Artist's Statement on larger collection, from which this image is taken:
I chose to examine the label pessimist. Even though I enjoy having fun and consider myself to be a mostly positive person, people have often told me that I can bring out the worst of a situation, that I seem to focus on only the bad of a situation. I personally think of myself as a realist, but agree that I can be obsessed with negativity at times. I chose to use the English Oxford Dictionary’s philosophical definition of pessimist.
“A person who believes that this world is as bad as it could be or that evil will ultimately prevail over good.”
-The Oxford Living English Dictionary
This definition seemed to resonate with me. It embodies some of the anxiety that I experience in my pessimistic episodes, however, it does not explain what that person does with pessimistic beliefs. Many of my beliefs and tendencies stem from nihilism. Over the years I have embraced my own personal philosophy on the matter. I understand that many of my beliefs are that of a nihilist, yet I embrace the empowerment of nothingness, and the opportunity that existential freedom gives me. I now consider myself to be an existential nihilist.
My collages are meant to appear dark and depressing on the surface, but hold some optimistic deeper meaning. It is meant to reflect how society can miss-interpret conscious concerns of a realist as the ramblings of a pessimist. Even though I have selected the word pessimist, my piece is tailored to inspire, despite the dark appearances. I have also arranged them in a way that depicts my growth throughout the years.
All of the images I have used are from the Flickr commons page, which I found to be particularly useful. The bulk of editing was done in Photoshop. Photoshop was particularly useful on the piece with the lettering across the man’s face. The text editor has an arch function that was made for my project. Below is a screen shot of my workspace during that project.
Author's Statement on "Designed":
This piece was meant to illustrate a transition period in my life, where I began to place less merit in emotional decisions, and more in calculated analysis. I cut out pieces of the heart and replaced it with mathematical formula and circuit traces. The math represented the beauty found in everyday life, that can be explained without emotion, the reconciliation of art and math. Geometry seemed the most appropriate medium. The circuitry represents some of the thinking that has developed from my time as an electrical engineer undergraduate. Some common themes of electrical engineering are: cost analysis, risk analysis, sustainability, safety, planning, and considerations across different domains. Having these two components replacing parts of the heart is representative of me augmenting myself with more contentious thought, where others may see it as cold and calculated. Additionally, to make the piece, I had to literally cut out a piece of the heart, which is poetic in itself. The code to the right is hand written by myself. According to Wikipedia, the human heart beats about 41,0480,000 times in the human life span. A loop is constructed that will continue producing beats until the heart hits the aforementioned number. A default variable is set to true. When something is not true, it triggers a sub function called doubt() and increments the beats of the heart by much more than one beat, effectively taking life off. This is representative of the anxiety experienced by the unexplained. Finally, I filled out some of the document specifications with my parents name, my birth town and birth year, so as to keep with the formality of the document. The entire piece is to reduce the biological masterpiece of the heart to technical drawing. Emotion is often associated with the heart, and I intended for the drawing to give a feeling of cold calculation.
