Monday, 3 October 2016

Author research:

CARL SAGAN
Having been a fan of the COSMOS T.V. series since I was young, I have decided to make Carl Sagan my first choice of Author.
I haven’t read any of his books before but from the T.V series I feel his use of words is very eloquent, thoughtful and extremely inspiring.

MAIN THEMES IN SAGAN’S WORK
  • Spiritualism of science - The beauty of understanding and exploring, The universe and planet earth
  • Human psychology - desires influenced by cultural hegemony - perceptions of success,
  • Environment and social concerns
  • The only respected knowledgeable and notable figure that I know of who so openly talks about uncertain concepts such as space/time travel, terraforming, alien life forms and meeting and communicating with them.
  • Setting sail into the cosmic oceans - The need to oneday leave Planet Earth altogether as this part of the galaxy is to volatile for us to stay forever. Speculation on how we would leave and how we could.
  • Investment in science and progress - Progress is generally measured against a country's GDP, Sagan emphasizes that progress is not about an individual's or a group's financial status but as all humanities and the planet Earth’s health and and future prosperity. He mentions how when great investment and organization is put into scientific developments fantastic progress has been made - this is shown in the space race and the Manhattan project - Both where governments organized the best minds from around the globe to test, experiment and develop a theory into reality - however the majority of scientists the best minds of the past century then and now are employed by Weapon manufactures and petrol companies. Such investment is made into new exciting ways to blow each other up from great distances and so little investment is made into, for example, preserving the clean air and fresh water, the safety and prosperity of future generations - I read recently This Article about a Data scientist one of the best in his field, who has just left his job at facebook. In the interview he says "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads." I wonder if Carl Sagan ever comprehended that data scientists would be paid millions to get people to click on digital ads for freemium games?
  • We have been evolved by the universe to understand itself.

WHAT INTERESTS ME IN SAGAN’S WORK
The eloquence in the delivery of facts. How Sagan applies an a-political approach to the problems facing humanity

WHAT ART AND INITIAL IDEAS I COULD RESEARCH
    Rick and Morty - Storytelling that makes light of scientific development and discovery, sharing concepts in a way that is not serious, in essence Sagan and Rick and Morty share a theme of introducing concepts about space and humans place in the universe and time in a novel way.  Unlike Star trek which is like Carl Sagan’s future in which humans have overcome earthly problems such as sexism, racism, nationalism and explore time and space for the good of all beings in the universe and for educational purposes. Rick shows the irrationality of humans, the irrational desire to alter our state of mind through drink, drugs, orgasms, gambling despite his (humanities) incredible intellect.
  • Moebius - Sci-fi illustrations - Drawing open areas, huge spaces to create the feeling of space or other planets. Drawing other worlds, different realities, interesting bold colour schemes that emphasize the ‘other worldliness’ of illustrations
  • RIck and morty is drawn in in a very simple flash cartoon fashion. The animation is expressive and funny. Comics like those illustrated by Moebius tend to have more stereotypical sci fi themes and characters by this I mean somewhat serious.
  • Robert Montgomery - Poetry to tell stories  
  • Wolfgang Tillmans - info pictures (review - Tillmans Posters give reasons as to remain in the EU in simple to-the-point sentences and simple photographs.)
  • Sagan suggest various crazy and very experimental concepts about humanity's future, (but his theories are more informed and rational than other theories about the future) for instance: the need for humanity to leave Earth, and that we may colonize large asteroids and comets.

IDEAS FOR EXPERIMENTATION

  • Text over illustartions.  Writing ‘Human’ makes the word look like a tribes name Wolfgang Tillmans photography Britex
  • Moebius style illustrations. Storytelling - Graphic novel style - interest in developing graphic novel/comics
  • “Momentary Masters of a fraction of a dot” - illustrate a variety of ways people try to accomplish this - politics, business, trendy, sports, arts
  • Lynd Ward prints -




Notes and references for The Little Prince, sketchbook page


Sagan’s writing comprises of almost everything human - Wars, Sex, Psychology, etc and he always puts a ‘cosmic’ twist to it. Sex and War and short moments of time, highs, lows, can be the most important or pivotal moments in an individuals or groups lives, however in the grand scheme of geological time, these moments are so infinitesimally insignificant. Yet they change us and therefore, those around us and therefore the world.
Carl Sagan introduces this ‘structuralist’ way of thinking. There is no proof for it but he invites us to contemplate it.

FURTHER DEVELOPMENT

I am interested in pursuing comics
I am going to experiment with making comic book pages in the style of Tom Phillips’ Humuments

Rick and Morty

I really like Rick and Morty, I think the plots of each episode are so creative, and funny I’d like to incorporate some of that into my comics. I did this really simple comic

Very funny.


