City in Flux Research

City In Flux Ju

A d i na

d a h rs

-After Effects -Photoshop -Photos -Drawings -Stencils -Stop Motion

-Use of buildings as inspiration -Important message behind the art -Theory coming into it -Good use of typography -Satire on several subjects

Materials

Ideas/Influences

City In Flux Artists -Barbara Krueger -Keith Haring -Banksy -Lori Nix -Shephard Fairey Mind Map

Topics to talk about -Politics -Terrorism -Diseases -Areas within city Intro Resarch

A

e R t rtis

h c r a se

Keith Haring

(Artist) Received from: blog.artsnapper.com

Received from: alphabetcityblog.com

American artist Keith Haring was best known for his graffiti-inspired drawings, which he first made in subway stations and later exhibited in museums. He was born on May 4, 1958, in Reading, Pennsylvania. He moved to New York City in 1978 and began using the city as his canvas, making chalk drawings in subway stations. His art was eventually seen everywhere from public murals and nightclubs to galleries and museums around the world. He was also known for his activism in promoting AIDS awareness (he died of AIDS-related complications on February 16, 1990, at age 31). The energy and optimism of his art, with its bold lines and bright colours, brought him popularity with a wide audience.

Keith Haring

This same aspect from his work was inspired from graffiti in subways which also incorporated bold lines and bright colours. We can see that one aspect of the city in which he lived inspired the look of his life’s work. If we branch out of the subway walls and look at the amount of movement and visual experience oozing out of every other aspect in the city, we can roughly say that there is endless amounts of inspiration leading to other great pieces of work.

Artist Research

Received from: haring.com

Keith Haring

Artist Research

Lori Nix

(Photographer/Designer) In her newest body of work “The City” she has imagined a city of our future, where something either natural or as the result of mankind, has emptied the city of it’s human inhabitants. Art museums, Broadway theatres, laundromats and bars no longer function. The walls are deteriorating, the ceilings are falling in, the structures barely stand, yet Mother Nature is slowly taking them over. These spaces are filled with flora, fauna and insects, reclaiming what was theirs before man’s encroachment.

Received from: lorinix.net

Lori Nix is a photographer and printer based in Brooklyn, NY who has been building dioramas and then photographing them since the early 1990s. She is interested in depicting danger and disaster, but tempers this with a touch of humour. She says her work was influenced by landscape painters. Her childhood was spent in a rural part of the United States which is known more for it’s natural disasters than anything else. She was born in a small town in western Kansas. Each passing season where she lived brought it’s own drama, from winter snow storms, spring floods and tornados to summer insect infestations and drought. As said by herself, she “considered these things euphoric compared to adults who viewed these seasonal disruptions with angst”.

Lori Nix

Received from: lorinix.net

Artist Research

Looking at her ‘The City” work, I see it ties in with my “City In Flux’ module as both of these topics look at the convergence or change of a city. I really do like the way she has taken her influence from the city; looking at it and portraying a different timeline of it as truly as she can in her own imaginative and creative way. I also praise the attention to detail and scaling of her work as that is what truly brings together the whole scene. Nix said that in order to get the maquettes and models to scale, she first chooses one main item in the scene, builds it to scale, and then builds up the rest of the models around that.

Received from: lorinix.net

Lori Nix

Artist Research

Received from: lorinix.net

After looking at Lori Nix’s work and her influences and looking at the way how she took a very different perspective to parts of where of she lived, it has given me an idea to try and see different areas of my city in a different perspective to give me some inspiration.

Lori Nix

Artist Research

Banksy

(Street Artist/Director/Painter)

Banksy is a pseudonymous United Kingdombased graffiti artist, political activist, film director, and painter. His work consists of creating satirical street art along with subversive epigrams which is all done in his own distinctive stencilling technique.

On his website ‘banksy.co.uk’, there is also works of his which consist of paintings; in these, he has replicated or mimicked other famous paintings and added his own graffiti style and mark to them to make the picture look like it has been vandalised or invaded by Banksy. Born in Bristol in 1974, he was brought up being trained as a butcher and became involved in graffiti during the great Bristol aerosol boom of the late 1980s.

