These are brilliant ways of visualizing, mapping allowing us to see & percieve these regular topographic landmarks abstract luminous colours & organic shapes in a different light.
Liz Hickok's project for her Masters in Fine Art, they are part sculpture, part photography and video, it resonates beyond the immediate appeal of the rainbow colors to become a sublime form of landscape. Her version of the city, which stems from a long-standing interest in three-dimensional city maps, emits a different kind of luminosity than the late 19th century Hudson River Valley variety. This in particular Palace of Fine - C-PrintArts, 2006 12"x16" 36"x48"editions of 12 has a great opposite harmony of orange & blue when light is refracted through gelatin.
'I make the landscapes by constructing scale models of the architectural elements which I use to make molds. I then cast the buildings in Jell-O. Similar to making a movie set, I add backdrops, which I often paint, and elements such as mountains or trees, and then I dramatically light the scenes from the back or underneath. The Jell-O sculptures quickly decay, leaving the photographs and video as the remains' liz hickok.
The molds she construct herself are based on idealized postcard images and her own photographs – have a way of making her vision go down smoothly. When she makes her city shake, as in her short video work, the landscape comes alive with the power of nature and culture on the brink of transformation, through changing our perspectives of the world in quite an innovative way.
http://www.lizhickok.com/10palace.html#photo
http://www.mills.edu/academics/grants_and_special_programs/mfa_exhibitions/mfa_2005/hickock/
Originally Dugg by user Gregd here
http://digg.com/search?section=all&s=san+francisco+jello
The fabulous design agency Pentagram based in New York with partners like Angus Hyland (co-author of many excellant design/illustration books, The Picture Book: Contemporary Illustration & Paula Scher (AIGA medalists, notorius mapper, will feature soon), ....at the worlds leading multi-disciplinary design consultancy, feature an excellant map that Scher would be proud of. The partner DJ Stout has created a “Texas Designer’s Map of the World” as a part of a promotion for Sappi Fine Paper. Based on the concept of a Texas Brag Map, the poster elucidates the worldview that everything is bigger and better in the Lone Star State. “It’s part of our Texas heritage and our collective sense of humor,” explains Stout. “My apologies to the other smaller, less interesting states on the map.”' (pentagram, 2008, p.new). He divides a map of the U.S. into six parts and assigns each section to a graphic designer who resides within the region. When all six posters are put together, they form a giant map of the United States, “of course I was given the Southwest,” says Stout (pentagram, 2008, p.new). Its composition is bolshy, beautifully layered (as you notice opening the pdf on a sluggish computer), with Piet Zwart/H. N. Werkman letters treatment surrounded by soft pastel triadic harmony of red, blue, yellow. Yet still its not too disparaging with the these surreal, fluctuating sized elements like The World's biggest Jack Rabbit, it has Swiss grounding in neat, clean, precise, even grids of text J.M.Brockmann would be proud of, creating a salient [1] contrast. It also treats word (type) as image that crow [2], and concrete poets of appollinaire to mallarme would adore. The other participants include Art Chantry, Rick Valicenti, Paul Sahre, Clive Piercy and Tim Hussey. Brilliant. Download the large version image here. http://blog.pentagram.com/2008/02/new-work-sappi.php [1] Kress & Van leeuwen [2] Left to Right: The Cultural Shift from Word to Image
There are other techniques to improve salience within the design process such as some of those mentioned by Laszlo Moholy-nagy in his essay from 1925 ‘Contemporary typography – Aims, Practice, Criticism’, ‘tension introduced into layouts by contrasting visual elements such as: • light/dark • empty/full • multicoloured/grey • vertical/horizontal • upright/oblique’ (Blackwell, 2001, p. unknown). An excellent visual map that beautifies, enlivens, and has an excellent salient ability is ‘Liverpool the centre of the creative universe’ designed by Burn Everything.co.uk, fig. This was exhibited at the Tate Liverpool but this certainly grabs the user/readers attention and it categorises the content into Topographic landmarks of the city, such as The Docks, The Walker Art Gallery, Tate, Bluecoat Art Gallery, Liverpool College of art & also by The Beatles. The subtle harmony with tinges of Pink Framing (arrows/lines) the main Landmarks in the foreground and the background framing of the Blue linking particular people across these Landmarks are excellent. The framing (Kress & Van Leeuwen) also has many different styles from varied iconic and well known pointing hands, to hand drawn, dashed lines, rounded edge bubbles, rectangular, organic grey shapes, speech bubbles all used in distinction to there landmarks. The use of varying saturations of black with the monochrome bubbles and introduction of illustrations of birds & eyes, some iconic others mimetic (realistic photos) create a magnificent balance of word & image. The layering and differing tones of grey create great depth and the information value is immense because it is so visually engaging and stimulating you to read/interpret and identify The Beatles as being something you know of. You follow the linked bubbles further and may discover Brian Epstein, ‘Who is this?’ is a reponse the name might elicit. This would then hopefully inspire the map reader/user to research this name, usually via Google (preferably Kartoo.com), or ‘Who is Peter Blake?’ That would certainly inspire and stimulate creativity upon discovery. Kress, Gunther & Theo van Leeuwen wrote three aspects of visual composition: Salience, Information Value & Framing in Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London: Routledge (1996), (Chandler, 2006, p. sem_04). Blackwell, Lewis. (1998). Twentieth-Century Type, New and Revised Edition. Lawrence King, London