Advanced Drawing assignment

I've lived in an apartment on the edge of campus for 5 years now. I do claim I have a wonderful view from my balcony. From this view I've watched them create a walking trail, a pond, and now they are in the proccess of building a welcome center (I personally and annoyed at that but oh well, I graduated from this place today and am done with it)

(scroll to the bottom to view animation)

So I decided to use various mediums to create my version of Time Passing. I used vine charcoal, charcoal, pastel chalk, and used crumpled up paper towel as me erasers

I hope you enjoy this and would like some feed back please.. :)
mature feedback!!


Advanced Drawing Time based drawing

Introduction Recap
Each student is to create a drawing the makes an issue out of one or more of the characteristics of how time passes. The student is to create a rough draft, "proposal" drawing; this will be used in an end-of-class critique on Monday 4/7. The standards for grading are presented in the syllabus and are related to the past projects, i.e. rich process = rich output. Keep everything for the folio.

Considerations
The work is to present time's passage. The student is to uncover what aspect of time's passage is relevant and significant. It may be presented as an indexical sign, e.g. with the use of vanitas' decaying imagery. Or it may be iconic, as in representing time's passage kinetically, e.g. iMovie's stop frame animation of vine charcoal drawing, actual moving parts, and/or installation elements.. The emphasis should be on showing how time passes.

The drawing may challenge the traditional display approaches of paper or wall mounted.
There are no media or size restrictions, however keep in mind anything smaller than 18" X 24" needs to be communicated and approved before moving on. Team work is possible. Consider the requirements of stages and work effort of the previous drawings as a standard.

"Time's Passage" research - Start with journal and sketchbook work, 5 pages minimum, on defining and describing time, its passage and how you might represent it.

Make a list of terms and synonyms that describe time's passage.
Make a list of common phrases and clichés that deal with time.
Make a list of songs and literary references.
Print off several art images that deal with time (historically relevant and significant artists).
What does a clock actually measure, what specific definition of time? How are time and clocks different, e.g. fleeting, marching, relativistic, deterministic? How are they similar?
Include brief information on three notable or famous clocks.
What other shapes beside a circle are possible for the clock face; why do you think this is the most common shape (symbolic or technological)? In a more general way, consider why geometry is the most common shape used in timepieces. Can biomorphic forms also be used? What would this signify about time's passage?
Does time seem to pass differently at different times (describe with evocative, appropriate examples these different passages)?
Consider different kinds of conceptual ways that time can pass - what would these look like: eternity, backwards running, fast-forward, etc. Generate some more fictional or conceptual time passages of your own.
As you narrow in on the concept you want to represent consider whether your passage of time is an expansive or constraining principle, be sure explain and site examples.
What visual components of rhythm, eyepath and balance are best suited for representing the expansiveness or constraint of time.
What kind of force of action best represents your concept of time's passage, e.g. dribbling, ejecting, exploding, flowing, scattering, compressing, entangling, etc.?
Obviously, certain kinds of lines, marks and tools will do better at communicating these than others, create a sample of lines and marks using a variety of tools in order to explore these characteristics.
After reading the appendix on History's Angel further consider the attitudinal response that your concept should evoke in a viewer: Is it frenzied, meditative, suppressing, etc.?
quiet, calm, or tranquil dramatic or invigorating
mesmerizing, detached alarming, shocking
naïve or unassuming competitive or aggressive
sad or depressing, suppressing repulsive or terrifying
serious, stern, or authoritative frenzied or capricious
distant, remote, or austere cheerful or joyous
grand, noble, or majestic raucous, reckless, disheveled
proud, confident, or assured powerful or mighty
Immovable, static fleeting, restless

Appendix: History's Angel
What is time? For humans it seems related to history, a story either personal or cultural.
History is not just the past as an object of systematic knowledge. . . ; history also carries a sense that is implicit in the expression :'making history'. Thus History often signifies the production of events having transformative potentials that ushers in the future.

Philosopher Walter Benjamin:
"A Paul Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.
- Walter Benjamin, Theses on the Philiosophy of History, IX (1940; first published, in German, 1950, in English, 1955)

Musician and performance artist, Laurie Anderson - The Dream Before (For Walter Benjamin) Lyrics from the album Strange Angels, 1989

Hansel and Gretel are alive and well
And they're living in Berlin
She is a cocktail waitress
He had a part in a Fassbinder film
And they sit around at night now drinking schnapps and gin
And she says: Hansel, you're really bringing me down. . . .

He says: I've wasted my life on our stupid legend
When my one and only love was the wicked witch.

And he said: History is an angel being blown backwards into the future
He said: History is a pile of debris
And the angel wants to go back and fix things
To repair the things that have been broken
But there is a storm blowing from Paradise
And the storm keeps blowing the angel
backwards into the future
And this storm, this storm
is called
Progress


http://youtube.com/watch?v=EW91ltEsx9A