Category Archives: 517: Visual Arts Research

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My current research is still hitting dead ends. I have taken the original idea and altered it into a survey format for alternative forms of opinions and information. I have created a survey, but found troubles sending it out because I cannot use Survey Monkey for free. The size and number of images I need to complete the survey requires that I upgrade to Pro and pay thirty dollars a month. After I received a response from my HREB reviewer, I decided to create several different surveys so I can use the survey format. The method I was trying to use prior caused a lack of anonymity. So, I am now trying to create several different surveys that fit the format for the free Survey Monkey so that I can use the platform. Once the surveys have been completed, I will post it to my school’s PTA Facebook page. From there I will inform participants that they can choose the survey in which they wish to participate. I am hoping it has some feedback since I have a few parents who are professors at RIT and Brockport. They know me pretty well from the art shows, and their avid dedication in fighting for the arts and the best education for their kids. I am hoping they take pity on me.
As for the photos, I still continue to take images and head throughout the city collecting pictures. I am expanding the imagery now to parts that are not covered in my data selections to use for studio. I have come to find that Rochester is a city for advocacy. Many personal statements can be found in the neighborhoods in peoples’ lawns. Many murals speak to things that are for beauty, kindness, and what supports the best interest in people. I am finding pride living here the more I see the work.

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This

This visualization is based off of the photographs that my students had taken during on field trip on april 5th. I wanted to keep this simple so I printed out a large map of all the destinations that we went to that day. From there, I looked at all of the students photographs and gathered five that were “taken” 5 times of more. In other words, students were able to photograph whatever they found interesting, or that they thought would give a viewer information about where we went and about the business’s in general.These images came up the most. I found out from this visualization and from reviewing the photographs that students photographed the green palette very heavily. Far more than they did American made monster studio. On our travels, and after, I have heard that students enjoyed the green palette most. It was interactive, and the owners were kind and approachable. The idea of recycling and being a creator also spoke to my students. I used green to outline the photographs for green palette, and red for the amount of “red coloring” within American made monster. I also marked out where KHS is in a blue marker. I have so much visual data that I could probably create 10 or more visualizations, however we are in the thick of it in terms of the giant cyanotype and working constantly late after school has kept me from focusing on the reviewing of data right now, just the gathering.

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This past weekend I finally had the chance to go back to MoMA. Since the last time I was there, one of the previous shows I visited had closed and two new ones were opened. I attended the two shows- “Unfinished Conversations: New Work from the Collection” and “Making Space: Women Artists and Postwar Abstraction”. I started off with similar note-taking that I have done before, recording what is on display, information provided, set up, etc…

Upon looking at these findings, I ended up coming up with a method to better organize my findings.The title of the exhibition is shortened in the middle, with the number on top symbolizing the spaces available to contemplate the art/rest and the bottom number any additional resources immediately available (such as exhibition catalogues or books about specific artists). The color/line around it represented my overall feeling/mood while in the exhibition. The dashes in the circle represent each piece and label on display and are meant to be read clockwise in the order of the exhibition itself. It ends up coming full circle as the exhibition spaces at MoMA always lead back to the start of the exhibition. The orange “i” coming out of each represents additional information provided about the piece or artist that made it. The red lines along the outside represent what I observed as acting barriers between the viewer and pieces. “MS” (Making Space) additionally catalogued all of the works according to genre type so I chose to demonstrate that by separating them off into colored sections.

“Making Space: Women Artists and Postwar Abstraction” Data

“Unfinished Conversations: New Work from the Collection” Data

I’m really liking this organization style and am working on transferring the data I have already on past exhibitions into this same format. I am hoping to go back to MoMA again for a third time in the next couple of weeks, perhaps on a weekday where I will be able to directly compare the experience of visiting the museum outside of the peak weekend times that I have visited during. I will be utilizing data collected about the museum visits as well to create another data visualization similar to the current setup I have.

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For this visualization, I set it up like my sketchbook. Of course, I had this idea now! Perhaps I’ll go back into my old visualizations and redo them to be set up similarly. In my sketchbooks, I have four swatches of paint based on the colors I’m feeling. What I did for this visualization was look at the sketchbook experiences as a whole and choose four of the most prominent places I visited multiple times and choose a color the best represented those times. Home, outside, work and other. Other was a combination of some places I visited only once. I looked at the words that I had written down and compiled them around the color. I color coded them just like my last two visualizations. I started to notice that warmed colors make me feel more comfortable. In this visualization, I only focused on words and feelings associated with the places. In the next visualization, I think I may take a more specific approach and group the words based on their meaning. Place really does affect how you feel in a space. It affects me based on how many people are around, how I’m feeling, how the space is set up and if I have been in that space before. Each time I went back to a place I felt something new based on varying factors. Even though I spent generally the same amount of time in each space, I didn’t have the same outcome each time. It became more like a reflection time and encouraged me to look around and just notice. Notice how I was reacting in the space and how the space was reacting to me, especially in public places.

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The first visualization, regarding my research data set, had a few areas with hiccups. I followed the same methods of my first two visualizations. I collaged imagery to the background and placed a final image on top of the collage—in this case one map of a neighborhood that I researched. There were a few areas where the threading proved to actually be a bit of an issue. While researching, all the visual culture images collected did not fit on the map. I tried to stick to a small radius for the thread component, but I was not able to fit all the actual visual culture imagery on the map. I decided to stick with the same size circles because I cannot determine from the research which images have more influence on the community than others. The threading was the main area where I faced an issue. I decided to buy smaller nails in height as well as head size for the next data set. I am hoping that will help fit all the needed radius that represent a form of visual culture.
The second area of concern was the maps. I enjoy the use of the maps to continue the theme, and give recognition to the size of the vicinity of Rochester. However, I was contemplating actually collaging the images I took for the research, and collaging them underneath the neighborhood map that is painted on top. My concerns are that I took this route with my second visualization that dealt specifically with my topic, and the images that I printed on tracing paper did not print well or collage well. The imagery disappeared greatly the more images I applied. With the amount of visual imagery, I was trying to document with thread circles, I am afraid it might be too many images to collage with tracing paper.
With these two areas being the major areas of concern, I plan on creating visualizations for the neighborhoods that had the most amount of documented visual culture during the research process. I would like to document each neighborhood that was covered, but I am not sure if that might be redundant.

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This collage-narrative generates relationships among complex issues of intercultural engagements in several contexts: boarding school era, Catlin’s ethno-tourism art, usufructuary rights guaranteed through treaties, resistance performance demonstrated on Lake Bemidji, and the multitudinous influences of Christianity. Themes of deculturalization, assimilation, essentilization, eradication, and survivance. Each signification is a metonym that suggests partial access as a means of “coming to know.”

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This mapping visualization is based on cultural immersion among northern Minnesota Ojibwe over a 3 week course. Processing my positionality in places where I was a visitor in their country. The medicine wheel is purposely dis-oriented per its significance to the Ojibwe. These colors are orientations and became a means for me to locate my emergent understandings and embodied experiences. There are text excerpts from my field journal that inform what is seen and not seen. The file is very large so this version is a bit blurry, but you can see the affordances and limitations of the approach to a mapping visualization.