Week Five - Additional Video Reflection

Architecture: The Science of Design

1.       Modern skyscrapers – concrete steel when no space we build up.  Wind sways buildings

2.      Wind Tunnel testing – microclimatic wind research
3.      Smart apartments – computers programmed to accommodate user’s needs.  Heat water for shower, start coffee pot, open blinds.
4.      Computerized management – voice controlled computer manages electrical systems
5.      Concrete used in buildings – Greek and Roman ruins are still standing were made from concrete. (sand, pebbles or broken stone combine with cement)
6.      Reinforced and Pre-stressed concrete – rebar – bars of metal placed in concrete.
 

Last Call for Planet Earth: Sustainable Development and Architecture

1. Sustainability Revolution – People use resources indiscriminately.  Today architecture is global.

2. Architectural Design and Energy Management - sustainability agenda is important for business.
3. Architectural Designs for Energy Efficiency - energy-saving designs.
4. Architecture and Environmental Awareness - architectural design that incorporates integrated systems of natural light, fresh air, gardens, and beauty.
5. Architecture and Resources Management - geography, climate, and local resources, particularly renewable materials such as wood.
6. Passive Solar Energy - greenhouse effect exemplifies passive solar energy.
7. New Concept of Cities - re-conceptualize cities.
8. Architectural Design in Former Granite Quarry - The building refocuses the eye to see beauty where there was once ugliness.
9. China's Ecological Architecture - design features positively impact ecology and economy.
10. Tools for Green Analysis - "Green-washing"
11. Green Roof Technology - The living roof provides heat in the winter and coolness in the summer.
12. Passive House Concept - loses the minimum amount of heat, is made of wood and glass, is insulated with straw, and no chemical additive to structural material.
13. Architecture of Integrated Systems - the practice involved in design and research that yields innovative, urban environments.
14. Sustainable Architecture Design in Office Complex - holistic design that takes more than aesthetics into account.
15. Sustainable Buildings in Antwerp - a complex of sustainable buildings.
16. Architect Kengo Kuma - works with wood lattice and bamboo as an architectural expression depiction of the changing elements of nature. Wood and bamboo are also sustainable materials.
17. Human Habitat and Sustainability - the re-establishment of human habitat is part of the solution to over-population and rapid growth of cities.
18. Future of Architecture - the importance of air, water, and earth to sustainable architecture.

Chapter 13 was about Architecture which the video discussed different designs of architecture.

The Architecture: The Science of Design Classical Architecture was informative with smart apartments and computerized management for electrical systems.  The Last Call for Planet Earth: Sustainable Development and Architecture was harder to get anything out of because it was in another language and you were hearing them speak but reading the words.

I choose the films to watch by the titles.  The names sounded interesting so I choose those to watch.

Week Five Video reflections

Through the Eyes of the Sculptor
                Emmanuel Fillion – French sculptor – carver then sculptor.  12 degrees in limestone quarries at all times.  Stone are wet and heavy when removed from quarry.  Breathe new life into the sculptures.  Draws sculpture then creates in clay then makes a mold, makes plaster cast of sculpture.  Finds perfect marble block in Carrara.  Marble is product of limestone that’s baked, squeezed and baked together. Artigiano – crafts maker files to make smooth, work called Genesis.

Glass and Ceramics

                Glass is everywhere.  Glass is made from sand.  60 – 75 % sand & Fluxes- soda, shells are added to silica mixture is heated into liquid.  Stained glass – modulate light by using different glass colors and textures, made by glazier.  Ceramics are fire, made with clay base.   Slip is poured into molds.  Removed from mold and fired the glazed.  Ceramic prostheses are stable and well tolerated in the body.  Ceramic vehicle engines are starting to be made.  Laminated glass used in Architecture.  Glass is slowly taking the place of stone as a building material.

Installation Art

                Contemporary art takes over the space, sculpture in the round.  3-dimensional art.  Richard Wilson – “She came in through the Bathroom window”.  Invisible art – computer generated music played over and over.  Must interact with installation art.  Ordinary objects used in installation art.  Happening – audience interacts with act.  Video installation – dark room.  Installing large installation could take months.  The canoes at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery are installation art.  It has to be assembled on site.  Expect the un-expected.

The videos related to the reading because chapter 11 was about sculptures and installations.  Sculptures are made from different materials and different types: modeling, casting, and carving.  They can use materials like marble, glass and ceramics.

