THE LAST SUPPER IN DETAIL

Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities
Superintendency for Architectural and Natural Heritages of Milan

THE LAST SUPPER IN DETAIL

From 27 October, Da Vinci’s Last Supper can be admired on the web at a definition of 16 billion pixels Milan, 27 October 2007 – Today, for the very first time, The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci, the most famous, most discussed and most controversial work of art of all time, declared a World Heritage work of art and registered at the UNESCO worldwide sites, can be seen by all, in all its details, on the website: http://www.haltadefinizione.com/.

The online visualisation system of the highest definition photograph ever in the world (16billion pixels) will in fact let viewers enlarge and observe any portion of the painting, giving them a clear view of sections down to as little as one millimetre square. The project started at the beginning of 2007, as a result of the meeting between the Ministry of Cultural Assets and Activities - Milan Landscape and Architectural Assets Office, De Agostini and HAL9000, a worldwide leader in the high-definition photography sector. This photographic technique has two benefits: on one hand, it is a unique instrument of its kind for “monitoring” the state of the painting and, on the other hand, it allows anyone on the Internet, from any part of the world, to observe all the parts and details of the work. Thanks to this technology, HAL9000 can also create large high-quality fine art prints of The Last Supper which offer an overall and detailed visual perception never possible before.

The photograph of The Last Supper, one of the most delicate and protected works in the world, is the result of many months of work and research, during which specific lighting and photography techniques were developed.

source / link : http://www.haltadefinizione.com/

Works by Nelda Gilliam at Ave Gallery

Recent works by artist Nelda Gilliam will be presented by Ave Gallery Dubai from November 3 to 19. Opening is on Saturday, November 3 at 7 pm. Ave Gallery is located in Bastakia, Bur Dubai, Building 15 B.

links: Nelda Gilliam

A panel on Art and Education at AUD

Talking Art: What I learnt at art school.
Monday 29th October, 7-9pm, the student lounge
click on the poster image to read

“Designing Design”: an interview with Steve Garner

Marcelo Lima, Designing Design (d'après Escher), pencil on paper

Marcelo Lima- Tell us about your background. How did you become involved with the Drawing Research Network?

Steve Garner- The study of drawing is not new but I’d like to make the case that drawing research is relatively new. Of course, artists have, for hundreds of years, explored their ideas through drawing. Perhaps Leonardo da Vinci is the best known of early artists who exploited the capacity of drawing to assist him to analyze the world around him. On a basic level artists have for centuries made investigations ‘through’ drawing but even Leonardo didn’t suggest he was inquiring ‘into’ drawing. Only relatively recently have we have seen the emergence of research into drawing. It has many roots. The industrial revolution of the eighteenth century revealed the importance of effective representations in systems of design, mass manufacture and the division of labour. Later still, studies of creativity - particularly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have prompted investigations into how drawing supports our thinking processes.

So drawing research is a more recent phenomenon than inquiry that exploits drawing but its history is rather vague. There were some landmark studies of drawing in the mid twentieth century - for example Philip Rawson’s book on drawing. In the UK this inspired new forms of courses in art and design education in the 1960s and 1970s.

In the 1980s changes in higher education inspired a new emergence of inquiry in Art and Design. Professor Deanna Petherbridge established drawing research at the Royal College of Art. A drawing research community was visible in the 1980s and 1990s but it was a fragmented one. In 2001 I offered to set up a website and email discussion forum to assist this community to engage in debate, publicize work, and share news concerning drawing research. This was titled the Drawing Research Network (www.drawing.org.uk) and today is has over 360 members around the globe. I continue to manage and direct the website and discussion forum but the content is provided by its members.

ML- How do you see the relations between the design fields and the visual arts today?

SG- Art and design exhibit close bonds (for example in craft) and I hope art and design continue to exist in a symbiotic relationship. However, this is not to say that design only exists in the arts. Design is a fundamental human capacity. We can all respond to our environment and generate new ideas for improving that environment. We can, and should, all be designers and it’s for this reason that design has an important place in the school curriculum. At the Open University I’m involved in teaching design to a wide range of mature students - not because they want to be ‘designers’ but because they want to develop their skills and knowledge of design so that they can ‘transfer’ this to their own jobs, interests or hobbies. Design is too important to be left to designers. We all need to be better problem finders, more creative, better team workers better at resolving conflicts - perhaps simply more confident that we can intervene in situations to improve them.

