Here's a photo of OSU'a McPherson Lab in Autumn. This is the courtyard I walked through every day on my way to class. The photo was found on the OSU website as photo of the day, sometime in Autumn 2010. Alas, I wasn't able to finish up the Autumn 2009 quarter of PhotoShop CS4, but hopefully my work will continue & be posted here as I progress. These are dark times, so, as C.S.Lewis pointed out, it's all the more important to stay at my post & to create, which I will do.

Artistic Statement
Project #2 __ Autumn 2009
Technoscapes: An Exploration of Images from Hayes Hall & from my own Paintings

In approaching the creation of the technoscapes for this project I assembled a variety of my own digital photographs including those of Hayes Hall, Hopkins Hall, some of my sculptures and paintings, and my garden. The first piece, Window with Doorway, is thus a digitally enhanced and created environment in which an image of a doorway can be seen through a window. The window is viewed from the outside of Hayes Hall and was transformed in Photo Shop by altering its coloring and tone, changing its perspective, cloning some of the brick texture where needed, and then masking the window with gradient masking and paint tools to create a space through which the painting within could be viewed. The doorway painting seen through the window is actually a composite of several of my paintings which were cropped, color-managed, and recombined into a new composition using a variety of Photo Shop tools, including Camera Raw for some of the original color adjustments. The second piece, Cosmic Comet, began as an exploration of an image of the main corridor of Hopkins Hall which I had transformed in Camera Raw, cropped, stretched, and color managed. My next step was to introduce images of my own paintings and sculptures into this transformed environment. However, as I worked on the piece I realized that the focus needed to shift to the image of the Comet painting which had been painted several years ago (part of a series done in various acrylic paints including metallic, iridescent, and interference paints). Thus the creative process led me to scrap the original plan and to work, instead, on the the Comet painting, transforming and enhancing it by placing it on a larger field, thus extending the original image into a virtual landscape. The extension was done with the use of a variety of Photo Shop tools starting with fills, gradients, and styles, then using the paint brush tool in various modes, and finally using the smudge tool and the motion blur filter to extend and accentuate the movement and flow already present in the original painting. At this point I am discovering that this combination of art and technology is increasingly presenting me with a very satisfying way of working, giving me the opportunity to explore, extend, even redefine themes and images which I have already developed in other media.

While I'm collecting images for the next project & sorting things out, here's a photo I took last summer of the Hopkins-Hayes Courtyard -- one of my favorite places.

Proposal for Project #2:
Technoscapes: An Exploration of Images from Hopkins Hall and from my own Art, Sculpture, and Garden

Artists have always had the opportunity to select, transform, and arrange their materials in a way that expresses their particular vision. Granted, some eras of artistic expression have required closer adherence to the observable world than others; nevertheless, artists have still been able to explore a variety of possibilities and arrangements and forms, to expand the vision of their times, to question or challenge that vision and the traditions in which it is expressed, to juxtapose that vision or tradition with alternatives, and so on. Technology has accelerated this process in a variety of ways by presenting us with the advanced imaging capabilities of digital photography and computer applications like Photo Shop plus internet access to vast image resources. Not only can we create and transform and record images faster and in greater quantities, but we can also share and receive them, be affected by them, and, in turn, respond to them with developments in our own work.

The creation of a "technoscape'" or a digitally created environment, a virtual world, is now becoming a creative norm. To participate in this, I plan to explore the juxtaposition and integration of various, even dissimilar, image elements, namely, photographs elements from a walk through and around Hopkins Hall with photographic elements of my own art work (paintings and sculpture). I may also include some images from an earlier photographic exploration of my back yard garden. At this point I'm not sure how these images will be combined or even which ones I will use. I do know that all of these elements, Hopkins Hall and the Art Department, my own art work, and the beauty of flowers in my garden, are parts of the composite of my life, of who I am, especially as an artist. Working on these pieces will, I hope, clarify, develop, and communicate that sense of identity, meaning, and growth.

-- and before proceeding, I would like to note that instructor, Eddy, & I discovered we both really like Bill Murray's movie, What about Bob? -- one of my all-time favorites. & so when I sent in my 1st Project (see following images) I also included this image from the movie.

Artistic Statement for Project #1:
Concerning People and Technology:
Issues of Privacy and Control

The works, Data Mining and Technological Takeover, represent two aspects of my concerns regarding the potential incursions of technology upon our lives, namely, upon our privacy and upon our autonomy. The first, Data Mining, is a response to the development and use of sophisticated data mining software applications which in and of themselves are incredible tools for research, information retrieval, and all of the services available through such search engines as Google. The existence of such software is not the source of my concern; in fact, these tools represent an incredible capability which has only begun to be explored. But the concern remains that these tools can be grossly misused to invade privacy, to retrieve and exploit information, and to violate boundaries and rights that we have thus far taken for granted. To illustrate this I have selected three basic examples: first, a page from my g-mail account in which ads, relevant to the e-mail opened, appear along the side; second, a page from the website WeFeelFine which trolls the web, particularly the Blogosphere, to assemble data on feelings expressed around the world and to exhibit these in visual displays that can be configured and mapped according to demographics of age, sex, geography, time, and weather; third, an image from a digital mapping site that maps connections on Facebook. While none of these represent a violation of privacy as I understand it (though Google is pushing it a bit by mining data from my e-mail and then posting unasked-for ads in my account), they do represent the capability to retrieve, store, map, and otherwise use personal information.

In designing this piece I chose to superimpose the images so as to visually represent the accumulation of data plus a sense of the variety of ways in which data is represented. The text object on the lower left repeating the phrase “DATA MINING” was created with the Text tool and then rasterized to give me the capability of shaping it and distorting it to give a sense of perspective, expressive of the emergence and flow of data and data mining. The text is thus intended to indicate a sort of pathway or road or influx, a flow to the viewer similar to the flow of data mining as well as to present a verbal marker pointing to the intent and meaning of the piece. The sheep standing on this text path and platform is there as a witness and commentator, also a metaphor of the innocence and harmlessness that can be violated by inappropriate use of data mining.

The second work, Technological Takeover, expresses a related concern, namely the increased interface, even interpenetration, of man and machine. Given that Star Trek’s Borg have become an iconic representation of the dangers of technological dehumanization, I chose to bring together images of several Borg drones superimposed upon images of Borg cube-like interior architecture. Again I have introduced sheep as witnesses, visual commentators on the scene and the issues involved.

Given that I have chosen to address incredibly complex issues, I decided to render them in a style more suggestive than explicit, including, hopefully, enough detail to get my message across, at least to illuminate some of these issues in a way that may provoke awareness, thought and dialogue. In the development of my themes, I had to narrow down my image search and selection to images with sufficient resolution to be usable. The images I came up with turned out to be just the ones needed, for example an image of the interior of a new library in Mexico City served to represent Borg architecture. I’ve just learned about the Select Pixels option in CS4 and was able to use that, especially with text. I am also learning to merge layers and in Technological Takeover made use of layer masks, the clone tool, and the smudge tool to achieve the final effects. The Borg figures in the upper left were separated and placed on different layers in order to create a sort of wrap-around perspective, then reassembled using various tools to smooth out the transition. Working on the pieces helped me to learn about Photo Shop CS4. It also helped me to clarify and develop my own insights into the issues addressed. I am happy with the resulting works. They express what I set out to express and may at some point develop into a more expansive series.

Title: Data Mining:
(Images from my G-mail account, 2 Data Mining web sites, some Text, & the return of the Sheep)

Entitled: Technological Takeover
(note presence of Borg, images also from 2 libraries, &, yes, the Sheep are definitely back! -- this appears to be an ongoing motif with me)