Banksy

Received from: banksy.co.uk

He was inspired by local artists and his work was part of ‘the larger Bristol underground scene’ - a term used to describe the culture surrounding trip hop music, drum and bass and graffiti art that has existed in Bristol since the early 1990s.

Banksy’s stencils are striking and humorous images occasionally combined with slogans. The message is usually anti-war, anti-capitalist or antiestablishment. His subjects are wide ranging, including animals such as monkeys and rats, policemen, soldiers, children, and the elderly.

He also makes stickers and sculptures and was responsible for the cover art of Blur’s 2003 album ‘Think Tank’. His art has appeared in cities around the world.

Artist Research

Received from: banksy.co.uk

I enjoy all of Banksy’s pieces of work because nearly each and everyone has a dark humorous twist or some satirical message behind it, and this coupled with his style of art makes it very appealing to me. Most of the time I see his pieces of work and don’t even understand the message behind it, or don’t even know if there is one, but I still admire the work for what it looks like visually. Nearly all his work is famous, but I think the one that stands out for me is a piece on his website which shows an auction room full of people and a painting to the side which simply states, ‘I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU MORONS ACTUALLY BUY THIS S**T’. To me, that is how I feel about rich individuals and celebrities glorifying street art (or just art in general) extensively; they make it out as if it is so much more than what it actually is.

Banksy

Artist Research

MY OWN BANKSY EXPERIMENT

Due to my great interest in Banksy’s work and also researching on him, I decided that I wanted to make a stencil based on a satirical topic similar to Banksy’s work. First I had to research some satirical topics which I could base my stencil on, and so this is where my starting point was. I almost instantly found some information regarding satirical topics on the internet which really helped towards ideas for the stencil.

Banksy

SATIRICAL TOPICS Juvenile Crime Language Policy Legal System Littering Marriage and Divorce Media Violence Medical Ethics Medicinal Marijuana Medicine Abuse Minimum Wage Missile Defense System National Tobacco Settlement Nonproliferation Nuclear Technology Organ Donation Organized Crime Peace Physician-Assisted Suicide Polygamy Pornography Poverty Prison regime Race Relations Racial Profiling Rain Forests Recycling Religious Right Reproductive Technologies Russia

School Uniforms School Violence Sex Education Single Parent Families Smoking Social Security Reform Social Welfare Space Exploration Stadium Taxes Stem Cell Research Tax Reform Teen Pregnancy Term Limits Terrorism Tobacco Industry Trade with China Transportation US Budget US War on Drugs Urban Terrorism Vaccinations Violent Video Games Voluntary National Testing War Crimes War On Drugs Water Resources Weapons Disarmament Welfare Reform Women in the Military Artist Research

After searching thorugh the internet, I finally decided on a topic to base my stencil on. However, I got this topic through watching the programme “The Revolution Will Be Televised’ on TV. On the programme they made fun out of underage gun training in the US and I found this interesting. So now with my topic ready, I had to start making the stencil. I did this by getting a picture online, then editing it on photoshop and then printing it out & cutting it by hand.

Red acrylic paint Black satin spray paint

The reason for using the colour red for the text in the final result is due to Banksy using red in most of his pieces of art. Also I decided to use the short phrase ‘I’m only 11’ because Banksy uses short phrases in his artwork.

Banksy

Artist Research

Shephard Fairey

(Street Artist/Graphic Designer/Activist)

Received from: obeyclothing.co.uk

Shephard Fairey is an American contemporary street artist, graphic designer activist and illustrator who emerged from the skateboarding scene. He first became known for his “Andre the Giant Has a Posse” (OBEY) sticker campaign.

After the OBEY obey campaign, he became widely known for his Barack Obama “Hope” poster during the 2008 U.S presidential elections.

Some of his work is included in The Smithsonian Museum in the USA and also in many other museum’s and galleries around the world.

Shephard Fairey

Artist Research

Fairey has stated that he takes his influences and inspiration from other street artists along with films he has seen (such as John Carpenter’s ‘They Live’), and slogans/quotes from well known people (such as celebrities, philosophers etc.). He said that the motivation/ message behind his work is to ‘question everything’. The Andre the Giant campaign (which later became the ‘OBEY Giant’ campaign) was created by Fairey in 1989 while he was attending the Rhode Island School of Design. The Obey Giant website says: “The sticker has no meaning but exists only to cause people to react, to contemplate and search for meaning in the sticker. Because OBEY has no actual meaning, the various reactions and interpretations of those who view it reflect their personality and the nature of their sensibilities.”