In teaching this I need the attributes of the artistic community (for example the ability to work with visual information as well as the written word). But modern design also requires that people exploit capacities from the sciences and humanities. We need to understand systems, complexity, political and ecological matters. More than this we need to think in ways that are appropriate to these domains. So aligning design with art has served us well but art and design but not be exclusively tied together. The twenty-first century requires us to be far more creative.


ML- What is your understanding regarding both the potentialities and the realities of the education of the artist and of the designer nowadays?

SG- Design education and art education are making new relationships. In our universities we see new relationships between, for example, design schools and business schools, department of computing, cultural studies. Also there is a fragmentation of the market - some people want vocational courses over the shortest possible time, others want part-time study so that they can work as well as study. Some need design theory and help to apply it in the existing career. Others need practice in developing foundation skills in, for example, teamworking or digital modelling.

Design education at undergraduate level is hugely popular around the world but hugely expensive to offer. The variety of studios, lecture theatres, workshops and placements required in modern design education are a significant factor in most modern universities. I foresee major changes in this provision. New design degrees will combine intensive full-time study of design on campus with part-time study of design principles and practices from home - probably exploiting web-based teaching materials. Such a model offers appropriate time for academic staff to engage in research. Or for those institutions who choose to maximize their teaching, two streams of students can be run in parallel


ML- Tell us about your current and future projects.

SG- I’ve just finished editing an anthology provisionally titled ‘Writing on drawing: essays on drawing practice and drawing research’. This comes out in mid 2008, published by Intellect Books and the NSEAD. I’m about to embark on a similar project for design.
As well as being the course team chair for the Open University course ‘Design and Designing’ I write for other OU courses. Recently I have contributed to ‘Digital photography: taking and sharing better images’ and ‘Design and the web’. I have a research interest in many types of representations used in art and design. The interaction of 2D representations and 3D representations interests me - especially the iteration between digital, virtual models and physical models in modern design practice.

Dr Steve Garner is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Design, Development, Environment and Materials Faculty of Mathematics, Computing and Technology, The Open University (UK)


Contact: s.w.garner@open.ac.uk
Links:
The Department of Design and Innovation, The Open University (UK)
Drawing Research Network

An interview with illustrator, writer and comic book artist Matt Madden

Matt Madden: illustration for The New York Times

Marcelo Lima- Tell us about your background. You are an illustrator and a comic book artist. If the education of the illustrator has a lot to do with studio art training in a general sense, how does one become a comic book artist?

Matt Madden- In fact, I have no background in studio art. I came to comics (and later illustration) via my interest in visual storytelling, literature, film, and drawing. My undergraduate degree is in Comparative Literature and in school I didn't take any studio art classes at all. My main training those years was doodling in the margins of my class notes--not a practice to be dismissed, I think, as it emphasizes the play aspect of drawing and in a roundabout way it helped me to start working out various visual problems--light and shade, line, perspective--that are essential to drawing. It was a foundation class in the margins.

I became a cartoonist piecemeal, like many of my peers. There was no manual, no standard to follow, so I picked up storytelling and technical skills through imitation and through the advice and encouragement of more experienced artists I happened to meet.

ML - Your latest book "Exercises in Style: 99 ways to tell a story", published in 2006, was inspired by Raymond Queneau: a kind of marriage between experimental, 20th century avant-garde literature and the comic book! How do you see yourself transiting between these different domains?



MM- I've pretty much always felt comfortable in both "high" and "low" domains of culture so I have never seen any contradiction in reading experimental literature on the one hand and underground comics on the other. What I value is rigor and passion in a work of art, no matter what the domain is. At the same time, though, it is true that comics as a medium has very little history of experimentalism or ambitiously "literary" work, at least before about 20 years ago, so I definitely see myself as trying to expand the playing field a bit.



