Ninth supervisor meeting

At the meeting I talked mostly about my question being reworded and what that means, I explained that although the question has been reworded it has been done so in a way that incorporates more of my research than the previous question. Ken expressed once again his concerns that my changing of the question would be detrimental to my grade, but I'm inclined to disagree and continue research under the new question that I feel encompasses more of my research and is more relevant to my final piece and dissertation.

I reported my progress with the focus group hypothesis, and videos as well as my progress with my dissertation so far.

The agreed upon action points were to research more experimental/non-objective animations, which leads to the next action point of defining all the terminology and what it means to me in writing, I also really need to get a draft of the dissertation to him soon as time is running out.

Focus Group Questions and videos

Focus Group
Have they ever watched non-objective animations before?

What do they feel when viewing the piece? A feeling or a memory?
 
How is their emotional response affected by Colour, Movement, Lightness, Shape and which do they feel is the most communicative?

Which of the videos was most evocative and why?

(I have written my hypothesis for each piece but have not put it in this post incase someone from one of my focus groups sees it)

(videos still need alittle camera work in some places)

Stage 1: Introduction, going into the mind

Stage 2: The cracked canyon

 

 Stage 3: The Ice Planet

Eighth Supervisor meeting

At my eighth supervisor meeting we discussed how the presentation went, and I showed Ken and the others in the group the videos I had made to show people in a focus group. Ken quized me briefly on what I was trying to make people feel and how I was going about it in the scene. I explained all of the things I had taken into consideration and the desired feeling that is meant to be created, though I need to write it all down I can't just keep saying it from my head.

Ken seemed a bit annoyed that I was going to change my question again but I explained that the project itself won't change, the question will just be altered to include more of what the project actually entails, after explaining this he seemed less concerned.

I also discussed the focus group and my idea of doing two and gauging the different responses, and even if they are unsuccessful it is fine because its all research, but in order to do my focus group I need to clarify the emotional response I expect and why, but of course during the focus group I will not let them know at all what emotional response I am trying to convey and will hopefully get mixed perceptions, it will also be interesting to see if other peoples perceptions can influence each other or if they talk about similar themes they may have in common. So far the people I have showed my work often give interesting and differing opinions on what the piece makes them feel but there are often certain elements that they have in common.

Crit Presentation Semester 2

Overall I think it was my most successful presentation yet despite some of the videos not being full rendered. The main problem as agreed upon by the lecturers was that my question does not quite explain the research and experimentation I have been doing, Ryan said that he really likes my project and he can see the project there but the question doesn't really cover everything because I'm not only using light and geometric forms to create emotions I'm also experimenting with colour, movement, composition, and representing forms in evocative ways.

Lynn really liked my more sporadic abstract works and thought it would be really interesting to apply that further within my animation and animation tests, all the lecturers responded really well to my use of abstraction which was very reassuring considering not so long ago I was very unsure of the value of it.

Brian was really enthusiastic about all of the work, most of all the ice planet scene, and he thought that the visuals were really expressive and he talked about how the visuals are clearly effective at creating emotion. I was really pleased to here his response to the visuals and again felt reassured that there was value to the work and that the emotional I'm trying to create is being created at least to an extent, but I am also really interested how people interpret the work and if it is evocative and makes the viewer think then like a song or painting it doesn't really matter what it's about aslong as there is value in it for the person percieving it.

Altogether I think the presentation went quite well and a lot of the feedback was very positive it has given me alot of confidence to continue working the way I'm working and has made me feel like there is more value to my work than I previously thought.

Abstraction Distraction

I was feeling quite creatively stifled today and couldn't really work properly, I knew I need to do more animated experiments to show off the effects of light on geometric forms but I couldn't formulate my ideas properly. So in order to get the creative juices flowing I played about with some abstract pieces in Cinema 4D this time with a cleaner approach, this also allowed me to experiment with some pretty interesting visuals that could be used again in further tests or even the final animation. While creating the piece I didn't really have any goal in mind and allowed myself to be distracted easily and as the renders progressed so did the creative direction, I really enjoyed working in this way and it made a relieving change and left me in a better mood to continue working on animation tests and research.

Here are my favourite renders below:

Tunnel

Here is a piece I have been working on as a side project but a lot of the animations used could perhaps be applied when travelling through the eye in my animation, it contains animated displacement, animated lights, and an animated twist.

Interestingly it is quite visually similar in certain ways to "Lapis" an experimental animation by James Whitney in 1966 shown below.

