NEW BLOG DONT FOLLOW THIS ONE

Haey GAuise i got a new blog ages ago you should follow that instead its way better and i have more friends on here and i h8 it follow it instead plzplzpzl

HERE

JERKCURB new track

Not involved with this one but it has been on repeat, nice one Jakey

Shlohmo And Rob Ryan

I don't expect anyone to read any of that stuff below. Did a work placement for Rob Ryan yesterday it was actually one of the best things ever everyone there is so sick they taught me how to screen print and did 200 prints of one of his designs with Jackie there she was so cool. Rob is wicked too he loves Adam and Joe and gets excited over everything AND he asked me to come back sometime. Fuckin excitin. This was all thanks to Barbara who I asked ages ago and forwarded me. THANKS BABS!

Final Piece Stills

Testing

If the videos overlap the text when you're reading this refresh the page once or twice and that'll put it back to normal.


I have decided to give the time lapse animation a go... I dont really know much about it but it seems pretty straight forward and I've found loads of videos on youtube showing roses growing with time lapse photography.

Blooming

Dieing

High quality time lapse

Bit of a more fun attempt at time lapse

I had to get a replica synthetic rose of a real one and after looking and failing couple of times i settled for an avalanche rose because they're pretty common and quick growing. Unfortunately you can't buy roses as a bud because if you did they wouldnt bloom so this is the most 'closed' I could get (rose on the left) and i went to so many florists but they all said the same. So annoying. The rose on the right is the synthetic silk (plastic) rose that is supposed to represent the simplified version. The photo on the right is my set up that I put up in a spare room in my house, i had to take it on my phone because my camera is a bit preoccupied at the moment... obviously... It's in a good place for light and wont get disturbed. I want this to be as natural as possible so I'm not going to tamper with it at all in any way.

These are a second test rose that I did to see how long it takes a rose to die, this is after just longer than a day without water which is good. 

I plan on taking photos about every 10 minutes to make the animation as smooth as possible.

What I am trying to say

From my research I have found out that beauty is objective and subject to change based on the era that it is in and I can't answer that question for people to look at because the likelihood that everyone would agree with what my opinion of what beauty is and how i have simplified it is not very likely. So instead I think the way that i need to approach my final piece is by offering the option for the viewer to decide themselves of what is beautiful; something naturally beautiful or something that is simplified beauty.

I looked at Theo van Doesburg, an abstraction artist who takes something in its traditional form and abstracts it into a geometric and exploded format. I love this style of simplification and the fact that both the first and last images both depict a cow, one more obvious than the other. It reminds me of exploded diagrams that you get with buying products that need building. 

TESTING

So I thought why not take something traditionally associated as beautiful and abstract it in a similar way to simplify it. 

 

If I was going to simplify it even more then I would change the colours to the three main primary colours, but this might be breaching on copying Mondriaans work... I thought of putting this into a 3 dimensional format but I'm not sure if it communicates obviously enough. Instead I think the best way to approach this is by using something that already exists as a simplified version of something already traditionally beautiful, like a synthetic silk rose in juxta position with a real rose. I could show the development of the real rose as it reaches its perfect bloom and then dies against a synthetic rose which is constantly in perfect bloom and doesn't have the initial development in growth and death. This is more of a comment about time and showing that beauty can either last for a short amount of time with natural beauty but will last forever with synthetic beauty. But which would you rather have?
This is a good way of making the viewer interact with the piece and decide themselves which is more beautiful; tradition or simple? In a way it is just a portrayal of my question in a visual form, which I like as it means that I am not answering the question myself because I don't agree with answering that for people.

I could show this as a set of roses standing still in the exhibition or I could show this as a time lapse animation which might be nice.

I need to start planning...

The notion of simplicity and beauty

SIMPLICITY

I researched into previous designers, artists and movements that use simplicity in their work to see if I could get an understanding of how they create it successfully. 

I began looking at traditional poster designs and contrasting between complex designs like victorian playbills against more simple poster layouts like Josef Muller Brockmann showing how that complexity and minimalism can both work and remain beautiful. 

Josef Muller Brockmann

Victorian Playbills

Also at how typefaces have been created to be simple like how Univers is all about pattern making and was created by layering type on top of each other to create a universal typeface. Other examples of simple type are Frutiger, Helvetica, Akzidens Grots. and many more. 

Then there are other designers that contrast with their use of simplicity and complexity like Otl Aicher and Gert Dumbar both of whom are successful in their own right in the design world but have completely different takes on design, neither right or wrong, but considered. Otl Aicher is known for his extremely simple design for Bulthaup but his work has been commented on by other designers like Henrion in 'Top Graphic Design' as having little character. Gert Dumbar on the other hand has much more personality in his work with lots of movement, colour and grids but with sharp unpredictable angles involved, but is this too personal and lacks being universal in its overall design to everyone?

Gert Dumbar

Otl Aicher

Simplicity exists within products too both with their function, form and packaging. Adolf Loos and Luwdwig Mies van der Rohe famously quoted 'Less is more' and worked with this ethos of simplicity. I really liked things like how the Shakers use this as a way of living and produce all of their tools and home living equipment with this theme. Everything is considered and nothing unnecessary is kept.  Much like the Ulm Stool designed by Max Bill and how it is literally as simple as it gets but remains multi-functional.

BEAUTY

To be able to find out what the notion of beauty was and how beauty can be created i decided that the best way to approach this was to look at different artistic movements and their understanding of what beauty was to see if there was an underlining theme that I could go by or see if there was a similar theme or set of themes that follow the notion of simplicity that I could use. So I began by going to the V&A to the 'cult of beauty' exhibition which i found out about on Johnson Bank's Thought for the Week blog. The exhibition was all about the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and William Morris and their perception of how beauty existed and how it should be portrayed as natural beauty rather than adapted or transformed/distorted beauty. It was a really good exhibition to go to and so relevant at the beginning of my research. 

I decided to do my contextual studies essay that we were told to do over the Easter holiday break on the perception of beauty where I looked at how there pretty much is no definitive answer to and it is subject to change based on the specific era that it is in. For instance, the PRB thought of beauty as ornate things and nature while the futurists thought of beauty as chaos... As corny as the saying goes 'beauty is within the eye of the beholder' is pretty relevant and what one person may find beautiful, another may not.

I watched Matthew Collings' documentary on 'What is Beauty' which was really helpful and he broke it down into 10 categories 

1. Nature

2. Simplicity

3. Unity

4. Transformation

5. Surroundings

6. Animation

7. Surprise

8. Pattern

9. Selection

10. Spontaneity 

Collings concluded at the end that to be able to label something as 'beautiful' you have to have a balance between the 'object' and 'subject' of what you're looking at, and I agree with him but I also agree with my statement above about how it differs from person to person and that no one can say for definite what beauty IS because that is impossible because it is subject to change. So maybe I have to offer the viewer the chance of deciding what they find beautiful in my final piece...?