EXHIBITION STATEMENT

Introduction

The Hard Surface Art and Design workshop is foremost centered around the question: "How do concept artists think?" Every class we've broken down some seemingly complex element of art or engineering into simple and comprehensible parts - whether it be questions like "How do planes fly?" to "Why did they choose that perspective?" From here, students use what they've learned of the works of other artists and engineers to create entirely new pieces of concept art.

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History & Distinction

The notion of "concept art" has existed for thousands of years. The explosion of the modern entertainment industry (television, comic books, videogames etc.) in the 20th and 21st century has put entirely new emphasis on the field as a whole. Many of the most prominent artistic jobs today relate to "hard surface" (design of artificial objects and surfaces) design - whether it be designing spaceships that will be used in the next AAA videogame or creating a unique concept for Tesla's next car. The workshop is structured to heavily incorporate a technical review of comparable designs that already exist (an idea taken from the design processes of Mike Doscher and Scott Robertson) - then using new knowledge to better inform the design process.

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Methods

My fundamental concept behind this workshop was based off the works of Christopher Bartel (Art, Aesthetics and the Medium) and Nathan Crilly (Seeing Things: Consumer Response to the Visual Domain in Product Design). Both assert the fundamental conflict between creating an aesthetically unified and pleasing design, and creating a design that appears foremost functional. The remedy for this intrinsic conflict is to create a balanced work that feels at home in its setting (realistic), yet is not solely utilitarian and draws aesthetically pleasing elements from other designs. Early on I decided that I wanted to devote this workshop to helping students find that precise balance and where it lies for them. To this end, lesson plans were structured to alternate a discussion of the practical and functional qualities of design and the aesthetic qualities of design. In a sense, lectures alternated between discussing engineering concepts that aid to better understand a "realistic" aspect of design, and artistic lectures that aided to better understand the role of aesthetic unity in design. Of course this balance was not perfect from the outset, and so I continually refined the current and future lesson plans I would be teaching based on student feedback (i.e. increasing time share for activities, increasing the time share of artistic lectures etc.).

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Audience & Impact

Foremost, my workshop is centered around creating students who have a deep and varied appreciation for both the aesthetic and functional beauty inherent in the world around us, as well as in their favorite media. Cultivating a general knowledge of the way things work, and what is and is not possible within a set of constraints encourages the kind of thinking invaluable in professional design firms and will hopefully aid many of them in finding a job in the field one day. Working within constraints, creating entirely new designs, and in general, diverging from the well traveled path I believe has positively influenced both the scope and scale of their creative talents (as I know it has for mine). I hope to use the lessons gained as an educator and artist from this experience to better teach courses in the future.

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References

Crilly, Nathan, et al. “Seeing Things: Consumer Response to the Visual Domain in
Product Design.” Design Studies, vol. 25, no. 6, 2004, pp. 547–577.,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2004.03.001 (Links to an external site.).  (Crilly et al. 2004)

Bartel, Christopher. “Art, Aesthetics, and the MEDIUM: Comments for Nguyen on the
ART-STATUS of Games.” Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, 2021, pp. 1–11.,
https://doi.org/10.1080/00948705.2021.1948336 (Links to an external site.). (Bartel 2021)

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Acknowledgements 

I of course need to foremost thank my TA Saxon for his assistance in each and every lesson with taking attendance and helping me with the logistics of the class itself. I want to thank Heather, and Gabi for their invaluable feedback on my submitted proposals and ideas, and I want to thank Harold for constantly introducing us workshop leaders to new teaching strategies. I'd also like to thank all of my fellow workshop leaders for their great feedback on each and every one of my lesson plans. I'd like to thank my good friend Roman Mamus (rmam.us) for aiding me in the creation and modelling of many of the pieces of art I presented in class. Finally I'd like to thank my sister for all of her technical and artistic input on my lessons and allowing me to use examples of her art.