Colour

I used photoshop to add colour to my photograph and I made a compilation. I was thinking it could be Andy Warholish if I kept them all the same size, so I re-sized and layered them. The effect is pictorial and the colours look good together.

Time Lapse

While doing some research for my essay, I came across an old photo on the web of a fencer in action. The photo had been done by superimposing the same fencer as he moved around. It made me think about doing the same thing with clapping hands.

Brackets

I am reading a book by Steven Heller at the moment, called Design Humor and it talks about how simple design can be more powerful and effective than something that is over-designed. It made me think about how I could represent the word clap using only type. This is what I did. I tweaked the brackets a little so they looked narrower at the top.

The Hulk

Since I've been thinking of words and fonts that represent the sound of a clap, I started thinking about the old comics. I remember finding it very funny when a superhero was beating up the villain there were always words like "biff" and "pow" in zigzag callouts. This is one on my hand clap theme with a word not often used. If you're wondering why the Hulk is clapping, well it's to stop a building from collapsing with the shockwave it makes (obviously). 

Applauding Cast

I'm trying to capture the busy loud movement of applauding. Yesterday I built a clay mould and and made a plaster cast. I really like this piece it looks like lots of hand frantically moving. I am going to to this to make a wax cast that will be the reverse to see how it looks.

  

TypoClap

At my last tutorial we talked about typography and using the dictionary words I used in the sound graph in a different way. This is what I did with them. 

Earlier on I worked on individual words and how they might look.

Clay Hands

I've been trying to make a series of the plaster pieces but when I went to fill some balloons it didn't work out. I'll need to recruit a helper. Instead, so the whole episode wasn't a waste of time, I made a clay one.  

Sketch

This is sketch I did of my 3D piece

Richard Serra

Drips and Light

While in listening to a talk on ceramics I notice how the audience sounded when they applauded the guest speaker at the end. You can distinctly hear one clap on its own for a split second and then it builds to a huge round sound before petering out back down until you hear one final clap. I made a quick watercolour picture of this.

I made another piece using Illustrator and I hope to print it on acetate. The white part will be transparent and I want to see what it looks like if it's back-lit.

Here are some first attempts (just to show I've been busy).

Listen

To continue on exploring the sound of clapping hands, I made an image using InDesign to visaully show the sound. The image looks like a graphic equaliser display from far away but when you move closer you can see that it is made up of words. The words are take from various dictionaries and are all related to the meaning of the word "clap". What I like about this is that when you try to read it, you have to tilt your head and this is how people hold their heads when they are listening closely to something. 

 

 

 

 

Hand Clap

This is a short animation (thanks John) I made of the vector.

John Maeda

I watched this today and loved the square reacting to sound.

Sound

I am moving onto sound, the sound of clapping hands and how I can visualise that. I've been looking at the artist Susan Morris because her work is similar to the last piece I did and I came across one in particular that reminded me of a graphic equaliser. Later when I was looking for a phone number in the phone book I noticed how it also looked like the image made by an equaliser.