Barbara Kruger Project

a.       What do you see in this piece of art (describe it)?
I see a woman of the forties, thirties or fifties who is pretty damn proud of her position in life. Do you see her eyes? Can you meet this feminine glare? Those are the all too perky pupils of a serial killer. The lips split into a smile that stretches from ear to ear. This unnatural Stepford smile epitomises the hopeless servile housewife who brainwashed by a capitalist patriarchal society now whole heatedly believes that a woman's work is in the kitchen. Her pretty little world consists of matching pastel coloured appliances, a hot meal on the table by six and a drink in his hand by seven. The arrogant Betty-Crockeresque demonstrates that what was most detrimental to woman's rights was the mindless gals who agreed with their male oppressors, those who worked against womankind from the inside. This is a picture not of a woman but of a pawn.

b.      What kind of message did you try to give in this piece of art?
Suffrage hasn't stopped no more then the manipulation of the brain dead masses has stopped. The wheel is spinning but the hamster is dead. Oppression may take new forms now and there is advancement for the roles of women and their place in the workforce but this was not always the case. The message that the words convey in their yield to the left lane yellow is that of one frustrated with being trapped in the role of the housewife, angry with her life, angry with herself, giving the only piece of advice that has allowed her to maintain any facade of sanity in an oppressive marriage " JUST BAKE THE ANGER AWAY, HON". She is emotionally dehydrating each day and expressing her pain through the gift of baking. The bottom piece is based around the idea of a window with a pie just left to cool on the window sill. The rightmost piece is more reminiscent of the bars that keep women in the kitchen and out of the workforce. The only outlet is aggressive baking and the pies taste bitter. So very bitter.

c.       Do you like or dislike this piece of art?  Why?
 I saw this picture on the web and despite ibosses futile attempts I have it.

I knew form the moment I saw it it was the picture that summed up the motif I was striving for. She was my muse and my medium.  So yes I do like this piece of art. I'm happy with my colour choice as yielding yellow is a bright eye catching colour and goes with the theme that runs through the art. My choice of wording is decidedly different from Kruger in that there viewer is more addressed than society as Kruger more often then not addresses society as a whole. Usually she expresses her message in less words too, but I am content if not personally please with my choice of words, the thoughts they provoke and the balance between the image and the wording. One thing I wish i could change is the size of the wording in the last piece. I would make all the words except THE and ANGER smaller so you could read the emotion and see the smile beneath from across the room. I did not do this because the text was already very pixelated and I could not risk losing the message.

Plaque Attack Reflection

What did you like most about your game?
The enemy organisms a.k.a. Wurms. I liked the way their animation turned out and if I had more time I would animate their bodies to writhe and squirm. If I could make the game more complex I would have a end boss fight. Allow me to set the stage: you click the PLAY button. You, Jerry the germ are drifting through the dental void but you cannot see a tooth marked for colonisation. Only rows of glittering white chompers and one conspicuously massive enamel mountain (a super big tooth). Without warning the tooth explodes revealing the Queen Wurm! you must fight for your life, shooting protoplasmic bullets at the Mother-of-All- Wurm, all while not crashing. This boss battle would be epic beyond  belief and there would be heaps of confetti for your triumph. I would also have Wurms that hide under teeth and then pop up wearing the tooth a hat/ camouflage and spit projectiles at you. Another factor could be the mouth your colonising could close slowly. Just think of the pressure you would feel as you avoid collision with the teeth below only to find teeth above slowly crushing your single celled body. FUN. Also my landing pads are clearly marked and you don't die one invisible obstacles.

What could be improved?
I do not know how to or if a Wurm/ movie clip can be edited by I wish I did so I could make the Wurms in the last level look better in size, individual in wrinkles and as stated before I would make them squirm. So much potential. I could make it look like they actually bored out of the teeth they inhabit. Any other complaints I have are simply do to the efficient but simple programming.

