Rough Draft for Final Project: Mapping of Cornwall (Including Some Works Inspired by a Summer in Cornwall)

Proposal for Final Project:
A DVD-Pro Presentation of a Creative Mapping of Cornwall

For my final project I would like to create a work done in DVD-Pro. This piece, a continuation of themes developed in Project #3: A Creative Mapping of Cornwall, will consist of a basic map of Cornwall plus images of my paintings of Cornwall. This will involve creating a Photo Shop file consisting of layers created specifically for this project. This file will then be imported into DVD-Pro, utilizing its capability to present an image with areas that, when accessed by a mouse cursor, open up to reveal additional images embedded in the original Photo Shop file layers. Although I have been exposed to the basic procedures for doing this, I do not yet know how to successfully complete the process. Thus realization of this project will depend not only on the creation of a Photo Shop file with appropriate layers, but also upon the utilization of a software application still very new to me. This presents me with the unexpected challenge of learning the rudiments of DVD-Pro and of burning a DVD for the first time. I intend to make the most of this opportunity, hopefully to the end of creating a meaningful presentation to share.

David Hockney:
An Influential Artist in Both Traditional and Digital Media

Before examining the works of David Hockney and their influence on me and upon this final project, I would first like to look at the more general issue of Digital Art as Art and the legitimate use of it by more traditional artists like Hockney as well as by a new generation of artists for whom working digitally is as normative as painting on walls and boards and canvases has been for artists throughout past centuries, even millennia. Over seventy years ago, in the conclusion to his classic work Meaning of Art, Herbert Read addressed the issue of the validity of artists' utilizing new technology in the creation of art. Concerning the transition to and assimilation of new materials and methods of creation Read stated the following:

The ultimate values of art transcend the individual and his time and circumstance....the artist will use materials placed in his hands by the circumstances of his time: at one period he will scratch on the walls of his cave, at another he will build or decorate a temple or a cathedral, at another he will paint on canvas....The true artist is indifferent to the materials and conditions imposed upon him. He accepts any conditions, so long as they can be used to express his will-to-form. Then in the wider mutations of history his efforts are magnified or diminished, taken up or dismissed, by forces which he cannot predict, and which have very little to do with the values of which he [or she] is the exponent. Read, Herbert. Meaning of Art (London, Pelican Books, 1954), p.191.

Writing those words around 1930 Read could not possibly have envisioned the technology that has been placed in our hands or the seemingly infinite variety of ways in which it could be used. Since the advent of the computer and computer graphics capabilities artists have been making the kind of transition that Read pointed to. David Hockney is one of those artists who has successfully made this transition from traditional media to digital media, currently incorporating both in his works. He thus has become a sort of bridge into the present era.

As to Hockney's influence upon me, I have always liked his works, especially his landscape paintings of the British countryside. In particular I like his use of color and his exploration of a variety of subjects and forms. Several years ago I became aware of his use of digital technology as a prt of his creative process. Moving beyond the use of photographs as a source for compositions, he employed scanners and computer images as part of a sort of creative feed-back loop in which paintings and digital production and reproduction informed and inspired one another. More recently he has begun "painting" images on an iPhone (http://andybutler.net/blog/2009/07/01/david-hockney-phone-art-free-download/). He has for me thus become an example of an artist who has successfully incorporated digital technology into his works without abandoning the traditional forms of drawing and painting.

His influence on my own work, in particular this final project, is perhaps more indirect than direct. My own paintings of the countryside and seaside in Cornwall were actually begun before I was aware of Hockney's British landscapes; his paintings thus became a confirmation of my own works as well as an inspiration to continue and develop those themes. His use of digital technology encouraged me to explore the possibilities of developing those images via the computer. I plan to further explore those possibilities. The final project gives me the opportunity to incorporate some of my previously created pieces (a scanned painting, a photographed painting, and a computer-generated seascape), into their geographical context, thus reconnecting them with their place of origin and communicating that experience to others -- those paintings will emerge from a map of Cornwall just as they were created out of my experience of being in Cornwall.

