A place of great disorder and confusion.

Visual Literacy; Week 3

Chaos... Could pretty much define my entire university life right now. But hey, that's what independance is about, right? From the state of my room to the state of my artistic thought processes, pretty much every part of my life has full potential to be chaotic. It's an interesting word to demonstrate as it is entirely dependant on perception. What I might think is an organised mess might be another person's nightmare.

The opening of Primark in Oxford street, London, is one of the most chaotic things I have seen on the internet. Several people were injured - all for the sake of cheap clothes.

A photograph I took outside my university halls. It's a police barrier that is put up every night to prevent drunken crowds that pour outside of the nightclubs getting in to the apartments. When I see them stashed away the next morning it reminds me of the chaotic groups of drunken people I hear shouting and singing outside my window.

Expanding from the idea of riots and anarchy being symbols of chaos, I decided to play around in photoshop to achieve different flame effects. They could be useful in my final piece for chaos if I decide to create an image orientated around riots as molotov cocktails are particuarly iconic for such disorderly events.

Simply using this tutorial, and making use of the smudge tool and linear gradient tool in photoshop I was able to create a quick and simple flame effect:

A students' room is very chaotic, because we're lazy and quite often hungover. (Disclaimer; this is totally not my room, but I did help to mess it up.)

I wanted to play around with the photo of my flatmate's room but I wasn't sure what sort of theme to aim for. I thought... What art style would I consider "chaotic". Fractal was out of the question, I don't see how I could apply that to the photo; but then I thought... doodles! Doodles by their very nature are chaotic. They're formless and often done when we're absent mindledly laying pen to paper.
Expanding from that, I decided to play around with the photograph in photoshop by drawing over it with the paint tool. I came up with a rather nice result.

Adding different effect filters gave my image different results. I included layer maskers and solarized the palette to add a gloomier mood to the overall image.

/needsfinishing/