ESHER IDEAS
August 18, 2008 9:53 AM Subscribe
I need IDEAS!! - Working on a piece/pieces inspired by Escher and need your help!!! PLEASE READ
The graphic works of Escher have many layers of depth with the influences of psychology, mathematics and technique which have made a major impact in design as we know it today. For school, I am working on a project that is influenced by Escher. I already wrote the paper and now I need a good original piece to go along with it.
The piece is for my portfolio, so I really want it to be strong. I think I could have chosen the obvious route and done some sort of Tessellation or I could have worked with Photoshop and altered some pics, to make my own escher inspired master piece. But I think maybe that is too literal. What I want to try to concentrate on is the Duality in his work. So not so much his work, but really what the work does when you look at it.
I feel like when I look at escher's work it is posing a question. Whether you are trying to figure out what is up/down, good/evil, concave/convex. The viewer is captured by the question, and has to seek out the answer. And the answer is always virtual...their is no correct answer, it is just forcing you to think.
So ideas! - I need them, I started taking some photos around the city, to see if I could capture Duality, but it's pretty hard to find obvious paradoxes within the city, while having only limited time.
Maybe I'm going about this the wrong way. I need help, advice, suggestions.....everything. I don't have to work with photography, I can make an illustration, a poster, a book, anything.....My first Idea was a photobook, with a few quotes in it. But now I am ready to explore anything (Graphic Design related), I am just limited on time. PLEASE HELP!
The graphic works of Escher have many layers of depth with the influences of psychology, mathematics and technique which have made a major impact in design as we know it today. For school, I am working on a project that is influenced by Escher. I already wrote the paper and now I need a good original piece to go along with it.
The piece is for my portfolio, so I really want it to be strong. I think I could have chosen the obvious route and done some sort of Tessellation or I could have worked with Photoshop and altered some pics, to make my own escher inspired master piece. But I think maybe that is too literal. What I want to try to concentrate on is the Duality in his work. So not so much his work, but really what the work does when you look at it.
I feel like when I look at escher's work it is posing a question. Whether you are trying to figure out what is up/down, good/evil, concave/convex. The viewer is captured by the question, and has to seek out the answer. And the answer is always virtual...their is no correct answer, it is just forcing you to think.
So ideas! - I need them, I started taking some photos around the city, to see if I could capture Duality, but it's pretty hard to find obvious paradoxes within the city, while having only limited time.
Maybe I'm going about this the wrong way. I need help, advice, suggestions.....everything. I don't have to work with photography, I can make an illustration, a poster, a book, anything.....My first Idea was a photobook, with a few quotes in it. But now I am ready to explore anything (Graphic Design related), I am just limited on time. PLEASE HELP!
You mention the city; how about something playing with the positive/negative space created by buildings and sky?
posted by gyusan at 10:33 AM on August 18, 2008
posted by gyusan at 10:33 AM on August 18, 2008
The virtuality of modern 3d video games (which can be user-edited) is a medium I used for some Escher inspired stuff. For example, since you can use a video game to build a structure like Relativity, and you can thus move around it in first person, then depending on how you decide to define the physics, the lack of a consistent up/down in the space creates navigation challenges and opportunities, a slightly different dimension to the orientation challenge that the print presents to a viewer.
posted by -harlequin- at 10:52 AM on August 18, 2008
posted by -harlequin- at 10:52 AM on August 18, 2008
Perhaps a mirror (or video camera) installation - two "mirrors" side by side, where one shows your reflection as you would see in a mirror (ie mirrored), and the other is a mirror image of that (ie no-longer mirrored - what a person looking at you would see, or what you would see if watching yourself on security cam).
Which reflection is "correct"?
posted by -harlequin- at 11:30 AM on August 18, 2008
Which reflection is "correct"?
posted by -harlequin- at 11:30 AM on August 18, 2008
Relationship between rhthyms and patterns in Escher and in different musical forms, e.g., fugues.
posted by carmicha at 11:31 AM on August 18, 2008
posted by carmicha at 11:31 AM on August 18, 2008
So this project is due... tomorrow?
You mention the city; how about something playing with the positive/negative space created by buildings and sky?
Excellent idea. Assuming you don't have one night to finish your assignment: circle your city taking as many pictures of the skyline as possible (assuming you are in a city with an exciting skyline and have access to a car) from different distances and different vantage points capturing as many pictures as possible. Some frame a few buildings and the sky, some deal with the entire city and sky. Keep the ground plane a constant in the middle of your frame. So once you have all of your pictures go in to Photoshop or Illustrator and 2 tone your pictures, one color is the solid (ground and built environment) and the other is void (sky) I would go for quanitity so you get a large variety to study. Flip them upside down and vertical. Carefully crop your photos so there is a level of interest and abstraction to the study.
Hell, if you are super lazy just google image search city skylines and do the same.
posted by comatose at 12:42 PM on August 18, 2008
You mention the city; how about something playing with the positive/negative space created by buildings and sky?
Excellent idea. Assuming you don't have one night to finish your assignment: circle your city taking as many pictures of the skyline as possible (assuming you are in a city with an exciting skyline and have access to a car) from different distances and different vantage points capturing as many pictures as possible. Some frame a few buildings and the sky, some deal with the entire city and sky. Keep the ground plane a constant in the middle of your frame. So once you have all of your pictures go in to Photoshop or Illustrator and 2 tone your pictures, one color is the solid (ground and built environment) and the other is void (sky) I would go for quanitity so you get a large variety to study. Flip them upside down and vertical. Carefully crop your photos so there is a level of interest and abstraction to the study.
Hell, if you are super lazy just google image search city skylines and do the same.
posted by comatose at 12:42 PM on August 18, 2008
This thread is closed to new comments.
...
it's pretty hard to find obvious paradoxes within the city, while having only limited time
In my opinion the big strength of Escher's work is the congnitive dissonance inherent in it, which I think might be difficult when taking straight-forward photographs of the real world.
Have you considered using Photoshop, but only to make minor tweaks to an image, rather than something resembling one of Escher's intricate works? Simple techniques such as removing the text from signs can make a normal photo seem odd and ambiguous.
posted by burnmp3s at 10:20 AM on August 18, 2008