Received from: wallpapers87.com

Shephard Fairey

Artist Research

Received from: obeyclothing.co.uk

The ‘HOPE’ picture of Barack Obama was made by Fairey for the 2008 U.S. Presidential election. I like this picture as it looks very simple yet the use of one word delivers such a powerful message. I think the colours he has chosen work well together as they make the viewer feel patriotic (red blue and white, although here he’s used a sort of cream colour). Its design is executed well due to the picture looking neat and its use of bold colours.

To sum up my view on Shephard Fairey, I like his work on campaigns and especially his style of work visually. However, I think the only piece of inspiration I can take from his work is the way his work makes a viewer think about it on more than just a level of looking at it visually.

Shephard Fairey

Artist Research

Barbara Kruger

(Conceptual Artist)

Barbara Kruger is an American conceptual artist. Much of her work consists of black and white photographs overlaid with declarative captions in white-on-red Futura Bold Oblique or Helvetica Ultra Condensed. The phrases in her works often include pronouns such as "you", "your", "I", "we", and "they", addressing cultural constructions of power, identity, and sexuality.

Much of Kruger's work pairs found photographs with assertive text that challenges the viewer. She develops her ideas on a computer, later transferring the results to (often billboard-sized) images. Examples of her more recognisable works read “I shop therefore I am,” and “Your body is a battleground," appearing in her trademark white letters against a red background. Much of her text calls attention to ideas such as feminism, consumerism, and individual desire. Frequently she has taken images from mainstream magazines and has used her bold phrases to frame them in a new context.

Received from: primaryflight.com

Barbara Kruger

Artist Research

The techniques which I will try to replicate are: The type of font she uses (bold, which connotes strength, seriousness and importance)

Received from: interviewmagazine.com

Kruger has said that she “works with pictures and words because they have the ability to determine who we are and who we aren’t.” A larger category that threads through her work is the appropriation and alteration of existing images. The importance of appropriation art in contemporary culture allows the ability to play with images with a meaning already and textual conventions: to mash up meanings and create new ones.

Barbara Kruger

I am intrigued by Kruger due to the phrases and words she includes in her work: they are simple yet the message directs a lot of power. I would like to somehow use the techniques Kruger uses in her works of art in my work in the future.

The colours used in her work (black, white, grey and red - black denotes negative and socially undesirable qualities and things that harm. White is the symbol for positivity, purity and all that is good.

Red is an ambiguous colour being somewhere in between black and white. It is universally seen as a sign of both life and aggression, however most people tend to associate red as a negative colour as red is the colour of blood and blood connotes death) The images which she couples with her typography to make the whole picture up (they are either related or not related to the typography in some way (this differs in Kruger’s work).

Artist Research

Received from: imageobjecttext.com

Barbara Kruger

Received from: whitney.org

Received from: godsavedadaism.blogspot.co.uk

Artist Research

Ablaze Visuals

AKA VJ Ablaze (Online Blog)

Ablaze Visuals aka VJ Ablaze is a Berlin based VJ (Visual Jockey) and Visual Artist with a graphic design background and a member of the ‘akustoOptik’ VJ Team. Specialised in creating loops and live interactive visuals performances. His goal is the aesthetic symbiosis (perfected partnering) of the realtime visuals and the music, to make it a epic and unique audiovisual experience for the audience. He tries to challenge himself in every live performance to reach a new level.

After looking at his website I found several posts which he titles ‘Motion Graphics Inspiration #1, #2, #3’ etc. In these posts he puts up different videos of other people’s work which he finds inspiring. On his post ‘Motion Graphics Inspiration #294’ there are two videos which I watched that both have influenced an aspect towards my future work. This is the certain type of music which is being played in the video, and I found that the music often compliments the theme/ subject of the visuals in the video.

Ablaze Visuals

Artist Research

For example in the short film ‘Symphonic’ (screenshot below), the director Jean-Michel Verbeeck uses simplistic and light piano background music accompanied with choir like vocals. The piano increases and decreases speed in time with the movement and flux of the visual animations in the video. The vocals create a sense of peace for the viewer while watching the video. This all exaggerates the video’s objective to tell a minimalistic tale with focus on simplicity, architecture and design; an abstract representation of a classic orchestra.

