Artistic Influences
Tonal Design: A Mathematical Guide in Constructing Moods and Weathers
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Woon Lam Ng
Tone or value is regarded as a very important visual element in various forms of art training. In order to extend the tonal design concept, this paper aims to connect it to basic graphical models adapted from mathematics for ease of teaching and learning. Students benefit through understanding of basic parameters that govern the tonal design based on graphical analysis of simple mathematical charts as visual aids. In drawing and painting, the training commonly depends on indoor or outdoor perceptual exercises. Fine artists somehow develop their likings through their working environment, locations of residence, or their travel experience elsewhere. There are various lighting conditions related to basic tonal arrangements or mood of colors discussed briefly in various art training books but there is no concrete framework to discuss how different weathers or moods can be designed based on tonal arrangements. Similarly, in photography, the discussions are focused on various lighting conditions and how the equipment can be professionally finetuned to arrive to achieve a desired mood. Light histograms are discussed in measurement of light to understand various lighting conditions and moods (Freeman, 2006, pp. 26-33). In design, tonal importance is briefly discussed as one of the three attributes of color (Pipes, 2008, pp. 125-137). Tonal design was introduced very briefly as ‘key’ (relative lightness of an image), where low-key referred to darker images and high-key images referred to bright images. Hence, there is a need to have a robust training framework related to tonal design.
Objects Dancing with Other Objects: Decentring the Human in Design Education View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Andrew Denton, Sue E. Jowsey
Grappling with the non-human is increasingly becoming a consuming human concern. Jolting design past anthropocentric outcomes demands a quixotic and confronting discourse for educators. This paper considers Graham Harman’s notion that “not all objects are equally real, but that they are equally objects” (Harman, The Quadruple Object, 2011 pp. 5). In this context, we explore design as layered conversations with and through objects as part of a choreographed ethical and moral exchange. We recognize the challenge for emergent designers/design students to consider ‘humans as objects’ positioned within an ecosystem of other actants. This way of approaching design demands a recalibration of ‘making-thinking’’ past human-centered design methods. As teachers, how we locate this conversation within a design education milieu presents a double bind. Firstly, the perception of design as intrinsically engaged in human to human conversations. And secondly, that design is practiced as solution focused and effective rather than harnessing the potential of seeing the human to human as located in a shared, interdependent, existence with the non-human. This paper takes the position that the human object resides amidst a plethora of other objects populating the universe, including the universe itself. One example of this turn is the New Zealand Government, in 2017, recognizing “Te Awa Tupua as an indivisible and living whole, comprising the Whanganui River from the mountains to the sea, and all its physical and metaphysical elements.” Teaching design into the uncertain future of the Anthropocene will demand educators to engage in visionary and radical imaginary approaches.