The videos were very interesting and informative on the subjects.  I enjoyed Through the Eyes of a Sculpture the most.  Through the Eyes of a Sculpture follows Emmanuel through the whole process for one piece of art, showing all the steps and work required to get to the finish piece.  Glass and Ceramics showed the process of making both materials that can be used to create crafts and art.  Installation Art was interesting with the many different kinds of art.  With contemporary art almost anything is considered art these days.

Art Gallery

Artist – Alexander Brennen, Lewiston Porter High School
Title: From Above
Media: Oil on Wood
This artwork impressed me because it was done by a high school student and was in the Albright Knox Art Gallery.

Artist: Andre Derain – French, 1880-1954

Title: The Trees
Media: Oil on Canvas
Scale: 23 3/8 x 28 ½
This artwork I was connected with because I am a hunter and spend a lot of time in the woods with all kinds of trees around.

Artist: Georges Seurat - French, 1859-1891
Title: Study for Le Chahut, 1889
Media: Oil on Canvas
Scale: 21 7/8 x 18 3/8
This artwork impressed me because it was done back in 1889 and it was about some show on stage.

Artist: Henri Cartier-Bresson  French, 1908-2004

Title: Alexander Calder, Sache, 1971
Media: Gelatin silver print
Scale: unframed 14 x 9 3/8 (35.56 x 23.81 cm.)
This artwork I would like to know more about to see who was Alexander Calder.

Artist: Joan Miro     Spanish, 1893-1983
Title: Head in the Night, 1968
Media: Bronze, edition ½
Scale: 26 ½ x 13 5/8 x 12 ¼
This artwork I connected with because I like to weld and this reminded me of welding.

Artist: John F. Kensett      American, 1816-1872
Title: Coast Scene, ca. 1860-70
Media: Oil on canvas
Scale: 22 ¼ x 34 ¼
This artwork impressed me because it was painted in 1860-70 and the water seems endless.

Artist: Milton Rogovin     American, 1909-2011
Title: Untitled (Sisal worker, Yucatan)
Media: Gelatin silver print
This artwork interested me and I would like to know what this worker is doing or making.

Artist: Roland Flexner    French, 1944
Title: Untitled (Ink Bubble Drawings)
Media: Ink on paper
This artwork is interesting and I am curious about the process Roland used to create his Ink Bubble drawing.

Artist: Tom Wesselmann     American, 1931-2004
Title: Still Life #20, 1962
Media: Mixed media
Scale: 41 x 48 x 5 ½
This artwork I made a connection with because it a still life of normal things in a kitchen.

Designing a Logo

It was fun to design different sketches of logos using my initials and sketches of things that interest me.  I just started drawing different designs with my initials and symbols that relate to cars that I like or things that I like to do.  I discovered that designing a logo is harder than I thought, trying to make it all balance and in shape.  I learned the 5 principles of effective logo design from this website:

http://justcreativedesign.com/2008/01/08/how-to-design-a-logo/

The videos show that the process to designing a logo is very time consuming, from the brainstorming ideas, sketching design, proofing, getting approval from the customer and processing the finished product.

Final Logo created with Acrylic paints

Value Scale and Color Wheel works of Art

I was actually looking forward to doing both of these projects.  I have never been into art but now it seems more fun.  I enjoyed the acrylic paints more that the pencils.  I felt like I was the guy in the video, dabbing the paint, mixing the colors.  It was interesting.  I discovered that if you have the right tools and time you can create nice works of art.  I liked the videos they were short and to the point with a lot of good information. 

Color Wheel

Value Scale

Photobucket - Slideshow - Elements and Principles

This was actually a very interesting project.  Before I took the pictures I found myself looking at things differently, thinking of what category it would fit into for the slideshow.  Here's a link to the slideshow, hope you enjoy.

http://s1190.photobucket.com/albums/z442/dobswj47/

Color Theory and Emotional Effects

Color the most powerful artistic element but the most difficult to control.  Color works on the human brain and body in powerful ways.  Color is function of light.  Colors effects on emotions – how appetizing would green mashed potatoes be – you wouldn’t know what you were eating, disorienting color cues.  

Color properties – hue, value, intensity

                Hue- name
                Value – lightness or darkness
                Intensity – relative purity of color

Primary colors – red, yellow and blue:  These colors cannot be made by mixing other colors. 

Secondary colors – orange, green and violet: These colors can be made by combining 2 primary colors
Intermediate colors – products of 1 primary and 1 secondary color.

