julia-vanvuuren-cofa1002-blog

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Brainstorm with our group for assessment 3 | We are thinking of going with the concept ‘language’ for the assessment.

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I am Julia. I moved to Sydney from Amsterdam. I am doing the bachelor of Design at COFA. Here I will...

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Final Work |

My final work is a narrative, conveyed in several illustrations and symbols. It is build up from ten illustrations, which each tell the story of a song. My final work aims to give a feel of a story, even though the story is not completely illuminated. It aims to stimulate imagination, to stimulate questions why and how, but most of all to stimulate you to connect the elements, to discover the story by creating your own connection - story line - between the illustrations. The story has rhythm, pace and flows from top to bottom, remembering that stories are music, especially this one since it evolved from music. 

But the story also looks back to where it came from, because stories are memories. And in that perspective it embodies the conceptual process behind it. Each single element has a concept. Nothing is placed into this story without being a result of the process of narrative. 

This work tells a story, it talks about songs, it talks about courage and confusion, it talks about changing, dreaming and escaping, it talks about challenges and adventures, it talks about journeys and searches. This work tells my story on the conceptual path to this point. Now it is up to you to stimulate your thoughts, and to discover and create the narrative behind this illustrated story. 

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Details of my final work

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Ten Pieces of Documentation

My ten pieces of documentation follow the conceptual process I went through with my concept of 'narrative'. On the way I got inspired by several artworks and quotes, that helped me to reach my destination. I experimented with convergent thinking, remaking and alien methods to explore the possibilities to answer my question: How can I create/extract (a) narrative(s) from my 'animal-songs'?

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Documentation Ten |

'Vertical landscape' by Eiko Ojala actually turned out to be more of an inspiration that I thought at first. I loved the way this images tells a story and has an order to it. You read it from the top to the bottom, following the line of the illustrations.

For my final work, I wanted to combine several symbols/illustrations of the songs into something that would tell one narrative. I thought of the best way to do that and ended up by also going for a line in my symbols and the way how this image reads from the top to the bottom. This also embodies the 'travel' that plays a big part in a lot of the narratives of the 'animal songs'. 

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Documentation Nine | 

Another exploration in convergent thinking, was to reduce each song down to a sentence in the lyrics that for my summed up the song. Then I again 'remaked' the sentence into simple symbols, conveying the story, and evoking thoughts and stimulating the viewer's imagination. I found it harder to stay away from literal symbols, because the sentences often included words that already have a very strong visual representation. 

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Documentation Eight |

I explored 'convergent thinking' to create illustrations for my songs. I tried to reduce each song down only four words. These four words had to tell and embody the narrative of the song. These words I then tried to remake in a visual way: symbols, which I combined in one illustration per song. My aim with the illustrations was to convey the narrative from the song, but also to evoke questions, the how and why, and to get thoughts stimulated by the viewer to create their own story to explain the symbol. When making the symbols, I also tried to focus on simplicity, to not distract from the concept.

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Document Seven | 

Karen Knorr made these installations in Musee Carnavalet. In this work, Karen Knorr plays in on fables. Instead of aiming to teach a lesson, Karen Knorr aims to show the distance between the worlds: 'Raw nature on the one hand and on the other the cultural site which allows nature entry only in the form of a representation." 

I discovered this work, when I was looking more into fables and animals used in stories. But I came back to this later in my conceptual process. I think Karen Knorr's work are very much about the concept. They are confusing at first a bit, but if you look into them you'll find more symbols, conveying the story behind the images. You want to now the how and why of the images and you are uncontrollably creating narratives from the images to explain what is happening. I think this message and result really sticked in my head when making my symbols, because I aimed to have the same effect on the viewer. 

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You have to crop everything down to concentrate the viewer’s mind. The more extraneous stuff there is, the more you lose sight of the idea.

Documentation Six | 

This quote is by Clive Challis, an art director and teacher. I found this quote in 'The A-Z of Visual Ideas' by John Ingledew. 

Keeping it simple has been a very important element to me, when creating a visual narrative from the songs. I wanted the viewer to get the feel of a narrative and understanding (a bit) of the story. I did not want to confuse the viewer with too many elements, loosing sight of the concept of my assessment. Especially since the whole project was about concepts.