Received from: ablaze-visuals.com

Ablaze Visuals

Artist Research

However in another video (an advert for Ferrari) named ‘The Art of Form’ by Fabian Oefner, the music includes string instruments accompanied with the sounds of an engine to represent the Ferrari (which is being showcased in the video). The various combinations of sounds crescendo and diminuendo, and this highlights the several colours opposing the black background in the video. This exaggerates the video’s objective to portray the subject (the Ferrari) as an art form: like the Symphonic video, this video is also an abstract representation of a classic orchestra.

Received from: ablaze-visuals.com

Ablaze Visuals

Artist Research

Mark Ronson & Duck Sauce (Sampling Artists)

For my research I wanted to look into sampling and how I could use this towards my city in flux work. A few artists which I know who use sampling in their work are Mark Ronson and Duck Sauce. Mark Ronson is an english musician and DJ. One of his most popular songs is ‘Ooh Wee’. The track samples Boney M’s ‘Sunny’.

Duck Sauce is also a DJ duo consisting of Armand Van Helden and A-Trak. Their most famous song also samples a Boney M song (‘Gotta Go Home’). In another one of Duck Sauce’s tracks they sample wolves howling.

I have chosen to try and use sampling in my future work as I had the idea of sampling the city sounds. I can sample sounds through the Garageband app on an iPad easily and also make a track out of the sounds as well.

Received from: sunnythesong.com

Mark Ronson & Duck Sauce

Received from: images-amazon.com

Artist Research

s a e Id

Idea 1 Satirical Spray Tag My first idea is to make a stencil based on a story regarding the city. The stencil should have elements of satire included in it (like my previous Banksy experiment). The inspiration for this idea came from Banksy’s works of art and how they looked, but also the message they presented and how they did this in a satirical way. The stencil is going to be done on a building somewhere in the city which may or may not be of significance to the stencil. Some places which come to mind are abandoned mills in the city or somewhere in the city centre.

Satirical Spray Tag

Idea 1

Received from: fakrakow.wordpress.com

Satirical Spray Tag

Received from: static.freepik.com

Received from: wilderutopia.com

Received from: flickr.com

Received from: magicalurbanism.com

Received from: streetartnyc.org

Idea 1

Received from: flickr.com

Satirical Spray Tag

Received from: theguardian.com

Received from: geograph.org.uk

Received from: panoramio.com

Received from: whetleymills.co.uk

Received from: flickr.com

Idea 1

Idea 2 Modern Bombardment My second idea is to show how modernism/modern technology has emerged into today’s society and taken over.

The inspiration for this idea came from the podcast ‘Digital Human’ by BBC Radio 4. The episode (called ‘Urban’) explains how the technology has come into our lives and changed over the years. It also explains how the city has adapted to this and how now there are ‘Smart’ cities such as the city of Masdar in Abu Dhabi (which is the smartest). The woman in the podcast visits Masdar and explores the social engineering that’s as much part of the design as the bricks and mortar.

If I progress with this idea, I am going to research into what major pieces of technology have been upgraded or invented to change our lives. Also, I want to compare how people lived without all this technology in the past to now, when people can’t live without it. I intend to make 2D & maybe 3D drawings and experiments with mixed media and then progress forward.

Modern Bombardment

Idea 2

Received from: previews.123rf.com

Modern Bombardment

Received from: ecns.cn

Received from: thefusejoplin.com

Idea 2

Idea 3 City Behind The Surface My third idea is to show that there are more aspects to the city than just its surface. By ‘surface’ I mean the specific areas of the city which other people relate it to (for example, when we relate Paris to the Eiffel Tower or London to the Big Ben). I want to explain how there many different things which make the city what it is. With this idea I intend to take many photos of the city (both of the ‘surface’ and the different aspects behind this), and then to take these photos and experiment with them on Photoshop. The city which I am going to be looking at is the City of Bradford as it is where I live, and so I know more information about it, plus, the city centre is near to where I live which makes doing work for this idea more practical and efficient for me.

