DIGITAL COLLAGETitle: What's Next?
Size: 60.96 x 91.44 cm Medium: digital manipulation Completion: November 2021 Exhibition TextMy self-reflective digital collage explores both the compository and thematic elements of the works of Fernand Leger and Salvador Dali as well as a reflection of who I am as a person. While developing skills in digital manipulation through my experimentation with Photoshop, I explore the struggles I face in my academic and normal life. My piece explores the struggles of the feelings of becoming automated with the persistence of time.
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Self Reflective Essay |
For as long as I can remember, I have always striven to become the most improved version of myself, especially academically. Even currently, I still hold myself to the standards of strongly succeeding in academics and in aspects related to academic settings. However, when asked to reflect on my struggles, I realize how absorbed I have become in meeting the academic expectations that have been set for me as well as expectations in my own life outside of academic settings. Although I experience struggles in attempting to meet expectations others set for me in life, I mainly experience difficulty in those set for me in my academics. As a student, I have always dedicated my utmost time and focus on my assignments, however as the years have gone by, the difficulty of this work has constantly increased. Aside from academics, the expectations set for me by my own self and by others is also added to my struggles of feeling like I must meet all of the expectations set for me. As I have become so immersed in attempting to meet all of these expectations, I feel I have almost become less human. As I continuously work to meet the standards others impose on me, I feel as if I am given work or a task and then constantly evaluated. Especially with the magnitude of my academic work, these evaluations of myself and amount of work seemingly have no end. The concept of time also relates to this feeling, as I often think that I never have enough time in the day to complete everything I want to attain. As time continues, this gets worse because I am piled with more expectations to meet and I feel that time is slipping away from me. Because meeting these expectations is not a recent struggle, I also have observed that in the small periods that I am not met with an abundance of work, I almost feel lost, as if I do not have a purpose when I am not busy. Due to these feelings, I have concluded that I feel mechanical in my actions, similar to a robot. This is due to the fact that I am given expectations to meet and constantly evaluated, and then the process repeats. With my feelings of being lost, I also relate this to feeling as if I am programmed to complete tasks, such as an automated being.
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Inspiration |
As I was exploring my feelings of becoming robot-like when working to achieve academic goals and other expectations in life, I began to think of the ways I could portray myself in my collage. As I observed my reflections of feeling dehumanized at times, I wanted to examine art pieces dealing with concepts of industrialization and mechanical parts.
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With these intentions in mind, I observed the oil painting Soldiers Playing Cards by Fernand Leger. Recalling his observations of machines and experiences building trenches in World War I, Leger depicts a group of soldiers playing cards, however the soldiers are broken down into basic forms. The basic shapes of circles, rectangles, and squares are given volume to create the implied forms constituting the bodies of the soldiers. With this use of cubism along with cylindrical forms, Leger illustrates soldiers as robotic beings made up entirely of mechanical forms.
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Although Leger's intentions for depicting the soldiers as industrialized non-human characters emanates from his emphasis of the role in machinery in World War I, I was inspired by his concept of reducing the soldiers to mechanical pieces through cubism. This concept closely aligns with my struggle of feeling reduced as a person to a being that is made solely to complete work or meet expectations made for myself. After observing this piece, I started to formulate the idea to reduce my picture to small pieces of mechanical equipment in a similar sense to Leger in my digital collage.
Another concept that I explored through my own self reflection was the concept of time and how I feel regarding the passing of time. Another artist I observed was Salvador Dali and his piece The Persistence of Memory. |
In his piece, Dali depicts a vast and spacious landscape in a surrealist approach with melting clocks. With Dali's manipulation of seemingly ordinary objects, he constitutes confusion and the questioning of reality. With the usual typically hard texture of clocks, Dali's depiction of clocks with a flowing limp texture challenges the permanence of time. Although many forms in the piece are more abstract, the composition of the cliff in the background depicts a form of actual reality, being the coast of Dali's home.
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Similar to Dali's work, I aimed to include surrealism in my own digital collage with manipulated forms of clocks, however I also reached to maintain the realism in the image of myself. It was important that in my final piece, I was depicted as robotic to emphasize my feelings of being automated, however I also wanted to emphasize the contrast between this automation and the reality that I am human. With my inspiration from Dali's piece, I began to incorporate the forms of melting clocks into my plans for my collage to symbolize time.
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Planning |
In the first stage of my planning, I worked to highlight and outline the specific feelings and images I wanted to depict in my digital manipulation. Reflecting on my feelings towards academic success and validation and how this made me feel robot-like, I began sketching images that aligned with this concept. Sketching images of gears, cylindrical objects, clocks, and myself as a robot, I began to brainstorm the components that I wanted in my piece. By depicting myself as mechanical and drawing mechanical objects, I was able to begin exploring my theme of feeling like a robot due to the expectations set for me in an academic standpoint and in life. At this point in my planning, I explored editing clocks into my digital manipulation and mechanical parts to contribute to my composition in my digital image.
