Cinder Block support structure 8/25/2010

Isn't it beautiful? A Sunday newspaper and a roll of masking tape. You can even stop to read the Peanuts comic. To think that this flimsy paper could support a heavy cinder block is outrageous! Of course that's what I thought before i even began trying.

After sitting for a few minutes, I said to myself, just go with the flow. So this is the beginning of my, go with the flow moment. Needless to say this piece isn't holding up anything anytime soon.

This marvelous triangular prism shape is starting to look good. My physics class from a year ago kicked in and I began to realize i needed something thick and sturdy, but was level so it would hold the block balanced. An unbalanced block is a dropped block, and also a fail.

This piece right here, is what i thought to be the final product. How horribly wrong I was...

Since the piece before didn't hold, maybe I needed more support on the bottom? I bent the bottoms to make more surface area to stabilize on, yet this also was unsuccessful. I was determined though.

It's a miracle! It stands! Even though its half it's height. Taking the bottoms off where the joints were bending, gave it more stabilization. And voila, it holds!

I even decided to give it some sprucing. It has to look good for its debut.

Gestalt Lecture 8/27/2010

2D

When someone give you the word composition and asks to define it, you think, " Oh, that's so simple." But breaking down the word composition is so much more than just its meaning.

The basic breakdown of a composition is

-Point

-Line

-Shape

-Hue

-Texture

-Space

-Value

Without realizing, everything is a composition of these basic elements. Like in ROTC, we start from the smallest element, the individual, and build up to squads(lines), platoons(shapes), companies, then battalions(value). Since composition applies to everything, it applies even to music. Hence our activity for the day. I have to say it was pretty entertaining. I didn't think that so many words could be expressed using mere sounds. A stomp on the ground of a snap of someones fingers could compose many different meanings which made the activity really interesting to decipher.

Through our lives, we quickly begin experiencing every sight, and our brains being the amazing organ they are, respond to what we see and learn from it, saying, "OK you now know that what makes this object and this object is a chair", for example. Our brains start short-cutting to solve what we see in front of us. The first time I heard this, it boggled my mind to look at things and instantly recognize what they were, but when i really looked closer, you could see all the elements that object was made from.

It's normal for someone to see "The Whole" as opposed to different elements. We learned about Gestalt, which means in relative terms that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Seems so simple eh?

With Gestalt there are four aspects...

-Closure

-Continuance

-Proximity

-Similarity

We went over quick examples of each and how the mind groups things together and 'guesses' on how things interact with each other. If anything is thrown off balance or is in a way weird to our mind, we try and fix it automatically or notice it on the spot.

Oooh am I excited for the homework. 40 sketches based off the aspects of Gestalt with black dots. Thinking about the different ways i could draw these, the project starts to become interesting and I can't wait.

3D

In the later part of today, we examined shapes and describing their characteristics based off looks. no experience or meaning disrupt our views of whatever form he had in his hand. Form is a part of composition and the sum total of physical attributes. Funny how they go hand in hand. 


First we examined a leafy branch of a plant. Acting like aliens on a new planet or a newborn that could talk and think appropriately ( i like the alien idea better ), we examined the branch, a.k.a form, in Mr. Davenport's hand. All of the physical characteristics we came up with combined together to create this form, like how elements form to create composition.


Using our new found skill at analyzing a form, our project is to examine an organic shape given to us very thoroughly then eventually create is out of cardboard, which I'm extremely excited about!