Proposal for Project #3 -- Digital Mapping: A Creative Mapping of Cornwall

A summer spent in Cornwall gave me the opportunity to walk the rolling hills and the cliffs and beaches, to visit and get to know the Cornish people and learn something of their culture, and to observe and make sketches of the countryside, the houses, and the seaside. I came away from that experience enriched and inspired. Upon returning to the United States, first the West coast the Columbus, I set upon the task of recording my observations and impressions in a series of drawings and paintings, several of which, works in themselves, constitute the groundwork for larger mural-sized paintings which I hope to do in the future. Some of these studies were begun while I was still in Cornwall living in the small fishing village of Porthleven. Appropriately, my first study (about 7” by 5’) was done on fish and chips paper salvaged from out frequent visits to the local fish and chips shop.

For some time I have wanted to not only develop these studies but also to document them and my progress in creating them. The concepts and forms of digital mapping provide a perfect vehicle for such a project. Thus I propose to (a) digitally document some of my works through digitally photographing them and scanning them, and then (b) assemble and incorporate the accumulated images in Photo Shop to create a series of three works. These works will record and reflect the earlier pieces; they will also be unique works serving to map the aspects of Cornwall and the creative process of interpreting and communicating my experience of that place. At this point I plan to modify and superimpose images, reflecting the genesis of the original series as well as the development of my own process of learning to use digital recording devices such as camera and scanners and digital software applications, in this case Photo Shop CS3. I may also incorporate other images such as maps of Cornwall and my own computer generated compositions. The resulting digital maps will thus become a part of this evolving creative process and an expression of it, communicating this experience to others.

& now to update the 3 images for Project #2: Technoscape, or, in case of my take on this assignment -- a virtual landscape related to Hopkins Hall, the Art Building at OSU, a place very special to me & one I'd like to share:
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Proposal for Project #2: A Technoscape of Hopkins Hall

By what the artists focus upon and by the ways in which they see and express their vision, artists influence and shape the way we see things, the way we experience both inner and outer reality. The traditional landscape (or seascape or skyscape) is one of the classic forms of artistic expression whether the artist is focusing upon a particular subject within an environment or whether he or she is focusing on the landscape itself. An example here would be that of the Renaissance artist bringing iconographical subjects out of traditional backgrounds and placing them within increasingly realistic and recognizable landscapes. Later artists focused on the landscape itself. The "-scape" became a place in which events happened or a place in and of itself.

All of this has been affected by our changing social and cultural perspectives and by our technological developments. Developments in printing combined with discoveries and advances made in photography, film making, and television have increased not only the availability of images but also the speed with which they are produced, distributed, and received; the influences reverberate within the artistic community and throughout popular culture. And now, with the imaging capabilities of computers, we are beginning to create more than images, we are beginning to create a virtual space in which to experience them. Thus the landscape becomes a technoscape, a virtual environment created by artists and made possible through technology.

As an exploration of this space I plan to utilize photographs I have taken of the interior of Hopkins Hall. When I returned to OSU after years of being away and re-entered Hopkins Hall I once again found great enjoyment in the stained glass blocks placed in the stairways on the north side of the building. I was also amazed at the fact that I had forgotten them, had forgotten their presence and color and reflections and the way that all of that had affected me. Now I have the opportunity to re-enter that space of colored glass blocks and reflected light, to photographically record it, and, through the use of Photo Shop, to express it and transform the images, translate them so that I might share with others the effects of that light & color. At this point I intend to present a series of three works in which I combine, overlay, and transform images to create a technoscape of the interior of Hopkins Hall, a sort of virtual tour through my own perspective and experience of this building. I hope to convey something of the nature of Hopkins Hall, namely that it is a building established for the purpose of creating and sharing art. This may involve the inclusion of some of my own paintings created since I studied here. I also intend, through this, to contribute a viewpoint that will influence, even impact, how other people experience the building. The works will relate to Hopkins Hall as it is as well as create a series of images that will extend it to a virtual place to be enjoyed on its own terms.

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& a quote here from class re. creating a work of art:
"...[you are] building a world that has an inner syntactic logic to it, but you are also building a world for other people to see." (& this provides the opportunity for others to respond)
-- Joshua Penrose, Instructor, Art 350 --
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Here are the 3 parts to Project #1 -- Let's hear it for the Sheep!