From the pictures I have here, there are two separate projects. The first is a few self portraits, which is what I worked on prior to deciding to pursue inspiration from Vera Molnar, an artist the class looked at earlier this semester.
The self portraits were inspired by the assignment in class where we made self portraits freely. For each one, I found pictures of minimalistic art and then based my self portraits on that art. I took care to make shapes big and bold. The main intention for doing so was to compensate for my lack of skill with the program Processing. When I set out to code-draw them, I was not thinking of what they would look like in the end. I went on instinct, starting with a shape and then thinking, “Well, what if I added that?” “What would happen if I did this?” “What would this color here look like?” I did not know what I was doing in the sense that I was not really “thinking.”
Upon learning about Vera Molnar’s approach to art, I liked her perspective. She would take her drawings and change one aspect at a time and make a series that would show the changes. She used bold shapes, such as large, noisy squares and lines that screamed over each other. In my two series inspired by her, I toned down the noise and instead focused on the simplicity and the predictability-unpredictability.
By changing one aspect at a time, I would again go on instinct like with the self portraits. Instead of starting with a plan, I would set the board with a starting picture and then see what would happen if I changed things. “If I make this number bigger, what would happen?” “I don’t know what this changes. Time to find out.” “Oh, that looks cool.” There is a sense of freedom and individuality that goes with letting the process be loose like that.
