Wunderkammer - Part 2

PART TWO: Building Your Cabinet

By the end of class today:

Use your images to create the first draft of your cabinet. Your cabinet should unfold to have sides that are at least 18 inches, but the dimensions other than that are up to you - ie. it may be square or rectangular.

1. Create a sketch of your plan for your cabinet. Will it be symmetrical? How will the collections be arranged: side by side, intermixed, by shape, size, color, meaning? Will you have one or two large images and many small ones, or images of equal size with some objects cut out with the pen tool? Will objects overlap? Is one collection subordinate to the other? Will there be a unified background? What exists in the space between objects? Is this collection contemporary or nostalgic? Will you borrow from the language of other collections you've seen - ie. fashion, automotive, gallery, etc.? How does your arrangement reflect the meaning and purpose of your collections?

2. Use a grid as a starting point. Arrange your images according to your sketch. Can be tiled. Indicate areas where you need to reshoot your images, or where you have decided to add new content

NOTE: Formulate your ideal audience. This should consist of 3-5 people whose opinion you value and trust, whose taste you admire, whom you seek to interest and impress. Check in with yourself now and then to evaluate whether your cabinet would interest this select audience of few.

---------------

HW

due next week:

1. Reshoot as necessary. I expect you to reshoot some of your images as you formulate your cabinet. If you do not reshoot that indicates that your project is not evolving. Consider the suggestions we made in class

2. Rearrange and revise your cabinet. Consider the folds - how will the cabinet unfold - what is the progression? This should be a similar thought process as in ordering your slideshow. Is there a moment of revelation?

3. Black and white full-size printout hung at the beginning of class next week (bring all files to class)

PS YOU MUST POST YOUR SLIDESHOW TO THE BLOG BY BEGINNING OF CLASS NEXT WEEK

Wunderkammer - Part 1

from "Mark Dion's Project: A Natural History of Wonder and a Wonderful History of Nature" by Lisa Graziose Corrin

Dion's 'model' for these arrangements begins with the wunderkammer, an encyclopedic, albeit idiosyncratic collection of rare objects, natural wonders and curiosities amassed by aristocracy and wealthy bourgeoisie from the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. The inventory of a typical wunderkammer included examples of naturalia (specimens created by God: animals, vegetables and minerals and unique examples of nature's oddities and deformities); artificialia (things made by man such as paintings, sculpture, musical instruments and scientific inventions and hybrid combinations of elements made by nature but 'perfected' by man, perhaps a nautilus set in an ornate gilt mount and transformed into a vessel; antiquities (objects of historical significance such as medals of rulers); and ethnographica ('exotica associated with Native peoples from the New World).
...
Displayed in glass cabinets, on shelves, set in niches and hanging from ceilings, the assorted contents of a wunderkammer were seen in one contiguous space as a holistic group of objects that could be touched and rearranged poetically to produce a kind of awe that could enlighten the mind, delight the senses and encourage conversation. Objects might be divided in any number of ways, for example, by the type of material they were made of, or according to a philosophical statement, such as that depicted in a painting of the Archdukes Albert and Isabella in their collector's cabinet (1626). More usually, the objects were organized according to what was visually pleasing to the owner generally without regard for function, origin, historic continuity, artistic style or school. Comparisons might suggest similarities between cultures by juxtaposing a multitude of objects from different cultural groups, or the endless artistry in nature as embodied in a bountiful array of objects of a particular shape or design.
...
Moreover, these collections were neither completed nor systematized because God had made nature infinite and the 'order of nature was not shackled to coherent sets of laws, but was subject to unlimited variability and novelty'. These arbitrary visual arrangements therefore seemed 'natural', and capable of revealing knowledge that was at once empirical and metaphorical without need of explanatory texts.
_________________________________

PART ONE: Visual Research
HW: shoot 2 collections
Before you begin shooting, write a sentence describing why you want to examine each collection - you must identify what is interesting about them. You can shoot objects, people, artifacts of a significant event or place, etc. Your collections should be hung next week in the following configuration:

That is 30 images per collection, hung 10-up on 8.5x11 paper, with your 3 favorite images from each collection shown at least 8x10 inches on 8.5x11 paper. All in color.

SLIDESHOW: tech hints

NOTE: Your slideshow should be modeled after the slideshows we viewed in class (although they do not need to be newsworthy - you may push the format as long as the sequence creates a narrative. Consider how you wish to affect the viewer - will you create an emotional arc?

Editing the Audio

You can edit your Audio using Garage Band or another audio-editing tool into a brief (40-second to 1-minute) narration track. Don't include music unless there was music playing as part of the natural sound backdrop. The audio file should be short enough so that your photos fit comfortably in the audio timeframe. Save your audio as an .mp3 file. Garageband allows you to choose Share/Export File to Mp3. However, if you have i-tunes you can also select your sound file (within i-tunes) and convert it right in there (choose Advanced/Convert Selection to MP3). Listen carefully to the audio in the slideshows (nytimes examples) to better understand levels and tapering.

A few bits of info to help you with your audio edit. Remember, Soundslides ONLY ACCEPTS MP3 FILES.

1. If you choose to edit within Garageband, some versions of Garageband allow you to Share/Export to Mp3. Some earlier versions won't have that option. SO what you need to do is choose Share/Send Song to i-Tunes, and then in i-Tunes, select the "song" and then choose Advanced/Convert Selection to Mp3.

2. Finally, if you're in Garage Band and you want to fade in or fade out your tracks (and you should), here is a video tutorial to show you how to click down the track that has the audio control points...

more tutorials

Building the Interactive Audio Slideshow

With your photographs and your completed .mp3 file, you're ready to build the slideshow. Using the 10 best images you have, build a slideshow narrative with audio. You can do this using a program you are comfortable with already, or use the flash-based SoundSlides software, which you can download onto your computer (demo version is just fine for this project--you don't have to buy the software, but you will need to have a Flash Reader on your computer).