Statement of Intent
Shape grammar,
We were meant to choose one of 3 shapes (Square, Circle, or Triangle) and make a composition that evokes a certain emotion. One composition was intended to be determinate and the other one, indeterminate.
Ideation
For my shape, I chose triangles because I personally like them more than the other shape and I find triangles to be a very simple yet complex shape. An equilateral triangle signifies perfect balance between each vertex. I personally like triangles because of the many emotions I think they can convey, such as irritation, chaos, simplicity, anxiety, balance, etc.
Determinate Process:
I was thinking about conveying the emotion of irritation but I took a glance at my phone’s lock screen:
Which is an image of a train window looking at a passing forest, all the green and motion gave me the idea to convey something to do with plants and a route. I then chose the emotion of Balance.
Indeterminate Process:
Originally for this process, I misunderstood the assignment. I thought that we would be creating a shape from an indeterminate process such as giving a tree branch a marker and letting it draw in the wind. like this:
I left it for 5 hours, and there was no wind.
So still misunderstanding the assignment I tried a different method of creating a shape. One of my roommates forgot about a bag of peaches and they went bad. So I took the peaches and my bristol. And threw them together…
I was left with an interesting weave of patterns from the splattered fruit. I then took the most obvious-looking shape.
After showing my process to my professor I was told that I misunderstood the assignment. So I cut out triangles from magazines and would drop them from 2 feet above the paper.
Iteration and Production
I began the process by cutting many rough triangles out of some spare magazines. I cut many different sizes so I could play with their differences.
I began to arrange the triangles in many different orientations.
Determinate:
For this process, I started by creating a web of sorts and then changing it incrementally.
after seeing the inspiration for my lock screen I began to play with verticality and some leaning to convey the feel of balance.
After nearly 25 iterations I settled on a sort of spire of leaning triangles as my final. So I named it “Blade of Grass”
Indeterminate (Arps Law):
This was a more straightforward process, which consisted of absent-mindedly dropping 12 pieces of triangles until they all fell on the bristol. I would have to drop pieces more than once because they would drift off the paper.
With the way how the triangles seemed to land on the page, I felt an emotion of carelessness so I named the work “Thoughts In the Wind”
Reflection
This Shape grammar assignment gave me a good understanding of the difference between determinate and indeterminate. I learned that there are times when an indeterminate process could be better than a determinate process. I believe that for each project there should be a balance between these two aspects to retain a thoughtful and creative composition.