Author: Adeliya Aitpayeva

Reflecting Eyeo2012 lecture by Casey Reas

Casey Reas starts with the statement that nature constituted the chaos in the world, but after, order was introduced by God. I was surprised by such an idea, because in my worldview people are the ones causing chaos in neatly ordered nature. Learning on biology classes about different systems that existed in nature, like nutrient cycling, I was thinking about humans intervening in these structures and causing disorder. But, now, looking back to Reas’ statement, I feel like maybe it is God and humanity who decided to order all the processes in our ecosystem, so that it would be easier for us to live with them. Moreover, I started thinking about how exactly artists are maintaining order with their works. Don’t they question the initial order of things to break through it? I felt like art was always about the protest, but now I do think I was partly wrong. 

Looking at the artworks that experiment with total randomness in images, I really liked how the same patterns get transformed to different mediums and it adds to the idea of a chance and minimum control of future image (07:07 about process 18). In addition, I couldn’t fully understand what’s the optimum balance between total randomness and complete control, because some works used a little bit of randomness and mostly decision making, which gets us to the point that we can control the amount of randomness, and it is a contradictory statement at its core. 

I really liked the author’s throwback to the past interactions of artists with a chance. It reflected in me in a sense that previous generations were highly afraid of chaos or anarchy, which is why destruction of an order in artworks was considered a radical gesture. But, as previous generations, we did experience different wars and uncertainties, and I think what makes us different from them and what makes artists be more confident and open about using randomness in arts, it is a sense of freedom and being okay with not knowing everything. Before I didn’t really think about historical events being influential on appealing to order and chaos, but now I do. 

In the video, the quote of Richter: “Chance is always planned, but also very surprising” resonated with me because chance is needed to introduce something different and disruptive. 

Observing Mondrian’s work, I didn’t expect to understand that order actually does not limit emotion and spirit, even in total order there is a room for interpretation and imagination. Moreover, looking at different algorithms presented by Reas, an association with the game PacMan came to my mind, since it also employed balance between order and randomness.

Concept

When I first thought about what kind of recognizable features I would like to emphasize in my work, I chose 3 of them: curly hair, earrings and background.

In this portrait, I decided to solely focus on collaboration between 2D shapes and colors to bring simplistic, yet realistic picture of me.

My first task lied in creating an interesting background for portrait that would resemble my personality in some way. Walking through library, I stumbled upon one journal that was only focused on photographs of ocean and waves. It reminded me of calmness and solitude that I do value myself, so I implemented gradient of water on background.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Furthermore, I was confused on how I could illustrate curly hair in p5, but then I decided to choose two colors and use unfilled circles patterns to show the curls.

Working on facial features, I decided to choose style similar to emoji drawings. I worked with opacity and arc’s to deliver also very calm mood of the face.

At the right bottom corner I decided to add a small signature of letter A, as it is very symbolic letter in my life.

Highlight of some code that I’m particularly proud of

//setting background
  //first row
  strokeWeight(15);
  stroke(91,184,229,50)
  fill(93, 170, 233)
  rect(0,300,100,100)
  fill(90, 177, 231)
  rect(100,300,100,100)
    fill(91, 184, 229)
  rect(200,300,100,100)
  fill(95, 190, 226)
  rect(300,300,100,100)
  //second row
  strokeWeight(15);
  stroke(110, 201, 220,50)
   fill(133, 211, 214)
  rect(0,200,100,100)
  fill(121, 206, 216)
  rect(100,200,100,100)
  fill(110, 201, 220)
  rect(200,200,100,100)
  fill(101, 196, 223)
  rect(300,200,100,100)
  //thrid row
  strokeWeight(15);
  stroke(157, 220, 210,50)
   fill(145, 216, 212)
  rect(0,100,100,100)
  fill(157, 220, 210)
  rect(100,100,100,100)
  fill(170, 224, 210)
  rect(200,100,100,100)
  fill(182, 228, 211)
  rect(300,100,100,100)
  //fourth row
  strokeWeight(15);
  stroke(218, 239, 221,50)
   fill(228, 243, 226)
  rect(0,0,100,100)
  fill(218, 239, 221)
  rect(100,0,100,100)
  fill(206, 235, 216)
  rect(200,0,100,100)
  fill(195, 232, 213)
  rect(300,0,100,100)

I am particularly proud of the background of the portrait, because it reveals additional detail I put in the work to deliver idea about my character.  I had intention in mind about creating a gradient using the tools we already learned on the lessons, so I experimented with colors, strokes, opacity, to create a kind of smooth picture that would resemble a gradient. And I think I could accomplish that.

Embedded sketch

Reflection and ideas for future work

In the future assignments, I would like to explore more efficient and realistic ways to portrait a gradient background and curly hair. In this work, major part of the code required manual instructions to create a specific illustration of curls and pattern in the background. I want to find out more efficient ways of how I could code these things. Moreover, I would further work on more specific and detail-oriented picture of the earrings, as it stays one of the key features in my portrait. I would tie shape of earrings to Kazakh national ornaments to show my identity. In addition, I didn’t have much chance to work with interactivity of my portrait in this concept, so next time I would definitely create more interactive background or interactive face features. As I progress in interactive media, I would also love to implement 3D shapes in my work.