July 8, 2016

Coughy! Coughy! Keck! Keck! The pollen count is high this morning. 8.30 am. A review of yesterday’s mixes and uploads. On my return, I’m aware that two tracks are a little louder than the others. (Resting one’s ears, sharpens them again.) An easy fix. I extremized the stereo file on several tracks, in order to test whether I’d achieved maximum resolution. I had (more or less).

My thoughts gravitated towards the design of a new art history module: Art/Spirit: The Visualisation of Immaterial Culture in Europe and North America Since the Sixteenth century. I’ve avoided using terms like ‘religious’ and ‘biblical’, which would likely put students off registering for the module and, also, suggest a too narrow field of inquiry. The module sits comfortably between Abstraction, on the one hand, and Art/Sound, on the other.

An inquiry from the National Library of Wales regarding the following print:

gospelship
The Gospel Ship, designed by ‘Hy P’, chromolithograph (early 1900s)

I responded:

If it’s the one that I’m thinking of, the chromolithographic print was sold by M’Lay & Co., Cardiff, probably in the early 1900s. A postcard version, similar but certainly not identical, was also available at the time. I don’t know where it originated, but copies of print have turned up in Patagonia, Newfoundland, India, and Australia. The text is always in English bearing the same biblical references. 

I suspect that it was designed in the UK, and capitalises on our island and seafaring culture. In biblical iconography, the ship is a visual symbol for the church. Indeed, the print exploits the principle of metaphor and correspondence between the mundane and spiritual in all the texts. In short, it’s a piece of visual evangelism produced for the tub-thumbing arm of Protestantism.

Afternoon. The cover design for the CD and Bonus Material beckoned. I’d taken several photographs of Bibles in pews at the Old Whalers Church, Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts in 2009:

Front-Cover_image

This will provide the motif and principal image for the covers. Out of the logic of this image will emerge the rules for the design of the whole CD. The design must also relate to that of the first CD, since they belong to the same series. The Pictorial Bible series booklets held to this  principle:

Screen-Shot-2016-07-08-at-17.02.10

Evening. Practise session 1. On, then, to the CD booklet’s back cover and to generating artwork that may be used by the graphic designer when the CD package is put together. I’m unsure how many sides there’ll be that require some form of graphic. Best to over prepare — to generate options.

Previous Post
July 7, 2016
Next Post
July 11, 2016