Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?

This video addresses the vested interest people have in education. It relates the importance of education to the future that is an uncertain entity. His contention is that creativity should be treated with the dame importance as literacy in education.

Ken is an interesting speaker who entwines witty humour with his point of view on creativity in children and the role that education plays in the development of this creativity. The fact that kids will take a chance when they are unsure what to do demonstrates their ability to be diversely creative. He made a point about the fact that if you are not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original. This point was interesting as creating takes risk. By the time kids become adults they are afraid to be wrong. He made the point that many companies are run this way. Yet in light of creativity and advances, risk is integral. He believes that education focuses on correct responses and that people are being trained out of being creative as they develop through school. As students progress through their education, the focus of their learning moves from their whole bodies toward their heads. Creativity becomes less of a focus and thus less important. It is a really interesting take on education and the way it can hinder creativity in people. Everyone that has been through the education system can relate with the points Ken discusses.

Paula Scher: Great design is serious

Paula reflects on design in light of seriousness or solemnity. The clip discusses the difference between serious design, as being out there, spontaneous and different, and solemn design, being commonplace.

Paula provides a range of examples as to how design can be serious or solemn. She discusses that serious design is unique and the first of its kind. Serious design is not always accepted well be the solemn audience and it is imperfect and not comment. It is about invention and change. This concept was interesting as many designs show telltale signs of perfection and elements that are common to other designs. I like the ingenuity, freedom and learning that can occur during serious design. The career step reference was interesting. The progress from beginning your career in short step, learning constantly through serious design, to a point where it becomes difficult to maintain serious design. The clip highlights that many designers are hired to be solemn designers. Paula makes reference to the four times in her 35 year career that she feels she was being a serious designer. The fact that after she designed something seriously, they ended up becoming solemn as there were what was expected was an interesting point to be made. It is easy to make direct links with the point Paula makes about the importance of differentiating design from solemn to serious.

Paul Bennett: Design is in the details

Paul focuses on the individual or the small, helping to create the big. It relates to what organisations want and how individuals go about providing it.

The clip discusses ways of achieving improvement through small details. These details are what can improve the bigger picture. The clip demonstrates the take the design company took on addressing the question of what it is like being a patient in their hospital. The company took the approach of the greater organisation looking at the question through the patients’ eyes. This was a great example of how the greater organisation could look out from the individuals’ eyes, rather than looking in through their organisational eyes. Just looking at the question from this perspective highlighted the need for detail in their design improvement processes. Small adjustments were trialled and personal touches made a huge difference to how patients were feeling. The clip showed how when people looked outside the square, great advancements in design and invention have occurred. It was interesting to hear the explanations of the impact design can have on finding solutions to problems occurring within the bigger picture of organisations. I like the concept of looking at the same things with new eyes. Taking a fresh approach to design and improving on the way things are. I like the concept of putting yourself in the position of the consumer and reframing the ordinary.

Monash Art and Design Graduand Show 2009

Top 10 Aussie Logos

1. Australian Made

2. CBA

3. Qantas

4. AFL

5. Channel 7

6. Channel 10

7. Australia Post

8. VB

9. Australian Government

10. ABC

I am doing my blogs..

They're just unfinished..

Transformations - J Space Gallery

Transformations is an exhibition currently showing in J Space Gallery. It exhibits the works by graduate students from the Certificate IV Interactive Digital Media Course. The exhibition runs from 12th of November through to the 18th of December. The students have created work that combines traditional media with new media. There are sculptures, works on canvas, film and photography. The students displaying work include Mireille Beaufrem, Benjamin Chan, Oslyn Franks, Michael Mavracic, Yvonne Picot, Sylvia Riley-King, Leanne Roberts, Quan-Hung Truong and Annie Watkins.

My first impression to the majority of the works was 'this is crap. It looks like they've just nabbed a whole heap of low res images off the net and put a filter over it in photoshop'. But there was one stand out for me, number 54. This small artwork beholds many fine and delicate details such as copper wiring, lace, small golden ornaments, antique imagery of a vase, flower and wheat. The piece has a close up of a large face on it which takes up the majority of the space. An image of some form of arch way has been placed over the top this face. i really like the fine curly paint details in the piece and subtle 3 dimensional aspects. The artwork is predominately brown and gold with aspects of blue and green. It has a rustic, worn effect which i'm a big fan of.

What i'm not a fan of is the film work. Some of it is fair creepy and makes zero sense. Overall the exhibition was ok.