Recent Research

Shadows: The depiction of cast shadows in western art

This book made alot of interesting points about light largely how it is used or not used to convey a certain meaning or feeling within a scene, the author (E.H. Gombrich) talkes about the eye as an instrument "that depends almost exclusively on the modifications that the surrounding light undergoes when falling on the objects within view. The varieties of light and shade on their surfaces tell us of their shape, the reflections on that surface indicate its texture, and their reaction to the various wavelengths of the spectrum determine their colour." (page 10)

Throughout the book he describes methods of lighting or use of shadow in a great variation of pieces that are well known for using light well, some of the important examples referenced include Caravaggio "There is hardly a function of cast shadows that is not illustrated by Caravaggio's dramatic painting" (page 24) his dark style also known as tenebroso spread throughout italy and made its way further north until it culminated in the are of Rembrandt. Rembrandt has an extremely well lit piece 'The Adoration of the Shepherds' (1646) that illustrartes the holy story having the light from the holy child completely overpowering the light from a lamp, in this way he uses light to tell a story but also illustrates the intricate effects too different intensities of light can have on a scene. (page 51)

The book also has some insight into lighting within cubism and surrealism which in many ways is quite detached from lighting in the rest of western art, "Cubism reinstated the role of shadows both to guide and confuse the viewer. Later still the Surrealists exploited the effect of shadows to enhance the mood of mystery they sought" (page 26).


Plato: The Cave

In Plato's 'The Republic' there are many interesting concepts and ideas concerning form, number and light but the one in particular that I find most relevant to my work is the simile of the cave (page 316), The story is about three prisoners who have spent their whole existance imprisoned in a cave with their heads locked in position basically giving them a 2D perspective, and light illuminates the wall they are looking at, they can see people walking by as if on a road, but these people are not really people they are infact made of stone and wood but because they can only see the shadow and are unable to look at it from any other angle it is very real to them and becomes the whole truth.

Then one prisoner is freed and taken out of the cave, he does not at first believe what he sees and does not understand it, but eventually realises that it is much more than what he had seen before and he is happier because of it, but if he were to tell one of the remaing prisoners they would not believe or accept it and would possibly harm him for challenging all they know because he would be attempting to destroy their whole truth and replace it with something they are incapable of understanding without actually experiencing.

There are many possible interpretations of the Cave story but I was very interested in the difference between illusion and disbelief, along with the light representing an intelligible region and the difference between these two perspectives one being much more than the other.


Color: An Introduction to Practice and Principles

Although this book by Rolf G. Kuehni is titled colour there is a very large portion that is focused on light and it establishes the connection between light and colour well, colour could not exist without light because colour simply comes from the reaction of materials to certain wavelengths of light. light itself can be divided up into a spectrum well illustrated by an experiment involving a prism where a thin beam of white light is shone through a glass prism and the light splits into a spectrum of the wavelengths of visible light which are between 400-700nm (nano-metres) here is an example below I created in 3D, I attempted to do the experiment using materials but it seems 3D has not yet progressed to the point of splitting apart light through prisms so I had to insert each light myself.

It is a very famous and in some ways evocative experiment illustrated below in Pink Floyd's 'Dark side of the moon album cover.

The Author talks further about the different types of light, how the light is produced and what affects it can have on different surfaces.

Refraction (page 12): illustrated by the experiment above is the change in direction of light aswell as the seperation of wavelengths due to the photons of higher energy changing direction more strongly.

Incandescence (page 4): a material or object that changes colour when heated, for example a piece of metal or even coal.

Luminescence (page 8): 3 types
1. electroluminescence: caused by arcs, sparks and lightning among other things
2. chemiluminescence: produced by chemical reactions
3. photoluminescence: flourescence, phosphorescence etc.

Black body radiation (page 7): a non existant material that is a perfect absorber and emitter of energy the temperature of which will change the colour and emission of light, the sun is quite close to this idea of black body radiation and the "brightness sensitivity of the human visual system is tune to the emission spectrum of the sun."

Scattering (page 10): is a process that occurs as light passes through and reflects off pretty much anything, it divides up the different wavelengths of light, the atmosphere itself scatters some shorter wavelengths of light and this is why the sky is blue, clouds made up of water droplets scatter all wavelengths equally making them appear white. He goes on to say "most color stimuli we encounter are created by wavelength-specific absorption and reflection."

Colour Perception (page 40-41): 
-Unrelated colours: typically manmade caused by the light from lamps, neon advertisements and flames among other things.
-Related colours: objects that change colour due to the presence of other objects around them.

