Photoshop and surrealism
Paul Orsi
http://www.transbay.net/~rrsquid/
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Nik Maack
Paul Orsi wrote:
>
> A few images that may be of interest to this group
>
> http://www.transbay.net/~rrsquid/
I'm sorry, but I didn't find your works all that interesting. My
biggest complaint is that the pictures are so small. They might be more
interesting if I could make out the detail, instead of squinting at the
tiny pictures you've put up. Clicking on the thumbnail photos takes me
to what I at first assumed were just slightly larger thumbnail photos.
Nik
Paul Orsi
download time, however your advice will help in the future. As far as your
not finding the works not interesting, I would appreciate better criticism
pertaining to ideas. I'm open to new ideas. Thanks -Paul
Nik Maack wrote:
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Nik Maack
or see the works for themselves:
http://www.transbay.net/~rrsquid/
Paul Orsi wrote:
> I apologize for the images being so small. Some of that has to do with
> download time, however your advice will help in the future.
Keen. I wouldn't worry so much about download times if I were you.
While it used to be a concern in the past, many of us have moved on to
high speed internet connections. And even if I were on a low speed ISP,
I would be willing to wait for large pieces of art.
> As far as your
> not finding the works not interesting, I would appreciate better criticism
> pertaining to ideas. I'm open to new ideas.
Okay, one complaint I had was regarding "Surreal Haiku". The face with
the flowers in front of it with a Dali landscape in the background... A
lot of would-be surrealist artists make the mistake of "paying homage"
far too often, creating works that are so obviously knock-offs of
traditional surrealist work that there's not much of interest to viewers
who are all-too-familiar with surrealism.
I would much rather hear your voice, your ideas, than see you speak
through the traditional surrealist symbols. If you do a search on
surrealist art, for example, you'll come across hundreds of artists who
draw and paint and collage Dali style landscapes and it gets dull very
quickly. At least, to me.
I think your strongest piece is the saxoscope. (It's the one that
irritates me the most because I cannot make out the details due to its
size.) I like the idea of it, because it's a nice surrealist
juxtaposition, and I wonder what the hell such a device would do.
Clearly you think this is one of your best pieces as well, seeing as how
you've included a black and white version, and a colour version.
"Alien Vision" is also a neat idea. I like it, anyway, but I really do
wish it was larger. I can barely make out your "signature" in the corner.
"Computer Music" didn't do anything for me. Somehow, I sense there is a
story behind this piece that I'm not getting. It looks like a technical
reproduction of something. But what?
"The Synthetic Man" is the weakest piece on your site. The colours
combinations are bland -- gray and army green and red -- and the
composition itself is fairly dull. It looks like a blueprint I'm
supposed to be intrigued by, but it's not really complicated enough to
be interesting.
"Paul at the Beach" is pretty good... Again, size is an issue. It's
difficult to make out the details. I'm not too keen on the rays
shooting out from the circle. For one thing, you have this highly
detailed centre circle, surrounded by these not very detailed gray rays.
That takes away from the complexity of the entire piece. I believe
it's important to have the same level of complexity throughout an entire
composition. You might disagree.
"The Mirror" is just too simple. It looks like it was purely computer
generated, and that always bores me. It might be a failing on my part,
but I always find purely computer made art, without messiness, without a
human quality, to be very cold and boring. I personally require an
element of spontaneity and freshness.
"Psyberstream" and "Dream Journal" just don't do much for me. Again,
the size of the images makes it difficult to see the details. I can
barely make out the words written across the bottom of "Psychberstream".
"Dream Journal" is a repetition of your other works, and I'm not quite
sure why you bothered. It was probably a technical exercise on your
part, to see if you could reproduce your works as pages in a book.
One last comment: I found it sort of odd that you're calling the art
site "Adobe Photoshop 5.5 Web Art Gallery". Is it really necessary to
include the Adobe Photoshop name in the title? It seems sort of odd.
Most seem to refer to their work as "computer generated art" or
something similar. Making references to "Adobe" seems akin to a
traditional artist naming his site after the brand of brushes they use.
Anyhow, I hope these comments are helpful in some way.
And Paul, if you want to return the favour (or punishment) or decide I'm
in no position to criticize you, here's my website:
It's my older work, and some of the links are fucked. But it gives a
good sample of what I do.
Nik
Black Barrel
concerned. It is not a device as such but an idea that intersects on a poetic
plane.(music as a probe for going deeper into feelings, a kind of microscope..)
I personally did not pay any homage to old surrealists in the 'surreal haiku'
but put old ideas in new ways. Who said that those artists really are that
original in the sense that those ideas cannot be recycled. I do not belive that
the human psyche and its mind is that removed from another(person) so that our
artist expressions cannot be similar at some point. That website of mine was a
beginning Photoshop class I took at CCC . (In my case there is also the need for
speed, who has time?). Right now I'm checking out things like the Holographic
Universe theory; Programming graphics (POV-Ray; Poly-Ray) which is for the first
time getting me turned onto mathematics. And ending on that note- I got a mid
term comming up.
Thanks again for your comments. I will study them. -Paul
(my e-maill is now rrs...@transbay.net)
Nik Maack wrote:
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Nik Maack
Black Barrel wrote:
> Thanks Nick. Your comments are well taken. As far as the 'saxoscope', is
> concerned. It is not a device as such but an idea that intersects on a poetic
> plane.(music as a probe for going deeper into feelings, a kind of
>microscope..)
I was thinking about the piece called "computer music". I thought it
interesting to wonder if that's what a person would see when studying a
piece of music by looking at it through the "saxoscope".
> I personally did not pay any homage to old surrealists in the 'surreal haiku'
> but put old ideas in new ways. Who said that those artists really are that
> original in the sense that those ideas cannot be recycled.
I agree that the ideas can be recycled. It's just that so many people
have recycled them that it's difficult to find anything new in the
reshuffling of the images. It's like panning for gold where millions
have already done so. Then again, there's always a sort of personal,
subjective gold to be found in such exercises, I guess.
> That website of mine was a
> beginning Photoshop class I took at CCC .
CCC?
>(In my case there is also the need for
>speed, who has time?)
One of the things I have learned about art is the results are best if
there is no rush. Sure, a deadline urges me on. But in the old days I
considered it the norm to start a piece and finish it in two hours or
so. Now I like to savor a work, dabbling at it for weeks, sometimes a
whole month, adding and taking away from the work.
It's funny how I had to learn this on my own, and maybe the advice will
be useful to you somehow -- when we draw a line, we sometimes assume
that that's it. It's the line, we have to accept it, and move on. This
isn't true. We can erase it, and redraw it. Or, we can leave it there,
and redraw the line on top of the old one. We can work the line.
In my early days of art making, I always felt that the first line put on
the page was sacred, and couldn't be reworked in this fashion. I was wrong.
But I'm babbling.
> Thanks again for your comments. I will study them. -Paul
Well, I hope they prove useful in some way. And please let us know when
you've done anything else by posting here, in alt.surrealism.
Nik