Creating Visual Narratives
The creating visual narratives module was seriously developmental in terms of influences and ideas for my futures project. Not only did I re-familarise myself with the work of some of my favourite artists, particularly Afrofuturist artists, but I also discovered some new key artists and terminology which may feed into my futures project. For example, we were given an amazing talk by the artist Solomon Enos whose work focuses largely on indigenous futurism and speculative futures. In particular, his art often imagines future worlds and landscapes which provide imaginative solutions to global issues, centering the indigenous perspective and utilises the combination of human and organic technology (the blending of humans and nature). This seems particularly relevant due to my interest in the cyborg, an idea also integrated into his art, and His work has been a key influence for me since, especially in my creating visual narratives project, as they focus on nature and discuss issues such as climate change.
Additionally, a central discussion during the intensive days of this module was the issue of speculative futures and dystopias vs utopias, what these two opposing concepts mean, and how they are applicable to the real world and our issues. These ideas and questions are definitely something that I want to tackle in my futures project. I therefore think that my futures project will focus on cyborgs, dichotomies, and Afrofuturist and indigenous futurist visions of speculative futures.
My final portfolio investigations and art piece for this module investigated these ideas by creating a landscape for both a utopian and dystopian future and melding them together. I found this extremely rewarding and would love to build on these ideas and my investigation of them in my final futures project, including implementing my own creative work. For example, in this final piece, I included a poem I created through a combination of my own writing and using black out poetry. This was also inspired by ergodic literature.
My final piece is the featured image of this post, and is acrylic on paper (A1).
