Beyond The Digital : Creating a Poetic Voice in Photography, Film, Graphic Design, and Architecture 

Instructor: Coy Howard

Project 1: Creating a Poetic Photographic Image

A “poetic image” changes the physical properties of the object into aesthetic properties that evokes within the viewer a feeling — a sense of an ineffable otherness. There is a sense of mystery that provokes multiple interpretations, a desire to linger over the image, savoring its form, texture, associations, and ambiguous possible meanings and significances. The purely visual has become tactile, the physical has become spiritual. It says “This is”. It is not seen as an apple but as a poetic statement capable of being seen/felt as many things - a paradoxical symbol of the mysteries, contradictions, and complexities of the human condition.

Project 2:  Creating a Poetic Graphic Expression, specifically, the design of a Lecture Poster 

Posters at the very least are meant to attract attention, generate interest, and/or provoke curiosity, as well as provide necessary information, such as what, when, where, and by whom the lecture will be presented. Each of the separate pieces of this information, either as image or text, can be featured - that is become the vehicle for attracting attention and/or the locus of poetic expression.

Project 3 :  Cinepoem : The Poetry of Opposites - Movement & Stillness

Two 3-minute films using your smartphone with music and a title page with credits. The first film is to be a celebration of movement with stillness as a background, while the second film is to be a celebration of stillness with movement as an accent. The deep structure of both films is twofold, complementary contrast and the unity of opposites. The universal and hence poetic focus that can become the emotional core of your films is that ephemerality is the essence of life: all things change, all be it at different rates, even time. Films, as a series of images, existing in time, with background and foreground, and stability and movement can emotionally presence this truth, poignantly or humorously.