Week 07 | Sequential

This class teeters on the divide of teaching software and delivering you an aesthetic history and technique. You cannot choose one or the other to be a well-rounded designer. You may not necessarily master all programs you use, but must master the understanding of how to use them intelligently. Rhino could allow you to model the hand or the leg perfectly and actually document it in motion, however we are not interested in recreation. The visual representation of motion is indicative of more than just a re-creating of what we can plainly see in front of us.

At the advent of film and motion picture, art movements were striving to attain a similar aesthtic of life in motion. Artists were in search of movement as more that just the body in space, but rather the body in time. Expressionist film and dance were working toward the same goal, using extreme contrast and layers, to express and heighten the complexity of movement.



In this piece, Boccioni puts speed and force into sculptural form. The figure strides forward. Surpassing the limits of the body, its lines ripple outward in curving and streamlined flags, as if molded by the wind of its passing. Boccioni had developed these shapes over two years in paintings, drawings, and sculptures, exacting studies of human musculature. The result is a three-dimensional portrait of a powerful body in action. You can see in the multiple directions of this image, that Boccioni projects multiple dimensions onto the figure. Being able to read this image in several ways is what makes is a successful. The multiplicity of movement was a feature of the body and of time that was an important notion of the Boccioni and his contemporaries – the Futurists.



As the project is called ‘sequential’ we will be confronted with the fact that a certain amount of overlap in motion and that the instance of time, or the photo, is only defined by what immediately precedes and follows it. There are several scales that we will think about while working on these drawings. Quantitative, or the scale of multiples – here we measure by numbers or amount. Relational scale, or a way of organizing information so that the user perceives it according to surrounding data – like a set of tables or bar graph. Lastly, the time scale will be the most difficult to notate.

Your images are documented in a linear – motion, similar to a film strip. But, the aim of this assignment is to map information, not just diagram it. That said, the mapping of your movement may not be best described in chronological order. Remember that your will be creating a multilayered drawing – not a comic strip. This complexity will be of a level similar to that of Boccioni’s charcoal drawing. Movement atop movement.



Let’s think again about the futurists. Their understanding of the visual universe – was the first aesthetic system to break almost entirely with the classical one – their images could properly be understood only in the language of waves, fields, and fronts. The type of movement it was obsessed by were those that created shapes in time, not only in space.

Submission: One 11x17 print, generated in Rhinoceros, composed in Illustrator, saved in .PDF format. You will need to post process the line work in Illustrator to emphasize information you find critical in your study. Use lineweight and linetype to notate these conditions. You may uses shades of gray to assign values to your lines, but may NOT use color. Again, use the filing nomenclature: for student BobSmith, “A06_Smith_B.pdf.” All .pdf files are due in your backpack by 12:00 PM on Tuesday 25 March. Late work will not be accepted.

Week 06 | Follow Up

My apologies again for the technical problems yesterday. The assignment will be reposted today, so be on the lookout for that. Also if anyone is around, there is a somewhat-pertinent event going on this weekend that is highly unacademic but really fun. You may find a kinematic motion your never thought possible. The Kesington Kinetic Sculpture Derby is going on; check out the site, and if you have time go and don't think about kinematics, just soak in the ridiculousness of the body in motion.

Week 06 | Transitional

Kinematics is the branch of mechanics that studies the motion of a body or a system without consideration given to its masses or the forces acting on it, or the study of the positions, angles, velocities, and accelerations of body segments and joints during motion. In kinematic studies of the body, there are specifically defined parts. Profiles, involve the contours of the body, or the most exterior and visible character of movement. Skeletal Vectors, or rigid portions of the body, being the arm, forearm, or leg for example. Joints between adjacent segments explain the range of motion within the kinematics as control points. Lastly, but often the first laid out in a the study is a Construction Framework, or all of the guidelines and primitive shapes required to generate a more complex construction.



It seems easy at first to diagram a bone and a joint, but to develop this three-dimensional motion as a 2d representation is a highly complex lattice of motion, trajectory, and rotation. Movement in space, and movement in elevation are two completely different images. Think of the iconic photos of Edweard Muybridge, without digital post process at his disposal, he placed his subject in front of a datum. These photos are a perfect representation of linear movement. Across a plane and along one axis, these movements seem to move parallel to a flat surface. However, there is movement along several axes in this image. You can image there is movement along the axis running towards us – the woman’s gait causes her to sway from side to side. These sub-motions are critical to understanding the whole kinematic diagram.


Theoretically, we can talk about these general movements as a difference in kind and a difference in degree. Mapping the variety of movements in your images will become a quantitative analysis of difference in kind and in degree. Think of making a fist, each finger moves in the same motion, this would be an example of a difference in degree. As the skeletal vectors and joints are similar, they only differ in degree, such as distance. While the closing motion of the thumb in this instance is a difference in kind – it is making an entirely different movement. Yet while they are all fingers, they do not all act the same in principle.

Another example to consider is Gilles Deleuze's of the racehorse being more closely related to the greyhound than a draft horse. While both of the same species, their functions are completely different. The draft horse, using this model, is more closely related to the oxen. Consider this philosophy when attempting to dissect your images. You will find many similarities in motion, but determine which are similar in kind and those which act only the same in degree.



Rhino will help us to define these mechanic characteristics using primitives - consider primitives as simplistic geometry. In the same way that we learned that Illustrator acts intelligently, such that it knows the image as a 1:1 projection and that the geometric values and equations are embedded within the ‘shapes’ you draw. Rhino acts in the same way. This is not an exercise in tracing…you are NOT to place your photographs as backgrounds in Rhinoceros. Instead, you will need to build a series of construction lines for each image to set up all of the reference information needed to build the 3 remaining conditions:

Skeletal Vectors –lines that notate the internal structure / rigging that supports the movement
Profiles – contour information of the body part / body parts being explored
Range of Motion – the degrees of flexibility dictated by the type of joint / joints

Start with the skeletal vectors first, notating the vectors present. Then move onto the profile information, using primitive shapes as the basis for your profiles. This is also not an exercise in reduction. Turning the profiles of your body parts into a series of iconographic or symbolic traces is strictly forbidden. Your goal is to notate the qualitative conditions of the profiles through primitive shapes. This IS a multi-week assignment that will require patience and concentration in order to be completed successfully. Predetermining the results in your head and trying to tackle too much information at one time will cause you to miss critical information. For Tuesday, you must set up the framework and drawings for at least 2 images.

Submission: One 11x17 progress file, generated in Rhinoceros, composed in Illustrator, saved in .PDF format. You will need to post process the line work in Illustrator to emphasize information you find critical in your study. Use lineweight and linetype to notate these conditions. You may uses shades of gray to assign values to your lines, but may NOT use color. Again, use the filing nomenclature: for student BobSmith, “A05_Smith_B.pdf.” All .pdf files are due in your backpack by 12:00 PM on Tuesday 18 March. Late work will not be accepted.