Project #4: Food Art Blog

Due: 5-14

For your fourth project you will take-on the role of culinary designers! Whether you consider yourself a true foodie, or your meals are just a means to survival, food is a topic that is central to our daily lives. There is a long history of fine artists who have worked with the subject of food in their own work. Review my Food Art blog on our course site to whet your appetites.

For this project you will use Blogger to contribute to a community recipe book. You will be made an author on the site http://art-food-yum.blogspot.com/ . This means that you have permission to post directly to the site.

To begin, pick a recipe that you feel defines your culinary life. This may be a family recipe that has been passed down through the generations, it may be a selection from your favorite cookbook, or it may be a recipe that you invented yourself. Write a paragraph describing the recipe & how it relates to you. You may discuss the occasions that you have used this recipe (holidays, entertaining guests, Monday’s lunch, etc…), as well as potential food or beverage pairings that you would suggest. If you have chosen a recipe from a cookbook, you must still come up with your own description…do not copy one from the book. Along with the descriptive paragraph, you will also include an ingredients list and cooking instructions. These need to be clear, concise and easy to follow.

The next step is to prepare and document your recipe. What fun is a recipe if it doesn’t get made? This is when you will need your digital camera handy. As you prepare the dish, I want you to take a series of 4-5 photographs. The first 3-4 should document the cooking process (what you consider crucial moments in the recipe), and the final image should be a documentation of the finished dish. You can either take the photos yourself, as you prepare the food, or you may ask someone else to help. Try to make an appealing presentation for your final image. As the designer, you don’t want to just document the dish…you want to make it look good! Things to consider: Where is the best light in your home for the image? Should you present it on certain dishware or with certain place settings? Should you use any garnish or table props?

If you do not have access to a good quality digital camera, you may take your images with a film camera, and have the photo-lab make you a digital image cd. You may also scan your printed photos on campus using a scanner in the library or in the B-333 lab. As with the written description, your images must be original.

Finally, name your blog with the name of your recipe, and add the label “food art 1105” along with any other labels that relate to your post.

Layout Order: First, your written statement, next, the ingredients list and cooking instructions, then the 4-5 images. When you upload your images, set the image size to “medium.”

Materials:

-camera (digital or otherwise)

-favorite recipes

-food for cooking

-access to our Blogger site, http://art-food-yum.blogspot.com

Design in our Lives; The Museum of Modern Art

DUE: 4/23

Whether or not we are aware of it, the design arts infiltrates our lives on a daily basis. Design influences everything around us from the products we use, to the clothes we wear, to the food we eat, to the spaces we inhabit. The Museum of Modern Art has a special interest in the field of design. They have an entire floor of their museum and a stand-alone design store to prove it!

For our third field trip, we will go to the various exhibits on the third floor of the MoMA. The design galleries feature an eclectic sampling of artists and designers who blur the lines between the two fields. Some of the objects are made for real world utility, and some of the objects are…well…less practical. The study of functionality in design is called Ergonomics. It may help to research this topic before writing your response.

For your paper, you must write about four different works from this exhibit. Two of the works must have “high functionality” and two works must have “low functionality.” Since there is no such thing as “perfect design,” your opinion about functionality will be somewhat subjective. In your writing, compare and contrast the varying degrees of utility that you assign to the works you choose. Consider the following questions: How do you define these categories? What do your “high functionality” objects have in common? What makes them so ergonomic? What do your “low functionality” objects have in common? How could you alter these objects to make them more ergonomic? Does an object need to be highly functional to be good design? Are art and design always two separate ideas? If not, where do they meet?

Your finished writing needs to be at least 350 words. It should have an introduction, three body paragraphs and a conclusion. Post the writing on your Blogger page under the title, “Design in Our Lives”, and label the post “Field Trip 3”.

At the end of your post, cite the four artworks that you chose in the following format. This information is generally available on the wall near the artwork:

Artist’s Full Name

“Title of Work” written in quotations*

Medium

Year Completed

*When referencing the work in the body of your writing, also be sure to write the titles in quotations.

Project #3: Illustrate a Story

DUE: 4/16

For your third project, you will take on the role of an illustrator. An illustrator is a commercial artist who brings somebody else’s story or idea into the visual world. For this scenario, you have been hired by the non-profit organization StoryCorps to illustrate one of their archived stories. Since its founding in 2003, StoryCorps has worked with the Library of Congress to record and catalog more than 35,000 oral stories. The participants in this project are Americans from all walks of life. The stories that they tell run the gamut of human emotions and experience. To begin, start listening to some stories at the StoryCorps website: http://storycorps.org/ . Click “Listen to Stories” from the left-hand menu, and you can browse by category.

Select any one story to illustrate. Your illustration may be created by hand (drawing, collage, etc…) or you may create a digital collage using Adobe Photoshop. Either way, your illustration must convey the essential nature of the story. I expect a minimum of four hours invested in this project. As with your digital collage project, do not include text in your illustration. Instead, use your understanding of formal analysis to tell the story with visual language alone.

When you are finished, upload a digital image (.JPG) of your illustration to your blog under the title, “Illustrate a Story”, with the label “Project 3”. Include a brief description about what you found interesting about this particular story, and what elements of the story are represented in your illustration. You will also need to embed the original StoryCorps recording into your post. Here is how to do this:

· On the StoryCorps webside, click the “Share” link next to the story.

· From the share menu, click the orange “Embed” button.

· Highlight and copy the embed code.

· In your Blogger post, click the “Edit HTML” tab.

· Paste the embed code into this field.

· Make sure to switch from “Edit HTML” to “Compose” when you upload your image and write your description.

Remember that Adobe Photoshop is available to you on any Mac computers in the library or in the lab B-333. Scanners are available in both locations too.