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Also in my planning, I examined the elements present in my inspiration pieces by Leger and Dali. When observing Leger's work with cubism and dividing components of his piece into small forms, I began drawing simple forms which I would want to include in my digital manipulation. As I began sketching different metal objects and shapes, I decided that my digital image would depict parts of my body being constituted from mechanical pieces. Similar to how Leger depicts the soldiers in his piece, I would illustrate part of my body as being made of robot-like mechanical pieces to demonstrate my theme of feeling automated when dealing with expectations and work.
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I also observed Dali's work and the melting clocks and sketched some ideas for how melting clocks could look in my digital collage. I decided that I wanted the melting clocks in my final work to better build my theme with the passing of time and time's effect on struggles in academics and in life. After creating a general idea of the elements I wanted to compose my piece, I produced a plan for my digital collage. In the sketch, my body is constituted of metal parts and additionally, melting clocks surround me. Although my body is made up of metal, I also wanted some parts of my body to remain unedited to emphasize a contrast between the metal and reality.
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Process |
Before entering Photoshop, my main goal was to find a picture of myself that would act as a starting point in my collage. When deciding which image to use, I observed spacial elements such as that the leftmost image did not include my whole body, which would limit the area for manipulation to create the robotic aspect of the piece. I was also more inclined of using the image on the right due to the vegetation in the background which would create a conceptual contrast between my robotic body and the idea of life and flourishing. Also, by using the rightmost image, a solid background is already present, eliminating my need to edit in another image for a background.
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After eliminating the background from each of the images with metal parts, I began to arrange the metal parts on top of the image of my body, so as to resemble the idea of being automated.
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When reflecting upon where I had planned to arrange the clocks in my piece, I decided that my theme would be more strongly conveyed if I had a clock melting off of my arm because the concept of time would be more closely related to my own self. Because my arm was not in a position to have a clock melting off of it, I decided to further my learning experience in Photoshop by experimenting with how to edit a separate picture of my arm into the image of my body.
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I developed skills in selecting different parts of an image and refining those selections to be abstracted from their image. Once I had edited my arm out of the image, I pasted my arm into the original image of me standing. Because my original arm was still present in the image, I developed arrangement skills by duplicating pieces of the surrounding brick and layering it over my original arm. I also refined my skills in color correction and values, as I adjusted the brightness and darkness of the orange values in the brick to correctly match the values of their new positions in the image as well as the values in the black of my sleeves.
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Once I had positioned my arm in my collage image to be propped upright, I continued to experiment with aspects of Photoshop. Incorporating elements of Dali's work with melting clocks, I explored the puppet warm tools of Photoshop. With this tool, I created pin points in the shape of the clock and dragged those points to my desired location, warping the image. A similar tool called liquefy was also available to use, however after experimenting with this tool, I decided that the puppet warp tool would create a more dramatic desired affect with more emphasis of the melting of the clocks.
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Contrasting from Leger's work, I wanted to look robotic but with the emphasis that I still was human. This concept, while contrasting from Leger's work, is similar to Dali's work with the inclusion of elements of reality. I felt my piece lacked unity because the metal elements did not appear to be smoothly integrated into the image of my body. To better create a more seamless look of the inclusion of the metal components of the piece, I experimented with the levels of opacity which resulted in the opacity levels being adjusted to a lower percentage. I also adjusted the levels of brightness and contrast in the metal pieces constituting my body, making the values in the metal darker with the additional lower opacity to manipulate the metal parts to appear more balanced on me. These adjustments allowed my digital piece to become more united.
