Animation

This is a time lapse of my backyard consisting of pictures taken every 2 minutes. The pictures are in order from day to night and then played in the reverse order.

Photomontage Critique

Peter Kennard

Defended to Death

1982

I think this photomontage is a great example of how you can use photomontage to deliver a specific message. The photomontage shows the Earth wearing a gas mask, with the American and Soviet Union flags for eyes, and missiles coming out of the mouth. The message this photomontage sends out is that the Earth is being destroyed by war such as the one between America and the Soviet Union. The gas mask tells us that during the way, mustard gas/nuclear weapons were used and in order for people to prevent themselves from inhaling toxic material, they had to wear gas masks. And the missiles coming out of the mouth, whether they are nuclear or not, tells us that there was destruction caused towards the Earth's surface. This photomontage uses various elements and principles of design. It uses shape by blending together geometric shapes such as the Earth which is a circle, the circle flags for the eyes and the cylinders with triangular tops for the missiles. There's very little use of the element of colour because it only uses the neutrals black, white and grey. The balance in this photomontage is symmetrical. If you were to put a vertical line down the middle, it would have an equal amount of the image on both sides. And contrast in this image is shown with the white on the Earth, flags and missiles on top of the black background.

Street Lights Music Video

This is a music video of "Street Lights" by Kanye West. Our intent as artists was to emphasize the mood and atmosphere of driving at night with street lights as our main focus. We wanted to show what it feels like to drive in the night time with all the beautiful lights that our city has to offer.

Black Square Designs

These Black Square Designs are images I created by combining, at the most, four squares to represent the description. For Order I lined the four squares up from biggest to smallest, for Increase I showed a small square which transitions to a medium sized square which then transitions to a large square. For Bold I put four squares with one rotated to look like a diamond, for Congested I put four squares together with very little space left around them, for Tension I stacked up four squares on their corners to show they can easily fall, and for Playful I created arrows which represent many videogames that are based on arrow inputs such as Dance Dance Revolution.

Sustainability



My intent for this poster was to promote sustainability of the planet through recycling by showing recycling would help save the polar bears. Recycling would help reduce the number of polar bear drownings by lessening the effects of global warming by cutting down the carbon emmisions from land fills and garbage incinerators.

Sound Problem

9 Squares:

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These 9 squares show a graphical representation of the sounds associated with them. The images help you to hear the sounds they represent.

Broken Bone:

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In movies when someone breaks a bone, they play a sound clip of celery being snapped as this is the best way to represent a bone being broken. I chose to draw the celery being snapped to help you hear the sound of a bone being broken.

Good Life Photomontage

The Good Life Photomontage Information Paragraph and Lyrics

The song I chose to make a photomontage of is the Good Life by Kanye West featuring T-Pain. One of the repeated lyrics in the choruses of the song is, “I’ma get on this TV momma” so I took a picture of my TV and displayed an image from the Good Life music video, showing that Kanye and T-Pain are on TV. In the third verse of the song, there are two lines that mention a plane, “Have you ever popped champagne on a plane” and “whipped it out, she said I never seen snakes on a plane” so I took a picture of a model plane I have and placed it in the sky. And in the previous sentence, the line from the song I first quoted mentions champagne so I got a picture from the Internet of a champagne bottle and I took a picture of one of my champagne glasses with gingerale in it which I used to represent champagne. The TV and the champagne need to be on a surface so I placed an image of a glass table I got from the Internet. And I used an image of a pool for the background because when we think of someone who’s living the good life, they have their own pool. And while normally you wouldn’t have a TV next to a pool because of possible water damage, if you’re a rich person living the good life, you can afford to constantly replace a damaged TV with a new one. So for my photomontage, I took the objects mentioned in the song and placed them on the background image of a pool to represent the good life.

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(Lyrics from album booklet.)

Image Critique: Burst Unity

Burst Unity

Hannah Hoch

1955


My initial reaction to this photomontage was that it was a beautiful, abstract piece of art but I didn’t know what it was. I have no idea what the objects are in this photomontage. What I see in this photomontage are many unknown objects, lines, shapes and colours combined to create this piece of art.