Cool Careers: Graphic Designer

This clip is taken from the ‘Get a life’ DVD. It explains the journey undertaken by entrepreneur Jeremiah Desmarais on his quest to succeed in developing his own graphic design business ‘Extremely Graphic Associates’. It explains the process by which he developed his passion in graphics into a career. He discusses the setbacks and challenges he has faced, along with the different inspirations he has used as motivation.

The movement of the camera and the attempts at humour distract from the overall messages in the clip. The information provided throughout the clip gave an insight into the implications of starting a design business. The music playing in the background made it difficult to understand and follow the explanation on the development of the business. The messages being portrayed to the viewer, during the second half of the clip, were positive and demonstrated the important roles enthusiasm and attitude play in achieving success in the business world.

You Suck At Photoshop

THE BEST..

Ron Mueck - Wild Man

Well known for his hyper real sculptures of humans, Ron Muecks Wild Man is a larger than life sculpture currently being displayed at the McClellend Gallery which was purchased by the Elizabeth Murdoch Sculpture Foundation and The Balnaves Foundation. The sculpture is made from polyester resin, silicone, horse hair, polyester menofilament and fibre glass. Mueck pays very close attention to every detail of the human body, replicating to perfection every aspect of the Wild Mans body- veins, pores, blemishes, wrinkles and skin tones.

Muecks sculptures are never life size, they are either gigantic or miniature in dimensions to emphasise the discontinuities between portrayal and reality. Standing at 285 x 162 x 108cm, Wild Man happens to be one of the gigantic sort. This sculpture is quite confronting yet outstanding. Wild Man has a fearful expression on his face - a sense of vulnerability - which made me feel a little uneasy. I couldn't get over the detail of everything. From the texture of the finger nails to the colour of his toes scrunched up tightly, It was bloody amazing.

I have seen one of his sculptures before Wild Man. Pregnant woman 2002 a few years back. That too was fair awesome.

Photos From McClelland Gallery

The Dwelling

The Dwelling is an exhibition that has been curated by Juliana Engberg for this year's Melbourne International Arts Festival. Bringing together 10 works, each an interpretation on the idea of haunted spaces and all that lies within them. A key to grasping the exhibition's intention is to simply understand its title; dwelling is a word often associated with a sense of shelter and comfort, but in old English ''to dwell'' was also to lead astray, hinder and delay.

In the American Gothic house that dominates David Haines and Joyce Hinterding's video installation, House II The Great Artesian Basin Pennsylvania, no one is home. Instead, as water gushes in waves from the mansion's windows and doorways, the house itself seems possessed.

In Chantal Akerman's The Man with the Suitcase, someone inhabits the space that shouldn't. It's a film about a woman who comes back from a trip to find a man in her apartment. He's not supposed to be there, and to avoid him she retreats into a single room of the flat. In a sense, her every movement is orchestrated in terms of avoiding 'the other', and all the pieces in the exhibition have been influenced in a way by this work.

In Sofia Hulten's Familiars, a series of photographs depicts domestic scenes, although with a twist - a chair sits in a room by a desk piled with books, a circle of smoke left from a just-smoked cigarette lingers in the air. The inhabitants are short-lived. In another image, a wooden chest of drawers sits in the corner of a sparsely furnished bedroom, a disembodied pair of hands hanging limply from the second drawer - is evidence of the splintered self.

One of the exhibition's more intriguing pieces is Canadian artists' Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller's Opera for a Small Room. Inspired by a collection of opera records the artists discovered in a small-town record store in British Columbia, each marked with the name ''R. Dennehy'', the installation is the creation of an imaginary identity - his living room. Stacked with records, lit by chandeliers and crowded with furniture, it presents a window onto the intimate space of another life.

The Dwelling invites its audience to consider how closely the architecture of the spaces we live in reflects the architecture of our minds. It's a translation of space and it has a real relevance to people and the way we live now. We need to think about how we dwell, beyond the realm of entertainment.

My favourite was the film with that guy stuffing a doona up his shirt and letting it slowly creep out again. Cool.

The Offering - Robbie Rowlands

The Offering is a sculptural intervention created by Robbie Rowland’s. Rowland’s transforms a run down, soon to be demolished, church into a piece of art. He doesn’t try to glamour it up, refusing to alter the obvious signs of decay. Rowland’s explores the nostalgia and raw emotion hidden in the walls and floors of the church. He achieves this by carving into the walls and floors, peeling back layers of walls and ceilings that have been put down by previous owners to form sensuous shapes, revealing various social and historical functions - good and bad.

