Unknown Spaces

Richard Rhys Workshop

2009-03-10T20:29:00.000-07:00

Objective: Design a pattern and find an application for it. Patterns overprinted onto men's magazine advertisements and compiled into an A5 book with reflective mylar.

Study for a more comprehensive project drawing upon the idea of representation, identity and distortion.

Fractured

2009-02-16T19:30:00.000-08:00

The idea is there, but the poster medium is the wrong format. "Posters are like one liners," and what I'm saying requires a different medium. A visual essay compiled in a book? Something web based? Motion?

Will continue to create a point of view about social networking sites and branding the self. What do the forms and messages people post about themselves communicate to the public? What would a typology of myspace profiles look like? See 2004's Exactitudes for reference (typology of subcultures in Rotterdam, Brazil and Beijing.

Experiments in Moresque Ornament Systems

2009-02-03T15:54:00.000-08:00

OUTSIDER ANGST. Experimenting with a grid system used in Moresque Ornamentation. Images from "Sixteen Candles," an iconic film about "heroes who were certifiable losers."

NYT article here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/09/fashion/09VIEW.html?ex=1233810000&en=cafab61425bc42f4&ei=5070

AMAZONS OF GLAMOUR. More symmetrical. Image from Vogue, Sept. '93, height of the supermodel craze. Models prominent icons for the 90's.

Excerpts form "An Animated Description of Mr. Maps"

2009-01-30T23:13:00.000-08:00

Catchy yet enigmatic, "An Animated Description of Mr. Maps" is one of those songs that I just want to "figure out." It's almost to the point of inaccessible, but certain elements--dominant beats, literary lyrics and nostalgic audio samples--are hooks that keep me engaged in it. The narrative in the lyrics is delivered with an efficiency that paints vivid fragments, but keeps the meaning of the whole song a puzzle.

Lines like:

He had no trouble recognizing patterns in the most delicate arrays of tangled lines,

but he had a strange fixation on partaking in nefarious things:
"Stealing, lying, cheating, gambling, fornicate..."

or

He saw red, but he thought five

These lines make me want to create some truth, even if there was none to begin with. Does it just "smell like content" and is simply fractured, seemingly profound?

The song is a portrait of "Mr. Maps," who is either a number-color synaesthete--as the song suggests--or, more deeply, an allegory for Modern Man. What meaning can I read into this song?

Could this be material for a modern-day Emblem book?

Full song and some theories on the meaning, see esp. Salty Kevin's post:

http://www.songmeanings.net/songs/view/3530822107858564244/

Here's a loopy one:

He willed away the miles while quixotically attempting to reclaim his inner child,
he was embrangled and enmeshed in something far too loud to comprehend:

"I want all of the American people to understand that it is
understandable that the American people cannot possibly understand."

--The Books, Lost and Safe

re:re:re:re:

2008-12-22T23:15:00.000-08:00

"Every idea, these days, seems to have passed its critical phase. It is a generally accepted fact that abstract notions about mankind have all been eroded imperceptibly by the investigations they have undergone, that human light has infiltrated its rays everywhere and that, as a result, nothing has escaped this universal process which is subject, at most, to revision. So we have the spectacle of the world's philosophers incapable of tackling the smallest problem without first going through the routine of recapitulating and refuting everything that predecessors have had to say on the subject. And by that very fact their every thought is inevitably the function of some previous error, based upon it and inheriting some of its features.

-Luis Aragon, Paris Peasant

The text inspired a method of resampling and layering degraded copies of open source footage into a sixty-second movie clip. Manipulating formal elements of resolution, scale and tempo creates a mesmerizing, visual reinterpretation of the text.

Figure Studies

2008-12-22T11:45:00.000-08:00

Sphinx study

2008-10-22T18:04:00.001-07:00

Love Hurts

2008-10-02T18:50:00.001-07:00

Just saw "Intermission." The opening scene begins with a flirtatious exchange and ends in a sucker punch. Funny and naively revelatory, its basic message seems to be Love is All You Need, but really, if you're gonna get dumped on (both figuratively and literally), is it worth it? This Irish tale of love, loss and pain says, AY.

Oddly enough, the project I completed for Core Samples earlier that day touches upon similar themes.

I'll be your mirror

2008-09-29T19:13:00.000-07:00

A nod to Botticelli, but Currin's Venus, instead of embodying sublime beauty, is wall-eyed and anatomically incorrect.
Contorted hand gestures signal ambiguous messages. Why is she pointing at her left breast?
And this one here with the inverted peace sign. Is she throwing a gang sign? And, why is she leaning on a cane? You'd have to break a hip with that pose (see New Yorker, "Pixel Perfect," May 12, 2008 issue)
Pam Anderson?
Maude never looked hotter.
Jenny Saville's take on the odalisque archetype.
Francis Bacon's portraits capture faces in motion, usually screaming, and displaying the violence velocity has on form.
Motion distorted, twisting figures imprisoned with ambiguous architectural space.

If all art is a reflection of society, what are these examples saying about humanity?

The faster we spin, the more distorted our sense of humanity. Time clips in the face of technology that is ever upgrading, ever expanding. Circuits burn around the clock, raising global temperatures every nano-unit towards overheating

How much space can you see ahead of you if life is perceived as a race toward oblivion?

Modelling the mind

2008-09-29T18:50:00.000-07:00

If you could make your mind a tangible object, what would it be made of? How would it feel? What colors would you use? Is it static or in motion?

What adjectives would you use to describe it? In a word or phrase, describe how your mind works.

Dick Avedon and things at face value

2008-09-27T12:06:00.000-07:00

The layering of B-roll audio:
Voices fade in and out of each other
Linked by a word, phrase, idea.
A river of shrill and sonorous tones,
ascending then descending the line of silence.

I am drawn to Avedon's portraits because of their startling mix of sublime beauty and grotesque reality. He captures the essence of a person through the microexpressions on the face: the subtle crease in the beekeeper's brow; the heavy lidded eyes and pensive mouth of Marilyn Monroe; Dovima appraising herself in the mirror, wrought both with glamour and insecurity. What surprised me most was how Avedon engaged his subjects during the shoot. He would ask them questions to elicit a response, usually an emotion he was after.

-A series of portraits based in a relaxed state
-get them to tell their stories.
-record the twitch at the corners of mouths
-the manic whites of eyes.
-record the surface expression of emotion.
-Find universals, common threads, shared hopes and fears
needs, wants.

Universal Narratives: Take 1

2008-09-25T21:00:00.000-07:00

"I want them either to come together or pull apart"
"I want to tie it together"
"Messy and clear at the same time"
"An impulse to resolve is triggered"
"Masculine, tenuous, active"
"A lot of loose ends"