Art cannot save the world, but it does help you understand the world inside of you. - Krist Pauwels
Good evening or morning depending on what side of the earth you are waking to read my shenanigans.
I hope your week is going well and that I can bring a couple minutes of interesting finds in the following entries.
This week, I've applied some of my recent learnings to implement 3D work I've been eager to explore for nearly a year. Currently, I'm experimenting with Blender as a templating tool to understand how I might develop a growth algorithm and create something intriguing that I can later code from scratch. I still have much to learn about materials and their proper production in Blender. This will help me grasp the components, which I can then break down even further.
You might wonder, "Why not just be content with what you have?" That's a bit too sensible, of course. There's a special intent behind making something. Creating from scratch allows you to infuse your own flavor of quality or simply approach it differently.
Les Eautres 7, Laurence Demaison, 2008
I came across this photograph a couple of weeks ago, and I must say there's a melancholy sense to it. It also reminded me of the displacement pattern similar to a scene in the movie Blade Runner, where water caustics aren't distorting the image but definitely provide a mood. (See the following video on how to recreate it.)
The artist describes the piece as:
Everyone has an urge to save a drowning woman—but some women don't wish to be saved. Laurence Demaison is one of them. Dozens of times, she has "drowned" herself, for the cause of art. "Autoportraits," a show of Demaison's photographs, will appear at the Galerie BMG in Woodstock, beginning May 22.
There's something oddly distorting (no pun intended) that creates a sense of something missing.
When we obscure reality and let it become opaque, we hide or lose the reality of the self, making us want to see or project the ourselves in its altered form. I believe it was Freud (it's been a couple of years since I've taken a psychology course) who first introduced the concept of defense mechanisms and how we use projection and repression when dealing with our true selves.
This altered view sometimes is a way to keep ourselves protected from becoming hurt and vulnerable. It also is a way to insure that the turbulence of other’s doesn’t become one’s own problem.
Yet it isn't just a form of defense. Clifford Geertz, an anthropologist, discusses a similar concept: