The Technical Stuff

For this, my final, blog, I will be discussing materials I would use to make the sculpture I showed you in my last blog should I construct it, as well as how the entire mechanism of the sculpture will work for the spiral to turn and the shell to open and close on its own simultaneously.

The mechanism will be housed in the base of the sculpture which will be constructed out of wood. It will mainly be a plain wooden box, except for a 20cm diameter turntable in the centre. The turntable will have three small wheels attached to the bottom to help it turn. Attached to the underside of the turntable will be a simple model train set’s motor. This motor will turn the overhead turntable slowly as well as the coil on top of that.

The coil will be made out of copper as it is an easily pliable material and is still very sturdy, even after being bent in such a way. The plates at the top and bottom will also be made out of copper and they will be soldered onto the coil.

The seashell will be made out of clay and the top and bottom will be held together by a using a small hinge. To have the mermaid bend and fit inside the shell when it’s closed, I will draw it on paper in two pieces. The tail and the body will be drawn onto two separate pieces of paper and then attached onto two small pieces of plywood cut out in the same shape as the mermaid. They will be held together again using a small hinge and will be placed at an angle so that both the top and bottom can be seen. At the back of the vertical piece of wood will be another piece of wood attached to it which will hold it to the inside of the shell, this will help to push the mermaid down as the shell closes and pull it as the shell opens.

 

 

 

 

 

Now on to, perhaps, the most important part of the sculpture and the main part of the mechanism. How the shell will open and close. The rod will be glued to the inside of the shell and go through the bottom of the shell, the top plate, the bottom plate and the turntable through a small drilled hole in each of them. Inside the base the rod will go down straight to the bottom, where a wheel will be attached to help the rod move smoothly in a circle inside the base. Along the moving perimeter of the rod will be a small slope made out of wood. The rod will move along the bottom climbing up the slope and pushing the shell upwards as it moves.

So that is my final concept and how it works, I hope you like it. J

My Final Concept

So, FINALLY, this is my final concept:

This is my concept idea for a sculpture. I got the idea for the spiral shape from the basic shape of ‘The Monument to the Third International.’  The idea for the wave came from the Japanese wood-block printing of ‘The Great Wave of Kanagawa’ which admittedly reminded me of a sideways coil, so rather than transforming it into just a coil I turned it vertical to make the ‘storm’ depicted in the print much more menacing.

On the top plate I put a seashell which will open up (due to a mechanism very similar to a cam) to reveal Ariel, the mermaid (the main character in the movie I chose), sitting down in the seashell. Rather than menacing this detail makes it more whimsical. 

So, that’s my final concept. In my next (and final) blog I will be discussing, in detail, how the mechanism will work and what materials I would be using for the sculpture.



Concept Idea No. 2

After some time thinking about my final concept piece, I went back to my last development and changed it a bit. This is how it looks now.




It's A Strange World.

 I prefer it to the first one seeing as the De Stijl 'window' didn't turn out as I had originally intended. In the original movie screenshot the moon and Jack Skellington were the focus of the picture. After my initial changes it was the wave that pulled the most focus. After the new changes, it is once again the moon and skeleton that pull focus.

Also the colourful moon make the view seem stranger and creepier than it really is. I'm still not convinced that this will be my final concept however I think I have finally settled on one combination of art, design and film.


References:
Since the above artwork is a change of an already original idea I had, i did not feel the need to add any references in this blog. 

Concept Idea No. 1

Looking Through the Window (Climbing The Waves)

This is a personal response to the three aspects which I chose. I took a scene from the movie where Jack Skellington (the protagonist of the movie) is climbing the movie’s iconic swirly hill (seen in y last blog) and set that picture as the background of my development.  Next I took ‘The Great Wave’ and inverted it horizontally to get roughly the same shape of the hill in the movie. I digitally copied the inverted wave 5 times to completely cover the foreground of the hill and the cemetery on the movie still. I then placed these five copies as best I could to cover the foreground and still let it look natural.

