FoD:R - M2 Flatness vs Projection

Foundations of Design : REPRESENTATION, SEM1, 2018 M2 JOURNAL - FLATNESS vs PROJECTION Maiken Stromgren Skogstad (978409) Mitchell Ransome, studio 6

1

WEEK 3 READING: LEGER, LE CORBUSIER, AND PURISM

Question 1: What is Pictorial Space according to Le Corbusier?

“Pictoral space is that which cannot be entered or circulated through.” According to the reading, Le Corbusier thought of it as a space that, when viewed from a distance, eternally resigned to frontality. In Le Corbusier’s artwork, there is an understanding of the object, often glasses, bottles, and other common objects, being depicted as flat with a basic contoured shape. Pictorial Space can be thought of as a flat, plane picture that can never be entered, but the two-dimensional art must be viewed from a distance to comprehend the depth and understand how to create an illusion of distance.

Question 2: The Flatness of Le Corbusier’s painting’s are attributable to two properties. What are they?

And what are these pitted against?

The first attribute of Les Corbusier’s paintings is the way the objects are registered as pure extension, meaning flat. The objects have a basic, continuous contoured shape, which never suggest a movement of turning. The second attribute is how the objects wedge together, called “mariage de contour”, and how texture and colour are handled in a way that enhance the understanding of the depth. These are pitted against the idea of the understanding of depth and distance, and how one can have a proximate space that spans.

2

MARIO’S WORLD

3

TOP MARIO’S WORLD

Pencil drawings of top layer

4

COMBINED MARIO’S WORLD

Combined top level of Mario world

5

BOTTOM MARIO’S WORLD

Pencil drawings of bottom layer

6

COMBINED MARIO’S WORLD

Combined bottom level of Mario world

7

WEEK 4 READING: AXONOMETRIC PROJECTION

Question 1: Explain the difference between Pictoral (in this case perspectival) space and Projection?

Perspectival space presents an individualistic view of a space that is limited, and is understood as closed.

This view is only true to a single point of inspection, meaning that there are several vanishing points.

Projection, on the other hand, means to expand the vanishing point to infinity, and defines objects with their true dimensions, which makes the understanding of the object more flexible and correct, and gives the artists the capacity to make the infinite visible in the context. Projection is a more modern way of showing hidden spaces and construction, and with that, creating new concepts of time.

Question 2: Where did Axonometric projection first arise, and why?

Axonometric projection has its origin in ancient visual practices, and first arose in a military context, where the earliest systematic descriptions occurred. Originally, it was used to chart the three-dimensional trajectories of artillery projectiles, and it was taught in engineering schools. What caused the need for practices of axonometric projection, was the mechanization and industrialization, it being an ideal tool to delineate the vision of constructing a new world. In the early twentieth century, it was adapted by revolutionary artists.

8

ILLUSTRATED MARIO’S NEW WORLD

World 6-12 has a very few number of different objects and elements that were visible to the observer, such as the orange, green and blue boxes without any obvious function, and the green pipes. Therefore, I decided to add more elements to give it some depth and distance, by turning the boxes into places of accommodation or other similar dwellings. I did this by adding details such as a window or a door.

The idea was to make the world look like a natural and livable space, and to enhance that by using shadow as a natural element. I have also put a lot of time in clarifying the textures by adding strokes and different shades of the same colour.

9

10

APPENDIX I started the project with printing the world, assembling my tools and set up an axonometric workspace where I projected the first 2D elevation template forward at 45 degrees. I devided the space I would be able to work with into different sections, to determine the depth of the different objects, and prevent there from being any empty spaces in the world.

Furthermore, I repeated the process with the second elevation, by lying out the second world parallell to the first one, and project the lines backwards to interact with the first projected world. After completing the top layer of the world, I repeated the process with the bottom world.

11

After finishing both the top and the bottom world, I traced them on a new set of tracing paper, to get a better understanding of how they would work together.

After tracing the drawings to make a collected representation of them, I begun tracing the drawing in illustrator, focusing on adding layers, texture and shadow. I also worked on adding new elements to fill the empty, or hidden, spaces.

12