ML- Your book has been translated in several languages: how many exactly now?

MM- French, Spanish, Japanese, Italian, Korean, and Dutch/Flemish.

ML- That tells me that you are touching indeed a subject close in many ways to some of the central issues of contemporary culture and the visual arts. The visual narrative in itself is not something new, but the use of explicit or implicit narratives, and specially the use of visual narratives (TV, film, video, internet, etc) is all pervasive in the contemporary world. How does the comic book, a creation of the early 20th century, fit in?



MM- We are definitely living in a visual culture and comics offer a key to becoming literate in a mode of communication that combines the verbal and the visual into a (more or less) seamless whole. "Visual" culture can be misleading because when people say that they are talking about TV, the internet, video games, advertising--all media that are indeed heavily visual but which also depend crucially on written and spoken text as well as on the ability to constantly and unconsciously switch and combine codes. This is what you do when you read comics: you are reading the pictures and seeing the words. A "zoom" sound effect is an onomatopeia as well as a verb, but in a comic it is usually also designed visually, with the shape of the lines, the use of color, and the distortion of the letter forms showing us what kind of zoom it is, and furthermore with the angle and direction of the word even showing us which direction the zoom is moving. Finally, all of this information is narrative--it's telling us a story--so if we are reading well we are constantly processing all of this information in the service of deciphering a story of some sort. To do this well--to understand the nuances and ironies of a comic by Daniel Clowes or Chris Ware or Alan Moore--requires a very sophisticated and critical form of reading.

ML - How do you relate your teaching activities and your creative work? As a teacher, how do you see the education of the visual artist / graphic artist today?

MM- My teaching is bound up with my creative work in the sense that I am interested as an artist in the structure and form of storytelling, so those concerns crossover very fruitfully in to a teaching situation. While my creative interest tends to a playful, self-referential investigation of comics and storytelling tropes, these very tropes are the building blocks of comics and storytelling. I teach students who want to do memoir, superhero stories, shoujo manga--rarely students who are into the same stuff I'm into--but it's all the same language and I love talking about it so it works out well. At the same time, like many teachers I draw inspiration from my students. I'm constantly turned on to new ideas and approaches and occasionally find my basic assumptions being challenged.

ML- Tell us about your current and future projects.

MM- My biggest current project is a college-level textbook about creating comics called Drawing Words & Writing Pictures. I co-wrote it with my wife, Jessica Abel, and it will be published by First Second Books in June 08.

Jessica and I are also series editors of the new Best American Comics series published in the US by Houghton Mifflin. We are working on sorting submissions for the 2008 edition with guest editor Lynda Barry.

As for my personal work, I have a number of projects in various stages of (very slow!) development. I am inking a 32-page narrative palindrome called "Kiss" which I hope to have published in some form or another in 2008. My next book will likely be a collection of short comics that follow various formal constraints: palindromes, alphabetical constraints, a comic’s sestina, a suite of pantoums, and so on.

Years down the line I plan to return to longer "graphic novel"-length works but it's such a long slow process that I'm reluctant to get into details.

Links:
Matt Madden
Matt Madden's blog
Exercises in Style

On Life after AUD

Faten Mahmood

Faten Mahmood at work, Dubai, October 2007

Starting off in a small, 2-room agency wasn’t my idea of a spectacular transition from college student to employee. It was difficult to shake off the discomfort I felt in what was always referred to as the ‘Real World’ at classes at AUD, but it was only a matter of time I had acquired enough self-conviction and poise to simply understand the balance of space, images, and text. After a year in this industry, I still feel the passion for design as I did when I’d begun to realize just what it was, years before. With a sustained base I could develop from, I certainly credit my tuition at AUD for providing a source of outstanding tutelage- an eminent faculty with an accessible library of books to pore over. While my assessment is real and founded, the review cannot all be glittering as there are areas which require revisiting, polishing, maybe even introducing. This account may perhaps initiate a discussion of what can be done to further assuage the changeover from sheltered undergraduate to exposed member of a workforce, and equally serve as a light-hearted reference to pending or fresh graduates on what to expect once walking out the gates of the American University in Dubai.

