The Arts at Duke

For my video documentary on the arts at Duke I decided to interview a friend of mine, Bri Connolly.  Bri is a civil engineering major, but is also known around campus for her artistic abilities.  Bri has not taken an arts class at Duke yet, but she manages to stay busy doing artwork around campus.  The interview was done in Duke's Coffeehouse in front of a mural Bri completed this semester.

What is the most important piece of art at Duke?

What art have you done at Duke?

Where should more public art should be seen?

How important is art/design at Duke?  And do people care about it?

The mural at the Coffeehouse.

The mural at the Central Campus apartment.

As a side note: there are a lot of neat murals all over the Coffeehouse, so I took a quick video of those too:

Probability and Growth

My system is based on a very simple, yet dynamic series of rules.  When thinking about what type of system I wanted to portray, I knew I wanted it to involve randomness and probability; I wanted the system to have a different outcome each time even if the exact same rules were followed by everyone with the same assumptions. 

I started by placing rectangular blocks of the three primary colors in random locations on the graph paper.  Each page after that, the blocks attempted to 'expand' by filling in the spaces next to them (horizontally and vertically) with their color.  However, each color was not guaranteed that it would 'take over' the adjacent blocks; the colors were assigned a probabilities as to whether they would succeed.  

The probabilities were assigned at random, based on my preferences.

page 1

Any color vs. White (85% chance of take over)

Blue vs. Red (55% chance of take over)

Blue vs. Yellow (75% chance of take over)

Red vs. Yellow (60% chance of take over)

From these probabilities we would expect to see easy expansion by the colors until they ran into one another.  Once this occurred, we would see yellow lose ground pretty steadily to both red and blue; we would also expect to see blue slowly advance into red's territory.  However, none of these outcomes are guaranteed as all expansion is left up to chance.

To determine each individual outcome I used a random number generator (link), with limits of 1 and 100.  If the number generated was less than or equal to the percentage assigned, the color would expand; if not, the other color would succeed (*not applicable to white).  The process of determining each outcome was long and tedious, however, I like the outcome.

page 2

page 3

page 4

page 5

page 6

page 7

page 8

page 9

page 10

Hopefully I did not make this sound too complicated and its easy to follow.

Heres a short video of the progression:

System-Rolling Dice

Initially, the graph paper reminded me of the game Tetris, and I thought I wanted to do something with that. I also wanted to use dice to determine each outcome. However, there were too many things to consider (shape, size, rotation, position, color, etc) which made the idea too complicated. I still wanted to use the dice though. 

Instead of using shapes from Tetris, I decided to represent the sides of a dice cube. I started in the left bottom corner. I rolled the dice three times for each square. The first number determined how many dots were to be on the square, which side of a dice cube (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6). The second number told me the side length to determine how big the square would be (1x1, 2x2, 3x3, 4x4, 5x5, 6x6). The third number told me how many spaces there were between the current square to the next square (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6). The spaces could go any direction where there was space, but the next square had to share a column or a row with the previous square. 

For example, the first set of rolled numbers was 4, 2, 4. My square would have 4 dots, would be a 2x2, and would have four spaces until the next square. 

How did I decide how many squares I would have on a sheet of graph paper? 

I rolled dice for this as well. Right before starting a new sheet, I rolled the dice to tell me how many new squares I should add to the page (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6).

The numbers I rolled:

4-3-4

1-4-3

4-3-1

3-2-3

4-2-2

4-3-1

6-6-3

2-6-2

4-4-3

4-6-3

4-5-6

4-2-1

6-1-1

3-6-4

2-1-1

6-2-1

6-6-5

3-1-4

5-5-6

1-4-3

1-3-6

4-3-5

6-1-1

3-2-5

6-2-3

3-4-4

1-5-1

3-4-1

1-3-5

3-2-3

2-6-4

1st sheet) 2 squares

2nd sheet) 6 squares

3rd sheet) 4 squares

4th sheet) 1 squares

5th sheet) 3 squares

6th sheet) 2 squares

7th sheet) 5 squares

8th sheet) 2 squares

9th sheet) 3 squares

10th sheet) 3 squares

Pipes

I began with on focusing on a different idea- one which consisted of wavy lines and different colors but was suddenly inspired by the tangle of pipes, which are visible below the ceiling of our classroom. Therefore I constructed a system with a pipe design, which is repeated over the following ten pages. The instructions of the system follow-

·      First design a basic template of a pipe drawing right in the centre of the page.

·      Using a different color repeat the same design except shift it three squares up and 3 squares left of the starting point of the pipe design.

·      For the following page use the same strategy – use a different color pen, move the design 3 spaces up and this time 3 spaces to the right.

