- Summer Desire by Oscar Dominguez:
- Use oil paints
- Paint a gradient background darker on the top, lighter near the middle of the canvas (almost white), this gradient should be starting at a colour similar to that of sand.
- The foreground should be dark brown and appear to look like cracked asphalt.
- The mid ground consists of a stone table, the colour of sandstone. On the very right side of the sandstone table there are two feminine figures who appear to be almost melting into the sandstone, they are the same colour as it just with added depth from shading.
- In the middle of the canvas there are two more masculine figures both with a strong physique. The one in front should appear to be sitting, leaned a bit over towards the right, with fabrics of pink and red draped over the leg. The first figure also has its hands dunked into a bucket to the right of it that appears to be painted to look like the body of a violin.
- The second masculine figure is standing behind the first one, with only about a quarter of its body exposed, appearing to be nude and leaning into the first figure. The second figure’s right hand extends behind the head of the first figure and is shaped like a person laying down with a blanket draped over them, in a shape that almost resembles the wing of an angel. Its left arm is extended back towards the left.
- Both the heads of the figures are vases and the second figure’s head is pouring water into the first figure’s head. Both figures have a deep caramel skin tone and have pronounced muscles.
- The final aspect of the piece is the sign that the second figure appears to be holding, propped up with its left hand behind them. The sign extends from the ground up to the second figure’s hand and is a cream colour. There are two silhouettes of male faces from a side profile. One is facing right and is located at the top left of the sign and the other is facing left and is placed on the lower right corner of the sign.
- The cadavre exquis or exquisite corpse technique is described as a collaborative effort from a group of people to create a piece. The way in which this technique worked was by folding the paper to be drawn on, into several sections and each person only drew their corresponding section of the larger image and so forth. The previous person however would fold the paper in a way that their work couldn’t be seen by the next person and so on. This idea of unbiased collaboration could translate very smoothly into usage with interactive computer programs. Techniques similar to this could be used to connect people all across the globe and help people from different cultures intermingle with one another.
- I disagree with the idea that art should reflect the wider cultural environment of the time it is produced. This isn’t to say that it can’t reflect those things or that it shouldn’t but I believe that art, for many people, is a means of escaping or almost therapy in a way. I know for me at least, art is a way for me to express myself or my emotions without having to say them or write them and those personal ideas aren’t necessarily always going to be reflective of current world issues or larger context. Art should just be reflective of whatever the artist wants it to be reflective of.
- Inspired by the text, design your own methodology to produce a truly random number. This should be a series of steps or questions that you can execute/conduct/perform at any time. Consider how to avoid bias of your own mind/location/time of day etc. Include a minimum of three algorithmic steps; for each, explain how it mitigates bias.
Example: Step 1: throw a dart at a calendar of 2020 Step 2: throw a dart at a world map. Step 3: on the internet find the temperature in celsius on that day (step 1) in that location (step 2). Explain your methodology in your blogpost.
- Open a book to a random page and jot down the page number
This mitigates bias because at any given day a person could have any random book with them, it could be a textbook, a personal read, a religious text, etc. there is no specific limitation to page numbers or any clear patterns of repetition.
- As soon as you open the book to the random page, place your finger on a random spot on the page and count which word number on the page it is and jot it down.
This mitigates bias because if done correctly, there will be no thought towards which spot on the page one points at, it is fully up to chance.
- Lastly, count how many letters the word you chose from the previous step has and jot the number down and that is the fully random number.
This mitigates bias because once again it is fully up to chance, there is no way to predict how long or short the word one randomly points at will be so it will produce a random number.