As an individually-initiated project, this work explores the translation and re-interpretation of visual information through 3 different mediums: photography, drawing, screenprinting – in this order. The project embraces iteration, playfulness, and uncertainty over accuracy or deliberation.
Beginning with photography, 4 images provide the starting point for investigation through drawing. The drawing phase was structured around the constraints of time and medium, working with instruments that I was not fully comfortable with: marker, 6B graphite, charcoal, and square conté. Each tool was used at timed intervals of 10s, 30s, 1m, 4m, and 9m. The intuitive drawing responses to the photographs questioned color, composition, shapes, axes of sight, light, shadow, mark-making, and tone. Shifting to silkscreen, color became a crucial component to achieve balance and maintain the integrity of the original photograph, while composition was shaped through layers of drawings.
The research question throughout production asked: how does our understanding influence how we look at images? The project therefore questions image-perception and image-analysis as potential forms of visual communication. If we can challenge our conditioned ways of seeing and understanding (for example, identifying something as a traffic light, chair, etc.), then we can begin to see images differently, abstractly, and with new potential.
“As Lou Kahn said, the process passes from the unmeasurable, through the measurable, to the unmeasurable again. On the way there is room for scientific rigour and for penetration, consciously and unconsciously, of all we have ever seen or read. As the design evolves, the words [and images] return in altered form.”
–Denise Scott Brown, Having Words
Fall Semester 2021, HGK FHNW
Basel, Switzerland
Concept, Design, Production: Nicole Salnikov
Mentor: Leander Eisenmann
Format: (A3) 29.7 x 42 cm
Techniques: 35mm film photography; marker, graphite, charcoal, and conté for drawing; silkscreen
Beginning with photography, 4 images provide the starting point for investigation through drawing. The drawing phase was structured around the constraints of time and medium, working with instruments that I was not fully comfortable with: marker, 6B graphite, charcoal, and square conté. Each tool was used at timed intervals of 10s, 30s, 1m, 4m, and 9m. The intuitive drawing responses to the photographs questioned color, composition, shapes, axes of sight, light, shadow, mark-making, and tone. Shifting to silkscreen, color became a crucial component to achieve balance and maintain the integrity of the original photograph, while composition was shaped through layers of drawings.
The research question throughout production asked: how does our understanding influence how we look at images? The project therefore questions image-perception and image-analysis as potential forms of visual communication. If we can challenge our conditioned ways of seeing and understanding (for example, identifying something as a traffic light, chair, etc.), then we can begin to see images differently, abstractly, and with new potential.
“As Lou Kahn said, the process passes from the unmeasurable, through the measurable, to the unmeasurable again. On the way there is room for scientific rigour and for penetration, consciously and unconsciously, of all we have ever seen or read. As the design evolves, the words [and images] return in altered form.”
–Denise Scott Brown, Having Words
Fall Semester 2021, HGK FHNW
Basel, Switzerland
Concept, Design, Production: Nicole Salnikov
Mentor: Leander Eisenmann
Format: (A3) 29.7 x 42 cm
Techniques: 35mm film photography; marker, graphite, charcoal, and conté for drawing; silkscreen