Jordyn’s Work

Week 10: Food Art

The Colours of Food

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For this project I created a series of photos of fruits and vegetables, with colour as the visual aspect of food. Originally I wanted to focus on the compositions and displays of food. I wanted my photos to look like the photos of food that you see in advertisements such as commercials, or grocery store flyers. When I began this project I photographed my many different meals. I played around with the lighting and camera angles, and ended up with a bunch of photos of food like pasta, chicken, and bread, but none of them really stood out to me. I then took a few photos of blueberries and bananas, and realized that I wanted to focus on the colours of food as one of foods visual aspects. So I decided to only photograph fruits and vegetables as they are the most colourful type of food. I love how vibrant the colours of these foods turned out. I really enjoyed taking these photos, picking out the most colourful fruits and vegetables I could find, and playing around with different camera angles and the positioning of food.

Week 9:

Food Art Ideas:

For this project I really want to focus on the overall look of food, the composition of it. When I think of food photography, I think of the photos of food you see in advertisements, such as commercials, magazines, billboards, and grocery store flyers. You can tell that there is a lot of thought and planning that goes into these type of photographs, from the specific positions and arrangements of each piece of food, to the overall composition, the lighting, and a clean background. This is what I am looking to do for the project. I want to really focus on the specific positioning and placement of food to truly capture the visual aspects of food photography.

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These are a couple of my very rough unedited ideas. I shot these two photos with my phone, however, I plan on using my DSLR camera for this project, and much better lighting. But I find that these photos are still able to capture the idea of the display and composition of food that I am looking to focus on.

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Here are a couple examples of food photography seen in advertisements. With these images you can see that there was a great deal of thought and planning that went into the arrangement of food and the composition. This planning and arranging of food is kind of what I want to base my idea on for this project.

Week 8:

The Rise and Fall of Bread Podcast Notes:

• A companion is someone you break bread with
• There is a social aspect to bread, it is meant to be shared
• Bread teaches us civility, democracy, and who we are
• Bread is life
• The yeast that makes bread rise is a living organism
• We use bread because Jesus was the first to use bread
• Bread is a symbol of God’s generosity
• The art of baking bread is in the feel
• Bread needs the human mind, and is what caused the population to grow
• Is bread our salvation or our damnation?
• Grain has shifted the balance of power
• Bread is money, people used to be paid with bread. “Making dough”
• Bread is about religion, politics, society, language
• Bread gave rise to civilization
• Bread is a connection to the divine, and a symbol of equality
• Flour, water, and time are the three main things to make bread
• The story of bread is every story

I’m not really sure what I would do without bread, it is one of my favourite foods. I eat some sort of bread at least once a day, I have a bagel or toast everyday for breakfast, and I always have a loaf of Villaggio bread and either sesame seed or cinnamon raisin bagels in my house. Bread is also one of my favourite smells, I love the smell of a bakery or the bread section of a grocery store. Whenever I go to my mom’s house there is always a lot of food there, especially bread. She will always have a loaf of bread, a couple things of bagels, english muffins, wraps, and baguettes. I never understood how four people could go through that much bread, but apparently its possible. My mom also has a bread maker, she’s had it for 20 or so years and it doesn’t get used that much, but in April at the beginning of quarantine we used it a lot. She would get my brother and I to make bread to go as a side with dinner. Surprisingly my teenage brother was a lot more interested in making bread than I was. One of my comfort foods is probably grilled cheese. Bread and cheese are two of my favourite foods, its easy to make, and I’m always cold so I love eating food that warms me up. I think the reason why so many people have been making bread throughout the pandemic is that it is a fun and enjoyable way to pass time. It may also help with stress, and there are many different recipes and kinds of bread you can make that it will never get boring. One thing that I found very interesting about the podcast is that bread can have so many different meanings and can be about so many different things.

Week 7:

Notes:

The first video I watched was Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay’s Live to Tell. This work is made up of 16 screens of surveillance camera footage. It consists of 16 men who look similar and are all wearing black clothes, in what appears to be a dance studio. The men are singing a cappella and performing a choreographed dance routine. I found this video to be very interesting because I still can’t quite tell if there are 16 different men or if its the same man wearing different clothes. I also can’t tell if each screen is in the same room because the walls and floors look very similar, but the camera angles are different. I think that this video was well thought out and choreographed because the dancing and movements were perfectly lined up for where each of the 16 screens were placed within the video. I also really like how some of the men were facing the surveillance cameras while others had their backs to it. The artist chose to use multiple camera angles, multiple screens, and had each person standing or dancing in a different position or doing different movements. I think that these choices made watching the video visually interesting. However, with 16 screens I found it a little difficult to watch because I couldn’t just watch one screen, I would have to jump back and forth between all of the 16 screens.

The second video I watched was Michelle Pearson Clark’s Suck Teeth Compositions. This work consists of multiple people standing in front of a white background performing the act of sucking their teeth. This video stood out to me because at first I thought it was such a weird and simple task for random people to perform. Then it seemed as though the artist was trying to make some sort of beat out of the different sounds of sucking teeth, and I found that to be quite interesting. I like how the artist decided to use three people on the same screen, whether it was three shots of the same person or three different people. I feel as though when explaining the instructions the artist simply told the performers to suck on their teeth, and thats why it looks as if the people are kind of judging her and look a little confused.

My video:

I ended up changing my video a bit from my video art proposal. I still went with the idea to do a zoom call while playing just dance on the wii, but instead of having three screens and three people, I decided to use two screens and two people. We originally tried using three screens but I found there wasn’t enough space in the living room for three people because we kept getting in each others screen, and there was a lot more random sounds with three people that the song we were dancing to wasn’t picking up in the video at all. The problem of getting in each others screens lead me to decide on a song that my roommate and I have played maybe once or twice that also involved a lot of side to side movements where we could jump back a forth between screens. I think that jumping between the two screens made the video more visually intriguing. I also like that even though my roommate and I were standing next to each other, it looks as though we are in different rooms because the lighting is different on the two screens. I was really interested in making and capturing a fun, energetic video that shows how my roommate and I have been spending our time during the pandemic doing something that we both enjoy.

Week 6:

Zoom Video Art Proposal

My first idea is for my two roommates and I to do a zoom call in the living room playing just dance on the wii. I was thinking we could each set up our laptop and angle them so that there would only be one person in front of each laptop. I thought of this idea because my roommates and I play just dance pretty much everyday. I’m leaning more towards this idea because I think it would be a lot of fun to try, it would be a very interesting video, and my roommates have already both agreed to it. Some of my thoughts on this idea are that I’m not too sure how the sound will work with three laptops being in the same room. I’m also not sure if we should pick one song to dance to or a couple and keep recording the zoom call in between songs. If I try this idea I would want to pick a more upbeat song with lots of movement, and one that my roommates and I know pretty well. If I were to record a couple of dances, I could choose one song the three of us know well and one song that none of us have ever played. Below are some images of how I would set up this idea. The laptops are angled so that there would only be one person on each screen and in a way that we would all be able to still see the tv.

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For my second idea I was thinking about using my instrumental ensemble group and playing our piece over zoom. One of the courses I’m in this semester is an instrumental chamber ensemble. I play the flute, and in my group there is another flute player, a violin player, and my instructor also plays the violin. It’s been very different this semester, we record ourselves playing the piece and then talk about our recordings over zoom every week. Sometimes we all try playing over zoom. It’s not always that easy as it’s difficult to listen for the other parts over zoom, but I think that if all four of us played the piece over zoom it would make for an interesting video.

Week 4:

Liam: “Not thankful for covid on thanksgiving.”

Erynn: “Stressed but happy he’s in my bubble.”

This video is of my brother and his girlfriend at an apple orchard and pumpkin patch in Stouffville. I took this video over the thanksgiving weekend. They wanted me to come to the apple orchard with them only so I could take photos of them. It was very awkward and I felt like the biggest third wheel, so I said to them if I’m taking photos of you then you get to be a part of my project. In this video I wanted them to stand 6 feet apart because thats what I think of when I think of social distancing. I also thought it was a bit ironic to make them stand that far apart because they are always close together. I noticed that in Adad Hannah’s videos, the people in them are close to the camera, most of them are looking directly at the camera, and the videos are shot from eye level. I wanted to change it up and kind of make it my own, so I decided to place the camera on the ground for a different perspective. I got my brother and his girlfriend to back away from the camera until they were six feet apart and in the frame. I also wanted them to look at each other as if they were having a conversation while social distancing.

