I really enjoyed seeing your various thumbnails - and how your varied approaches have created such different impressions. I have to say that your line-art pages are a delight - whimsical and very illustrative. For this same reason, your choice of Ersilla makes sense - there's a storybook quality to the idea of this city that leaves a trace of itself behind - woven from threads. In common with lots of your classmates, specificity is what you're lacking - i.e. a clear sense of identity for your city, and perhaps one logical way of achieving this might be to look for any 'real world' relationships between weavers or the production of silk and particular regions, peoples or ethnicity:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weaving
In this way, you might be able to link weaving with a specific time/place/culture, which would then give you some specific real-world reference to research - so Chinese architecture (silk industry) for example. This may not be the answer, but you get the principle I hope - which is that it's not enough just to draw any old building any old way and then cover it with string - you need to find your 'visual concept' that will 'tell you' why you're drawing what you're drawing and how you're drawing it.
Another rich source of inspiration will come from looking at installation artists:
In terms of thinking about the 'purpose' of your interior shot, I suggest you think about the sorts of environments that might be characterised by having concentrations of lots of strings, i.e. communal spaces where you might expect lots of lives to converge; this would seem to get to the heart of Calvino's ideas of people's interactions 'mapping' a space, even when the structure around it has vanished. I'm reminded too of visualisations of the internet and web-use, which might give you another angle to explore:
For this reason, you might also want to look at the area of 'data visualisation' - which is actually what Calvino is describing - cities described, not by buildings, but by a visualisation of human interaction.
OGR 06/10/2016
ReplyDeleteHi Ruth,
I really enjoyed seeing your various thumbnails - and how your varied approaches have created such different impressions. I have to say that your line-art pages are a delight - whimsical and very illustrative. For this same reason, your choice of Ersilla makes sense - there's a storybook quality to the idea of this city that leaves a trace of itself behind - woven from threads. In common with lots of your classmates, specificity is what you're lacking - i.e. a clear sense of identity for your city, and perhaps one logical way of achieving this might be to look for any 'real world' relationships between weavers or the production of silk and particular regions, peoples or ethnicity:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weaving
In this way, you might be able to link weaving with a specific time/place/culture, which would then give you some specific real-world reference to research - so Chinese architecture (silk industry) for example. This may not be the answer, but you get the principle I hope - which is that it's not enough just to draw any old building any old way and then cover it with string - you need to find your 'visual concept' that will 'tell you' why you're drawing what you're drawing and how you're drawing it.
Another rich source of inspiration will come from looking at installation artists:
http://www.jeanniejeannie.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/GabrielDawe7.jpg
http://www.local-social.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/JanaFlynn_011.jpg
https://isabelladami.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/kiel_opt.jpg
http://www.ignant.de/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/numen-nets_art_008-1050x708.jpg
In terms of thinking about the 'purpose' of your interior shot, I suggest you think about the sorts of environments that might be characterised by having concentrations of lots of strings, i.e. communal spaces where you might expect lots of lives to converge; this would seem to get to the heart of Calvino's ideas of people's interactions 'mapping' a space, even when the structure around it has vanished. I'm reminded too of visualisations of the internet and web-use, which might give you another angle to explore:
https://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/m.dodge/cybergeography/atlas/cox_1678_large.jpg
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/N1STqQ9T2gU/maxresdefault.jpg
For this reason, you might also want to look at the area of 'data visualisation' - which is actually what Calvino is describing - cities described, not by buildings, but by a visualisation of human interaction.
Hey Ruth - just left Joel some feedback on his OGR - and he's looking at Ersilia too - thought you'd be as interested in the various references here.
ReplyDeletehttp://joelwsmith-caa.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/ogr-invisible-cities-phil.html
Thank you :)
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