Voter Registration Notes

You can register to vote by completing a "Voter Registration Application" and presenting it to the Registrar of Voters Office, the DMV, any State Welfare Agency or by mailing the form to the Registrar of Voters Office, P O Box 11130, Reno NV 89520

Where can I get a voter registration form? 1. Registrar of Voters Office, 1001 E Ninth St., RM A135, Reno NV 89512 2. DMV Offices 3. State Welfare Agencies 4. Most Post Offices 5. Libraries

Or fill one out online here.

The deadline is Oct. 6.

Fake News Project

The current assignment is to fake a news story. This should involve at least three images you'e composited, and some supporting text -- the text could be as simple as a caption or headline, or you could write a mini news article to accompany the image, if appropriate. The "fake news" could be either something plausible, or something completely absurd. Either way, strive to make the image itself as convincing as possible, and try to create the accompanying caption or story in a way that it sounds like a real news story. Tuesday will be an in-class work day for this project, and it will be due at the begining of class the following Wednesday.

Come to class Tuesday with your raw materials for the project selected (or shot, if you're using any photos you plan to shoot yourself), and a basic sketch of your idea for the project.

In-class assignment: Compositing

In this assignment, I want you to insert a small image into a large landscape, or a large image into a small space: think of putting a giant banana in the middle of Times Square, or putting the eiffel tower into an aquarium. This is a basic compositing exercise -- I want you to make it as convincing as possible. Six things to look for when compositing, to make consistent across your composited images:

1. Color Balance
2. Brightness and Contrast
3. Key Light Direction (and Shadows)
4. Perspective
5. Blur
6. Grain

Here's a good tutorial on changing the lighting source for an image by creating two layers for a single image, adjusting them to highlight and shadow values, and then blending the two layers:

Lighting a Giant Elephant By bpkelsey
http://www.worth1000.com/tutorial.asp?sid=161386&page=1

You mini civics assignment - due Thurs

As the Oct 6 deadline for registering to vote in Nevada gets close, here's your mini-assignment. In several states, there have been some voter restrictions either passed or proposed that would make it more difficult for students to vote. I want you to look into this, and be able to summarize the point of view of both sides of the issue - one side, which claims that they're trying to eliminate voter fraud, and the other side, which clams this is an attempt at voter disenfranchisement. Which side makes the most compelling case, in your opinion?

Write and print out at least one paragraph giving your take on the issue. We'll talk it over in class.

What's due Monday, 9/17

Just a reminder: your visual response to your chosen collage artist is due at the beginning of class, Monday 9/17.

Collage Artist Paper and Presentation: Due Tues, 9/11

Write a three-page (doublespaced) paper on a collage artist, choosing from the list below. When you've selected your artist, post the artist's name in the "comments" below, along with which section of the class you're in -- morning or afternoon (and make sure no one in your section has already claimed that artist by checking out the comments before you). This is first come, first serve, so the quicker you pick and artist and comment, the wider choice you'll have.

Your paper should include some biographical background, to put the artist's work in context, and you should also choose two specific collage works by the artist, and give an aesthetic analysis of those works. You can talk about content -- what is the "meaning" of the piece, and how does the artist articulate that meaning? What sort of sources did the artist draw the collage material from, and how does that inform the meaning of the work? Also analyze its formal properties: how has the artist used color? Composition? Variation - of size, of light areas/dark areas, etc? Negative space and positive space? Rhythm? Texture? Is there a foreground and a background -- and if so, how do they relate to each other?

The central message of your paper should be a summary of the particular methods the artist uses and the effects the artist achieves through collage. You can break down the three-page structure like this:

Page 1: Central message and bio
Page 2: Analysis of one collage
Page 3: Analysis of second collage

You will be presenting your paper next Tuesday. Bring a printed-out version of the paper and visual materials (the two images you've chosen, and anything else that will help in explaining your chosen artist and his/her work -- for the presentation, you can make a powerpoint and/or bring digital images to project). You will also be making a digital collage that is in some way a response to the artist's work; we will be working on that assignment for a couple classes. This is not to be a copy of any of the artist's work -- but take some principles that the artist embodies, and apply them to a work of your own making. For instance, Max Ernst used illustrations from 19th-century popular illustrated novels and science books and combined them to make a kind of disjointed story. What would a collage-story look like if it were assembled from science books of today?

So - due in one week - the paper (which you will present), and the beginning materials of your "artist response" collage, so you can begin working on that in class next Thursday.

Use the MLA guide for citing sources for your bibliography, for the paper:

http://www.umuc.edu/library/libhow/mla_examples.cfm

Citation help:

Citation machine

Easybib

Here is the common writing rubric, which I'll be using to grade your paper:

http://www.sierranevada.edu/assets/SNC-Common-Rubric-Written-Assignments-4-columns.pdf

And here's the list of collage artists. Not all of them were primarily collage artists, but all used collage:

Jean Arp
Romare Bearden
Umberto Boccioni
Mark Bradford
Georges Braque
Joseph Cornell
James Dawe
Arthur G. Dove
Marcel Duchamp
Max Ernst
John Heartfield
Hannah Hoch
David Hockney
Lee Krasner
Kazimir Malevich
Man Ray
Henri Matisse
Pablo Picasso
Ad Reinhardt
Allison Renshaw
Mimmo Rotella
Kurt Schwitters
Bernie Stephanus
Jonathan Talbot
Cecil Touchon
Marnie Weber

Assignment for Thursday (8/30)

Image and text project. You will be making two different pictures, working from the same initial image. Produce an image that can relate to text in an interesting way. Create that image either by shooting it yourself (it can be a staged image, or an image "caught on the fly"), or it can be an image that is collaged from at least three sources (if you want to make a drawing as one of your sources, that's perfectly acceptable -- otherwise you can cull images from Google images and so on).

Using that image as a base, make two seperate treatments of the image, with legible text in each.

In treatment #1, use text that has a sense of "interior monologue." It doesn't literally have to be an interior monologue, but it should have that interior quality -- as if we're listening in on the thoughts of someone -- perhaps the thoughts of someone in the picture, perhaps the thoughts of someone looking at the scene (as if we're looking at the scene through someone's eyes, and hearing their thoughts).

In treatment #2, take the same image and place text in it that has a quality of "exterior commentary" -- the type of commentary one might find in a news caption or textbook, explaining what's happening, or somehow passing judgement on the scene. It should be as if the words are coming from a source that's not participating in the scene -- but commenting upon it from some sort of remove.

Each treatment of type should be distinct, utilizing different fonts and different layout strategies. Think about how the text relates to the image both conceptually (in the manner of an idea) and formally (how it sits on the page, how the shapes of the letters relate to the imagery, etc). Try to be as radically different in your font treatments as possible. For instance, if you have one treatment where the text is all one font, horizontal, small, and in one color, the other treatment might mix different fonts, run the text vertically, large, and in various colors.

You will have class time to work on this project on Thursday. But come prepared with an idea, and with your text and images already selected.