My Way To The West

Last week on the first #DS106 GoodSpell of the year Mariana and I talked about her DS106 Art on the couch idea. Simply this is a way of looking at someone else work in DS106 and thinking about it in a bit more depth.

Critique is often most instructive for the person offering it. In looking at other people’s work, and formulating your opinion of it, you’re learning a great deal.

I’ve given this a go before but as mentioned on the show, neither Mariana or I had done as much as we hoped. I said I was going to try and use the technique in playing with Western106.

I’ve managed to reach Saturday without participating in western106 at all this week. Real life intervened:( I decided to at least give this a shot. I headed over to the ds106 and typed /random after the url. This will lead to a random post, try it: http://ds106.us/random. And because DS106 syndicated posts it will lead, more often than not, away to a participants blog.

I had decided to go with the first visual post (movie, image, gif ect) that I hit and arrived at: Assignment Heaven – The Good, the Bad and the Kelly 3 roll of the dice. The post mentions 2 assignments, the first was to take a picture and change the hues to make it look different. which fits the visual bill. (You can head over to the blog or butterfly! onFlickr to see the image as it is All rights reserved.)

I hope Kelly takes this extended look at her work in the spirit intended. She might find this useful or not. The intention is for me to think and learn a wee bit.

1. What stands out the most when you first see it?
The lurid pink that edges the clouds.

2. Explain the reason you notice the thing you mention in number 1.
I’ve been playing with glitching photos on and off for a while, this is the sort of effect that could alomost have come out if you glitched an image. Eye catching and unnatural that emphasises somethings in the original and deemphasises others.

3. As you keep looking, what else seems important?
The angle that the picture has been taken at. The ‘butterfly’ and its slightly wonky antenna. The wings of the butterfly. The effect of the wrought iron is agmented by the colours coming through from the sky.

4. Why does the thing you mention in number 3 seem important.
I am not sure if the orientation of the photo was carefully selected or if it was rotated 90 degrees by accident. This adds to the overall ‘glitchness’ of the image. and adds to the idea that it might be accidental.

5. How has contrast been used?
There is a very strong contrast between the wrought iron in the foreground and the sky beyond. This is perhaps stronger in the original as the change of hue effected the almost black foreground as well as the back.

6. What leads your eye around from place to place?
The butterfly’s antenna, one leading onwards into the sky the other off to the right of the image.

7. What tells you about the style used by this artist?
There is an offbeat quirkiness about the image. There is something optimistic going on.

8. What seems to be hiding in this composition and why?
The bigger picture, we do not see the whole gate, where it is ect.

9. Imagine the feelings and meanings this artwork represents?
Curiosity, looking into the unknown, heading west.

10. What other titles could you give this artwork?
New Horizons

11. What other things interest you about this artwork?

I wonder why the blogger choose a All rights reserved license on flickr. Early days in #DS106, or a deliberate choice?

I would like to see a third version with the flattened very high contrast foreground of the original over the adjusted sky.

I enjoyed that, the structure from the questions helps me stick with an image for a lot longer than I usually would. I hope to keep up this practise for the rest of the Western106 course.