Zaha Hadid

Why I want to curate elements of Zaha Hadid, her life, architecture and design projects

Zaha Hadid’d Portrait

Three sculptural flower towers named Grace on Coronation will triumph over urban parklands and heritage conservation, and will border on the Brisbane River in Toowong to create a vibrant civic space in the Brisbane residential sector. Grace on Coronation towers are part of the new proposed project by Sunland developers, and is designed by Zaha Hadid architects. Her design features smoothness and elegance, and is like an organic sculptural flower in blossom.

Not only is this design new shores for Brisbane, it is also new shores to me, who first got word of its existence from a recent architectural newsletter that is delivered to my e-mail inbox. I immediately investigated the proposed design and Zaha Hadid’s other designs and buildings. Through further research, I also discovered, that she is  mentioned  amongst the 10 greatest modern architects of our time. She is also known as the queen of curves for her curvy like interior and exterior, as well as furniture designs.

As a qualified interior and building designer, I will forever have an acute interest and involvement in architecture. When I came across architectural designs such as those from Zaha Hadid, I wished to investigate it further and share my knowledge with others.  My spliced together page will thus not only focuses on, and depicts the proposed design features of Brisbane’s flower towers, but will also focus on Zaha Hadid’s other designs and buildings. Content curation for my page includes images, videos, and links to other blogs, websites and my Pinterest account.

It is all about the Sea

The sea has many colours and emotions. It is always changing and never boring.

Montages

My newest experiment is to create Montages. It is a strange concept  – I see it as something real because it has all the elements of a face, but it is unreal. The face elements are scaled and positioned to create a happy appearance. I’m looking forward to investigate this art form in order to create more images in the name of Montage.

It is me and not me

My Montage became a Vintage portrait.

My Montage with a vintage look

 

 

My Blog and Me

This blog provided me the opportunity to  showcase my digital art and photography. It also gave me a platform to tell my stories – stories about myself, my interests and to showcase my digital art.

My interest involved pictures and stories that concern people in their everyday life activities. I’m therefore interested in Movies, art, design, architecture, dogs (my Bella), architectural and art history as well as music. I’m a collector of pop-up books and have quite a collection of architecture pop-up books, abstract art, fairy tales and other themes.

A collage from some of my artwork

Pictures, pictures and pictures – I have always been  interested in pictures and will always be. I had boxes full of pictures before this digital era.  Pictures tell stories. Since I learned and discovered Photoshop and Illustrator, BeFunky, Snagit Editor, Sketchpad (a Google Chrome app) and also Architectural Software such as AutoCAD, Revit and Google Sketchup, I become capable to create my own pictures and designs – it changed my world.

Not only can I use all these software programs and applications separately, it can also be used in coordination with each other. These applications enable me to create and design pictures, and I can also manipulate and change these pictures by applying different techniques  for artistic impressions.

Patterns

I also included digital photography as a separate category as part of my digital art. During my Building Design studies, I executed several projects,  including Urban Research, Landscaping and Studio. I took many pictures to showcase design elements, built-form, landscaping elements and environments – man-made elements that colour our world.

Read more about my Avatar, About me and My history by clicking on the links.

My Avatar

That’s me

This is my avatar that I used for most of my web-presence online accounts. This image is digitally manipulated from my driver’s license photo. It was taken when I was granted an Australian driver’s license in 2010.

I am not sure who owns the copyright to the photo. I investigated my current driver’s license, and could not find anything that prohibited me from using the photo for the purpose I used it for. The current manipulated image also does not show any resemblance to the original image.

However, more information concerning my driver’s license can be found here, from the Department of Transport.

Understanding Digital Art

The digital in front of the word digital art, and its different means of making art and how it is produced, may raise some questions and doubts from some people seeing digital art for the foremost time. In addition, in order to define myself as a digital artist, I had to find a source that explains this interesting art form in definition and import to the visitors of my blog.

A site called Digital Art for All: What is digital Art, defines digital art as an art form made with a computer. Digital artwork is further unique in that it requires computer-based software, with a skilled person to guide the artwork to its final shape.

This website did question the establishment of digital art as an art form, although it does distinguish the fact that digital art requires creativity and the cognition of artistry and design principles, the same as what traditional art practices. Digital art therefore involves the same aesthetic principles as traditional artistic production, such as creativity, design skills and knowledge of colour theory. The difference – instead of using traditional art materials, computer based software is needed. Thus, digital art can be classified as artistic creation.

The site also mentions different digital art types, and according to Digital Art for All: What is digital Art, most of these art types are suited for mass media uses. These purposes include graphic illustrations for advertising, logos, pamphlets, and posters. Illustrations are required for books and comics, but producing them using traditional art is time consuming and costly, which is why digital art is ideal for this media.

Digital art sometimes require a jump into three dimensions, since 3D models are used in animations, movies, picture games, architectural plans, and digital painting. Also, 2D and 3D graphics are present as design elements for websites.

