Art Museum Experience

   I visited the Getty Center in Los Angeloes. There are a lot of collections such like painting and drawings from the Middle Ages to the Impressionist period, 19th American and European photographs, contemporary and modern outdoor sculptures and more. The exhibition I focused on was the sculptures from Europe. The approximate square footage of the space is about 4800 square foot and it is divided into three smaller spaces. Pedestals are used to display those sculptures.There are different materials of pedestals such like marble, wood and bronze and the heights of the pedestals are also varied depends on the heights of the sculptures.There are louvers on the ceiling, which help to bring in natural lights and LEDs are surrounded by the louvers to support the display of artwork. The observers are directed to walk around through the big openings, material changes of floor (marble-wood). In additional,I found that the walls that backed up with the artworks were interesting. It looks like polished gray concrete, but it is not totally gray. There some dark grays blended together to create kind of blurry feelings and I think that works very well by helping to emphasize the beauty of artworks.Moreover, there are rounded sofas in the center of spaces for people to rest without blocking the views to the artwork.

 

(Louvers, LED around and blurry walls)

(Wood Pedestals)

(Rounded sofa in the center of the space)

(Beautiful view in the Getty Center)

Vision disability ability workshop

     The vision disability workshop I did was really interesting and helps me to understand people with low visions better. The first activity I did was looking through the two layers of plastic which represents 20/60 vision. When I looked the newspaper through the two layers of plastic, though I can’t read the words very clearly, I could still tell some overall shapes and colors. However, when I used the four layers of plastic, it was just all white with very obscure and blurry colors. 
     When I experienced with the simulator tool, my observations are except the totally blind one, I could still read some words from the other three kinds of vision loss, even though not very smoothly. 

(Totally Blind)

     Then I wear a sunglasses with a lot of glue on its glass and I began to walk around. I tried to walk up the library stairs and though I could feel the steps by foot but when I took a look at the stairs, it was just a whole white stripe without any gradient. When I experienced with the elevator, it was hard for me to push the floor button and I ended up push all buttons and the elevator stopped every floor. The stairs in CUB was easier to use compared to the stair in library since there are color contrasts to inform me where steps start and end. Then I went to the Bank of America ATM machine, the location for the card swipe and the key-pad were found easily since there are red lights near the card swipe and I could touch and feel where the key-pad located. Mostly, because I used this machine a lot, so the familiarity helped. There is one more thing I want to mention is natural light was always very noticeable, it appears light blue and I could easily tell it. Generally speaking, everything seems blended together when I wear that glass and I begin to have a general sense of how people with low vision live, work and behavior. I will incorporate those observations in my future design to help people with low visions live better and more comfortable.

Examples of colors and shapes blended together:

 

Concept Development

 Overall, the process of the concept development was really educational, inspirational, and interesting. The concept development was made for the project which is re-purpose the old depot to a new building which will has three parts of space---residence, studio and the gallery. First of all, I went to the depot to take the inspiration picture and I ended up using the picture I took (show below image 1) from the layer of the train because there are icicles going down the train, creating lots of different layer and angles. Then I started exploring different patterns from the inspiration. I mainly focused on the color contrast that icicles created for the colors of the train. As showed in the image 2, I ended up using the patterns that I taken from the portion of the person’s hat. It is not only because there are color contrasts, but also the curved lines. I felt there are kind of movements going on and at this stage, I suddenly catch another phrase---transient eternity. I got this phrase because icicles are stable while trains are supposed to be moving. That forms a contrast in another way.  After that I incorporated different color scheme into my parti, I finally decided to use the blue and yellow because psychologically, yellow is a color that is most fatiguing to the eye and it gives a feeling of frustration and anger, so it could represent the “transient” part. Blue is used to represent the “eternity” part, because it conveys a feeling of calmness, serenity and tranquil. After I decided the color, I enlarged, resized, rotated the parti to create the movement for the textile (image 4). Those movements also help to create a sense of eternity like it goes forever. At the final stage, I made the model (image 5). I randomly tore some yellow pieces and also tore their first layers to make them look rough. I glued them together non-directionally to create different angels and versions. Those yellow pieces are representing the transient part. The long and smooth blue pieces are glued around those yellow pieces to ease the stress of yellow. Those blue pieces are slightly curved. The blue is functioned to give a sense of wave and eternity. The the plastic stripe us add through to bring the idea of transparency of icicles and it also kind of functions as cohesion to make the model looks like a whole.

Generally speaking, the concept development was really helpful for me and I felt I’ve grown from last semester. I could picture patterns more abstractly and I could also transform the abstraction back tangibility. I felt I gain a lot through this development both academically and psychologically.

Image 1 (Inspiration Picture)

Image 2 (Inspiration Object Analysis Sheet)

Image 3 (Final Parti)

Image 4 (Textile)

Image 5(Final Model)