This week was interesting.

After exploring the local park in my community, I decided that I’d end up making a book that follows the growth of a plant through the stitching together of various outdoor textures and the various textures of playground equipment.

I had the idea when I began to cut through the book. It started with me cutting out a raindrop, which then evolved through further cuts into the idea of the moon, sunlight, a flower, a flower with leaves, then multiple flowers.

It’s obviously a work in progress, but it gave me a general idea of what I want to do. I think the important feature is going to be how i incorporate illustrations and collage into the area surrounding those cuts, and the mood those elements create. I want the end product to be meaningful, and while I couldn’t put in a gate fold, I was thinking that maybe a gate fold would allow for a more interesting image of a flower sprouting out from the spine of the book.

Regardless, it was a good opportunity to get my ideas down onto the page, and just exploring where and how to cut into each page was a very interesting and eye-opening experience. I did a lot of work with negative space, and it became difficult to work within those parameters and still communicate something abstract. However, it still managed to create a general example, and I’m sure it will only improve as I continue to expand my ideas along with my library of usable images.

Hopefully, the final product will represent what I envision. Even if it evolves, I think that the whole book making process has made my ideas a lot more open, at least in terms of organization and delivery.

Christopher Nolan’s Memento, is a film that relies on a unique storytelling element; its entire sequencing is backwards. Memento begins with Leonard, a man with short term memory loss and a need to avenge the murder of his wife, developing a photo of a dead man in reverse. From that scene onward, the film is presented in reverse order, with the individual scenes being shown normally rather than in reverse. This left me wondering what was going on, and while it was a little disorienting, it was interesting to try and piece together the actual events and decipher what was happening to Leonard.

The film itself is a very tangled web, the flow of the story changing around halfway through, proceeding in a chronological order to end at the big jaw-dropping conclusion, which ultimately reveals the truth about Leonard’s condition and his life. The details that are presented during Memento are extremely crucial to understanding the film’s plot, and the non-chronological flow of the film demands that the viewer pay attention to the events that take place. From my own perspective, the film was rather immersive, and drew me in with the uncertainty of what was real or fabricated by another character, especially with the introduction of Natalie, who turns out to play a major role by manipulating Leonard through the first half of the film (a fact not realized until the end of the film).

The style of Memento is unique, but the twists are a key feature in Nolan’s own style, given that Nolan also created the film Inception, which prides itself on its uncertainties. I think that I’m most interested in the fact that he used chronological order in the end, as well as flashbacks, to clear up all the loose ends. It was especially interesting how in certain areas of the film, there seems to be an overarching conversation between Leonard and someone on a telephone, as it adds to the mystery while providing information about Leonard.

When I look at Memento, it seems like a film that revolutionized the film industry. Honestly, I’ve never seen anything like it, and I believe that in art, sequence and presentation are the two most important methods of controlling how the viewer experiences someone’s creation. If Memento was shown in chronological order, it might’ve had a predictable outcome, or may have been less intriguing. By controlling the work and how others perceived its flow and sequence, Nolan created a whole new sense of uncertainty, and used it to blindside the audience.

As the third week of collaging ends, I’ve really gotten into the material. I’ve dared myself to try new things, and I’ve thrown caution to the wind a few times in an attempt to try new things. Overall, while it has been a struggle to break away from the formal and lean into the suggestive and abstract, I’ve worked diligently to try and capture those very concepts.

This time around, I managed to incorporate some items into my collages, as well as make some very interesting observations about my own style and creative mindset.

For the first collage, I was determined to create something that could represent something through suggestions and minimal context, yet remain a jumbled assortment of random images. That came out in the form of the above collage, and took root in an experience I had at the Lucky Robot. I decided to make a sushi plate, but I wanted concepts to remain collage-like and relatively abstract. While it is the most formal out of all of my collages, it also remains abstract through the mere suggestion of form, being that it still requires thought to even understand what is depicted. The way the digital balanced with the analog was interesting, and was harmonious both in composition and content. I used the chopstick and string to give the image a three-dimensional depth, and I must say it was quite effective. I really like the way it turned out, even if it does stand on the outskirts of abstractivity.

The second collage, to put it lightly, was quite messy. I like the way it turned out, as it’s definitely more abstract than the first one, but retains a unique composition, filled with not only circles but a variety of shapes and patterns. I think that this collage was the most difficult, as it mainly presented itself as I worked on it, while the other did the same, but at least started with a general concept/theme. This collage was definitely the most experimental, by far, and remains my least favorite of the two, only because I now see it as cluttered, even though it does have some redeeming qualities. I’ve incorporated several scans within the image, as well as a soda can and some random bits of metal/coin that I picked up off the street. Needless to say, it uses the items better, but looses something in it’s composition.

Overall, each collage has pros and cons, and I’m not completely content with either. Aesthetics aside, I think they are both interesting concepts and bring something new to the table, but they also each took a considerable amount of thought and effort to end up where they are. I think that that same effort is evident in the artwork, and that both pieces represent two distinct concepts within my own definition of collage; the first collage is clean and calculated, while the second is much more liberal.

My scavenged items:

The analog collages were pretty difficult, especially since I had no idea what I was doing. However, with some reassurance from our last critique, I figured I knew what I was doing, more or less, and I needed to explore things a bit further.

As far as the digital collages went, I feel there was definitely a better of the two. Both collages were centered around the principle of a sort of leading line or focal point within the image, and then expanded into the themes of color and shape, along with some interesting experimental features.

The first collage was mostly green/blue, and I tried to keep things as monochromatic as possible, even playing with the saturation of the images. I started with the circle cut out from one of my shots of the river around SoCo, then I just took samples of other textures and patterns and made the various elements conform to a general path, as all of the objects head towards the top-left and converge. I made a dotted line from one sample, and used it to divide multiple elements, which I figured was a creative way to go about creating some kind of vague symmetry. For the most part, I tried to keep everything as vague and abstract as possible; rather than leaving an object whole, I manipulated it, or cut it down further.

I think my favorite part about that collage was the hand and the typography element. At one point, I took a random hand off of the Mr. Rogers mural, and slapped it into the focal point. I think it gave the piece a new meaning, as everything seemed to stem from it. In addition, I took a letter A and cut it in half, then made a copy and inverted it, creating the layered/3D look that the letter has in the collage.

Overall, I think it kind of became a visual representation of life, moreso a breath of life than the act of living.

The second collage was not my favorite, and was a little disjointed, in my opinion. The overall theme was orange hues, and I played with the idea of a camera lens, so that’s sort of how I structured the circles in their groups, and why some are more focused than others. Even looking at it now, I still feel like it’s missing something, I’m just not sure what.

As an experiment, I cut out four diagonal lines from the entirety of the collage, suggesting lines that lead to a specific vanishing point. They’re faintly suggested, so it was just something I wanted to put it and see how it turned out.

I think both collages were pretty well-rounded, and I used some cool principles, but the second one needs work. I’m pretty sure that both collages managed to capture a pretty good amount of Austin’s “weird factor”, and I think they each served SoCo justice in their own unique and weird way. Overall, they are more abstract and a definite improvement from the analog collages.