·      For the next page replicate the design, except this time it is 3 squares up and 3 squares left from the bottom of the pipe design.

·      By the 5^th page you move back to the top half of the page and this time you count 6 squares from the top tube of the pipe design and 6 squares to the left. The next page repeats the same pattern except it is 6 squares up and to the left.

·      This pattern is also repeated for the bottom half of the page where the design is moved 6 spaces up and to the right from the bottom tube of the design and next 6 spaces up and to the left.

·      This pattern continues with 3 squares added to the distance upwards and sideways from the ends of the top and bottom tubes of the pipe design.

·      The middle pipe design acts as the anchor for the rest of the design, everything else builds up on it and it is necessary to use different colors each time to see the different pipe patterns.

 

Each page has to consist of all the pipe designs in the previous one, so each page grows more complicated and complex. The only way to maintain the uniformity of each pipe design is by counting the number of squares for the length of each bend and maintaining this number for all 10 sheets. The first pages start of easy but each becomes more complicated and time consuming, which I didn’t realize at the beginning of the project! The system is mainly for a design purpose and reveals its intricacies as it builds up.

Conceptual Project: reCYCLE

Instance #1 and #3


Instance #6 and #10


For my conceptual project, I created a rotating/expanding system of arrows that's reminiscent of the popular "recycle" signs. The system grows by concentric polygonal arrangements of arrows, and rotates with each successive page of the system.

As I was designing the system, I tried various ways of making the system seem to rotate. The colored pattern of the arrows is designed to lead the eye around the rotation without being too overwhelming (the system is limited to green, orange, and black). I also discovered that the best way to create uniformity in the system is with a template arrow, although I did not use a template here, but rather traced the arrows individually on each page.

The system is fairly complex, so please visit this page to read a full explanation of the process. The basic procedure is to begin with a square, then add concentric polygons around it, rotating a certain number of times for each new polygon, and alternating the direction of rotation for each polygon.

Conceptual Project

My design really takes advantage of the mathematics of this project.  It is actually just a collaboration of simple linear functions.  If this were to be recreated the instructions would be as follows:

Use the following graphs:

1.     x+1.5

2.     –x

3.     -6x+30

4.     .2x-2

5.     4x+11

6.     .2x+5

7.     -.5x-8

8.     2x-8

9.     11+x

10. .5x+10

For all of the graphs you will draw the ones that are increasing will be in green and the ones that are decreasing will be in green.   The red lines will always act as somewhat of a background and will not ever overlap the colored double lines.  When the double lines cross, the intersections of like colors will be filled in with that color and intersections involving two colors will be filled in red.   On the graph paper, two squares are equal to one.   The origin is the middle of the paper.On the first page graph numbers two through ten in red and number one in green as a double line.  On the next piece of paper graph numbers three through ten in red, leave number one as it was originally graphed and graph number two in blue as a double line.   For the next one graph four through ten in red, numbers one and two as they were on the previous page and then graph number three in blue as a double line.  Continue this process until all ten are graphed as double lines. 

  A quick lesson on drawing graphs:

 All of the graphs in this project are simple and easy to draw without using a calculator.  They are all in the form mx+b where m is the slope and b is the y intercept.  For example, for graph number one, x+1.5, the slope is one, which means for every coordinate you move up you move one coordinate to the right.  And the y intercept is 1.5 so you start at y=1.5.  If there is a negative slope, for example -.5x-8, for every one coordinate you move to the left you move .5 coordinates down and you begin at y=-8. 

One of the neat things about this design is that it can easily be tampered with to give it an entirely different look.  For example if all the negative slopes are changed to positive and all the positive slopes are changed to negative, the graph will be flipped upside down.  Also, if the y-intercept for all of the graphs are changed to zero  it will look somewhat like a starburst coming out of the center.  Slopes and y-intercepts can be changed and it could be fun to just mess around with all the graphs to make it look completely different.

I chose to do my conceptual project like this because I always thought that graphs looked neat when they were all together.  I started by making more complicated graphs, for example ones that looked like flowers and spirals, but they were quiet difficult to replicate and would have been impossible to draw without using a calculator. 

While drawing the multiple lines I kept thinking that it kind of represented some of Sol Lewitt’s work.  In particular his large pieces that just look like a bunch of random lines going every which way.  If my design were done on a much larger scale and a lot more graphs were added I think it would look a lot like his work.   

 

Mapping Project

My idea for this project was to take a different angle on viewing the states from a more ground level view. I thought it was an interesting idea because many maps are usually your traditional top view that usually just shows you the layout of the states and doesn't give you any feel for what our country is about.