ARTS341 :: Image Practice:: Projects

Project info will be posted as needed.

Project 1: Iconography

Part 1: Archaeological Self Portrait
Description: Students will create a self portrait/auto-analysis by documenting 10 personal characteristics. These 10 characteristics (things considered "essential" elements of your personality/history/character) will be documented through the photography, creating images that communicate those desired traits.
Students should be able to discuss the difference in representational forms chosen, from C.S. Pierce's delineation of image types: iconic, indexical, symbolic.
Requirements: Each of the traits will be documented in individual photographs, printed in color at 8x10 inches, at 300 ppi, on letter size paper. Pictures should be taken by each student with a camera.
Deadline: 1 week
DUE: Sept 4

Part 2: Grammatical Icons/Self-styled ISOTYPE
Description: Students will construct a series of 10 ISOTYPE-inspired abstract icons based on the characteristics documented in Part 1. The icons should be grammatical - i.e. able to be combined in various ways to construct a meaning more complex than their individual meaning. This will require a formal and conceptual consistency across the 10 images.
You will then put them to use in 2 imagined contexts - speculate how they might be used.
Requirements: The 10 images will be created as scalable vector graphics and printed individually on letter sized paper in B/W.
The 2 imagined contexts can be documented in any form (interventions into real spaces, imaginary proposals, etc...)
Deadline: 2 weeks
DUE: Sept. 18

References:
Lupton/Miller "Modern Hieroglyphs" + "Language of Dreams" (reading)
Timo Arnall's "Graphic Language for Touch" (see the full research report as a PDF)
US National Park Service Map Symbols + Patterns
Homeland Security Symbology study
ETC Group's Nanotech warning symbol
Other hazard symbols
Trevor Paglen's "Symbology"
Terrorism/resistance logos

Project 2: Semiotic Self-Portrait

Description: Students will explore the methodology of semiotics through a further investigation into the notions of self-perception begun in project 1. The project will be created in stages, with the final end-product being a photographic self-portrait. The purpose of this section is to provide students with a grounding in the basic understanding of semiotics as a critical/analytic tool for reading and constructing images.
Step 1: Create an archive of images from popular culture that visualize your own sense of self. In other words, find pictures that exist in mass media forms that you find yourself identifying with. These images can be collected from cinema, literature, advertising, television, art, historical narratives, etc. You must have a minimum of 30 images, and half must be from a source other than the internet - your sources should reflect the diversity of media you actually consume. If it is a literary source, you should isolate the scene or character, using the vocabulary in the text to describe it (passages from a novel, for example). Deadline: one week, Due Thursday Sept. 27.
Step 2: You will isolate 5 pictorial/descriptive elements from your selection of images, identifying material artifacts and appearances that you feel create your connection. If your images involve sounds and literary depictions, you must create visual equivalents of them (think of textures, objects, environments, colors, pictures, etc). Describe how those elements generate meaning.
See: A student's semiotic analysis of advertising
What you will create for this step will look like this:
For each descriptive element, you will generate a visual equivalent (explained above) and a textual analysis of what that element means, i.e. how it functions in terms of a code. How is it meaningful within the larger cultural context of which you are a part? Remember that in terms of codes, we're talking about more than simple signifier-signified relationships... "red" can't be a simple stand-in for anger, for example, you must be able to point to instances that make that relationship meaningful - what its context is.
These 5 analytical exercises will be placed (1 each) on letter sized paper, so that you have one image and it's analysis on its own sheet.
In the meantime, have 5 different people (friends/family) give you one image that they think says something about you - MUST BE A MEDIA IMAGE - NO ACTUAL PICTURES OF YOU.
DUE: Tuesday Oct 2.
Step 3: Create a photographic self-portrait that incorporates the 10 elements from step 2. You will create a tableau or mise en scene (a theatrical stage set) incorporating yourself and these elements. These photographs cannot be manipulated in photoshop beyond color corrections and brightness/contrast settings - with exceptions for specific ideas. These will be printed on legal size (11x14) in color from an inkjet printer - the 16in 4800 inkjet printers in the lab woiuld do the trick. (images should be 300ppi).
DUE: Tuesday Oct 16.
Making Foil Reflectors

Project 3: Historical Remix

Here, we will shift more from the focus on the imaginary self, and into the realm of the social imaginary, but still maintaining some relationship between ourselves and the social. This assignment, and its formative components, is an exploration of the conceptual and technical method of montage. We will simultaneously investigate the notion that all images are created through the process of addition and subtraction of socially circulated elements that can be deployed, redeployed and rearranged for different historical and political contexts. Other points of discussion will be the formal and conceptual differences between notions of pictorial montage, composite imagery and collage.

Step 1: Locate a historical narrative that exists in the social imaginary (i.e. something that we can assume has some level of cultural distribution beyond personal geographies) that has somehow had an effect on you that you can describe. These narratives should not be solely biographical or geographical in nature - no stories that are someone's "life story". They should be event-based, something having a more-or-less conventional beginning and end. Bring in 1) an image related to the event 2) an institutional account of the story (encyclopedia, newpaper) 3) a first-person account of the story 4) a description of how this event has impacted you.

Step 2: Exchange your chosen narrative and materials with someone in the class.

Step 3: Create a pictorial montage(as distinct from a collage or composite) that uses these 4 elements, supplemented by additional images and text. This picture should use the images and texts to tell the story of the relationship between the person whose information you received and the historical event.
Half of your text and image sources should be made up of primary sources and be gathered in non-electronic form. For information on primary sources - see the UIUC Library tutorial on the subject. The other half can be secondary sources and/or images/text chosen for aesthetic/narrative affect, etc.
Details: One 11x14 inkjet print, or equivalent mixed-media picture.
Due date will be Thursday Nov 1.

Project 4: Sequencing

This assignment is based on the creation of a series of images designed to be experienced in succession. The starting point is to be a text of your choosing that isn't already illustrated.

Step 1: Choose an unillustrated text. This can be just about anything: a poem, excerpt from a story, set of instructions, cooking recipe, personal diary entry, radio transcript. Pick something you find interesting and want to make interesting for others.

Step 2: Lay out a simple storyboard. Your solution can be one of the following forms: a slide lecture (yes you and a powerpoint, or somethign similar), video, printed comic/book. If you're really ambitious, you can utilize a combination of all three.

Step 3: Make it.

Requirements: It has to be one of the 3 forms given above.

Timeline: This will be our last large project and will be due on our last day of class. The text will be due the next class after the assignment, storyboards the next.