The elements and principles of design in this photomontage are balance, dominance/emphasis, contrast, shape and colour. The balance in this photomontage is symmetrical because if you were to draw a line down the middle, it would be visually equal on both sides. Dominance/emphasis is found in this photomontage because all the objects are placed in the center, making it the focal point. Contrast is found through shape and colour. The shapes contrast with each other because of their different sizes. Some are large and some are small. Contrast in colour is found with white on the dark blue, dark blue on the lighter blue and dark blue contrasting with the light green. There are both geometric and organic shapes in this photomontage. The organic shapes are all of the unknown objects in the center. The geometric shapes are the rectangles in the photomontage and the background shape with the top half being dark blue and the bottom half being light green. The primary colours red as seen on that rectangular-ish shape at the top, blue, both light and dark, as seen in the background and in the shape on the left and at the bottom and the rectangle towards the bottom, and yellow as seen on the shape on the left beside the blue shape, are in the photomontage. The secondary colours orange, as seen on the shapes in the bottom left of the center, green as seen on the top left shape and in the bottom half of the background, and violet as seen in the shape in the center and the bottom right rectangle, are in it. And the tertiary colours yellow-orange as seen in the orange shapes in the bottom left of the center, blue-green as seen in the background where the dark blue and light green merge, and red-violet as seen in the the rectangular-ish shape at the top are in the photomontage as well. The artists choice of objects/materials are all unknown, unidentifiable objects and this photomontage doesn’t have a location. What grabs my attention in this photomontage is the center focal point. All the objects seem to point to or come from this point. It has a black hole effect where either things are being sucked into a central point or things are coming out from a central point.

The theme of this photomontage is aesthetic beauty of these images put together. It’s really hard to see any moods or emotions in this photomontage. I can’t see any happiness or sadness or any other emotions in this photomontage. You can’t really tell from this image alone what it’s about or what it means but the photomontage is called, “Burst Unity” so maybe all these objects, shapes and lines bursted out from a central point which is where the objects seem to come out from. This work was created because the artist, Hannah Hoch, wanted to create a beautiful photomontage by combining several shapes, lines and colours. Based on this piece of art, I’d say the artist’s view of the world is beautiful because of a combination of various objects and colours. For example, in nature we have a combination of green trees, blue water, yellow sunlight, red roses etc... that can give us beautiful scenery. Hannah Hoch never explicitly said why she created “Burst Unity” but all throughout her art career, she worked hard to learn the techniques of photomontage so she could show other artists the things photomontages were capable of, a medium that artists lost interest in during the 1920s and was discarded in favour of other mediums. In her photomontages, she worked hard to create an image which looked modern and sophisticated and I think “Burst Unity” is one of her photomontages that best show this and that’s what her intent of this artwork probably was.

Hannah Hoch created the photomontage “Burst Unity” so she could show that through the use of the medium photomontage, she could combine shapes and lines that are simple on their own and combine them to create a complex, modern and sophisticated piece of art. My thoughts and feelings about this photomontage haven’t changed after knowing what her intent with this probably was because I always thought this had a modern, sophisticated and abstract look which seemingly is what the artist was trying to communicate. I don’t interpret the photomontage any differently now. I still see it as an aesthetically beautiful/pleasing piece of abstract artwork. What I learned from “Burst Unity” is that a combination of simple shapes and objects can create a modern and complex image which I should try to experiment with when creating art.

Works Cited
Cut And Paste: Hannah Hoch. 2007. 10 Oct 2010.

Less Is More

My intent as an artist for these pumpkins was to emphasize the idea of "Less Is More." As you can see, the detail in the physical characteristics of the first pumpkin gets simplified through cropping/zooming in and so the pumpkin is shown much closer. The second pumpkin still shows part of the outline of the pumpkin whereas the third, fourth, fifth and sixth do not. The fourth is shown in black and white. The colour brown is shown in the fifth. And the colour orange is shown in the sixth.

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