Reactions to Final Project Critique

This afternoon was the final critique of our final projects for Computer Art 2. I can’t believe that class is completely over, or that by the end of tomorrow another class of mine will be completely over, or that after this Friday I’ll only have 2 finals between me and Winter Break (yet I’ll also be home over this weekend, and only return to campus before break for those two finals, anywhere from 30 hours to 4 days total). Anyway, on to my reactions to the critique.

My final project’s display was mixed between some images printed and mounted in the gallery, and the vast majority being just in my online digital art gallery. There were a few comments made to the extent of how appropriate that was for me. Not only was I displaying the images I created themselves, but the website was entirely hand-coded by me, as was the iOS app in which I displayed the website on my iPad in order to wholly (also thanks to Guided Access) restrict the iPad usage to the final project for this course in my web gallery. All areas of digital art, insofar as you label the programming art, were utilized for my final project, at least for its gallery display while I (and my iPad) where there.

Comments made at the in-process critique were surfaced again. These were in discussing the text-to-image relationship as well as the apparent pull to make the images simpler. I had spent time working through the images in order to achieve some of that change, but didn’t want to go all the way until I had planned it out for all the images and had the time to make the changes. This is due to the important need to maintain visual unity, as in making those changes I would be breaking that between the images not edited yet and those already edited.

Right at the start of the critique of my project one of the two students who’d chosen to be the ones to introduce my work questioned their ability to do so without any real knowledge of Peace Studies. Though being a Peace Studies person adds a dimension to this project, for me as the artist and for viewers, it isn’t a requirement as I see it. After all, each image is depicting a phrase that while drawn from Peace Studies literature surely has meaning independent of that as regular English expressions. Heck, even some of the images weren’t depicting anything negotiation oriented, but just a fun way, and thus universally (as I see it) understandable, of expressing the raw phrase.

Though you can’t see this in the online gallery, I had the Disputant inner images mounted with my artist statement to the left and the notice of this web gallery to the right with a pedestal holding up slips of paper with the gallery URL on it that visitors could take with them just below the notice. This display created a real left-to-right progression that drew the eye through my entire installation. This was noted somewhere in the critique. I have no real comments to make about this, but I’m just glad that effect was established since it was what I was aiming for.

During the reception someone critiqued my choice of typewriter-like font for the index images. Though I hadn’t given a ton of thought to fonts I had worked my way through a few options before settling on the final choice. I like the slightly lighter look this font has, and that is part of my final font choice. I honestly hadn’t thought of it as being like a typewriter.

I welcome any critiques that you’re interested in sending my way. To the extent that I do more of these images in the future, when I have the time for it, any feedback I receive will be on my mind. But for now, time to work further on all the end of semester work that I need to do in the next week.