In 2006, I graduated at the top of my class in the Visual Communication department. My confidence was running high after an internship at Grey Worldwide and from the calls I received from potential employers who had reviewed my work in one of the last courses I took in college, Final Portfolio. Yet, all it took was one hasty decision from me to land a job which was not short of hard labour with an unwarranted over-use of brain cells. This is where my first hand of advice goes to the young students at AUD:

Study the whole package. Ardently.

Even if it’s a good salary, have a good understanding of your would-be workload. Have your job description detailed to the core; you must know where you stand in the company hierarchy. You really don’t want to find yourself feeling guilty leaving 2 hours after 6pm regularly and face the challenge of fending off insufferable team members at the same time.

But if you’re worried more so about getting a job at all rather than weighing packages, here is another pearl of wisdom which I guarantee will never fail:

Fishy Wishy.

Make a list of 10 agencies in Dubai you want to work with. If you can’t yet name that many, peruse the nominees selected by the Links Awards of Dubai and pick out the names of distinguished firms. The next step is contacting these agencies and asking to speak to a creative director. Once you’ve convinced the receptionist to put you through, explain that you are a graduate of AUD and would like to request a portfolio review. The key word here is ‘review’- it is more inviting yet less pressing than an interview. It is then up to you impress the director with your work. And because it is a review, the director is free to give you his advice and comment on whether he feels you are hiring material or not. Remember that although there are instances where those elusive contacts can ultimately help you in attaining a job, this is a dignified approach which can’t fail. If you find however that you’ve reached the bottom of your list, you have to ask yourself if your work is up to par. I found that as every year went by in AUD, I was seeing things differently- in some occurrences I was appalled that I could have ever produced such off-balanced and uninspiring work. So I upgraded it to the level of skill I had achieved up until that time. As your instructors have advised you, aim to have one golden project from each class in the program, so you have sufficient choices once you are collating and perfecting your work selection. You’ll soon see the result of your solid folio masterpiece. When that phone starts ringing, make sure you fish around before making any decision.

Although I pride myself in enduring such excessive circumstances in my first job for as long as I did, I was always aware it had an approaching expiration date. There was only so much I could learn in a small environment with back-breaking capacity. I had to move on. I applied the portfolio review trick and was very happy with the offers I received. It was in this second job where I suddenly realized the lack of knowledge I had in two areas- logo design and production. 4 years in college and a grand total of 1 logo is a disproportionate tally. There’s no way about it- working in a team of high aptitude makes your idiocy shine, even radiate. Although I picked up on the brand identity design process after a few tries, it was ‘production’ that really had me radiating. Just what is the difference between Spot UV and Laser UV? Perhaps knowing what UV meant would help. Did you know that the minimum print resolution decreases as the print area size increases above A3? And remember making a transparency for poor quality graphics is not always a solution.

What?

Every week for the first two months, I heard a new production term or learned about a new technique. It was close to humiliating that I didn’t know what seemed to be basic knowledge for designers. While I concentrated so much on the visual communication of the design, I neglected the finishing of it. What a difference that makes! A Splendorgel Fedrigoni sheet absorbs the colours of graphics while foil is another option to screen printing. 2-colour printing with an overprint of a special third? My eyes were peeled open to this new untapped area of production! Although we had a course dedicated to this area of focus, I believe if this was introduced in classes such as Graphic Design I, students would be attentive from very early on. From what I have seen and can rightly back, production is an essential ingredient in design. Just allowing students to think of possibilities would push them to research methods and incorporate them- even if in principle- in their projects. I guarantee this will aid them in the future.

End

The works you create right now are subsequently going to determine what early successes you will see after your imminent graduation. Keep in mind that it is always useful to practice your skills outside college in these years too- it would be a significant experience to venture out occasionally into that ‘Real World’ and test your abilities. One year on after AUD, I have had my share of ups and downs. Easing into any industry after gaining your degree is difficult, but once you’ve passed those first few months, you’ll get comfortable before you’ve realized it. I took in as much as I could in my years at AUD- and the position I’m in right now is testament to how much I owe the members of the faculty.



