Arts and Technology Assignment: Xerox Art

"Dulce Bellum Inexpertis"

This piece of art was made by utilizing my scanner, that I set to black and white, the dimensions of this piece is 2 feet by 3 feet. I wanted to utilize the various pieces of art work already on my skin to help enhance and make the message more easily comprehended. The tattoos on my body were done by Will Ashberry, as I feel the need to credit him for his hand in my art piece. I was inspired by Baroque art style, and wanted to create a depiction of heaven (the top portion of the pice) and hell (the bottom right side of art piece). There is obvious sense of surrealism mixed in as well, as strange creatures and representations are made by using normal body parts. I utilized different contrasts and color control of the scanner to make some images darker as I wanted to use them to form the "hell" in my piece- dark images with heavy contrast and evil pieces of my tattoos, along with  contortions of my hands in evil gestures were all utilized to enhance the vision of hell seen below:

I then utilized an image of my own face in a position of almost pain, and from my mouth a contorted hand is protruding. I utilized a number of various scans of my hands and arms, to make it seem as though my hands are reaching out from my mouth, holding onto each other. 

I appear to be wearing a mask of an evil  skull, with the words "dulce bellum" inscribed with it. I wanted this portion of the art piece to be very chaotic, mixed with both dark and light colors.

Next, the hands coming from my mouth the hands reach up and appear to be holding onto to each other. The middle ground is between heaven and hell is a representation of earth, the hands link together and pass through the darkness of the woods. Ultimately, the hands end by holding on to heaven by just the tips of their fingers.

As previously stated, I utilized scanner options and set the color tone to very bright/light, to create heavenly images. I tried to create clouds using my stomach and different hand gestures to represent the sun. I also utilized the tattoo of an angel on my tricep to further enhance the representation of heaven.

Then from heaven, on the right side of the image, another set of scanned images of my hands and arms can be seen leading to hell. I wanted to make this set of hands appear to be dragging each other down to hell.

Below I included an image from Baroque style art, I included it to show the chaotic nature of this art style with so much going on just like in my art work. I wanted to fill every inch so someone has to stare at the image to see all the details.

Image Credit: "Canto XXXI" by Dante Alighieri. Dante's "Divine Comedy" is one of my favorite poems and many of my tattoos were inspired by it so I wanted to pay tribute to him.