The Corner

On collecting Primary Research for my Sense of Place project, I came across a new bar in town that I thought was not only visually interesting but also intriguing to the point where I had to go in and take a look around. When you arrive at The Corner, you are presented with nothing but a small door which leads you to an upstairs space which has been made into something truly modern, yet traditional. The Corner is a Mallinsons Taphouse, Mallinsons being based down in Lockwood, a small area just outside of Huddersfield town centre, and the pub being situated in the centre of town.

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 This image shows the view from the upstairs window out onto Market Walk, famously known by the locals as Wappy Nick. 

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This image shows the bar from a slightly different angle, it shows off all different aspects of the bar whilst the viewers eye is mainly directed to the light in the corner of the image but because of how it is focused we can tell that the main priority is the pumps. 

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This is one of my favourite images which I have taken. The boards are taken off and rewritten every time a new product is put onto the pumps. I like the proportion of sign which is evident on the picture because it enables the viewer to know exactly where to look. 

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These are the remainder of the images which I took during the visit.

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After Effects Workshop

During todays session we developed our After Effects skills from the previous session. We were told to come to the session with pre-made slides which we were to add to music. We learnt how to make fade effects through the slides and how to add key points within the timeline in order to know when to change the image or behind to develop the image with either an effect or a motion. We were instructed on what to do by steps which Sara had previously prepared. I will admit that my current slides need developing and making much simpler because I haver over complicated them and added too much writing. Below is my current trailer for Cinderella.



Book Trailer from Jessica Mountford on Vimeo.

Type

During todays lecture we learnt about type. A font is the physical embodiment of a collection of letters, numbers and symbols and when referring to the design of the piece as a whole it is called a typeface.
We looked at Jan Tschichold's book called the New Typography, it was a modernist approach to 1920-1930s type design. He combined elements from Bauhaus and Sovien movement in Russia into his book which made it a visually impressive piece.

• asymmetric balance of elements
• utilisation of white space
• san serif typography
• advocated lower case letters
• supported the typo photo approach 
• content was designed by hierarchy

We also looked at a range of other artists including Herbert Bayer, James Felci, Theo H Ballmer, Walter Dexel, Max Burchartz, Joseph Muller Brockmann, Stanley Morison, Herbert Spencer and Eduard Hoffman. Saul Bass was another artist we looked at, he looked at the consecration of the movie credit sequence as a design object, he defined design as being "thinking made visible".

Kinetic Type is type that moves and we see it every day in digital adverts.
Conceptual type.

Location Drawing - Second Session

Today we met up with John again for our location drawing session in the Process and Production module. Instead of going out into Huddersfield town we decided to locate ourselves in three different places within the Creative Arts Building at the University. Our group started in the Studio where we were able to draw live images of the outside world through the large windows. Unfortunately drawing isn't my strong point so i chose to just draw random parts of the outside without much consideration for composition or layout. I enjoyed drawing the spire which is located in the middle of the piece and i liked trying to draw some type which was located on the ground floor. Below are images of my work and the whole groups work.

One True Sentence

During this seminar we got the chance to practice our essay writing skills. We were presented with a quote from Ernest Hemingley which said "Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know."
From this we were presented with a picture of a bear sat on a chair and we had to write one true sentence, followed by the same sentence but with different parts of added detail. My final sentence was:
The bear was a hazy hue of brown, with sharp claws and its pink tongue sticking out of its mouth. It was sat on an old garden chair with stained arm rests. The door slowly opened behind him. He hadn't eaten all day.

From this exercise we then moved onto pieces which we had collected and we applied the same technique to the pieces. My final sentence was:
The girl wears a scarf with the Stussy logo and style printed all over it, along with an array of chains. Therefore minimalist culture is present. Her makeup is minimal and slightly smudged in order to be in keeping with her current style.

This technique has allowed me to understand how to start off with something quite simple, and then make it into a short paragraph with a great amount of detail about something. I found this seminar incredibly useful.

Triangle, Circle, Square - A Psychological Test

In 1923 Wassily Kandinsky conducted a questionnaire at the Bauhaus to get students and teachers to fill in a triangle, circle and square with the primary colours. He hoped to discover a universal correspondence between form and colour, embodied in the equation: blue=circle, red=square and yellow=triangle.

I conducted my own experiment with my flat mates and these were the responses:

The reasons behind the choices:

1) "This is the most eligible choice and i think it is right, I'm not really into art but this looks right to me"

2) "This is definitely the right colours, the primary colours have to go in order and these are the colours that I would associate with the shapes"

3) "I'm not too sure, but I think that these colours are right"

Surrealism and The Uncanny Valley

The Revolution movement was in the 1920s, it involved breaking away from realism and escaping the harshness of reality. This meant that various artists reform the world in their own way. They controlled from reason, therefore meaning that they were breaking away from the normality.

• Salvador Dali was a large influence and a major contributor to surrealism. He combined the unusual juxtaposition of objects on the canvas. He also worked with Disney to create a surrealist aesthetic. For instance, Dumbo is a classic disney film which Dali had input into, it includes pink elephants which could be considered dark and almost trippy, there are various weird combinations and metamorphisms.
• Andre Breton-Poet was also another contributor to this movement, his key ideas was 'long live the revolution' therefore he was focusing on transforming the world. 
• Alphabet - Jindrich Heisher - surrealism has intertwined with typography
• Andre Masson - automatic drawing: allowing mistakes the be made, and they're all automatic, manifesto "pure psychic"
• Rene Magritte - The False Mirror (1928) - questioning how accurate the eyes truly are
• Remedios Varo - his collage demonstrates the interesting relationships between juxtaposition
• Max Ernst - thinking about the process that is necessary in order to execute juxtaposition

All surrealists had their own manifesto and their own way of presenting the movement.
The Surrealist Revolution Magazine (1924-1929)
In the 1960s surrealism hit other countries.
In many surrealist pieces eyes are used as part of the piece, and eyes are considered a metaphor of new ways of seeing the world.

'The Uncanny' was coined by Sigmund Freud in 1919, it means being attracted to something but being disturbed at the same time. Freud - uncanny meaning opposition rather than likeliness.
Winkler and Noah, Liera (2006) - weird, none human whilst being unrealistic but realistic at the same time.
The Shining (1980) uncanny likeness, a likeness thats strange and incomplete.
Uncanny Vally - visual representation of a theory (1970)
Final Fantasy - plummets into uncanny valley and destroyed the illusion of reality.