Bag/Box Paper Folding Project- Avatar

The word that I have (semi-arbritrarily) chosen for the bag/box folding project is the word avatar- in Hinduism it means "a manifestation of a deity or released soul in bodily form on earth; in incarnate divine teacher."

Typography Poster- Lateralus

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents."

~Howard Phillips Lovecraft

This is the typography poster that was supposed to fulfill the requirement of creating a poster chiefly with words that were meant to relay a certain message. The color scheme I used was one of a rectangle, containing red, blue, green, and orange/yellow. The fonts used were Times and Systema Encephale.
This piece, simply dubbed "Lateralus", compiles all lyrics from every song of the cerebral celebration of our humanity. The purpose of the poster was to relay a message of "drawing way outside the lines," as Maynard James Keenan sings in the title track, "Lateralus". One purpose of the message is to notice the difference between the image up close and the image from a distance. When observed up close, one will notice that the poster is made up of interconnecting (but not perfectly aligned) puzzle pieces of text. While this fact in and of itself is a reference to the renowned quote "I know the pieces fit" from the single Schism off of the album, it is also, after one gives careful thought, apparent that pieces fitting together is very reminiscent of the human mind itself. There are many separate parts of the human mind, from the compelling frontal lobe to the minuscule pineal gland. This is done for both the showcasing of knowledge of relaying scientific principles of art, as well as relating the speculated origin of the name of the album, Lateralus. The name, as one can easily perceive, is not one common to the tongue of any average person, as it is not part of proper english, so the question is, what is the word?. Naturally, where this mystery there are always those who attempt to solve it. After gathering sources and information, I have come to the conclusion that I believe the name Lateralus is a combination of the name for the part of the brain, the lateral cerebral sulcus. Later- from lateral, -al from cerebral, and -us from sulcus (this idea is not my own, it is a compromise between opposing fan theories). Now the question is, what does the lateral cerebral sulcus do? In short, it is the barrier (or, as some believe, the bridge) between the frontal lobe, which is responsible for processing our sensory information, and temporal lobe, which is responsible for retaining information, or processing our sensory information into derived meanings. So, the lateral sulcus is literally the bridge between our reality and our perception. These are two parts of the brain that aid each other in a certain task of perceiving our reality. This is relayed through the piece in that, when viewed closely, there are specific alternations of text and shapes that seem almost random, but when a step back is taken and the piece is viewed from a distance, everything comes together and forms a shape, an image, a story. How is this not precisely analogous to our mind, to our very humanity?

Another way of relaying the message of the album (something whimsical, celebratory, cerebral) was through scattering the numbers of the fibonacci sequence across the piece, and including multiple examples of spirals. As is known, the fibonacci sequence is a sequence of numbers beginning with 0 and 1 that increases by adding together the past two numbers in the sequence. This is a profound mathematical concept that is seen everywhere in our universe, as when the sequence is graphed it forms an infinite spiral. In Lateralus, there are many examples of this sequence, from the time signatures of the guitar riff in the intro of Lateralus to the time signatures of the drum beat throughout the entire album (the drummer Danny Carey is a follower of sacred geometry and was thus able to graph out the spirals and drum out the sequence). The one profound way that the band uses the spiral is when lyricist and singer Maynard James Keenan uses the spiral as an archetype of human will and perception (a technique very reminiscent of Jungian psychology, which the band has shown hints of following in earlier albums), and uses the metaphor of the spiral being infinite to imply that human beauty and intelligence is boundless. To relay this as it is in the album, numbers of the fibonacci sequence were, in relative vertical order, scattered about the piece. This leads the eye around the piece once the pattern is noticed, and the discovering of the pattern itself is a rewarding feeling of conquering a mysterious aspect to the piece itself. This was also done through the means of multiple iterations of the spiral across the piece, including in the bottom right hand corner where one is shown being made up of the word "Lateralus", as well as in the top right hand corner and other places where the word "spiral out" has been distorted to form a spiral. 

The resulting imagery is one of constant mystery; there is always some puzzle left to uncover no matter how well one deciphers the piece. At a close glance one will notice the piece is made up of words, and, upon closer inspection and reading of said words, the pieces will seem to come together as one reads. There are multiple pieces to the puzzle that do not include specific words, but also half-ending spirals and numbers. However, if one were to take a step back, one would notice that the entire piece comes together to form one specific image, and the pieces may just come together.

Poster Design

The general idea for my poster is going to relay the message of Tool's masterpiece Lateralus. I am going to use the lyrics of the song to convey the message of going outside of the lines, pushing the envelope, swinging on the spiral, being bewildered. I want the words to hold meanings and the different verses to be aligned well and artfully in a way that expresses the tone, flow, and mood of the song. Words with particular meanings may have effects placed upon them to further convey the message of the individual word. The color scheme I am going to use is rectangular, consisting of red, orange, blue, and green.

Goya Artwork Recreation

This image is intended to reproduce the style of the late 18th century and early 19th century Spanish romantic painter Francisco Goya. Originally the personal painter to and for the royal family of his time period, Goya was thrown into a period of darkness when the Franco-Spanish war broke out, which stayed with the artist until his death. After the war concluded, Goya became deaf of the ear and removed himself from society, living in a cabin on the outskirts of civilization, in which he painted on the walls in his new dark, macabre style that he had adopted. This piece here is a replication of his style at this point in his life, as it holds many of the same colors and general color style that his works at the time did. For comparison, his famous work "Saturn Devouring His Son" is shown below the piece that I created. Notice the similar color and paint blending styles: the actual piece below holds no color but dark brown to red, exactly as mine above, which holds no color save for varying values of brown. Another prime comparison between the two pieces is the heavy reliance and utilization of black as both emphasis and space filling: the black of the trees and the bats of my piece above and the black of Saturn and the background in Goya's piece below. Another way in which my piece is reflective of the styles utilized by Goya is through the general tone/mood of the artwork, which is somber and macabre. The below image is of the Roman Titan Saturn devouring his son (either Pluto or Neptune) upon learning of the prophecy that his sons would usurp him. The image shows signs of a grotesque giant with contorted features and an odd shaped body devouring another human-shaped being. This piece is, for lack of a better term, sp00ky. My piece holds the general idea through its imagery as well. The bottom third of the image is a desolate and destroyed wasteland of what used to be a habitable field, but now ominous smoke rises from it and the branches of trees or bushes lay shattered, bent, gnarled, charred. Above this is a foreboding forest scene, with tall, dark trees shrouding the land around them in darkness as smoke rises from behind them. A swarm of bats are birthed from the darkness and appear to be flying directly towards the viewer. After effects added to the image give it the illusion of being painting using- well, paints, upon a canvassed surface. This gives it a similar visual appearance to what he once actually used to paint upon.