Rowland’s method of work involves sawing into surfaces, creating long strips, which are then coiled and placed to form curved sculptures. Rowland describes the cutting process as ‘incredibly tense’ as it demands full attention. When sawing through floorboards he would staple lengths of calico to keep the pieces in tact. He takes this structurally sound form of a church and turns it to liquid.

Coming from a churchy background, Rowland’s felt that he was possibly pushing the boundaries and doing something quite dangerous by cutting into the church. It was a huge decision for Rowland’s to cut the cross bar out from a cupboard, wondering, “What would mum think?” Ultimately, cutting out this cross highlighted the symbol of the crucifix and this cut out was used to form an organic sculpture in another room. Rowland created his own doors and pathways to lead you around the church, controlling the way you view his work and making you view it his way.

In previous works, Rowland would rely greatly on floors. It came to a shock to him that this church was without any, just dirt and the remains of wooden stumps. Rowland’s uses this to his advantage, shaping his splices and cut outs around these stumps to lead your around the abandoned area that was the floor. A floor which once supported a whole community.

The Offering is an emotive experience. It’s a reflection on the site history and how similar we are to the built environment that is the church. Rowland’s forces you to take a stance. To become part of the demolition process and to look at this building in a new light. Realising spaces mean something.

I know that most of you thought it was a joke. "How is this art?" But i got right into it. I enjoyed it.

Theo Jansen - The Art of Creating Creatures

Theo Jansen’s clip is based on a project detailing ways of creating new life. His designs are created using electricity tube and take the form of ‘animals’. These animals eventually need to be able to sustain themselves in a beach location.

This clip outlines the stages of development of Theo Jansen’s animals. It demonstrates how the animals get their energy from the wind. The energy from the wind allows the animals to be able to walk. It is amazing to watch the animals move. The intricate design of the animals allows them to move in a smooth and steady process on a sand surface. He likens the development of the movement to that of the invention of the wheel. The animals are able to move heavy loads easily across the beach. Each new generation of animal progressed in design. The next stage involved storing wind to use as energy later in small bouts when the animal faces a dangerous situation. Theo discusses some of the important design elements in creating these animals such as the proportions of the tubes in making the animal walk. The animals have feelers to sense obstacles and adjust their travel direction to avoid collisions. They also have noses that allow them to recognise when they have approached the water. I found this clip intriguing to watch. An amazing design concept!

You Suck At Photoshop

Some of my Faves

A Lesson In Typography

This clip explained what typography is and informed of the elements of type design. The clip demonstrated the skills and techniques involved in typography. It links the role typography plays to careers such as graphic design and art directors.

The clip used a range of visual/graphical typographic demonstrations, along with audio, as a strategy to engage the viewer and develop an understanding of typographical awareness. It was clear, easy to follow and interesting to watch. The intricacies of the visual/graphical representations of text are clear to the viewer and demonstrate the impact typography has on overall design. It is an informative clip, outlining the elements of the arrangement of type and the anatomy of letterform. The clip addresses the advances typography has been exposed to in the digital age. Although the clip was well constructed and interesting to watch, I found that it hastily brushed over the details of typography. It lacked detailed explanation and examples of the techniques involved in typography, and this was a sacrifice made to maintain momentum within the clip. I found that the history and development of typography was not adequately addressed.

Stefan Sagmeister: Yes, Design Can Make You Happy

This clip outlines the career of Stefan Sagmeister. It demonstrates the link he has found between design and happiness. The clip refers to a range of examples of design and links them to a feeling of happiness.

Stefan was interesting to listen to. His explanations included humour and were engaging to listen to. He compared the happiness associated with design in regard to the consumer and the designer. I found this interesting as it is important to understand that design has many purposes. When designing, it is important to keep the consumer in mind, and when consuming, acknowledgement of the designer is appreciated. He discusses the misrepresentation of happiness in regard to visualisation, advertising and the movie industry. He challenges the depiction of happiness in regard to design. Although Stefan demonstrates a deep knowledge and understanding of a range of exhibitions and pieces of art, the clip is focussed around his personal opinions of designs that invoke happiness. He shares designs that have made him happy with a live audience and in turn evokes a positive response. Although funny at times, the clip is rather long and slow. I enjoyed the demonstration of his work at the end of the clip.