OLIVER SACKS

“If a man has lost a leg or an eye, he knows he has lost a leg or an eye; but if he has lost a self—himself—he cannot know it, because he is no longer there to know it.” -Oliver Sacks

‘Oliver Sacks has become the world’s best-known neurologist. His case studies of broken minds off brilliant insight into the mysteries of consciousness’ Guardian
In 1967 Sacks first began to write of his experiences with some of his neurological patients.
Sacks's work is featured in a "broader range of media than those of any other contemporary medical author"[32] and in 1990, the New York Times wrote he "has become a kind of poet laureate of contemporary medicine".[33]
Sacks considered his literary style to have grown out of the tradition of 19th century "clinical anecdotes", a literary style that included detailed narrative case histories. He also counted among his inspirations the case histories of the Russian neuropsychologist A. R. Luria, who became a close friend through correspondence between 1973 and 1977, until Dr. Luria died.[34][35] After the publication of his first book Migraine in 1970, a review by his close friend W. H. Auden encouraged Sacks to adapt his writing style to "be metaphorical, be mythical, be whatever you need".[36]

MAIN THEMES IN SACKS’ WORK


WHAT INTERESTS ME IN SACKS’ WORK
Like Carl Sagan it’s the delivery of real information in a way that makes it so much more accessible without losing its content.
I am interested in psychology - the difference between people’s minds and the understanding between people - how thoughts and feelings are shared to others through speech, writing, art, music - and still how it is hard to impossible to truly complete understand

“Language, that most human invention, can enable what, in principle, should not be possible. It can allow all of us, even the congenitally blind, to see with another person’s eyes.”
― Oliver Sacks  

WHAT ART AND INITIAL IDEAS I COULD RESEARCH
I have been interested for a long time  about the way Artists have depicted the mind in art - Francis bacon depicts the mind or projections of his portraits subjects.

Harry Clarke - Illustrated Edgar Allen Poe’s Novels - great illustrations that show psychological fears.
- In literature and art - understanding or lack of, is often represented as emerging from or being lost in the woods or darkness. Out of the woods or darkness we can see clearly for miles, we can see our enemies, friends, hunters and prey and make clearer judgements. In the woods or darkness we are easily confused, lost, scared. You can mistake a friend for an enemy.
Martin Luther King said in his last speech “I have been to the mountain top, and seen the promised land”
‘Then Moses climbed Mount Nebo ... There the Lord showed him the whole land’ - Bible

Vania Zouravliov - Vania’s artwork like Harry Clarke’s is very gothic. People (predominantly heroine characters) victim to the mystical. Vania’s artworks are mainly shallow compositions with everything in the foreground. Almost every one of his works feature nature. Symbolism for sex, death, innocence, anxiety, fear and uncertainty.


OLIVER SACKS- thoughts - I think I could have a unique approach to studying Oliver Sacks’ work. However I am aware that the majority of my class are choosing this writer so I think i’ll stick with Carl Sagan. I am more familiar with his work, But I think I can still incorporate some of the ideas I developed whilst researching Oliver Sacks into my Carl Sagan project. The similarities are apparent to me - The two greatest unknowns of modern science are the human mind and the cosmos.

ITALO CALVINO

Since receiving this project I have spent the majority of my time looking at Carl Sagan and Oliver Sacks. Calvino was the last writer I started to research. I am now super excited to look more at his work I started to read ‘if On a Winter’s Nights traveler’ but having researched some more of his books I have just ordered Cosmicomics which I think will add itself as a great influence to my ideas regarding the work of Carl Sagan

“A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.”

Italo Calvino was born in Cuba and grew up in Italy. He was a journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy (1952-1959), the Cosmicomics collection of short stories (1965), and the novels Invisible Cities(1972) and If On a Winter's Night a Traveler (1979).
Calvino was heavily affected by events leading up to and during WW2

MAIN THEMES IN CALVINO’S WORK

Cosmicomics - I have just order this book but it sounds fascinating. All of the stories feature non-human characters which have been heavily anthropomorphized.
“Naturally, we were all there," old Qfwfq said, "where else could we have been? Nobody knew then that there could be space. Or time either: what use did we have for time, packed in there like sardines?” - Quote from Cosmicomics -  
I love the visual image the author paints in this short quote. He is talking about the concept that all matter in the known universe was packed into a singular infinitely dense point before the big bang, but talks in a way that the narrator's consciousness and personality was there for that time before time.  I would like to experiment with my own drawings of scientific facts, theories or concepts

WHAT INTERESTS ME IN CALVINO’S WORK

Putting in personalities and giving characteristics to everything - Anthropomorphizing everything from bacteria to equations to pages of a book.
Doing this enables the reader to image events from such a novel perspective, I think visually this could be very interesting  

WHAT ART AND INITIAL IDEAS I COULD RESEARCH
  • Jungho Lee - I choose this illustrators work as I like the soft style of illustration, they have a very calm and soft feel, very dreamlike and they also remind me of the kind of illustrations that used to feature a lot in the books I was read/read as a young child.
  • I found these illustrations of lichen on pinterest and I thought I could perhaps I could illustrate thoughts of such creatures as they go their life cycle.
    This reminds me of a little excerpt of a Richard Feynman (famed quantum physicist) quote. Here is a link to a video of the quote

    I am getting very excited as to how my ideas and influences are overlapping and a theme is emerging

    Whilst living in London I went to an exhibition in the Tate Modern of the work of Brodsky & Utkin THe illustration are of I guess theoretical architecture. Ink line drawings showing strange and unusual solutions to man's architectural problems, some time real sometimes ridiculous but I could take this influence into illustrating my ideas inspired by Calvino’s writing.  

MORE THOUGHTS

It is so interesting taking as Feynman recommends a martian perspective on the things everybody does everyday - Feynman uses the example an alien who comes from a world where they do not sleep or need sleep and then trying to explain the function of sleep to that alien. It is something that I often taken granted. And as Carl Sagan says if an alien where passing by all the planets and solar systems near us then they would surely see this lush green world as a comparative heaven compared with the hells of our surrounding planets. All this scientific wonder really does give me a real sense of the spirituality in science that Sagan, Feynman and Calvino seem to have discovered and try to share with us.
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