From the class Integrative Studio 2 · Learning Portfolio post, January 29, 2020
While reading the articles on Visual culture throughout the past three years three works in particular resonated with me.
The first work that stuck out to me was Ruth E. Carter’s costume design in “Black Panther”. I have always been a huge fan of costume design in movies and cinema and have been drawn to its many intricacies. As a kid, I always made my own Halloween costumes as a way to emulate this. My favorite costumes and my favorite movies have always revolved around superheroes. When watching the movie “Black Panther” the themes of Pan-Africanism and Afrofuturism are expressed beautifully throughout the movie and the actors’ wardrobes. My two favorite costumes in terms of behind the scenes work are Queen Ramonda’s shoulder mantle and Nakia’s dress in the casino scene. What both of these pieces have in common is that they were both created using 3D printing technology.
The second work that made an impact on me was HBO’s Watchmen. Watchmen is a TV series that is a sequel to one of if not the most famous graphic novels of all time. Watchmen is actually the only comic book on TIME Magazine’s list of top 100 novels of all time. The show along with the comic takes place in an alternate timeline to ours where certain historical events happened differently. The biggest difference being that the US won the Vietnam war. The comic book is very dark gritty and pessimistic and is symbolized and summarized by the reoccurring image of a cynical bloody smiley face. The TV show despite also being dark and gritty sends a different message. It is about healing, rebirth, and hope and it is represented and summarized by the reoccurring image of an egg. It brings hope to this once hopeless story.
The third and final work that caught my eye was New Story and their adventure in trying to bring affordable, fast, and safe housing to people in need. New Story is doing this through 3D printing the actual houses. I always found this interesting and I think this is a great application of technology. However, I don’t think this 3d printing of housing can be scaled up efficiently or work very well in urban environments. The work this company is doing is fantastic and they are not the only ones using 3dprinting to construct housing. There are companies being funded by NASA to research habitats that could be 3d printed autonomously on mars. I really hope this technology advances in the coming years and that my predictions on upscaling and urbanization are proven wrong.
This semester I think I want to try using 3D printing more since last semester I only used it once and I would also like to try to layer meaning and symbolism into my work. In the past, my work has been very utilitarian and to serve a purpose for the most part but not much meaning has been attributed to it and if it has it was usually done retrospectively rather than actively.
Originally posted on my Parsons Learning Portfolio.