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A short note on my current art interest

Liminality / Liminal-ism

2023 April 10

Juniper Chew

(As this is not a scholarly work but a set of reference notes, I am not providing formal references.)

"Liminal space imagery often depicts a sense of “in-between”, capturing transitional places (such as stairwells, roads, corridors, or hotels) unsettlingly devoid of people. The aesthetic may convey moods of eeriness, surrealness, nostalgia, or sadness, and elicit responses of both comfort and unease." (Wikipedia)

I have been researching briefly the subject of liminality in art, particularly for 3D CG photoreal rendering.  I studied how artists have used liminality as a device in their photoreal CG images. I confine my discussion to still images of scenery / landscapes. 

First, I will dispense with what is not to be included as styles, subject matter, or mislabelled technique.  There appears to be a misunderstanding of the term cinematic, which has been loosely applied to a particular look in final still images. The cinematic aesthetic is actually the result of a production strategy. There is a degree of labelling overlap as well, between a liminal image (poolcore, and such), and a fantasy image.  Fantasy is a genre.  There are many non-liminal images which can be safely included in the Fantasy genre.

So, on to liminality. Liminality in art is a device to evoke a sense of unfamiliarity or "unease" in the viewer of an artwork.  I dislike the latter term "unease", which I see often in explanations of liminality in art.  Horror or pornographic images can evoke unease at the gut level in the unprepared viewer, but those images affect the viewer through shock and awe rather than psychological emotion-elicitation.

Liminality in art, as I understand it, is a psychological device.  Since it is associated with transitions depicted in the art piece, particularly from the familiar into the unfamiliar and thus the associated feeling of unfamiliarity, any scenario with these elements can work:

1. A familiar setting, subject, context, placement, scale, perspective, and so on;

2. An unfamiliar (or "weird") setting, subject, context, placement, scale, perspective, and so on;

3. The art piece tying and holding (1) and (2) together in some way.

An image of a cat with polka dots and flowers on its fur is not liminal because it does not convey transition from one state to the next.  It is a novel take on a familiar subject.  (A partially-decomposed cat depicted artistically could arguably be liminal, in that it makes the viewer ponder the state of being alive verses being dead - that transition phase.  Artistic sense aside, I digress.)

So, on to liminal scenes or landscapes.  The most effective use of liminality - for me - appears to be:

1. when a setting has no living being in it;

2. the piece is hyper-realistic or at least photorealistic (to capture the familiarity);

3. there is something "wrong" with the perspective or scale for some of the elements in the image (a moon on the sand of the beach, or a door in an empty field opening to a different scene visible only through the doorway, or a cloud floating in your bathroom) - such elements help to convey the unfamiliarity aspect of the liminal scene; and,

4. something that holds the familiar and the unfamiliar together to make the image coherent despite the oddness (the lighting, colour palette, camera angle (in the case of 3D digital renders), time of day or night, the sky, water, fog, partially-viewed architectural elements).

It is quite easy for the creator to slide off the liminality focus and fall into the purely Fantasy genre without actually having any sort of liminality in the art piece.  Some type of intellectual discipline is required !

For now, I end my notes on the subject, and proceed to do the practical -i.e. actually creating the 3D CG scenes.

January 2023

I made a video of my recent renders as at January 2023

Just a summary of some more recent work.

Link:

https://youtu.be/3T-eeaEg3mo

My Jaw Dropped

2022 August 06

Just go and look for SUPERKIND and their metaverse AI K-pop idol boy Saejin.  I can throw away all my 3D CG animation software.  there is no way to beat that.

My AI Generated Art Albums are public at FaceBook

You may visit my public FB albums to see my AI-generated art (some other stuff there, but the album titles will inform you what content to expect). I do not wish to participate in NFTs. Please do not use my art as NFT.

Some of my AI-generated art is in music video format at my Instagram account

You may see some of my AI-generated art in music-video format at my public Instagram account.  There's other life stuff there, so you may get confused ha ha !

I am at Pixiv

I do have an art-related presence at https://www.pixiv.net/en/users/1323164

I started a thread on Japanese Freebies at the HiveWire3D Freebies Forums

On 04 March 2016... 

https://community.hivewire3d.com/threads/japanese-freebies-websites.525/

My ancient freebies at Poser Club Japan

From a long long time ago.  The website was vandalised twice at least.  The owner (also a 3D content creator) appeared to have re-built the site since.  I haven't visited it for many, many years, but I just went looking today and found my own freebies still there.

http://poserclub-cab.net/pf/author/ibr_remote/