The large group critique that happened yesterday was really helpful for me. The biggest issue that came up concerned the roads, which I, myself, was struggling with. While I got a lot of different "dislikes" or "not workings" thrown at me, one comment was universal and that was that the paper wasn't working because of its pattern, which people pretty universally said doesn't read as road.
However, I still really do like the paper (and I would like to note here that it did copy a bit differently), and am going to try two things before I totally put the kibosh on it. Those are: narrowing the width of the street (which might also make the pattern read differently) and adding more areas of road so that it's not an isolated form on the surface.
As per usual, I do have two questions for whomever reads my blog this week that I would like addressed, please. I'll just number them so they're easier to refer to:
1. Should the roads taper/recede into space?
2. If yes, to question one, should this be the case everywhere or should there be some areas where a road is suggested by just a rectangular strip?
3. Do you think it's okay to have 'my roads' or paths I want to indicate that do not inherently follow a 'real' road?
4. Is it okay to have different papers for roads or do you think that would add too much confusion?
5. Should the roads be straight and linear (cut with X-acto) or more of a freehand look that I cut with scissors? That said, too, should the roads be more or less straight or curvy or both?
Thanks in advance! Here is my breakdown of time:
Photographing and scanning actual paper images to be re-sized: 7 hours
Printing new paper components: 1.5 hours
Cutting out new paper components: 7 hours
Arranging the copied image in my studio: 1 hour
Doing work on my actual piece (including gluing down grass and walkway areas, affixing appendages to the larger foam core sheet, lining the edges of the foam core): 6 hours
Here is a photo of my second copied version of "my Berlin" in my studio. It is 75 percent the size of the original.
As requested, here are some responses to your questions.
ReplyDelete1. Yes, I think it would help anchor us in this space, and make it easier to figure out what's going on.
2. I'm vaguely imagining large vertical avenues, and smaller cross streets branching out from them horizontally. If you do a perspective thing on one vertical street, then you should be consistent with all of them. Horizontal streets would of course be straight rectangles.
3. This is a good question. I feel like we're trusting you to show us some version of Berlin, based in reality if not strictly faithful to it. Are you showing us fake buildings that aren't in the real Berlin? If not, why would you do that for the roads? On the other hand, what's important about the roads is to give us a sense of Berlin's larger structure. I think it's okay to wander a bit from the real street system, but not too much. Here's a way to think about it: What would a Berliner think if they were looking at your map?
4. Different papers would work if they're fairly similar, and also I think if there's a reason for them to be different--are the original streets cobbled vs. pavement? Again, I think the job of the roads in the map is to anchor us, more than to have their own expressive nature, but you maybe you can make exceptions for big, important avenues as long as they stay recognizable as roads.
5. This is a question of balance. If they look enough like roads in size, proportion, and texture, I think they could be shaped freestyle and still work.