Analyze an Ad
I would not exactly call this ad successful, as most people that look at it believe it isn’t really trying to sell you anything until you see the Diesel logo, as I did. Right off the bat, it is easy to see that Dielel’s strategy in this ad is sex appeal, however it comes off as humorous. This ad’s denotative qualities are: a girl on a bold red ladder lifting up her shirt completely to flash a surveillance camera attached to a brick wall. In the right side of the frame, in bold, all-capitol, bubble-gum pink font, it reads, “SMART MAY HAVE THE BRAINS, BUT STUPID HAS THE BALLS.” Then in smaller font, “BE STUPID. DIESEL.” This as connotes that people who wear Diesel are more ballsy than those who do not wear Diesel. That is really the only logical answer I can think of, besides it connoting that “people who wear Diesel are stupid, and you should be too.” I would say somewhat of a miss as an advertisement, however I like the boldness of the font. I feel that all-caps is a sure-fire way to be persuasive, even better that it’s bright pink.
Animation Concept.
My animation is about love and the irrational actions we take when we invest ourselves in it.
Artwork Review
The piece titled “Not I” by Samuel Beckett at the Museum of Contemporary Art touches on the theme of subjectivity. The piece is presented in the form of a film. The denotative qualities of this artwork include a black and white video of a person’s face completely covered in face paint except for the lips, moving quickly and precisely in a way showing the woman’s mouth overtly articulating each word she speaks in a way that is almost hard to understand. The face, though not fully exposed (only the mouth and sometimes the chin), is very expressive. The racially ambiguous woman’s teeth are bold and harsh against the dark face paint, gleaming through the opening of her mouth as she reads aloud more text so fast that her words and her mouth seem to become a blur.
The large lips are projected in the very center of the screen, and the composition is very simplistic. The words being read are read multiple times, as if on a loop. The text being read is a One Act, and the voice reading it is not soothing in any sense, but rather raspy and dramatic. The voice reading the text aloud is theatrical in a way that is reminiscent of ghost stories told around a campfire. I did not get the best understanding of what was said, but most of the words were very powerful and dramatic words annunciated very clearly. However, with so many powerful words backed up to each other such as “God” and “Punishment”, it began to sound like another language, meaningless gibberish. The text is entirely in third person, speaking about a girl and understanding among many other things.
In my opinion, this piece connotes the complexities of communication within the boundaries of language. I see this especially because the video has cropped to face only to see the mouth, which is in between being hard to understand and hard to listen to all together, due to the drama in the voice and the pace in which the person is speaking. I feel as though the face was painted black in order to remove all identity of the person. This is also being done by not showing the eyes on the face. Even though the actor in the video is using bold and powerful words, they still became just that- words. Because so many of them were jumbled together and all said with somewhat of the same dramatic emphasis, the words became less meaningful and it was difficult to take in any of what was being said. Not only that, but the fact that the text was being repeated over and over again also made the viewer feel as if they had multiple chances to connect the dots, and put something together about the text, because it seemed so obscure. As if there was a mystery about that text, that could be solved by only listening to one part of the video a bit better, or having more time to translate the sentences spoken into a more conventional sentence structure, I tried to listen harder the faster she spoke, which did not help.
Overall, I feel this piece brought some interesting topics to mind, such as the complexities of spoken languages and how meaningless powerful words can become when overused. Though, in my opinion, this piece is reminiscent of David Lynch videos because they are very interesting to watch, in the way that train wrecks are interesting to watch. The video made me very uncomfortable and definitely even more uncomfortable when the same text was repeated multiple times. I would be fine without ever seeing this piece again, as it was so discomforting to see such harsh expressions in such an intimate space.
Artist Statement for 100 Images
For my project, I used the key words “group photo” in the search engine, and most of the pictures happened to be large class pictures, weddings, and other happy events. Another trait most had in common was that almost all of these pictures were dated at least 50 years ago, and most were black and white. My concept was the idea of how people get more emotional about 1 person dieing than large numbers of people dieing. While defacing the eyes of every person in every picture, I felt I was leaving each person as an empty vessel, rendering them unimportant, and without meaning. This is how people feel when large groups of people die. It is impossible to relate to so many people at once, so it is also impossible to feel empathy for them. Especially when they are hard to relate to, like people from another time period or people in third world countries. However, when one person’s story of death is singled out, it can be very emotional for people. This is what the focus of my project was.
100 Images Project
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mollypocket/sets/72157623609325431/
Artist Statement
A common theme I find in my art is story telling, because I am very interested in illustrating childrens’ literature and book covers. Using one image to convey many parts of a story while still leaving many things to mystery is what I aim for. Often, my art will look somewhat theatrical or dramatic because I like to incorporate dramatic lighting, dramatic settings, and a subtle tone of fear. My first piece, “Promises Made, Secrets Kept”, displays most of these qualities, whereas my second project was displaying something else I find very much interest in; portraits. Trying to capture a person’s character and convey it with one image is very challenging. This portrait happens to be of my older sister, titled “Wherever Life Takes Me”. This is a comment on the way she has always lived; freely and unknowing of what will come next.