Faten Mahmood, a native of Pakistan and a long time resident of Dubai, is a graphic designer.

The Drawing Research Network

The Drawing Research Network is a loose affiliation of individuals and institutions who are involved in some way with drawing research, for example via professional practice, education or the promotion of drawing. Some participants are based in universities and colleges of art and design with established teaching and/or research profiles in drawing. Other participants have an interest in, for example, drawing therapy, the cross-curricular role of drawing in schools or digital drawing. Some participants simply have an interest in drawings and the drawing process which might include in making, thinking about and communicating on drawing. Individuals and institutions use the Network to communicate news, to explore possibilities for cooperation in drawing research, to formulate collaborative projects and to share outputs. Membership of the Network is free.

source/ link : Drawing Research Network

REMIXING CINEMA: FUTURE AND PAST OF MOVING IMAGES

The Department for Image Science at Danube University Krems created a new format of international lecture and debates on key questions of Image Science and Media Art with high-caliber experts - the DANUBE TELELECTURES. The discussion will be recorded by several cameras and transmitted live over the www. Online viewers can participate in the discussion via email. So far the debates have included: Machiko KUSAHARA, Sarat MAHARAJ, Gunalan NADARAJAN, Christiane PAUL, Paul SERMON, Jens HAUSER.

REMIXING CINEMA: FUTURE AND PAST OF MOVING IMAGES Danube TeleLecture #4: Thursday, Nov 8, 2007 - 7pm CET Live debate at the MUMOK in Vienna with Lev MANOVICH, internationally renowned media and art theorist (Russia/USA) and Sean CUBITT, expert in film and media theory (Great Britain/Australia)

Cinema as a visual phenomenon has accelerated increasingly over the last decades. Technical achievements at the material level like new participatory models driven by the melting of Internet, Databases, TV and Cinema are setting new standards and bringing a new dynamic to the black-box of the movie theater. Remixing, Coding, Remapping, and Recombination of visual manifestations are revolutionizing the narrative form of film - new societal phenomena, like the VJ scene, generate immersive viewing spaces and new forms of moving image distribution. The domain of video, film, computer and net-based installations stands on the threshold of a material revolution: do they bring a new aesthetic? Revolutionary possibilities in camera and projection techniques offer increasingly faster development cycles that also allow for innovative image languages. New historical perspectives of the cinematic revue coalesce with innovative interpretations of our visual consumer culture and foretell future developments. What can be expected ... what are the consequences?

Introduction: Oliver GRAU, Director Department for Image Science, Danube University

Danube TeleLecture # 4 from the MUMOK, MuseumsQuartier, Vienna Time: Thursday, Nov 8, 2007, 7:00pm CET (Start of Streaming)

You can attend the event in MUMOK or in realtime over the www http://www.donau-uni.ac.at/dis

After the lectures the audience will have the possibility to ask the
speakers questions. Internet users may join the discussion via e-mail.

Sean CUBITT
Current Publications: Projection: Vanishing and Becoming, in: MediaArtHistories (2007); The Cinema Effect (2005); Aliens R Us: The Other in Science Fiction Cinema (2002); Digital Aesthetics (1998); Videography: Video Media as Art and Culture (1993).

Lev MANOVICH
Publications: Abstraction and Complexity in: MediaArtHistories (2007);Black Box : White Cube (2005; Soft Cinema - Navigating the Database (2003/5); The Language of New Media (2001)

contact: Wendy Coones, M.Ed.
Tel: +43 (0)2732 893-2543
Wendy.Coones@donau-uni.ac.at
http://www.donau-uni.ac.at/dis

Interview with AUD graduate Al Zahraa Sulaiman

"Number 4"

"Number 6"

"Number 8"

Digital prints on canvas by Zahraa Sulaiman,
78 x 78 cm each canvas, 2007

Al Zahraa Sulaiman’s most recent exhibition, Colors of Time, is a collection of digital paintings. These digital paintings feature Arabic calligraphy in a burst of vibrant color that ensnares the mind and senses. The exhibition can be seen at Gallery 76 at the Dubai International Art Center until October 11th, 2007. The art work is printed by HP Designjet Z3100 printers on high quality Archival Canvas, and meant to last up to 200 year without any changes in color's intensity. The exhibition is sponsored by HP and Soura Magazine.

