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Dan Phillips, repurposes materials in order to create entire homes or 70-80% recycled products. Things that most people see as trash, he sees as a usable resources that he can feature in a home project he uses. He goes to trash heaps and recycling plants, to get the things they are ready to throw away or burn in order to use them and repurpose them. We see things as useless once they are broken or twiddled down to the scrapped pieces. He finds a way to be creative and give a purpose to the purposeless. Using fence handles as door locks, scrap wood to create a tub, tree branches to make a porch lining, beer caps to create a mosaic and all for the purpose of reusing them. He could go out and buy all new things, but why would he spend more money than necessary when he could just use something and make it into what he needs.

We often times see the warped objects as things we can no longer use, he showcases them and makes them beautiful. Like Dan stated, most people would take the whole window out and replace for one cracked window pane. It bothers people when thing aren’t proportional and perfectly patterned, when if we changed our perception and cracked all of them it wouldn’t seem so different that they weren’t suppose to be that way at all.

Dan Phillips, along with being economically smart and creative is boldly challenging the norm, not concerned with how people perceive his work. He is reusing the “ugly, old, and broken” and making into something beautiful again!

How people choose to communicate with each other basically defines the type of person they are. Whether they will be the type to captivate peoples attention and imagination to become unforgettable with their method of communication or just looked past and forgotten. Over centuries of communication we have seen media evolve from spoken word, to song, to print, to radio, television, internet.

Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase, “Medium is the Message”. Influencing many types of media. The medium in which we choose to communicate holds the same value if not more than the actual message itself. The medium chosen to communicate holds much of the same meaning as the message itself, due to the fact that it is meant to capture the attention of the audience and keep them entertained long enough to retain the message. While many people seem to grasp the general point of this, the deeper truth is often missed or misinterpreted. In order to get to this deeper meaning of the media, exploring the general concept first may be necessary.

 

The images I chose relate to Gestalt through several of the properties presented to us. Grouping, repetition and proximity, line were the most commonly used in my own work. My inspiration for this project came when I noticed a rather direct correlation between my art and the pictures I was photographing. I draw tattoos with clean perfect outlines and a lot of angular objects, while going back and looking at the photos I noticed a lot of clean line outlines and angular shaped objects which was interesting and intriguing to me.

When I started shooting I really tried to primarily focus on artificial light and how that would effect the objects i was shooting, to shoot without a flash and let street lamps, spot lights, or even Christmas lights in all five images to help showcase the content of the photo better. Therefore, once I had my key concept, I incorporated the Gestalt properties which became easier once I knew what to look for. Repetition is very prominent in photographs two, three, and four through repetitive objects and lines. Grouping comes into play as well in a few of the photos and is almost directly correlated with containment. Grouping is found in photos three and five.

Overall, I thought of Gestalt as the basic guidelines someone should follow to make a good photograph. These guidelines can be combined with other properties or used on their own, depending on what the photographer is trying to accomplish. I have never done any sort of photography before, through this assignment I’ve certainly gained a better understanding of the Gestalt principles and photography itself!

Where Does Creativity Come From:

According to Amy Tan no one really knows where creativity comes from, some say it comes from spasms in the temporal lobe or some other sort of neurological explanation. Amy Tan views creativity as an inability to repress ones feelings and inability to find a real meaning in a process. I do believe this holds true, especially when watching the Dan Brackage video. Trying to understand a meaning or a message is kind of discomforting but rather letting it inspire you and letting it invoke a response may be its purpose all together. Amy stated that people obtain skills, but some may not have obtained the skills that enable creativity, some may not understand or respond to art, music like SPOON, or videos how others would. Creativity comes from experience, what people are exposed too and how they are conditioned to respond. It stems from ones own ambiguity about what should be done about something and what actually should be done. There is no real clear answer if where creativity is from or who gets more, how they get It and how someone doesn’t have it, the uncertainty in it is what draws people to want to know more about it and the things that inspire them to be creative at all.

Kenya Hara in “what is design?” proposed the question, what exactly is design. In the 21st century people have fallen victim to the wide progressive spread of technology. Technology has changed the structure of the world, leaving victims with only the aesthetic values that have accumulated in the world. According to Hara, design is not self expression but instead it is derived from society. The whole purpose of design is rooted in the process of discovering a problem shared by many people and trying to solve the problem. Most people understand the solution and the process to reach the solution begins by seeing the problem from the designers perspective. Design is infatuation and intriguing to most due to the process it involves and the creative inspiration needed in order to produce. Integration of design in common day propaganda and advertising as affected product consumption and economic competition. Having style has become common place in advertising and sales, whatever is the most appealing and effective is what buyers will consume. Along with being a recreational activity, design is architecturally important, economically significant, and always evolving and changing to adapt.

 

 

Daniel Pink stated in the excerpt that he believes American should continue to control the stakes in the global economy. He stated that they must evolve to compete with global competitors and dominate. Throughout the agricultural, industrial, informative, and conceptual age we moved from a economy “built on peoples backs, to an economy built from peoples left brains” When people didn’t have to worry about anything but working it wasn’t very complicated. As North America, Western Europe, Australia, and Japan are evolving right brained thinkers are gaining social and economic primacy. Now in the conceptual age both left and right brain must work together, to create an entire new mindset IN order to truly develop this mindset, a high touch high concept outlook must be established. In order to implement this mindset and style, they must develop six skills including design, story, sympathy, empathy, play, and meaning. Once this mindset is developed, Americans will be able to continue dominating the global market and strengthen the global economy in regards to its global competitors.

 

Vilem Flusser stated in The Photograph expert that naïve observes of photography are prominent in observing photography very basically, they choose to see is as life and do not allow themselves to see the philosophy in photography. Naïve observers hold that black and white states of things are purely theoretical, they do not ever truly exist. They do though as images of concepts that belong to a theory of optics. Colored photography is true and evident in elements of photography, it represents transcoded concepts that are reflected from the world onto the surface. Naïve observers would agree to being decanted by colored photographs which makes them necessary to decode and identify true relevance and significance.  Photography is not only about dealing with specific aspects and technicalities regarding the images. Photographs are concepts encoded as states of things, regarding photographers concepts like those that are programed into a camera. The camera and the photographer must both rely on each other to relay a message and accomplish a goal.

 

 

Visual Studies:
1.My greatest strengths in ______ include: Creativity, positivity
2.For greater success in this course, I need to: Stay on top of my blog assignments

Algebra:
1.My greatest strengths in ______ include: Problem solving
2.For greater success in this course, I need to: Read to book and use it with assignments

Speech:
1.My greatest strengths in ______ include: Confidence, comfort in front of people
2.For greater success in this course, I need to: Write drafts better

American Experience:
1.My greatest strengths in ______ include: Note taking
2.For greater success in this course, I need to: Write better papers

Drawing:
1.My greatest strengths in _____ include: Creativity, passion
2.For greater success in this course, I need to: Be more alert and follow instructions

Computer skills:
1.My computer skills include: I am not very good with the computer, I can type fast
2.I still need to learn: How to use certain programs

Research & writing skills:
1.My greatest strengths as a researcher/writer include: I use a lot of different sources.
2.I need to work on these aspects of research and writing: Just writing all together
3.I learn best & accomplish most when: I feel like I’m in control of the situation

ACTION PLAN
Visual Studies:
Do blg post.
Stay on track with assignments.
Bring supplies necessary.
Be better with the computer.