City Behind The Surface

Idea 3

Received from: wikipedia.org

City Behind The Surface

Received from: facebook.com

Received from: prints.bl.uk

Idea 3

Chosen Idea - Idea 3 City Behind The Surface From out of all of my ideas I have chosen to progress forward with the ‘City Behind The Surface’ idea. My next step is to go around the City of Bradford and take photos to use as material for my experimentations.

City Behind The Surface

Chosen Idea

Prim

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h c r a se

The Alhambra Theatre & The National Media Museum

The Alhambra Theatre & The National Media Museum

Primary Research

Bombay Stores (UK’s largest Asian department store) & Great Horton Road

Bombay Stores & Great Horton Road

Primary Research

Bradford Cash & Carry

Bradford Cash & Carry

Primary Research

Bradford

Bradford

Primary Research

Countryside & Moors

Countryside & Moors

Primary Research

Bradford Ice Arena/Mecca Bingo

Bradford Ice Arena/Mecca Bingo

Primary Research

Indian Takeaway

Indian Takeaway

Primary Research

Indoor Football

Indoor Football

Primary Research

Ingleby Road

Ingleby Road

Primary Research

Leeds Road

Richard Dunn Sports Centre

Primary Research

Bradford Playhouse, Leisure Exchange & Westgate Shopping Centre

Bradford Playhouse, Leisure Exchange & Westgate Shopping Centre

Primary Research

Mosques

Mosques

Primary Research

Old Textile Mills

Old Textile Mills

Primary Research

Richard Dunn Sports Centre

Ingleby Road

Primary Research

City Centre

City Centre

Primary Research

im r e xp

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n o i t enta

My Experimentations After gathering many photos for my City In Flux idea it was time to try and create some experimental visual development to try and see what would look right. I started off on Photoshop as I know my way around this software. I tried to experiment with a couple of my photos and wanted to visually show my message of the city of Bradford being labelled as the city of film and only being popularly known by the National media Museum and the Alhambra Theatre. None of the pieces are fully finished, they were just done to give an idea of what the piece would visually look like.

My Experimentations

Experimentations

Experimentation 1 I took some of my pictures of the ‘surface’ of Bradford and then changed the opcacity of each one. I then overlapped these and then added a Hue/Saturation to them. After that, I added a ‘burning hole’ effect over the pictures and then placed another picture behind that layer.

With this experimentation I was intending to show the ‘surface’ of Bradford being burned away to reveal the different aspects behind Bradford.

Experimentation 1

Experimentations

Experimentation 2 I took some of my pictures of the ‘surface’ of Bradford and then I added ‘posterize’ and ‘threshold’ to them to make them look like a stencil. I then got an image of drips from the internet and I added them to the previous image. The message I intended to show here is that there are aspects of Bradford which are dripping away from it; hidden beneath the surface if you will.

Experimentation 2

Experimentations

Experimentation 3 This experiment was done on my A3 sketchbook. With this certain piece I wanted to use mixed media to see what kinds of material would work well and look good. First I printed a few of my pictures of Bradford and then placed them around the page like a collage. I then made the stencil on the right side of the picture by using the same method as I did with my Banksy experiment test piece. After this I used acrylic paint to make the red skyline on the left of the picture and then I printed off some typography in the style of Barbara Krueger to see how text would impact the whole picture. At the start of this certain experiment I did not have an intention of how I wanted it to look, but once I’d finished it, it seemed to me that the picture as a whole just portrays that there are many aspects of Bradford and that these aspects are quite distinctive in the city. Also, the text seems to present the message that the city is full of all these different things, yet we don’t really take notice of them.

Experimentation 3

Experimentations

Experimentation 4 With this experimentation I tried to use the surface of the water as a metaphor for the surface of the city. The piece isn’t fully finished, but what I was going to write was ‘look beyond the surface’.

Experimentation 4

Experimentations

Experimentation 5 With my fifth experimentation, I ended up making the first design and then I kept changing little parts of it to show different visuals.

Experimentation 5

Experimentations

Experimentation 5 These are the other side experiments from my fifth experimentation.

Experimentation 5

Experimentations

Experimentation 6 Like my fifth experimentation, I ended up making the first design for this experimentation and then I changed little parts of it to show different visuals.

Experimentation 6

Experimentations

Experimentation 7 I took some of my pictures of the ‘surface’ of Bradford and then I placed one picure within the other. However, in the triangle I added a picture of an abandoned mill.