Al Zahraa started out as a Fine Arts student at The College of Fine Arts in Sharjah, and then transferred into the Visual Communication Program at The American University in Dubai, where she stayed until she graduated in Spring 2007. She has had exhibitions in painting, mixed media, photography and digital photography. Along with a team of her peers, Al Zahraa also helped design the winning advertisement for the Dubai Management Innovation Forum – an advertisement which has since been aired on BBC World and CNBC.

Sara Saifaei





Sara Saifaei: Please tell us a little about your background as an artist.

Al Zahraa Sulaiman: I think that the cliché "I was born to be an Artist" could truly explain it all. Since I was too young to remember, pens and papers were my favorite toys. Later on, I started developing this weird love toward books! Something about them always struck me. Not just the content; rather, the idea of books themselves. I just wanted to know how something like that could be created. This fascination with books led me to becoming an artist before becoming a Visual Communication student. I have to admit, it has always been hard for me to express myself in words, and so being an artist gave me the ability to communicate without them. I'd never received any Art education as a child or during my school years, so whatever knowledge I have was all gained first independently through a lot of reading and research, and then from my university experience.


SS: Tell us more about your new exhibition, "Colors of Time". What was your inspiration for it?

AS: This exhibition, titled "Colors of Time", holds 25 paintings which go beyond the traditional calligraphy we are all used to seeing. When you stand before one of them, do not expect it to have a literal meaning or a predictable verse. They are simply a burst of healing colors, a mixture of blissful emotions and an attempt to allow some thoughts to run free. The drive inspiration for this exhibition is Chromotherapy, it is an alternative medicinal method that uses color and light to balance whatever energy our bodies are lacking, be it physical, emotional, spiritual, or mental. I have been interested in this discipline. I read a lot about it and tried to apply some of it in my work. In the end, it is not meant to be something complicated. It's a way of expression through colors.


SS: After starting out as Fine Arts student, you moved to AUD's Visual Communication Program, and have since been producing work in many different media, including photography and animation. Is this ability to move between several different media important to you? Why?

AS: As a graphic designer with a photographic eye I discovered that all art fields are related in one way or another, and it's really important for any artist to expose themselves to the different media out there and not just limit themselves to one thing. I wasn't able to choose just one to concentrate on, especially because I always try combining the two to create something different. Working with different media and techniques allows me to see things from different perspectives.

SS: You recently graduated from AUD, with a degree in Graphic Design. How has your experience at AUD affected you as an artist?

AS: To be honest, when I made a decision to transfer to AUD, I had so many doubts. I wasn't sure if I made the right choice. However, after spending some time over there, I was relieved and all my doubts were gone. I feel that I grew professionally at AUD. I became much more confident about what I do and the way I do it.

SS: Where do you see yourself going from here?

AS: In the short term, I will be starting a Masters degree. I am also working on two books. In the long term, I am not sure yet. I have so many plans and dreams that I want to accomplish – I am just waiting for the right time and the right opportunity.

SS: And lastly, having experienced it yourself, what do you think of the UAE in terms of the opportunities it presents towards young, upcoming artists?

AS: I do understand that finding our way between big names isn't an easy task. Not everyone is always willing to promote young artists - they find it as a risk sometimes. So, to be on the safe side, they'd rather go for more experienced people in the field. However, this should never stop us from trying and knocking on every possible door. Wherever you see an opportunity, grab it with poise. If we, the young artists, don't show the right confidence then no one will believe in what we really are capable of doing


Sara Saifaei, a citizen of the UAE, was born in Japan and raised in Dubai. She is currently a student at the Visual Communication Program at the American University of Dubai, and a member of the Editorial Staff of the Panoptikon.