Sample Prompt Art 2704
Assignment 1.
Phenomenology and memory: The lost personal object, exploring nostalgia in the naïve imaginary.
Due: 11:59 PM February 12, 2017
Critique February 13, 8AM.
=“My past has its space, its paths, its nameplaces, and its monuments. Beneath the crossed but distinct orders of succession and simultaneity, beneath the train of synchronizations added onto line by line, we find a nameless network--constellations of spatial hours, of point-events. Should we even say 'thing,' should we say 'imaginary' or 'idea,' when each thing exists beyond itself, when each fact can be a dimension, when ideas have their regions? The whole description of our landscape and the lines of our universe, and of our inner monologue, needs to be redone. Colors, sounds, and things--like Van Gogh's stars--are the focal points and radiance of being.”
In this project, we are embracing the ambiguity of memory and getting into phenomenology and nostalgia in order to conjure a forgotten object from your childhood and place it in a collage of details from lost interiors. Your challenge is to (A) recreate a lost personal item from childhood and (B) build a context for the object out of disjointed interior architectural details. These models will be constructed, textured, and rendered out in Autodesk Maya. The surface characteristics (texture maps) for the objects will be done in Photoshop.
PART A: RECALLING THE OBJECT
Memory, it is said, decays the further and further we get from the moment of encounter. In representation, do you as the artist express this decay? Is it necessary to depict its texture accurately? Is this fog a part of the representation? As you engage your sketchbook in free association, observe your process for accessing memories. Once you settle upon a single memory, interrogate it forensically: What is said object called? Was the object manufactured? Was it handmade? What was the impact of its absence? What is being conjured emotionally as a condition of my recollection? Brace yourself as nostalgia creeps in. You have found your object.
PART B: VIRTUAL PLINTH COBBLED FROM RECALLED MUNDANE EXPERIENCES
For this part of the project, you will enshrine the object. Use details from the more mundane or banal places that inform your past. We want to juxtapose details to compel an interesting context for the object. Begin to combine the details in a kind of tableaux, shrine, or room, built out of fragmented memories. Don’t try to recreate a place in perfect detail. Mix it up. The more detail you are able to approximate and confuse, the more interesting the end result will be.
Assignment objectives:
Introduces you to phenomenological approaches to practice. Build basic skills in modeling, texturing, and rendering of static objects.