Friday 3 February 2017

Outdoor Culture Creativity and Affect - Spencer's Lecture

Within this lecture we started to talk about the subject topic of Outdoor Culture Creativity and Affect. The first part that we looked at within this lecture was a video known as the dream of the 90’s is alive in Portland which is about the Portlandia spirit of the 90's. It started off in the Los Angeles area about a guy who had recently come back from a trip in Portland, where he started to talk to woman about his experiences and how the 90's era still exists which is located in Portland. I found that this video was interesting but slightly weird as well.



We then moved onto to watch the same video, however it was about the same story but the place in Portland had a special place that lived in an era in the 1890's. I found the video very strange and interesting.

               

Reference - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_HGqPGp9iY

There is a recent (re)turn to concern with nature in Graphic Design. There is a point of historical contact, but there is something that keeps pushing against.We firstly looked at NeuBau First 
(Gandl, 2014) - which is a catalogue where we looked at different layouts of the publication that showed us the different art forms of trees. from photography to Illustrations and Vector Illustrations (graphic). It is intended to be produce to authentic designs, within the catalogue design. Where in which you find the trees are more in the urban areas. High contrast texture photographs such as Bark, simulated surfaces. Trying to show wildlife through digital work. The NeuBau First Catalogue is a collection of detailed silhouettes of trees in urban areas and photography, and separate tree sculptures. 

Within the publication there are four different categories of imagery which are:
- Naturalistic Objective photography
- Vectorised and digitalised imagery
- Urban scenes with naturalistic elements (trees/bushes in pots on pavements)
- Textual details of natural forms (barks, etc.).

Some of the inspiration that was used to address the lack of architectural modelling - attention to naturalistic components and materials which provide architects a better catalogue to work with, by doing this Neubau has made the publication in a downloadable media.

The next one that we looked at was a publication and outcome called the Outsiders by Bowman, Ehmann and Klanten. Where we firstly looked at the front cover of the publication that displayed is someone that is standing on a cliff top that is wrapped in either a blanket or a duvet that has red hair. This makes sense of the publisher’s claim to an: occasional romantic or ironic work, it is a quotation of a image called Wanderer above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich, that is displayed and portrays a romantic setting, that has a story behind the painting and image, that is very interesting. We have a connection between this image and the publication which has been intended as a joke. The artificial hair is something that is very intense, and that stands out to the outdoors. We want to see life size version of the outdoors, that is pre-industrial. 

We then moved on to look at what is presented inside the book, which is more about camping technology and about different ranges of camping expeditions. It is all heavy conditioned as there is a guide involved. it is the functionality of camping and camping equipment design, more interesting about travel and people that like to camp. The book has been stylised, I found that this book was quite interesting as I may look into this book even further. 

We then moved onto looked at the publishers blurb and the design focuses of this book:
- Products 
- Brands
- Workshops 
- Organisations


Reference -



How these publications play the tension between the natural and the designed world. we started to look at a pastoral landscape which is a slightly different to romantic concerns. The pastoral is calm and so beauty but has a similar lifestyle, similar types of nature. It includes rural communities, it is a very ordered landscape. Where we were shown an example of a painting that has a rustic world that is about communities coming together and managed vision of nature which was Alvan Ficher in 1854. The outsider book has a new pastoral movement. It is a more conservative form of artwork. We then looked at a review about some of the pictures that we were shown about the ‘Picturesque’ that was fostered by William Gilpin at the end of the 18th century. He urged everyone not just artists to go out into the nature such as the cotswolds and the lake country to look at different scenes that reminded people about the examples of paintings like Claude Lorraine. The interest in the sublime begins to grow out of people’s accounts of the pass. 

We then looked again at the Caspar David Friedrich piece that has a reaction to the neo-classical reason/rationality and has a supernatural account of vision. It is a very expressive, spontaneous and not controlled piece of design work. We some times get photographer that are interested in urban cities and the urban landscapes, like the European countries that the nature is kept in a unkept way. The opposite to east European countries is that they are more romantic and let go. We then looked at arts and craft movement, which was between 1880 to 1914. Where we looked at the artist William Morris and Ruskin where they talked about the quality of life and we then talked about the IKEA advert and chucking out the chintz, IKEA advert in 1990’s. Its all about female liberation. The store IKEA has reformed the british culture and homes over the years. There all natural materials.


I found that this session was very interesting and i'm looking forward to the next lesson to look into this topic even more. Within next session we will briefly look at the language and affect. 

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