I blended the ends of each layer together to make it look more whole rather than placed and pieced together. I would have liked to cut out the boats on the wave however when I tried that the wave didn’t look as natural and menacing as it had before. I was very pleased with the final result of this step and would have liked for it to be the very end result, however seeing as I still needed to incorporate design into the piece I took one final step. I took a copy of Piet Mondrian’s ‘Composition II in Red, Blue and Yellow’ and placed it foremost on the picture so that it completely covered the picture of the man climbing the waves. I turned on the Overlay option for this layer and played with the opacity until I was happy with the final look. I did this to make it look like a Chinese screen window with a light in front of it therefore making it more see-through than a screen would usually be. (This aspect was inspired from a scene from the movie Mulan after having watched it last week).

I could have decided to say it was stained glass however I decided to keep the aspect of oriental culture (woodblock printing as very popular in Japan and the great wave is made using this technique) and say that it was a Chinese coloured screen window instead. Even though it wasn’t my first choice for the finished piece I am quite pleased with the end result – had I not needed to incorporate all three areas I would have left out the De Stijl composition and let it be just a man walking on a monstrous wave rather than the same thing being seen through a window.

Although I know this will definitely not be my final concept – I feel that I’m on the right track when it comes to combining the three elements.

References:

These are the pictures I used to create my final piece:

Hokusai, K. (1829) The Great Wave off Kanagawa. [image online] Available at: http://www.wallsoc.com/images/2000x1379/2012/09/01/paintings-waves-japanese-boats-vehicles-the-great-wave-off-kanagawa-katsushika-hokusai-thirty-six-views-of-mount-fuji-620740.jpg  [Accessed: 15th December 2012].

Mondrian, P. (1930) Composition II in Red, Blue and Yellow. [image online] Available at: http://www.pasunautre.com/2010/12/22/de-stijl-here-neoplasticism-and-the-20th-century/  [Accessed: 15th December 2012].

The Horses of Neptune

The Horses of Neptune

I found this painting which reminded me of the one I wrote about in my last blog. However in this painting the froth of the sea has been transformed into horses – The Horses of Neptune actually. I guess you could call this an adaptation of ‘The Great Wave’ except that the colour scheme is based more on neutral tones such as yellows and browns rather than shades of blue. I think the most appealing aspect of this painting is the horses. I do love a good painting of a horse – perhaps because they’re such beautiful creatures, even when they are stationary. Maybe I’ll replace the first painting with this one and use this in my concept rather than the first because I feel it has been used too much before.

References:

Crane, W. (1892) The Horses of Neptune. [image online] Available at: http://www.artmagick.com/pictures/picture.aspx?id=5986&name=the-horses-of-neptune  [Accessed: 6th December 2012].

The Great Wave off Kanagawa

The Great Wave off Kanagawa

  
The teacher showed us this artwork last week and the moment I saw it I immediately knew I wanted to do something with it. I mostly like it because whereas usually for stormy seascapes artists use darker and grayed out blues, Hokusai used clear blues and white. I have also always been a fan of oriental cultures and wood block prints but I’ve never seen this one until recently. It reminds me of Hawaii, it looks more like one of those waves people surf on rather than a wave in a storm. This is something I will definitely be incorporating in some way or another in my final concept, I’m still not 100% sure how as I have many ideas how this can be adapted, but I will definitely be using this.

References:

 Hokusai, K. (1829) The Great Wave off Kanagawa. [image online] Available at: http://www.wallsoc.com/images/2000x1379/2012/09/01/paintings-waves-japanese-boats-vehicles-the-great-wave-off-kanagawa-katsushika-hokusai-thirty-six-views-of-mount-fuji-620740.jpg  [Accessed: 5th December 2012].

From Archaic to Hellenistic

Today I decided to look at the transformation that took place between the Archaic and Hellenistic periods by comparing two sculptures, one from each time period.

