Its been a few weeks without a class but now we are back in full effect. This week the students at HVA were introduced to the work of the constructed reality. We looked at the work of Maggie Taylor, Thomas Allen and my own work (Kieran Johnson). But with so much time apart we all just wanted to get down to making some realities.
The basis for the project was to start simple, "let's make a garden". The students were supplied with a few simple tools to create their gardens: laptops, print-outs of grass, contact sheets of flowers/animals and some general materials such as X-Acto knives, tape and garden wire. Below are some of the students hard at work, making some wonderful gardens.
The laptops act as the staging area for the construction. We used a Google image search for large files and a basic image viewer (capable of filling the screen with an image). This provides the back-drop for each image. Much like a scenery for a play. The keyboard is the stage where the print out of the grass sits on top.
From a selection of printed flower samples, the students then selected and carefully cut out their chosen plants. Each sheet had approximately 10 images to choose from including a skunk and a peacock for animal flavor. Stay tuned to see some finished images after this week's photo shoot!
