Filed under: precedents

241 Steam Punk Precedents

Similar to Theo Jansen's work which I had been looking at I also wanted to incorporate a steam punk theme. I have always been a huge fan of steam punk themed projects. Some examples are Eye of the Storm by Christopher Alender (some screenshots shown here), or the movie "9". I really like the mechanical look to it and the inclusion of cogs and time based equiptment. I wanted to use these ideas to mechanicalize my own character. This way, as well as involving Jansens walkers, I could create interesting ways of moving characters around.

Punk

Theo Jansen

I've decided to look at Theo Jansen's work as a precendednt for Project 2.

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Out of the four given artists and architects I found that Theo's work was more exciting for me to look at than the others.

Things I like about his work-

1. Materials are very basic, using tubing, rope, ties and plastic. This is neat because it shows how very basic simple everyday materials can be taken from their usual use and combined to create new life. Note that there are no electronic parts, which means that the life is created without the use of artificial life. I can bring this into my own work by looking at combining simple materials rather than making complex ones.

 

2. Forms are crazy and wild. We would not think of shapes like this as new beings or creatures. They are quite rigid and non fluid when static but when the machine begins to move it can be quite fluid and soothing to watch. This can be incorporated by having smoother flowing parts on my character.

 

3. 

Precedent Images from Damien Hirst

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These three precedent images are my favorite pieces of work from artist Damien Hirst.

 

In the first image, of a diamond skull, Damien has chosen to represent one type of material which is abundent and important in our lives, bone, and replace it with a rare and luxury material, diamond. I like this use of swapping materials which we have a strong relationship with in a familiar shape and change the way we think about the form.

The second image is one of Damien's spin paintings. I like this piece because of the relativey random pattern it creates, the paint is spraying outwards but we end up with a wild out of control image.

In the third and last image, Damien has cut a cow in half and place each section in a seperate box. I like the way that a person who views the piece can view the cow from either the outside or inside of the cow. This allows the person to get inside of something we usually cannot. The other interesting aspect of this piece is that he is taking something which requires to be together to operate and split the parts up. This mean that seperately the parts are pretty useless, it is only when we add them together does anything happen.