As stated before, digital art requires knowledge of art and design principles, but the tools needed to create them are both organic (humanity and its accomplishments) and binary (the digital software). For people from an earlier generation who live before computers and the Internet came to power, the cognition and skill set required to mold with these technologies are hard to read, whereas people growing up in the knowledge economy may find it more comfortable.

Nevertheless, there are numerous free and trial software to download. Some of this software is accompanied with video instructions and textbook-based tutorials that are available on the Internet to ease the learning process.

Rebecca Blood’s Weblog Ethics, revealed that blog posts must only be printed when you trust you are scribing the truth. I trust in my digital art and I hope the visitors to my blog can notice that I love making digital artwork.

Digital artists like myself needs a platform to share their art and ideas, and by creating this blog, I found a platform where I can consolidate all my art in one place. I also treasure the work of other digital artists, and social media allows digital artists to share their work and passion for one another.

To conclude, digital art is cost-effective and can be made in a shorter timeframe with the benefit of being flexible when changes are required. It is suitable for different media types and needs knowledge of digital software to produce.

Digital Software | Represents the Truth?

It is easy to manipulate images with digital software, but uneasy when the manipulating of images distorts its accuracy. I can honestly say that most of the images displayed in my blog are creations of my own, from which some are manipulated (from my own collection).

Then there are some photo-images used in my blog, from the My History page under the category About. These and others are either purchased from stock photos, or downloaded with the source acknowledged or the original owners permission was granted. Besides, my Avatar is manipulated from the original and I did recognize the source.

It works differently in the newspaper industry who bought photos and images from other sources, which are commonly noted in the caption of the photo.

When issuing a news report, the public trust the newspaper publisher to be ethically correct when conveying news to readers. Well, it appears that it is sometimes not the case, as seen in the example from an article published by the Press Gazette: Journalism Today and written by Dominic Ponsford. Ponsford  reported that The Daily Mail published a photo-image that differs from the original that was taken by a photographer, and distributed by Getty Images.

What has occurred in this scenario was that an element of this image was excluded, and the setting was altered. Granting to the Press Gazette article, the ‘picture team’ from the Daily is to fault for this glitz by using digital software.

It is not difficult to perform such a practice, especially with Photoshop if you recognize how to use Photoshop. Consequently, the distorted image failed to transmit the original tale from the state of affairs when it was needed, that plainly makes it untruthful. (Please Click on the link here to view the two photographs and the comparison between them).

It is not clear who gave license for this manipulation or for the reason it was done, however the Daily Mail stressed to the Press Gazette that this was a misunderstanding from their side, against their policy and not common pattern to manipulate photos.

A few comments underneath the Press Gazette’s article voiced their concern around this issue of straining as an untruth and they want the news to be reported ‘as is’. Nevertheless, one of the reviewers has a different view and argued that framing and cropping a picture can also be distorted, which was quickly rejected by others.

In summary, digital software is useful in picture manipulation, only it should be done with care and consideration in the setting of the digital art type and for what reason it is applied.

Creating Digital Art

It is amazing what you can do with all the digital possibilities, the software available today, and the luxury of Web 2.0. So, Since I learned Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, I create and manipulate my own art (non-digital) and other images (photos, scanned birthday and any other cards, calender images as well as architectural designs.

Web 2.0 platforms such as BeFunky, Delicious, DeviantArt, Flickr, Pinterest and Twitter enables me to link, share, view, and store my own and other people’s work regarding art, digital art, photography, architecture and also any information concerning my interests in the form of websites, videos and images.

Find more of my digital art images here.

Photo Manipulations

This image tells the story of two painters, painting the gutters of the blue house. One of the painters is getting naughty and paint the flowers blue too. The butterflies might also get blue paint on their golden wings.

Mythological Creature Art

The following creatures displayed on this page are based on the Japanese Shinto Mythology.

The two major religious structures influence Japanese mythology are Shinto and the Buddhist religion. Shinto is a term used to distinguish its region from Buddhism, and it is the equivalent of the Japanese kami-no-michi, which means the ways of the gods. Shinto is a community-based religion and celebrates life. It focuses on kami (sense of the sacred), which is the essence or soul of anything that inspires awe (respect combines with fear or wonder). Shinto places of worship are shrines, which are based on belief and worship of kami. An example of a shrine is the Meiji Jungu Shrine and it features a torii, or Gateway as a classic icon of Japanese architecture. Find more information about the shinto mythology here and more on kami here. A discussion about torii’s can be follow here and here.

This creature represents elements from the animé film Princess Mononoke

One of traditional Shinto images I plan to use is the face of Amaterasu. The core of Shinto mythology revolves around her tales (the formation of Japanese islands and the foundation of human society). She was the ancestress of the Imperial household. Read more about Amaterasu here.

The face-image from Amaterasu came from the webpage ‘Temple Illuninates’ and can be found here. Read more about this princess and other information in this article.