Guest Critic Response

Having guest critic Yoonjai Choi come on Friday to review my work was a great experience. She immediately addressed how the work provides a different experience for the viewer when they first see it from a distance and then get up close to it. Like a real painting, the image begins to break apart when the viewer is close to it and reveals the individual images I used to create it. Yoonjai said the most interesting part of the image is when you are close to it. She said the way the left and right dissolve away was cool but that it was almost like I am "revealing my trick." For a process book, I am making for the project, I am going to have many cropped images of details of the piece which is similar to the ideas Yoonjai was conveying to me. I also explained that the main reasons to have the images break apart, besides the fact that it looks cool, was to show how the skin tones are being optically mixed, like in with real bush strokes or pixels. We also addressed the issue of how each image I used comes charged with it's own little narrative. Due to time constraints, and other factors, making a portrait comprised of pictures, each with a specific meaning would have been near impossible. This was definitely an issue I had thought about while making the piece. However, the piece is about controlling external imagery that surrounds us, so the randomness of the images I think supports that idea of the project. Also, the technology aspect of the project is supported by this randomness because it is all based on what Google Images provided for me in my searches. Overall, Yoonjai said it was a great project and thought I must be a very patient person.

February 7, 2011

Today I had a major breakthrough that will allow me to speed up my process and create a much better image. I found out that in a Google image search you can select a specific color from 10 choices. As Google searches through millions of images, the ones with the most pixels of the specified color appear at the top of the search results. This tool will allow me to not specify colors in my text search and just use keywords like fox or watermelon, and then select the respective color I need. I can also toggle between colors using the same search keyword. This has also greatly increased the image library that I will be able to pull from for my piece.

February 3, 2011

I have begun rendering my face with images I have found on Google. I am starting with my lips and will build out from there The main features of my face (mouth, nose, eyes) must be rendered very accurately in order to capture a likeness to me. However, I figure after these are nailed down I can be much more liberal with images I use for the rest of the image. The process is extremely slow and tedious. I am using words like red meat and red pepper as keywords for my image searches. The key to creating the image I have in mind will be to control the blacks and lightest part of the pictures I use, just like in real painting.