Red – increase appetite, horror, blood, anguish

Blue – lowers blood pressure, pulse, respiration rate, calming effect, freedom, calming (oceans, sky)

Bubble-gum pink is relaxing. 

Red and Green means Christmas

In the Color video the part most interesting was those painters had contracts and were told how much of each color they could use for the painting because of the cost of each color. 

In the Feelings video the most interesting part was about Leonardo da Vinci   - Mona Lisa painting.  Painted in 1505 he captured a person, a smile a human.

Aesthetics - Week One

Aesthetics: Philosophy of the Arts - Key Concepts

1.        Study of beauty and art – works of arts

      2.       Plato – 4^th century BC – what is beautiful in itself is not this object or that one, but which conveys their own nature.
      3.       Aristotle analysis tragedies – Unity of action, time and play.
      4.       Francis Hutcheson – 18^th century – The ideas brought about in our soul by beauty and harmony delight us necessarily and immediately just like the other sensible ideas.
      5.       Alexander Baumgarten – 18^th century coined word aesthetics from Greek words for perception, aisthanomai.
      6.       Immanuel Kant – Through the genius nature set rules to art.
      7.       Friedrich Von Schiller 18^th century – When we develop our aesthetic capacities, we develop our moral capacities, so much so that aesthetic education renders moral education superfluous.
      8.       Geary William Heyei – 19^th century – The work of art is a sensible object not only for the sensible intuition, but also for the spirit… The beautiful is defined as the appearance or the sensible reflection of the Idea, of the Absolute.
      9.       Geburt der Tragodie –
    10.   Friedrich Nietzache – 19^th century – Only art can replace old mythologies.
    11.   Ludwig Wittgenstein – 20^th century – Do you think I have a theory? Do you think I am saying what this is and what that is? I describe; I give examples. You have to describe ways of living in order to be clear about the aesthetic principles.
   12.    Morris Weitz – 20^th century – What I am arguing, then, is that the very expansive, adventurous character of art, its ever-present changes and novel creations, makes it logically impossible to ensure any set of defining properties.
   13.   Art is art no matter what we call art, even an upside down urinal
   14.   John Dewey – 20^th century – Feelings aroused by a work of art are not purely a personal experience, they must be of a universal nature.
   15.   A work of art is no longer unique and unrepeatable with the digital era

Carta: Neurobiology Neurology and Art and Aesthetics      Accent makes it difficult to understand

    1.        Jean-Pierre Changeux – rules and constraints of artistic creation: the neurobiologist viewpoint.
         ·         Works of art = artifacts, human productions… specialized for intersubjective communication that use – symbolic forms – genetically & epigenetically encoded
         ·         Distinct from language = non verbal communication of emotional states, knowledge, experience with multiplicity of codes yet, under implicit constraints of – rules – regies de art
         ·         With esthetic efficacy staggering effects on emotion & reason mobilizing conscious & non-conscious processes
         ·         Art is constant evolution = art history renewal yet without apparent progress
         ·         Novelty – constant search for the unanticipated
         ·         Consensus partium – the universal search for harmony
         ·         Symmetry vs. aesthetics – within the brain
         ·         The artist attempt to share his conception of the world
         ·         Schematization; - bottom up realism vs top down abstraction?

2.       Vilayanur Ramachandran - The science of Art: A Neurological Theory of artistic experience

         ·         Science and Art met in our brains
         ·         How does the heart respond to art
         ·         Eight laws of Art
                        Grouping or binding
                        Peak shift principal
                        Contrast
                        Isolating a single cue to optimally excite cortical visual areas (attention)
                        Perceptual problem solving
                        Symmetry
                        Abhorrence of unique vantage points and suspicious coincidences
                        Art as metaphor
  
Wow it’s a lion – when your brain figure out what the picture is

Immanuel Kant theory on aesthetics was judgment of the beautiful is subjective. No exact science of the beautiful. Kant proposes that aesthetic experience brings sensibility and reason together. Judging beauty is a feeling and cannot be formalized. His era was the end of the 18th century Enlightenment.

The videos continue teaching about aesthetics of art and explored more how the brain works when looking at art.

I did not enjoy the French speaker Changeux he was very hard to understand, but Ramachandran was very funny and a good speaker who keep my interest. 

Beginning Blog

I had my gmail account already set up but setting up the blog was interesting.  I have never been interested in Art so I'm hope to start appreciate Art more.  I have previously taken online course and they have worked out good.