The message I intended to show here is that there are aspects of Bradford which hidden insde the surface.

Experimentation 7

Experimentations

a n i F

e c e i lP

Animation Comes Into The Picture

After making many experiments I have chosen to base my final piece in the style of my second experiment (shown below on left). I am going to stick to this kind of visual look as it is simple, but it clearly displays my message of the ‘surface’ of Bradford and the different aspects which make up Bradford. Also, after being told that we had to make an animation for our City In Flux work, I decided to make my animation as my final piece, plus, I wanted to finish my 2nd experiment and make another experiment in that same style. I was shown some examples of an animation storyboard/mood board. It was the opening title sequence of Sherlock Holmes.

The several shots showed the house style of the animation. I have been looking at different visual styles which I can try and use as inspiration and have ended up choosing the music video of Coldplay’s ‘Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall’ as my main influence. The stop motion style of the video exaggerates the visuals and music, plus, the stop motion technique can create a different kind of vibe depending on how the video is edited and what type of music is played along with the visuals.

Received from: pocketnoodle.co.uk

Animation Comes Into The Picture

Received from: vimeo.com

Final Piece

Animation Storyboard

I’ve created a storyboard to give a rough idea of how my stop-motion piece will look like. The animation will show what makes Bradford and what more there is behind the surface of it. It is going to include the visuals just like the ones which are in my second experiment, but in my animation they are going to be moving instead of static. The location for my animation is in an abandoned mill in Bradford. The reason I have chosen this location is because it presents visuals of a ruined area very well, and I am trying to show that even though Bradford has deindustrialised, it still has many features to it which make it very special. The piece starts off with blobs of paint emerging on the wall which eventually widen and create the skyline of the city centre in the heart of Bradford. This skyline then starts to pour down the wall and drips emerge. From some of these drips, a certain aspect behind Bradford shows through (such as a silhouette of a mosque, a road sign etc) and these then pour onto the pavement and eventually drain down into the gutter.

The message I’m trying to show in my animation is that cities like Bradford are labelled (Bradford being the City of Film), and most people only relate the city to certain aspects. For example, Bradford being related to as the city which has the National Media Museum or the first IMAX cinema in the UK, or Liverpool being related to as the city in which the Beatles were born. However, there are lot more aspects to the city than just these few, but the majority of people don’t see these because they are not as highly praised as the other things. Bradford for instance has rich cultural heritage, it has beautiful moors and countrysides, it is the Curry Capital of the UK, it used to be the wool capital of the world, and the list goes on.

Animation Storyboard

Final Piece

Animation Practice Run

After gathering some equipment for my animation, me and the camerman set off to the abandoned mill to go and have a practice run. This was mainly to find out some information regarding my animation such as; how large I was going to paint the stencil, how long it would take to take the pictures, how far away I wanted the camera from the stencil etc.

Animation Practice Run

Final Piece

Shooting The Animation

Once I had done a practice run I had learned that I needed to make some stencils to do parts of my animation. The reason for this was to make it look more accurate and to also save time. I also did an experiment with the animation on paper in a stop-motion style to see what that would look like. However, after making it I didn’t like the look of it and so I decided to not to use this style.

Shooting The Animation

Final Piece

Stencils

Stencils

Final Piece

Stencils

Stencils

Final Piece

Shooting The Animation

On the whole, the shooting of the animation took 6 days over a period of 2-3 weeks due to problems occuring on some of the days of recording. These were things like losing daylight and spray paint cans not working. The actual animation itself was extended. Once I had the footage of the animation, I added text onto it in post production using iMovie.

Shooting The Animation

Final Piece

Shooting The Animation

Shooting The Animation

Final Piece

Shooting The Animation

Shooting The Animation

Final Piece

Final Pieces (2D)

Final Pieces (2D)

Final Piece

Final Pieces (2D)

Final Pieces (2D)

Final Piece

Conclusion

In conclusion to my final pieces, I beleive that I have stuck to my concept of the city behind the surface and have hopefully portrayed this well enough in my final outcomes. If there was one thing which I would change in the process of my final outcomes it would be to plan the shooting of my animation a bit better as when I did shoot the footage, I ran into many problems.

Conclusion

Final Piece