2013 CSM - BA Graphic Design
4 Weeks Project
Brief:
"1. Research the idea of what a journey could be – look at the great journeys of the past and those projected into the future by science fiction, your journey could be physical, conceptual, external or internal, real or imagined.
2.
Now, make a journey of your own. Record it factually by collecting visual material to document your idea (evidence). Think about the people you meet, time, temperature, tastes and places. Consider the past, present and future.
Use your observational skills, drawing & photography to record your discoveries. What have you found?
3. Create a piece of work that integrates 1000 words of your own writing with your images. This should communicate your journey in a way
that reflects your findings. The early explorers brought home maps of their travels: your piece of work doesn’t have to be a map and can take any form, but it must integrate words and images. It’s important that the organisation and presentation of your journey communicates what you have done.
Considerations:
Your final piece must contain your 1000 words integrated with your images presented in any size, and any format, but no AV or films."
Ideas Development
Examples of first tests on Shades, applying to the external world working on my own pictures I took during my travels
The final Book:
"Through The Well Unknown"
You observe but you don’t see.
Too many stuff leads you away from the main point.
Perspective, depth, height,
shapes, colors,
patterns and textures,
consistency,
light and darkness,
transparency,
opacity,
illusion.
You are focusing on everything…
You are focusing on nothing.
This is a journey through places you have been always seeing
A movement toward the unknown between spaces “you know so well”.
I want you to let Sense run away,
forget him because he always tell you the same strict story.
And farewell to Experience too, because she has always loved to grow
Illusions in your mind.
You are starting angain, from the beginning, alone.
I’ll lead you through this fabolous world, but hurry!!
Sense and Experience will chase you soon!
Chapter 1: Color
Where are we?
You know well this place
Trust me I’ve never been here before
Well this is the place where you spend most of your time.
I’m serious, I don’t know what it is, I… Where is the top and where the bottom?
I want to leave this place!
Run! Experience is reaching us, come with me, this way!
Don’t panic like that anymore, we seriously risked to be raped again, your journey was finishing before actually starting!
Ok Ok, I’m sorry, but I’m confused! What is this? I can not touch it!
Where is this stuff ending? Where are the walls?
My boy, so many questions… Are you realizing how many certainties you do need to be calm?
But I can understand you… Sense and Experience have imprisoned you for so long in their strict kingdom…
We are now in the world of Impression, upside down, in the Hidden country, precisely in the region of Color and exactly in the city of Shade.
You will never see walls here, neither objects, nor dimensions.
No patterns, no shape.
Is this an illusion?
The contrary! This city shows a pure truth: the Truth of Colors.
But to reach such a genuinde, absolute truth all the rest must be forgotten!
All your attention goes to colors, focusing on nothing else.
So what I’m seeing is a real place but transformed in color?
No, this is not a transformation, you are looking exactly at places that you see everyday, with no difference, but since we are far from Sense and Experience, you are able to remove every detail except color. You see just now, for the first time in your life, an absolute truth of the world of Impression.
Ok I start understand it.
Good. But have you noticed how difficult is for you to get away from your convinctions? Just now you are able to appriciate it. But hurry! Sense and Experience will join us soon to bring you back to your world. Really few people has been able to escape, and their fate has not been lenient. Who escapes can never come back to the world and get easily swallowed by Madness world.
I’m trying to appriciate it, but I miss all may world’s colors! Here I just see an omogeneous blurry image.
You miss colors of details… But you don’t need it! What you see is the essential, the absolute synthesis of shapes and depth! This is the truth that just your unconscious can see.
Are you shure this is a homogeneous flat image? Look deeply.
You see gray all around? It is not just gray my dear. Look, Look!
I can see Yellow, Black, Green, Light Blue, White, even Red!
And now: Pink, Purple, Green…
Light Blu, Green, Gray, I can ditinguish tens of tonalities!
Well, this is impressive, but I’m not convinced yet.
I mean, you say this a a pure truth, but there is not really relation with what I see in the real world!
The colors I always see are brighter. Here everything tends to gray and brown.
I usually feel good in this building and if this is the same place, I should be fine aswell!
Instead, I feel anxious, almost restless.
This is the power of color that influences your mood.
You said that you can’t feel this anxiety. That’s because in reality you don’t face colors directly.
The “whole color” is splited through hundreds of tonalities, so its effect is reduced.
What you don’t know is that you probably get this feeling also in the real life. You don’t notice it, but inconsciously you does.
How is it possible?
It is because each color has a different impact on you.
Gray, for exhample is a neutral color, It is not black, neither white. So its presence effects on you with a sense of indecision. It is cold, it doesn’t stimulate you. That’s why it often gives an impression of sadness.
But in this building I can also see a lot of brown tonalities. These balance the power of gray.
In fact, brown is a warm color and it means stability. Is is able to give you a sense of security and protection.
It depends from person to person though, colors perception is a quite subjective concept.
I see.
Tell me, does this perception world focus just on just on colors?
It does in this region.
There are hundreds of other places you should visit. The are the regions of Shapes, Depth, Perspective, Orientation…
I’d love to explore them.
Next time, sure, as soon as you will be able to leave Sense and Experience again.
But your time is over now, your journey has come to the end. I’ll see you in the next adventure!
Wait! You didn’t even tell me what’s your name!
My name is Perception.