Paul: “The pandemic allowed for more time to get into shape.”

This video is of my dad right before he left for his bike ride. Adad Hannah’s videos seem to be of normal people out in the world simply living their lives, and doing everyday activities. So I asked my dad what is the one thing that you enjoy doing everyday, and he said biking. That’s why I decided to take the video of him on his bike. I also wanted to include the mask because I think that with it on it shows that we are living in different times, where a mask is one of the most important things you need, and is something you can’t leave the house without.

Week 1:

The strategies that Katchadourian uses to select and order books is sorting the books by titles that she finds interesting. She then orders and stacks the books so that the titles are readable and almost tell a story from the top to the bottom of the stack. Dyment orders books chronologically. In his one book stack, the books are ordered chronologically over the span of one billion years. Park orders books by the colour of the book covers. The books are colour coordinated, and they are all opened up about half way through each book within the stack.

In Nina Katchadourian’s A Day at the Beach, the final composition of the seven book titles tell a story. Each one of the books need to be where they are in the stack in order to understand the story. If one or two of the books were not in the stack, the final composition would have a completely different meaning, and tell a much different story.

In Dave Dyment’s One Billion Years, the final composition is ordered in chronological order, with the books dating over the span of one billion years. If a few of the books were switched around, it would change the meaning of the work entirely as it would no longer have order. I really like how the books are stacked in a way that the centre or the middles of each book are all lined up.

My Book Stacks:

This first book stack consists of all of my philosophy books. They are stacked in alphabetical order by the last name of each philosopher. I tried to line up all of the last names on each book so that they were right in the middle of the photo. As you can see they are kind of tipping, so it’s not perfectly centred, but I do like how the top three look like they’re about to fall over. I chose to use my philosophy books because I liked that they were all one genre or theme, and these were the majority of books that I had in my house.

This second book stack consists of all of my books that I could find. They are also stacked in alphabetical order, but by the titles instead of last names of the authors. I personally love when things are organized or are in some sort of order, and alphabetical order is one of my favourite types of order because it makes sense to me and is visually pleasing. With this book stack I wanted to stack it kind of like Dyment’s One Billion years. I really like how he centred all the books directly in the middle.

With this third book stack, I kind of wanted to use Katchadourian’s strategy of sorting books by titles that I find interesting, and then stacking them so that they are readable and almost tell a story. In this stack I used a couple of my roommates books, who is in criminal justice, and a couple of my philosophy books. I liked how these book titles gave the overall composition a kind of dark philosophical feeling.

Week 2:

The first artwork I chose to write about is by Yoko Ono titled Fly. This work is the word “Fly” on a giant billboard, in black text on a white background. The work is so simple, yet it is so bold with its large, noticeable letters. The medium that is used is a billboard, and the message simply says “fly”. The medium is relevant to the message because in order to view the message you must look up in the sky where things fly. I think it would be very ironic if a bird were to sit on top of this billboard. The viewer can interpret this word in different ways, and it can have many meanings based on who is looking at it. The first thing that I thought of when I looked at this work was freedom.

The second artwork I chose to write about is Barbara Kruger’s Untitled (Your Body is a Battleground). Barbara Kruger uses found photographs and then places bold white text on a red background on top of them. I think that in this image the message comes off as strong, bold, and intense. Just like Yoko Ono’s Fly, Kruger’s work is mainly noticeable billboard sized images. At first look you can already tell that the image portrays a very feminist theme. The medium used in this work is a black and white found photograph of a woman. This medium is relevant to the message as the message is clearly about a woman’s body. The small text on this image reads “support legal abortion birth control and women’s rights”. The large text that reads “your body is a battleground” is a metaphor for women not having much of a say in what happens to their body.

Week 3:

The words I decided to choose from the article were “Accumulating Endlessly”. I’m not exactly sure why, but the word accumulating really stuck out to me. It made me think of earlier that day when I went to get into my car and it was covered in leaves that had fallen from the tree hanging over the driveway. The leaves had accumulated on top of my car. I looked up and could see that the tree had many more leaves left on it, so I decided to park in the garage so that the leaves would stop accumulating endlessly on top of my car. This story is why I chose to use a floral, leafy looking paper to cut the letters out of. It is also why I hung the banner outside in my backyard with trees and leaves present in the background.