Students channel Dali in Surrealism works
“I used the idea of how people kill plants and flowers on a daily basis, and [so] I twisted it into plants hurting humans. Only because flowers look pretty, we tend to ignore the importance of nature. Thus, I created this image to express the idea of beautiful things in nature [are] for us to look at and not there for us to kill.” –Eunseo Choi (12B)
Project Description:
“This project was inspired by the Surrealist movement of the 20th century. Surrealist artists use irrational juxtapositions and scale to create an eerie, dreamlike world. The emphasis of this unit was on the process of developing creative ideas, rather than on the finished piece. We investigated how artists develop ideas, what makes an idea original, and how alternative methods of brainstorming can facilitate creative thinking. Media Arts students experimented with a variety Adobe Photoshop tools and created an animated GIF in order to bring their surreal world to life.” –Ms. Ashley Hayes
“When I was brainstorming, I was considering somehow embracing elements of nature in my work. I decided to use a human figure as my subject to symbolize nature visually as a human…In my work, human and nature are merged as one.”
“…After deciding my topic, I interviewed seven different people by asking, “What would your hand be like if you are stuck in somewhere like an ocean, where you cannot hear or see anything? What would it be like if one day you finally see hope and you can finally reach out of the sea?” One said that his hand would be bloody and with a ring on it. Another said that her hand is chained and can no longer reach further. Some said that her hand will be part of the sea, while the other said that her hand would be like a fish with scales. Some said that his hand would be wrinkly and old due to the water, and the other said that she is about to disappear even though she can reach out. But I am most amazed by the answer that her hand is holding a pumping heart. It is amazing how these students have such different minds and ideas of reaching for hope…”
“I was inspired by a picture of a civilization on a tree house. The tree branches in the picture looked very similar to the antlers of a deer. Changing the scale of the objects and adding the golden chains made the artwork surrealist.”
“I didn’t really have a process, I just wanted to make food jump off a diving board to cook itself. As I was unable to find a lot of the pictures I needed, I ended up finding other things and thinking “whatever, I’ll just put this picture in.” Finally, I ended up [with a] strange collage of a lot of random things, which I guess is what surrealism is about–so that’s cool.”
“As a surrealist work, it’s okay if it is a bit random or perhaps done out of the blue (that’s kind of the point, actually). I just tried visualizing how to combine a flying aircraft and leaping whales/dolphins, or how to combine human hands and an aircraft; in the end, I decided to combine hands, whales, and an airplane to make this work.”
“I was first inspired to create this because I thought that the keyboard looks like a plot on farms, so I wanted to have plants and flowers growing from it, but later I decided to use a typewriter to show antiquity. Most people think that we can only choose one or the other between technology and nature, but I wanted to show a combination of the two. At the same time, I still imply that nature is stronger than technology, so it could also be interpreted as what may happen if nature decides to destroy mankind.”
“I started off fairly easy, with my family’s head on silverware, but as time passed, everything got included in my surrealist project and I liked the complexion. The circles on my family member’s face blocked their [expressions], so we all look like insensitive people getting sucked by the black hole. When the time came to make a GIF, I thought to have all the people go through the hole, but then my friend thought of a plot twist: to have me repel the forces of the hole and go inside the fire. This project was simply the most challenging yet most fun of all the projects done in Media Arts; it not only needed professionalism, but mostly creativity.”
GIFs and images courtesy of Ms. Hayes’ Media Arts class