Achromatic: white, grey, black (hueless)
Chromatic: all colours with a hue
Saturation: measure of the chromatic content of colours of equal brightness

Lightness (page 42)
"The majority of our color experiences involves related colors, our everyday world of colored objects and materials as seen illuminated by some natural or artificial light source. In some instances we remain conscious of the brightness of colors, such as in looking upon a dazzling area of a snow-covered field on which sunlight falls. But we may also be interested in the relative amount of light being reflected from one surface when compared with another; this is a difference in lightness, an attribute of visual sensation according to which an area appears to reflect a greater or smaller portion of light falling on it."


Colour Theory in Art (page 137)

Since cave drawings in walls over 30,000 years ago colour has been integral to many artistic endeavors. However it was only more recently during 1919 when the German Bauhaus school was formed that colour became a much more integral part in the way art is veiwed, Kandinksy one of the teachers there focused his program around appropriately affecting the soul with harmony of form and colour without any need for the orientation of natural objects. "There are three fundamental pairs of colors, besides white and black: yellow-blue, red-green, and orange-violet. Each pair is antagonistic in some manner, e.g., yellow is warm, moves toward the observer, and is material and eccentric; blue is cold, moves away from the observer, and is spiritual and concentric."

Paul Klee talks about his views on colour and form in his speech "On Modern Art" in 1924, he considers three important aspects of a painting and they are line, lightness-darkness (value/chiaroscuro) and colour. Klee referred to colours as qualities and also recognised them in three fundamental pairs but the only one in common with Kadinsky's are the red-green, Klee pairs yellow with violet, and blue with orange which are probably pairings that we are more accustomed to, it is very difficult to go far without seeing this colours being paired in some way.

"Since Kandinsky's and Mondrian's work in the 1910s and 1920s color has become a completely free and independent creative tool for artists, hardly even constrained by form."


Please forgive the constant change in spelling of colour, the book used the american spelling.

Altogether I have learnt alot about light and colour in the past few weeks in both a scientific and artistic sense but I feel I could do further research into some of the Bauhaus artists that established these bases for colour theory in art.

Ice Tunnel so far

I have been working recently on the ice tunnel, it underwent the same process as the other pieces here are some of the renders below

 I then made a quick preview on cinema 4D of the camera flying through one section of tunnel

seventh supervisor meeting

In my seventh supervisor meeting I told Ken about the research I'd been doing into Plato, shadows, and some general rules of visual perception, mostly we talked about my focus group both how I need to organise it very soon and that the people I ask probably shouldnt be artists or psychologists or anything like that. I should get feedback from a general group of people that won't pick the piece apart and will simply tell me how they feel when viewing it and I can perhaps get a discussion going. He also suggested I make 3D models testing more subtle aspects of light such as the reflection of different wavelengths on different surfaces.

Colour Association

 One of the things I have been looking into this week is colour association, and there are alot of interesting things I hadn't put much thought into. For example colours may be responded to very differently depending on the cultural background of the person viewing them although this in itself would be a research topic on its own so I'm not going to focus on it but an example would be white means death in china and peace in Europe, where as other colours like red have universally similar meanings like love, success, long life.

I also was interested to find out that there are alot of negative and positive feelings associated with different colours, of course in some this is obvious but I had always though of yellow as warmth but it can also mean danger, and even depression. I believe that the emotion conveyed by the colour could perhaps differ depending on the intensity of the light aswell as any other colours it is contrasted with. I proceeded to create some quick experiments.

 Here is the first unaltered model of a light grey landscape with a dark grey transparent sea, with default lighting.

This is the first test I did with 1 yellow light to see if I could create a more depressing yellow by lowering its saturation making it greyer, grey also being a colour said to be associated with depression. I think this piece works to an extent but feels more like it is an anxious mood rather than depressed, anxiety is also a feeling associated with the colour yellow.

This piece is a low intensity blue which is meant to represent coldness but also sadness, menace and a certain heaviness, the shadows become much more powerful at portraying mood in this piece than the light.

This piece is the depression piece approached with 2 lights, a similar greyish yellow against the cold grey contrasting creating a slighty more conflicted piece but one that to me suggests nothingness, lack of emotion, but also a sort of psychological neutrality.

This piece uses red and pink lights to create a feeling of warmth and love, but also strain in a way, the contrast almost creates a feeling of conflict.

 This piece is somewhat representitive of growth but can also portray themes of jealousy, generally though green is widely recognised as growth and fertility and such it is in this case. With darker greens it may better represent other feelings associated with it.

 In this case the blues are quite vibrant and I think are representative of some of the more positive associations, trust, logic, calm, and perhaps reflection. Although the piece still has a certain coldness about it.