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Critique |
Compare A similarity between Leger's work and mine is that the components of the art are two-dimensional. With Leger's work being an oil painting and my work being a digital collage, the appearance of dimension in both pieces is implied. In my work and Soldiers Playing Cards, the technique used to create implied form is similar. On the metal pieces contributing to the composition of both the bodies of the soldiers as well as mine, darker values are applied near the edges of the objects to create a highlight towards the center. In both my piece and that of Leger, the basic metal shapes presented in the works constitute the bodies of people. In both works, this composition of people made with metal parts explores the theme of analyzing the relationship between technology and automation with human life. This composition choice also depicts the individuals presented in the piece as non-human and robotic, emphasizing this relationship between automation and humans. |
Contrast
While my piece What's Next? is a digital manipulation, Fernand Leger's Soldiers Playing Cards is an oil painting. Due to this, the techniques implemented in Leger's work differ slightly from mine. While Leger applies color and implied form through the use of a paintbrush, I applied values and shapes to my piece through digital manipulation. Another contrast between my work and Leger's is the inclusion of realism in the work. Leger's painting is a cubist piece solely constituted from layered shapes with added values to create form, however my collage includes less abstract qualities as well. My digital manipulation differs in this way as I incorporated parts of the image of my own body to emphasize more realism along with the ideas of automation. My work also differs from Leger's in its use of color. While Leger incorporates various values of primary colors in his painting, I do not use those colors and instead apply different shades of black and white. |
Compare
A comparison between my piece What's Next? and Salvador Dali's The Persistence of Memory that can be observed is the similar tones of orange used in the works. In Dali's work, an orange tone composes the majority of the piece. Although more dull, a similar orange tone is also present in my digital collage in the bricks. My piece is also similar to Dali with the concept of melting clocks and the themes that accompany this concept. As Dali created the melting clocks to pose a statement about the meaning of time and the confusion surrounding this topic, I also implemented the use of melting clocks to embody similar ideas. The process of creating these melting clocks also involved methods of manipulation in Dali's work as well as my own. Although both works include elements of surrealism, both my piece and that of Leger also include elements of reality. In Dali's piece, the cliff that is observed in the background of the painting depicts the coast of Dali's home. This element of reality is also present in my piece, as the metal objects only contribute to a portion of my body. By incorporating elements of my body unedited, I implement elements of reality to emphasize the fact that I am human. |
Contrast
One contrast between my work and that of Dali is the medium used to complete the pieces. While Dali's The Persistence of Memory is oil on canvas, my piece What's Next is a digital manipulation. As the mediums differ, the methods used to apply color and manipulation vary. While Dali painted his manipulations of the clocks to appear them to be melting, I digitally manipulated the clocks in my piece to give the same effect. Another difference between Dali's work and mine is the contrast between the vibrancy of the hues used in each piece. While Dali's work contains bright and vibrant hues of yellow and orange, the same hues applied in my work are dull. My digital collage also does not apply many different hues such as in Dali's work and instead implements more tones of black and white. The work between my collage and Dali also differs in the inclusion of the decay. While Dali incorporates a dead tree into his work along with hoards of ants representing decay, these elements are not included in my work. Instead, my work incorporates elements of life with the inclusion of myself as well as the vegetation in the background. |
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Reflection |
As it was my first time using Photoshop, I gained useful experiences in photo-editing through this project. With my creation of the digital collage, I developed skills in photography, cropping images, using tools to select specific portions of images, and editing levels of brightness, contrast, and opacity. I also worked to refine certain skills such as color matching and using the computer. The skills that I have gained from these experiences will be useful for future projects as I will have a resource to help me plan. For example, with future paintings, I will be enabled to create an image of my ideas of what I envision to paint on Photoshop with my developed skills. Inspired by the works of Salvador Dali and Fernand Leger, I explore the feeling of being automated and robotic when struggling with expectations set through academics and in life. My work is connected to Dali, as the elements in my piece along with the concept of time though the melting clocks is explored. Also similar to Leger's work, I explore the dehumanization of individuals and emphasis of automation through elements of cubism. Although I gained many skills through the process of creating my digital collage, one of my greatest struggles in the project was learning how to navigate and use Photoshop effectively. While this was a challenge, I was able to learn more about the photo manipulation and editing process. In creating this project, I was able to explore a means of medium I have never used while also personally expressing myself through my findings.
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Connecting to the ACT |
Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause effect relationship between your inspiration and its effect on your artwork
I was inspired by the works of both Salvador Dali and Fernand Leger. Through my inspiration of Dali's work, I chose to manipulate images of clocks to incorporate into my piece. Dali's symbolism in his work also helped me to develop my theme concerning confusion regarding time. With Leger's work, I was inspired to use images of metal parts to compose my body and incorporate the idea of automating human beings. What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration? Both Leger and Dali incorporate intentional additions to their work to provoke thought. While Dali incorporates melting clocks into his piece to create confusion and questioning of time and reality, Leger incorporates cubism and implied form into his work to convey the theme of machinery and technology's affect on individuals. What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration? While some people may interpret robots and people represented as machines as negative, some individuals do not view it in this way. While the automation of living things may be view negatively, it is also possible to analyze this occurrence as the aesthetic of machine. What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research? When dealing with expectations in academics as well as in life, people are left feeling as if they are a robot and are being automated. The concept of time also contributes to this theme because as time passes, this issue worsens and leaves individuals confused. What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research? While reading my research, I concluded that art is one of the many ways that people are given opportunities to express themselves. Through art, different emotions and ideas are able to be communicated through color, texture, tones, values, brightness, and contrast. |
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Citations (MLA) |
“La Partie De Cartes, 1917.” Soldiers Playing Cards – Kröller-Müller Museum, https://krollermuller.nl/en/fernand-leger-soldiers-playing-cards.
“Salvador Dalí. the Persistence of Memory. 1931: Moma.” The Museum of Modern Art, https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79018. |