Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainence
Primitive shapes like circles, squares, and triangles may not mean much by themselves, but when they are placed in a specific manner they can convey the meaning of a specific word or phrase. In this assignment I created two sets of four compositions using black and white shapes. These compositions convey meanings or feelings of their respective works of authorship. For a novel, I chose to use Robert M. Pirsig’s, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and for an album I chose El-P’s, Fantastic Damage. These subjects differ greatly in style and produced wildly different compositions.
For Robert M. Pirsig’s, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, I began to draw pictures of scenes I had imagined while reading the novel this summer. Though I was limited to simple shapes things began to flow pretty easy. I personally like one composition of overlapping cloud shapes. I was thinking of a scene in the book where the author is reminiscing about laying on his back looking at the clouds. I clustered circles together to mock the shape. I really like the overlapping effect and how it implies the layers and motion of the clouds in the sky.
For El-P’s album, Fantastic Damage, the composition worked differently. I put on the album and worked on my compositions while listening to the songs. The compositions reflect my interpretations of his musical style. El-P produces hip hop, that’s different than most. His songs can sometimes follow a specific pattern, or they can be very noisy and misarranged. One thing is usually consistent; his songs start somewhere and begin intensifying until the end when the track is abruptly cut off. My favorite composition is one that uses spiraling circles that are growing in size. I let the frame cut them off just like El-P was cutting off the music.
While working on this assignment, I began to notice that when I read, my imagination almost always wants to paint a picture of what is going on. When I listen to music I don’t always have a story to imagine so the pictures get more abstract and emotionally driven. The use of simple objects inspired a wide array of visual interpretations for me. Some proved to be more successful than others in conveying the meaning of their respective works of authorship.
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