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‘Brainjack v. 1. to communicate by seizing someone’s imagination. 2. to transmit or reveal information, feelings, emotions or thoughts so that they are cleary understood.’

Documentation Five | 

This quote comes from the book 'The A-Z of Visual Ideas' by John Ingledew. 

Since I discovered this quote, aiming for 'Brainjack' has been very important to me. My mind opened a bit further, because I realized that we need imagination to create a narrative. Of course, I knew this, but in my conceptual process I had not been actively aware of this until I saw this quote. To get my viewer to feel the narrative I am trying to convey, I need to seize their imagination, 'light up their mind', so that they will use it to stimulate thoughts to connect the illustrations with each other, using stories. 

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Documentation Four |

'Why We Need Stories' by Jacqui Banaszynski

(Nieman Narrative Journalism Conference, Spring 2002)

This article was very inspiring for my conceptual process. It explores why humans need stories, why we need narratives. First it touches on the fact that people always have had stories, fables, myths, histories and more. 

We need stories because 'they answer answer eternal questions like, ‘How could this happen?’ And they help us build theories about why this could happen.'. And I think this is also why we come up with stories, if we see unrelated things combined together.

We want to create a why and a how, because 'stories give shape to experience and allow us to go through life unblind. Without them, the stuff that happens would float around in some glob and none of it would mean anything.' 

Later in the article, Jacqui Banaszynski mentions different elements that stories are. Two really stood out for me. The first one was that 'stories are music; write, edit and tell yours with pace and rhythm and flow, throw in the dips and twirls that make them exciting, but stay true to the core beat. Remember that readers hear stories with their inner ear.' 

I tried to come back to this in my final work, creating a rhythm and flow in the narrative I created. 

The second one was that 'stories are memory; write and edit and tell yours with respect for the past they archive and for the future they enlighten.'

This is also an important message to me, since my story/narrative/final piece embodies my process, my conceptual process. So in a way, my story is a memory of that process. But also a future for more stories, for evoked imaginations, for stimulated thoughts.

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Documentation Three |

Another way in exploring how to create a narrative from my songs was making haiku's. This was definitely an alien method to me. Even though I had heard of haiku's, I had never attempted to make one before. Also, the haiku's in a way were convergent thinking, since I tried to reduce the narrative of each song down to a core of 17 syllables. I aimed to retain the story feel. It was a good way to explore the narratives, since I had to reduce them down and produce them again, more in my own words. I made haiku's for ten of the songs in total. 

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Documentation Two |

To start my conceptual process, I used the chance method, inspired by Dada, to create three narratives. I shuffled the songs and pick the first, last, or 'animal-containing' sentence from the playing song and placed them together in one narrative. I had never used used chance as experimentation, so in a way it was an alien method to me. It was interesting to see how, already, some narratives popped up from the lyrics, using this technique. 

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Documentation One | 

As starting point of my conceptual process for assessment two, I used my map for assessment one. In this map I search for connections between songs in my iTunes Library and ending up with all the songs including an animal in their title. These songs I then reduced to symbols, creating the conceptual map.

For my second task, I found it hard to start, but I noticed, when listening again to the songs, that each song contained a sense of a narrative. So I choose 'narrative' as my concept for my process and was wondering how I could create or extract (a) narrative(s) from my song.

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For my final assessment, I made ten illustrations in total, here are the last six. These are also each based on four words that describe the narrative of that specific song. I tried to focus on keeping them simple, but also to evoke people's imaginations. I want to combine all of the illustrations in one story. 

First I was thinking of doing this by chance again, shuffling the songs and than put them in that order. But I think it will be better if I put them in the order that makes sense to me and tells a story. 

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I have decided to keep working with the symbols based on the four words. One of the symbols I made before, when asking others, was too busy. There was too much going on, distracting from the concept. So the first image in this post is a new iteration of this symbol, in which I tried to simplify it. 

The first image is based on the four words: soldier - fight - alone - proud

The second image is a new one, based on the words: fight - hidden - lost - faith

I have decided that I am going to focus on a line as 'a story line' in all my illustrations, so that when I want to combine them, I can use this line.