is beautiful. The pattern of this beauty is based the mathematical equation of the fractal while other aspects of the piece such as form and colour express the truth in the equation. Truth and beauty are subjective, however, that truth is the human perception of what appears to be true. They could be completely wrong, or completely correct. The same can be said for beauty. Different people have different ideas of what is beautiful, however, that doesn’t necessarily mean that there is anything that is right or wrong. Thus, it is entirely possible for math and art to exist in the same place, sharing an intertwined relationship depending on the perception of each individual.




Nets

I quite liked drawing out nets for the different shapes today. In highschool geometry was my favourite because I thought it was fun since you get to make 3D shapes out of flat paper nets. I also find that I get a longer sense of fulfillment when I do things like making objects out of something flat, empty and “unimportant”. This is because, usually, nothing gives me happiness and satisfaction for more than a few minutes so I’d rather spend my time working hard than let my thinking time go to dangerous places.

I did some googling on that for the net of the icosahedron. It turns out I was right and the lecturer made a small mistake. The icosahedron is the one with twenty equilateral triangular faces while the dodecahedron is the one with twelve regular pentagonal faces. [1] [2](Farlex, inc., 2011; MathIsFun.com, 2010) So it turns out we accidentally got them mixed up.




The two-piece pyramid puzzle

Made a test net and the one given made no sense. It couldn’t even fold up properly to make a decent shape as some of the edges couldn’t meet to close up the shape.

So I did some googling to see what the final solution looked like so that I could get an idea of how the correct net should look like.

I found a picture of the solution and a brief bit of information about pyramid puzzles from: http://gamesmuseum.uwaterloo.ca/VirtualExhibits/puzzles/pyramid/index.html



From that I sketched a little diagram of the solution in my book with all hidden edges. Then drew up the simplest net for a tetrahedron to map out where the edges of one of the two pieces should be, and from that I got the measurements to create a net for one of the pieces.

Did a test net for that one; it worked, so I then colour-coded which edges were congruent and added in angles to make it easier to draw the side flaps in the final nets. Then the final two nets were cut out from stiffer, sturdier paper, glued and put together to show the solution of the puzzle.

That was quite fun to be honest. I was expecting this paper to be extremely boring, but after reading the planned schedule for what we’ll be doing I’m extremely pleased because geometry is my favourite. I’m especially looking forward to the session about Fibonacci, golden ratios, and spirals. I’ve always had a special interest in golden ratios and golden spirals because I think they’re perfect. It’s much like my love for circular, spherical, and curved objects. I find them to be the most beautiful forms because the number of sides they’re actually made out of are so infinite that it appears that they only have one surface or one side depending on whether you’re going 3D or 2D. I’m also looking forward to working in pairs for this. Since my love for working with other people has grown greatly and because geometry has always been my favourite, I think I will enjoy it very much provided that I don’t end up working with somebody lazy and unreliable.

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[1] Farlex, inc. (2011). Icosahedron – definition of icosahedron by the Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus and Encyclopedia. Retrieved July 19, 2011, from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/icosahedron

[2] MathIsFun.com. (2010). Definition of Dodecahedron. Retrieved July 19, 2011, from http://www.mathsisfun.com/definitions/dodecahedron.html