Cleobis (Kleobis) and Biton by Polymedes of Argon circa 580BC

http://www.travelingsolemates.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/13-Marble-Statues-of-the-Argive-heroes-Cleobis-Biton-Museum-of-Delphi-Greece.jpg

These two statues are often referred to as one. They are usually either called “The Greek Twins” or “Cleobis (Kleobis) and Biton”.

“In the legend, Kleobis and Biton were Argives, the sons of Cydippe, a priestess of Hera. Cydippe was travelling from Argos to a festival in honor of Argive Hera. The oxen which were to pull her cart were overdue and her sons, Kleobis and Biton, pulled the cart the entire way (45 stadia, or 8.3 km/5.1 miles). Cydippe was impressed with their devotion to her and her goddess and she prayed to Hera, asking her to give her children the best gift a god could give to a mortal. Hera ordained that the brothers would die in their sleep, and after the feast the youths lay down in the temple of Hera, slept and never woke. Herodotus, who relates the story, says that the citizens of Argos donated a pair of statues to the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi.” - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleobis_and_Biton

The Archaic period in Greece came right after the Greek Dark Ages where everything was lost – even the language, so the one could say that the archaic period was somewhat like the Renaissance period later on in history. Like so many Greek statues, the kouroi are naked except for boots which may identify them as travelers. The proportions of the bodies are very well laid out, however the details are very minimal. The face is very triangular, and the hair doesn’t look real at all as the curls are modeled one by one and they are quite large so much so that there are only three on each side of the head. The sides transition into the front so abruptly that there is almost an edge. The ears are somewhat too large for the head as is the head compared to the neck. The torso might be considered too short in proportion to the total length. It is particularly interesting to note the shape of the knees. They are triangular and almost indented into the full leg.

Now let’s take a look at how the style of representing the human body transformed in the space of 550 years:

 

Laocoon and His Sons by Agesander, Athenodorus & Polydorus of Rhodes. 25BC

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Laocoon_Pio-Clementino_Inv1059-1064-1067.jpg

“The most detailed description of Laocoön's grisly fate was provided by Quintus Smyrnaeus in Posthomerica, a later, literary version of events following the Iliad. According to Quintus, Laocoön begged the Trojans to set fire to the horse to ensure it was not a trick. Athena, angry with him and the Trojans, shook the ground around Laocoön's feet and painfully blinded him. The Trojans, watching this unfold, assumed Laocoön was punished for the Trojans' mutilating and doubting Sinon, the undercover Greek soldier sent to convince the Trojans to let him and the horse inside their city walls. Thus, the Trojans wheeled the great wooden Horse in. Laocoön did not give up trying to convince the Trojans to burn the horse, and Athena makes him pay even further. She sends two giant sea serpents to strangle and kill him and his two sons. In another version of the story, it was said that Poseidon sent the sea serpents to strangle and kill Laocoön and his two sons.” - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laoco%C3%B6n 

The Hellenistic period, as I said before, came roughly 550 years after the Archaic period, it was the age when the sculptors were looking back at the work of the sculptors that came before them and were looking to create the same affect in a better way and developing new techniques. Again the figures are naked, which was the style in the Hellenistic period – but in a way, it was also an almost realistic depiction. In Ancient Greece it was very usual for men to walk around without clothes proudly. Here the proportions are, as much as they can be, perfect, and it is very detailed. In my opinion, it’s so detailed that it’s as if the sculptor(s) carved the whole anatomy and then added a layer of skin to cover it. The faces are much longer in shape, like a real face would be. The hair looks much more realistic as the general shape is carved as one whole thing and the details are added later. As opposed to the kouroi, the sides of the faces transition very smoothly into the front, sharp where they should be and soft where they should be. The ears are placed just right and are to the right proportion. The torso is the right length for the overall length of the body. The biggest difference between this and the first sculpture however is in the knees. Whereas before the knees pulled the focus because they were sculpted so ‘badly’ here they blend in because they are done just right, as if they were real, after all no one really notices anyone’s knees unless they are ‘ugly’.