Collage - Meaning

The first thing I wanted people to notice when they viewed my work was how much light it seemed to radiate. I really tried hard to give the work this sense of electricity and light brightly coursing through all visual aspects of the piece. The various points of bright light were incorporated to signify a accumulation of knowledge in the form of digital information. My choice of color was chosen not just for its visual appeal but because of the feeling it presents the viewer with. Various hues of blue have always been associated with cooler feelings, by using blues it gives the viewer this feeling of technological professionalism, and removes much of the personal element of the piece. This is what I wanted because computers and digital codes are rather impersonal entity's doing a specific job as commanded with no understanding of consequences. I hoped that the cooler colors would help the viewer see unique individuals with personality's as impersonal entity's almost computer like.

The Silhouetted individuals I created to show that we as a human race may be all unique and different in terms of race, religion, social status, and gender but yet there is something inherently common that flows thought each of us. I used the numbering forming the individuals as a way of showing that we are all in fact not as different as we would like to think and that we are all connected. The use of numbers can also be seen as a way that we all identify ourselves. All of us have our identity recorded as various combinations of numbers and quite often those number speak to who we are. I then superimposed the silhouettes against a image of the world in an effort to further show that we are all connected no matter were we live on this planet. Finally the circling digital numbers bring the whole piece together by creating the effect of a pipe or link, the idea is that we as individuals are defined by numbers and because of this can be connected thought digital links no matter were we are in the world. The bright central point of light represents the wealth of human knowledge and our potential, it is located at the end of what could be termed the data pipe and is therefore available to be accessed or added to no matter who you are or were you are in this world. With that my over all theme is that of connection no matter who we are or were we live.

Collage Is Finished

I finished my collage today and it was a lot of fun. I worked more on this one than I did on my first assignment and I feel that this activity really helped me to understand the different ability's of photoshop. For this project I had to use so many different filters to get the right effect and this process took a lot of time and trial and error. I think this is why I really felt like I learned a lot from this project because it required so much experimentation. The other problem I had that I had to work though was only having really low resolution stock images, my pic of the earth for instance was a horrible image and I had to basically retrace the whole image twice and then resize it to be able to get it to work.

Intense Editing

These two images illustrate some of the time consuming editing I am doing to create my collage. The bottom image is the original low resolution stock image that I used and above is the finished high resolution image I created from the stock image. It probably took around one and a half hours or more to increase the resolution of the stock image.

I have an Idea

I was looking through some images today and I found this image. I think I am going to use for my main inspiration for my collage project. I really like the visual appeal it has, and to me that is extremely important but I also like its message. To me it shows how our whole world is interconnected by data links whether that is through the internet, cable, radio or some other means. I also found another image that further shows that because of this we as humans have lost our unique identity and have become numbers.

Not so Fav Collage examples

Fav collage examples

Collage - Intro

We started discussing our collage project today and it was quite interesting. I will admit that I have mixed feelings about this project, on one hand I feel that I have a better grasp of the programs needed to edit the photos but on the other hand I feel that this project is going to require me to put more meaning into the piece. I have a hard time with the concept of having to infuse meaning into every work of art. Our teacher discussed how collage is a very old art form that reflects the views of the artist. With me I am more drawn to the visual appeal of a piece and not so much to the meaning, in a nut shell if it looks cool to me I like it and it does not go much farther than that. Some of the piece that our teacher showed us were kind of silly looking or even down right ugly. I suppose that as I try to understand their meaning I will better appreciate them for what they are. I feel that I am going to really struggle creating something with meaning instead of just something that I feel looks good. I mean what can I say I really like to have fun in photoshop! Ill post some of my fav and less fav collage examples that our teacher showed us tomorrow.