Monday, May 10, 2010

A German Landscape: Interpretation

I chose the following picture as the inspiration for forming my initial landscape.
From this, I took features of the land instead of just trying to copy it. For example, I noticed that the valley was continually rising to the right. I also noticed that you can't see to far beyond the left of the image, meaning anything could be happening. Even so, I gathered that the terrain would slowly become flatter and flatter as that is what the overall slope suggests. I also wanted to create a terrain that highlighted the colder Germany. In other words, I made the environment Winter. Even though it is early stages in the design yet, I have an idea of how the cold climate will help aid in the transmission of the idea of power. This is what I ultimately came to.
I am toying with a few ideas in my mind with this landscape. The inclusion of the river makes for an interesting dip to perhaps build my bridge over. Even so, I am unsure about this. Furthermore, I am not sure whether to make this more of an urban environment or a heavily vegetated one. Either way, I need to find the appropriate brushes to convey these two different landscape features.

Sunday, May 2, 2010

Experiment 2 Submission Post: Ignorance, Stupidity and Greed

The Three Quotes:
The brief asked for three quotes, but only two clients. I ultimately decided on Hawkings and Darwin. I thought about their quotes in a bit more detail than Kueppa's, that is why hers is separate from the others and not in prose.

Nicole Kueppa: "I love working with passionate people who want to help address climate change and poverty by thinking and experimenting outside the square."
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In response to the question "What worries you the most about the future of the universe?", Stephen Hawking replied:
"I am not worried about the future of the universe. The universe will continue whatever happens, but the future of the human race and of life on earth is much less certain. We are in danger of destroying ourselves by our greed and stupidity."

In conjunction with this idea, Charles Darwin contributes an interesting point:
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science."

Through these two sharp minds, it is clear that selfishness and incomprehension is what is endangering the human race and holding back science. Because of continued aggravation of Earth, science is always one step behind finding a problem.

18 Sketch Axonometrics
36 Custom Textures
The textures were created around the ideas I gathered from my quotes, being ignorance, stupidity and greed. I decided to translate these ideas to my textures. The rows of textures you see below are structured as follows:
1. Ignorance: Even though the texture is complicated, no two lines ever meet; they are ignorant of each other.
2. Stupidity: I used the 'stupid' textures to really go crazy. There were no measured or precise elements in these textures. They are crazy, spontaneous and stupid.
3. Greedy: The texture progressively takes up more and more space. It is greedy.
4. Ignorance: The idea for this was similar to the first. Despite looking complicated, no two elements from either side of the square are touching.
5. Stupidity: Again, much like the first idea but a little more simplistic.
6. Greedy: This was a more measured attempt at creating a texture that represented greed, even though the "space taking" idea was used again.

The Landform, the Image Captures and the Architecture:
The idea behind my architecture was Ignorance, Stupidity and Greed. There is an element to my architecture that accompanied each of these ideas. They have been highlighted with an appropriate texture. I.e. The piece or architecture that takes up a lot of space is highlighted with a greedy texture. The architecture is also only supported by a central pillar, making it perfect for the landform I embedded it in.
The idea behind my landform was to have a very steep terrain that also explored the ideas. For example, the fact that the architecture is surrounded by a massive crescent shaped bay fortifies the idea of ignorance, as it segregates the architecture from the greater world.
As my architecture and landform were created for Hawking and Darwin, I felt it necessary to explore their philosophies in the ramp structure. Both of them are of such high intelligence and their minds can compute many different ideas at once, practically all of which have had some bearing on the scientific world. I created a ramp that was long, windy, steep, shallow, sharp, blunt, rising, falling ect., thus incorporating as many different terrain 'ideas' as I could, which is similar to the way these mens minds work.
Their two quotes speak of a an uncertain future that could end in destruction. I also tried to include this idea along the ramp, as I have included some dead trees, and bland rocks along the way. This idea is most prevalent however at their meeting place, which is outstretched, high over water. Here, the dead trees add to a sense of the macabre, and the fact that it is so outstretched makes it seem like it's at the centre of the world. I imagined this space being centralised because if these two people were ever to meet, the conjunction of their ideas would be centre most to the continuation of our species and planet.