How is this game an improvement upon the original?
Where the original was mundane I tried to create a sense of purpose and attachment to the character you play: Jerry. His struggles are your struggles, his triumphs your triumphs and his horrible cytoplasmic explosion your annoyance and encouragement to try again. You feel the patriotism for Germopia, a home you've never been to. But only if you read the text.
You don't have to read the text because the game is so simple and visually pleasing. You play a cute little green germ in an unwelcoming environment composes of yellowing enamel, decaying cavities and grotesque Wurms. This visual and thematic creative is vastly improved from the original moon lander that was dull.

All in all I'm please with the result and have gotten various compliments from fellow classmates.

Barbara Kruger Forethought

a.       What do you see in this piece of art (describe it)?

I see a pair of leather shoes on a shag carpet. The shoe style is decades old, very well cared for, very polished. They make me think of the smells of shoe polish and leather. Old leather. The angle is looking down on the shoes as you would look down on a coffin in its grave.

b.      What kind of message did you try to give in this piece of art?

A cold slap into the face of materialistic society, this piece commented on the multitudes that spend their lives accumulating STUFF and the bottom line that in the you won't have your possessions forever. In reality people can think of themselves as the renter of STUFF, because despite so called ownership you can't keep it forever and must eventually pass on your accumulated wealth. Or debt. The latter seems more likely these days.

c.       Do you like or dislike this piece of art?  Why?

I LIKE this piece of art because of the message that ponders answer less questions, tears at societies self conceptions and pleasing imagery. Although a tad morbid it tackles the very real issues involved in materialism, wealth, mortality, social and personal morality and possibly spirituality.

It was images such as those above that inspired me to create a macroverse in which the invading single-celled organism was the hero.

Im going to redesign an older moonlanding platform game. Whatever to base it on?

For this project I the student, am to redesign an old moon landing platform game and I am NOT TO CHANGE THE PLATFORMS OR THEIR ACTIONS. Many a theme has jumped across my frontal lobe at the thought of such possibility. An underwater theme is taken but not a micro theme. I’m thinking dental: the platforms will be teeth, you avoid crevasses and as germ of gingivitis, it is you solemn mission to plant the flag of a brave new colony in this untapped oral frontier. Go team plaque!
Another idea is to have the lander be an eagle and the platform a nest. You must roost among mountains. Could work.
Plan C is a bunch of spiky wals and you must land a balloon.

Obviously I'm going to try the gingivitis invasion first.

Text in a Picture: Aint No Rest For the Wicked by Cage The Elephant

What I like most for all three:

I think the urban vibe I am trying to convey is visible and the use of reflections and positive and negative space make these pieces interesting to behold. Certain colour limitations correspond to the whole black/white morality debate.

What can be improved in all three:

The erasing wasn't as crisp as needed in places and not as airbrushed in others.

Which piece was the most successful of the three:

I believe that the first one was most successful despite its lack of reflection imagery because of the deeper layers of thought that went into this one. For example the model's skin is blue( traditional of the Hindi deities) and he is wearing a hoodie that appears blindingly white, much like a celestial robe and then it reaches a darker core( the shirt beneath). The placement of the text is simpler in that it’s crooked. All of this adds up to challenge tradition concepts of good and evil as well as the place of evil within religion. The main theme I was going for with these pictures was the rock and a hard place situation that some people find themselves in and turn to less legal methods of survival: boy in hoodie leering avariciously at possessions in store window and contemplating theft. The song Aint No Rest For the Wicked by Cage The Elephant is about such people who commit crimes (mugging, prostitution, embezzlement) because of the desperate need for cash. In it most of these crimes are committed by reluctant criminals that have families to support and little ones to feed. This link to hunger leads me to the regret that I couldn’t work in a kid stealing an apple but I think you lose alot of the urban feel that way.

The Other Half When the Job is Done

Invention to Improve the Future

This project, as the title loudly proclaims, was about a new revolutionary invention and the futuristic world it would operate in. I settled on making a ridiculous but awesome looking form of neotransport: the Spider-Car.I would like to point out that sculptris is awful for creating anything mechanical looking. Absolutely everything you put in becomes biological swirls or genetic tentacles or textured skins. Not ideal for metallic prototypes or boxy new inventions. But I digress.

