An investigation of nature inspired work.
Summary:
For the research component of my thesis I have investigated land and environmental art, also known as earthworks. Artists from this movement include Robert Smithson, best known for his Spiral Jetty located in the Great Salt Lake, Utah; and Richard Long who created his work through the act of walking and rearranging stones into recognizable shapes. Michael Heizer, best known for “Double Negative”, created a large scale land sculpture in the Nevada desert, where two large trenches were dug using explosives and a bulldozer. The scale is so massive it can be seen from space.
More contemporary land artists such as Andy Goldsworthy, create their work within the landscape using only materials found within the vicinity to construct well designed, and in most cases, ephemeral sculptures. His only means of documentation is to use a camera before the work is reclaimed by nature. Goldsworthy uses all types of materials, from snow and ice, to pure earth, rocks, leaves, twigs, and water to name a few. The challenge is learning the properties of each material and what its capabilities. Another contemporary artist, Patrick Dougherty, is also presented with the challenge of learning the properties of his medium, however his primary materials are saplings and twigs that he finds within thick underbrush to create large scale structures. They too are integrated into the landscape and are ephemeral usually lasting a year or two before they naturally fall apart.
The key element these artists have in common is their desire to play with nature and let the natural elements create the work. The artist has simply become an enabler of the materials, allowing the work to become what it can only naturally be.
In order to complete the requirements for my visual component of my thesis, I am presented with a challenge of irony that cannot be overlooked: I am going to create an interpretation of these artists’ processes in the form of a computer generated animated film.
Through the development process I have gone through several ideas and thrown them out only to come full circle and find I liked the original idea better. At this point I am taking the work of these artists to a new level and examining the structure of patterns in nature and how they relate to each other. I have come up with a series of textures I am interested in, for example, the vein structure of a leaf. It is very similar to the pattern created as mud drys and cracks. Ironically this is also similar to the crevices created in a man-made wall built with irregularly shaped stones. And now I have come full circle and found a connection to my fascination with man’s tendency to mimic the patterns of nature in our structures. In doing so I have more or less bridged the gap in my thesis and found the legitimacy behind using computer generated imagery to convey my research and fascination with patterns in nature.
Furthermore, I have taken a rough list of patterns I’m interested in, picked some music and started animating. I have found that my outlined ideas for creating transitions from one pattern to the next have not necessarily been ideal; therefore I have been changing them on the fly. Through this process I have realized that this may end up being the best way to create the film, making it an experimental film. It has no definite end in mind, but as I continue the work, I know it will continue to evolve. In this process I am keeping true to the tendency of my favorite earthworks artists who go into nature and play with the materials at hand to create the work. By implementing this process within computer generated graphics I am able to convey concepts not possible within a completely natural, and somewhat limited environment.
For the research component of my thesis I have investigated land and environmental art, also known as earthworks. Artists from this movement include Robert Smithson, best known for his Spiral Jetty located in the Great Salt Lake, Utah; and Richard Long who created his work through the act of walking and rearranging stones into recognizable shapes. Michael Heizer, best known for “Double Negative”, created a large scale land sculpture in the Nevada desert, where two large trenches were dug using explosives and a bulldozer. The scale is so massive it can be seen from space.
More contemporary land artists such as Andy Goldsworthy, create their work within the landscape using only materials found within the vicinity to construct well designed, and in most cases, ephemeral sculptures. His only means of documentation is to use a camera before the work is reclaimed by nature. Goldsworthy uses all types of materials, from snow and ice, to pure earth, rocks, leaves, twigs, and water to name a few. The challenge is learning the properties of each material and what its capabilities. Another contemporary artist, Patrick Dougherty, is also presented with the challenge of learning the properties of his medium, however his primary materials are saplings and twigs that he finds within thick underbrush to create large scale structures. They too are integrated into the landscape and are ephemeral usually lasting a year or two before they naturally fall apart.
The key element these artists have in common is their desire to play with nature and let the natural elements create the work. The artist has simply become an enabler of the materials, allowing the work to become what it can only naturally be.
In order to complete the requirements for my visual component of my thesis, I am presented with a challenge of irony that cannot be overlooked: I am going to create an interpretation of these artists’ processes in the form of a computer generated animated film.
Through the development process I have gone through several ideas and thrown them out only to come full circle and find I liked the original idea better. At this point I am taking the work of these artists to a new level and examining the structure of patterns in nature and how they relate to each other. I have come up with a series of textures I am interested in, for example, the vein structure of a leaf. It is very similar to the pattern created as mud drys and cracks. Ironically this is also similar to the crevices created in a man-made wall built with irregularly shaped stones. And now I have come full circle and found a connection to my fascination with man’s tendency to mimic the patterns of nature in our structures. In doing so I have more or less bridged the gap in my thesis and found the legitimacy behind using computer generated imagery to convey my research and fascination with patterns in nature.
Furthermore, I have taken a rough list of patterns I’m interested in, picked some music and started animating. I have found that my outlined ideas for creating transitions from one pattern to the next have not necessarily been ideal; therefore I have been changing them on the fly. Through this process I have realized that this may end up being the best way to create the film, making it an experimental film. It has no definite end in mind, but as I continue the work, I know it will continue to evolve. In this process I am keeping true to the tendency of my favorite earthworks artists who go into nature and play with the materials at hand to create the work. By implementing this process within computer generated graphics I am able to convey concepts not possible within a completely natural, and somewhat limited environment.
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