Photoshop as a design tool. by Scott Parker
Groundwork:
The Imagery and Expression 5 studio at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles is simply intended as a class to introduce students to Photoshop and Form-Z. Under my direction, the focus was shifted slightly to put an emphasis on the use of computers to develop an imagination rather than simply providing the students with another marketable job skill.
The course was divided evenly into two sections, one for Photoshop, the other for Form-Z. The subject of this article is the Photoshop portion of the class.
The Project:
Each student was introduced to a passage of John Cages from composition in retrospect about discipline. Both the quote and the title of the book provided the conceptual backdrop for the work of the class. Each student was asked to collect two distinct images. At this point, the student's were intentionally unaware of the images intended use, so as to not influence their choice of images. These images were eventually collaged together according to a rules set that each student was asked to develop independent of the images. The intention was to free the students from their preconceived notion of what could be done with the images, and instead create an environment (through the rules set) where each student could experience a moment of formal discovery.
The rule set itself was intended to have its own internal logic, both conceptually and formally. The example that I introduced to the students was one of John Cages pieces. The story goes that a certain number of radios were set up on stage. Cage came out with his own rules set, a series of chance operations that tells him when to turn on which radio, where to set the dial, at what volume and for what duration. The piece that resulted was not based on any notion of what is beautiful to the ear, instead it's what was consistent with the rule set. That became our classes goal, to free each student from the need to create a beautiful image.
The Images:
What is presented here is one example from the class. It is developed from an 8 measure section of a piece of jazz notation. The project was selected because the student allowed the process to take the work past his own ability in the given medium. The student had no prior computer experience.