 Back to the spider car. I should first explain that it is a bio engineered cyborg much larger than a human being. Think a normal everyday spider gets bitten by a radioactive Peter Parker. And then steals a Transformer's sunglasses. Basically you the driver (drivers in this case) enter through a hatch move through  the hollowed transport cavern within the biological automobile and into the cockpit/control room/its head and  control it much as you would a horse... only with cables connecting the primordial brain of the spider car to your own and numerous globular bioscreens showing what the spider car sees, smells, hears, etc.  Now my invention is made for difficult terrain so I demonstrated it in one of the most forbidding environments known to man: Florida. This biologically created super spider will tower over the trees, sidestepping gracefully through the forest ferns and have finely tunes sense to avoid dangerous alligators, retirees, and quicksand. These biological beasts would require food, perhaps a high protein pellet, but it means they won't need gas. Yes we would feed them the pellets, because if they ate raw meat it would only be a matter of time before an...accident occurred and then with a new found craving for the juicy meats of their human overlords the spyderborgs would revolt bring society to its knees to worship a hungry arachnid race. Or not.

Shark shark sharky shark

Resubmittion of Whats in Keith's head?

Whats in Keith's head? Reflection

I started this piece with the idea of the back of my head being broken and leaking out an inner personality and I solidly followed through  with this idea. I took multiple photos of myself, by myself, and used the best ones. You'll see a black and red face and a white face in the bottom center of the picture. These are placed side by side for maximum contrast and represent the conscience. Think angel on one shoulder, devil on the other.  The other was just the back of my head. Have you ever seen a more gorgeous back of the head? I thought not. For this I wanted a puzzle piece hole to show that people are made of lots of little defining pieces that come together to form a whole. Inside my head I wanted to display a natural curvature to make it really look like the inside of an egg or a ball. I found some stained glass which curved nicely and appealed to my artistic tastes. I also have the back of a mask with eyes peering in through the eye holes. The mask itself is pretty self explanatory and the eyes represent the introspection that was needed to create this piece. Out of my head you ll see swatches of colour escaping and musical notes. The musical notes and rainbow piano keys represent my love of music (as a listener only. I couldn't play an instrument to save my life) especially classical music. I think music is a far more important part of life than it is given credit for and I think it is psychologically nessicary to facilitate the development of society, the economy and human thought in general. Those colourful characters you see poping out of my cranium are the world reknown British comic group that travels under the prestidgious name of Monty Python. The Cessna 172 light aircraft towing the piano keys is just a blurg of self history: I took flying lessons and am currently trying to get my Pilot's liscence. The skull headed Egyptian sphinx on the lower left side mirrors not only my early love for Egypt but my adoration of the macbre and sinister. At the top of my head there are three stacks of books sprouting and these are meant to show my love of the written word. You'll also notice I'm wearing a pretty fancy hat. I'm wearing it because I look good in a hat. The background of this image is a darkened room with the wallpaper consisting of black and white photos of crowds from the 1930's and a floor of dingy cement. This grim habitat represents the way we all feel sometimes: alone and yet in a crowd. Usually this aren'y clear when we feel like this: dingy dim room. The blue skeletal image you see behind my noggin is the bare bones of a Bermese python. This represents my respect and appreciation of biology, animals and nature. As well as my awe for the bone splintering strength of the Bermese python. And I enjoy the colour blue. All in all this in't my favourite piece but I'm glad it's done.

Whats in Keith's head?

Ashvault Jungle

Brain Storming for Alter Ego

I like classical music

I like a cup of straight tea to start my morning

I want to go into a career that utilizes visual arts

I like fiction, mostly fantasy and sci-fi and horror for reading and comedies, documentaries and reality based movies

Love British Comedy: Monty Python, Black Adder

I don't know what three labels my friends would apply to me as I'm not a mind reader. I could change that about myself. I wont guess at what they say so ask them yourself. If I wanted to change anything about myself I would be doings so. I am quite satisfied with the distance between me and the world, thanka veery much.

Goal Numero One: Improve my drawing skills. 2: Get a job. 3: Learn to drive stick-shift.  4: Learn to fly a plane. 5: Get into the University of Toronto.

Repent as the End Times are Nigh

Lithgow Mania

Mosaic