Barbara Kruger

The large, bold artworks of Barbara Kruger incorporate images taken from the flood of mass media that is so predominantly a part of contemporary society. Pictures and words derived from television, film, newspapers and magazines comprise the media's powerful ability to communicate. By incorporating these into her art works, Kruger creates her own sexual, social and political messages, and effectively challenges the stereotypical ways the mass media influences society's notions about gender roles, social relationships and political issues.

Untitled (Your Body is a Battleground) demonstrates Kruger's interest in addressing and interpreting heated political issues of the moment. Using as a central image a silk-screened frontal photograph of a model's face, she gives the image additional meaning by dividing the large canvas it occupies into sections: right and left the image reverses from positive to negative, and from top to bottom the face is divided into thirds emblazoned with the slogan "Your body is a battleground." Kruger critiques the objectified standard of symmetry applied in modern times to feminine beauty, and perpetuate at fever pitch by media and advertising.

I'm quite a fan of her work..

Kareem Rizk

Australian artist, Kareem Rizk, studied a Bachelor of Graphic Design at Monash University Caulfield in 2004, with all intentions of pursuing a career in graphic design. After completing the course, he worked for the Herald Sun doing design work but felt he wasn’t being challenged enough or able to express his creativity, ultimately resigning after 8 - 9 months. The Bachelor of Graphic Design encouraged Rizk to explore and experiment with mixed media, which led him to pursue a more fine art style. Collage became the focus of his works.

Rizk’s interests shifted to collage work in 2005. Rizk’s style is one of a vintage type, pretty much like one of his influences Charles Wilkin. He sources his imagery from old publications such as New Idea and would stick to this publication so the works had the same feel to them. Grid paper, torn paper, black and white imagery of cars and people are common elements Rizk uses in his work. To avoid copyright issues Rizk would make an image unrecognisable by scratching out familiar parts of an image, giving it a weathered look. Random typography that has no purpose or story is another major element in his works. Experimenting with oil pastel, acrylic, carbon and pencil Rizk would build up a background, find an image and build around it. His work is highly textured and layered. His technique is very structured as if he was working on a grid, but spontaneous looking at the same time. Rizk’s likes to keep his designs very original, simple and dynamic, never over-doing it.

In 2006, Rizk began promoting his work over the Internet establishing a string online presence. He built a huge online folio, which took about 3 months, where he would provide visuals of his work to sell. After a few weeks of promoting his work, Rizk received feedback from the UK and was given opportunities for printed publication and exposure. Which then led to offers to exhibit his work in galleries. Risks' first major solo exhibition was in June 2008 at Phone Booth Gallery in Long Beach California. Since then Rizk has held exhibitions in Melbourne, Sydney, Los Angeles, Washington DC, London, Barcelona and Milan. Rizk has also had his work published in numerous magazines and publications, on t-shirts, shoes, skateboard decks and mugs.

Rizk believes it is important to get out of your comfort zone, to explore and experiment with different medias and techniques, and take a rizk. LOL. But dude, wanting 400 an hour is such a joke. Like you were good.. but not great.

Andy Warhol

i love..

Roger Ballen

BRUTAL, TENDER, HUMAN, ANIMAL showcases the works of Roger Ballen produced from 1983 - 2006, an exploration of the depth and meaning in his practice. Ballens work consists of black and white silver gelatin and carbon ink prints of minority places and people living in the dorp areas of South Africa. The dorps are the main subject of his works. His early pieces begin with documenting the world, taking photographs of people in their homes going about their everyday lives, to a more staged scenario, where he collaborates with his subjects to create his imaginary world.

Ballens imagery intentionally has no depth and is quite flat. This is achieved by using a flash. Using the flash also creates shadow that adds another important element to all of his images. The walls in his photographs are very important and dynamic component in portraying the story of the subjects lives. They are never dead spaces. Whether it is a shadow, existing drawings on the wall or chalk drawings that Ballen has added, they are a response to, or extension of, a particular situation and the physical context.

Ballen's use of the black and white imagery creates a dramatic mood. His pieces can be described as unsettling, raw, brutal and beautiful. The use of repetition and shape has a way of flattening the subjects into the walls. In some instances, the people in his images form a similar shape to a sculpture or image on a wall. This is evident in Ballens' Crawling Man 2002, where a man is on all fours taking on the shape of a metal stand beside him - becoming one with the object.
Challenging the border between human and animal, nature and culture, Ballen forces us to consider the border between the two as well as the excessive pride in all who think we reside above the natural. Ballen considers his work to be about the human condition as a whole, a psychological journey.