Graphic design students 'Instant Messaging' truth, beauty
By Kristin Nehls, Assistant Entertainment Editor
May 23, 2008 | 11 a.m.
As colorful illuminations project from the ceiling and sculptures emerge and blossom from their display on the floor, the School of graphic design’s exhibit "Instant Messaging" is a perfect escape from the reality that many of the art pieces satirize.
Stepping through the doorway of Seigfred’s fifth floor gallery, one is met with the smell of fresh paint, the techno beats of Crystal Castles and an eruption of overwhelming aesthetic curiosity. Debuting May 20 for an 11-day exhibition, "Instant Messaging" reveals the final thesis projects that 17 graphic design seniors in OU's College of Fine Arts have been developing for almost one year.
Ranging in variety from installation art that requires audience participation to still frame photography, one thing that each project shares is a theme too complex for one simple glance.
"Instant Messaging" is not only the name of the exhibit but also the goal of each graphic design student. “We just wanted people to walk into our show and just kind of feel something from it and…look at our pieces and instantaneously get a message,” senior graphic design student Bridget Litzinger said.
Because technological savvy is so relevant in today’s society, it was important to the students that technological themes correlate to the exhibit’s name, Litzinger said. Multiple projects within the exhibit reflect the artist’s personal take on the world’s growing technological dependence.
Litzinger’s own project instead focuses on environmental concerns. Unavoidably protruding from the tiled floor of the gallery, Litzinger created a sculpture of a tree whose beauty is tainted by tangible carbon dioxide. Homemade carbon dioxide was constructed using tissue paper printed with words related to global warming and pollution swirling out of self-constructed mufflers aimed precisely at the tree.
Litzinger said art is the most effective way to convey a message that people are otherwise ignoring. “I feel like people either aren’t listening or they are listening and they just don’t want to pay attention,” Litzinger said.
While many of the artists, like Litzinger, have been influenced by personal qualms with society, others were endowed with motivation upon a recent study abroad excursion that the graphic design class of 2008 embarked on together this past winter. Patricia Cue, head of the graphic design program, grew up in Mexico, inspiring the rest of the group to study in the country.
Senior Diane Call’s project, “The Branding of Idols,” focuses on the iconography of certain religious figures throughout history. Displaying a collage of religious portraits interposed on top of one another and missing faces, Call claims that Mexico gave her a basis for the theme of her project.
“When I went to Mexico, the Virgin of Guadalupe was everywhere...and what I was most interested in was...the iconography that the Spanish used to convert the natives,” Call said. “When I looked deeper into it I realized that Guadalupe functioned as a brand.”
Mexican themes are relevant in other projects as well, such as Abigail Hanson’s “Contextualizing the Language of Marketing: From Naïve to Calculatedly Contrived.” Hanson's piece focuses on the differences between Mexicans and Americans when it comes to advertising techniques.
Laura Biel’s “Inside the Box” clearly reveals the new perspective that her Mexican experience gave her, as her thesis project attempts to challenge the American stereotypes of Mexico via posters throughout the exhibit.
Beginning the process of a thesis project during spring quarter of their junior year, graphic design students find that the opinions, perspectives and ideas about their projects go through a metamorphosis that correlate with the changes that each particular artist faces in life.
Joshua Reith best exemplifies the self-reflective qualities of the project as his project, “PSA (Public Self Analyzation).” Reith's piece serves as a type of self-portrait of his own stage persona. “The project will manifest itself as a study of androgyny and gender objectification through an understanding of an entertainer-audience dichotomy,” his project description states.
Reith’s project includes a rolling footage of his band, The Personas, as poetic phrases are scrolled across the screen, which beg the question of effective communication and deceiving appearances.
“Living in Light” by Mallori Stone requires the viewer to step into a dark room illuminated only by the poetry reflected on the walls. A light is then abruptly turned on, disallowing the possibility to finish reading the poetry and exemplifying the concept of overindulgence and an excessive use of light in an energy-depleting world.
Additional projects include interactive videos that allow the viewer to determine his own socioeconomic fate, rooms that help to the blur the definition of metaphysical space and cross-cultural differences exemplified through wallpaper. Such variety throughout the exhibit makes the concept of graphic design ambiguous and broad but also helps to open the public’s eyes to beauty and truth, as expressed through multiple outlets.
“Graphic design can be anything you want it to be," Litzinger said. "It can be making a poster, it can be making a logo, it can be creating a whole identity for an entire company...it [is] just making a message, really, is what it is. Really, it is just getting your audience to see what it is that you are trying to show them.”
---