Right prospect of face

The body representation measurements were obtained by measuring Tyler Budge, our professor and then multiplied by four. My portion of the project was the right side of the face including the eye. The head measurements that Nik and I came up with were: head circumference-22.5"(4)=90"/2=45" which was my half of the head. The Neck- 18"(4)=72"/2=36" and the top of the head to the neck- 10.5"(4)=42". The only available tools to measure the body was string and it's not the most precise way of measuring and wish I had brought my fabric measuring tape. I think we had the measurements correct, yet when we drew the head out using the measurements, the head was misshapened and resembled a mushroom cloud. Nik, Kayla and I ended up coming in to Tyler's studio over the weekend to retrace the head and it was a success. We then cut out the pieces leaving room for the lips and the nose for Kayla and attached pieces of wood to the sides of the face where the ears would approximately be placed and also served as an anchor point for Kayla's ears. Then the fun began. I knew I wanted to work with metal and had decided on Aluminum. Originally I had wanted to use this project as a means of brushing up on my welding technique, but as I am on a financial and time budget, I had accepted some free aluminum roof flashing, which is really too thin to weld and decided to use that for my piece. I then purchased two more rolls of aluminum flashing from Lowe's and the cost was about $30.00 total. My original idea was one of anatomy. I wanted to create an anatomically correct muscle structure for the face utilizing my anatomy and physiology textbook for a reference. I wanted to do it with small strips but that concept didn't really work out since you would have not been able to decipher the muscles from each other. So I tried my best to use large pieces for every muscle. I then cut and bent them to make the correct curvature, then fastened the pieces with pop rivets. As I moved downward toward the jaw I ran into trouble getting the perfect jaw angle and the neck muscles were larger than my aluminum allowed so in a fit of desperation and frustration I cut the two larger neck muscles into strips. This allowed me to bend them into the correct formation and I think it was the best move short of heating the metal. I then connected metal string used for hanging pictures to a Styrofoam ball, covered that in tin foil and hung it from the eye socket to be consistent with my childhood story. The story I am referring to was when I was running at full speed from the top of the hill where my house stood to the field down below, I did not know my father had been working on the fencing he was building for our horses and he had only completed hanging the top barbed wire, then quit for the day. I hit the barbed wire at top speed and was propelled backwards. I was sure I had popped my eye out of its socket but when I gathered my self and felt the damage it was only a small cut above my right eye, deep enough, however, to leave a scar.

I then nailed the remaining bottom pieces to the neck and stepped back to gander at my creation. I was a little worried because at this point in the process it just looked like a mess of metal. But when we connected it to Nik's left side of the face and Kayla added her facial features it looked like the robots from Miyazaki's Castle in The Sky.

Connecting it to Nik's piece only called for a few screws which were accessible through the gaps in the metal and we then screwed on Kayla's facial features that were made of Styrofoam.

The day of installation came and as I have no childcare I was unable to come earlier and was only able to help for 15 minutes before my next class, but I would have liked offer more assistance.

We had some problems getting the piece up and had to make the decision to leave it resting on the ground at waist level. It was a little frustrating because it required the comments and opinions of every one's piece, yet there were some people who dropped off their body parts and didn't show up for the installation so we were left fixing and screwing their body parts together. It should have been more of a team effort and I am disappointed in those people who did not make it to class.

All in all, it looks fantastic and I am proud of those fellow class mates who put a lot of effort into their piece.

Body System: The Right side of the face/head and the eye

The head and the eye consists of the brain, eye, cranial nerves. muscles, cranium bones and skin, among others. There are many more components, however I will only lightly touch upon the major ones.

The Brain:

Primary center for regulating and coordinating body activities, in the human adult it weighs about 3lbs and has many parts that control many different parts of the body.

Frontal Lobe:

Function-Thought Processes, behavior, personality and emotion.

-Broca area: Motor Speech

-Temporal Lobe: Hearing, smell

-Parietal Lobe: body sensations

-Occipital Lobe:Vision

Wernicke's area: Language Comprehension

Cranial Nerves and functions:

Olfactory- smell

Optic- Vision

Oculomotor- Eye Movement

Trochlear- Eye Movement

Trigeminal

-Opthalmic- Face/Scalp sensation

-Maxillary- Mouth/nose sensation

-Mandibular- Chewing

Abducens- eye movement

Facial-Face/scalp movement, tongue (taste)

Vestibulocochlear-hearing,/equilibrium

Glossopharyngeal- ear pain/temp., tongue/throat

Vagus- throat, voicebox..etc..

Accessory- neck/back movement

Hypoglossal- Tongue movement

Head Muscles:

Orbicularis Oculi- Closes eyelids, wrinkles forehead

Masseter- Closes Jaw for Chewing

Sternocleidomastoid- Turns head (on neck)

Skin:

Protective membrane over the entire body, skin guards deeper tissues against loss of water, salts, heat and against invasions of pathogens and their toxins.

Skin contains 2 types of glands:

sebaceous- produces an oily secretion called Sebum

Sweat Glands- watery secretion called sweat

The 3 layers of the skin:

Epidermis

Dermis

and Subcutaneous

Head:

Bones of the skull protect the brain and the structures related to it, like the sense organs. Muscles for controlling head movements and chewing motions are connected to the cranial bones. The cranial bones join each other at the joints called sutures.

Bones of the Cranium:

Frontal

Parietal

Temporal

Occipital

Sphenoid

Ethmoid

Jaw:

Mandible (lower)

Maxillary (upper)

All the facial bones except one, are joined together by sutures so that they are immovable. The mandible is the only facial bone capable of movement.

The major parts of the eye:

Pupil

Retina

Conjunctiva

Cornea

Sclera

Iris

Optic Nerve

Macula

Rods and Cones

The eye is a sense organ with receptors whose sensitive cells may be activated by a particular form of energy or stimulus in the external or internal environment. The sensitive cells in the eye response to stimulus by initiatin a series of nerve impulses along afferent sensory neurons that lead to the brain.

FINAL Plastic body wrap

I chose to make my body image based upon the words "body ritual" because it would prove to be less boring than some of the others that I had come up with.

The etymology of body ritual only influenced my gesture in a mental pathway that led me to mummification, which is a culturally religious act.

The gesture reflects the word because mummification is a ritual that certain cultures will practice.

The gesture is only a reflection of myself in bodily form, I do not personalize myself with mummification in any way other than I find it fascinating.

The puppeteer is culture and the visual elements chosen to represent the puppeteer was a deep red color painted on the cross with the word ”culture” on one side facing the mummy and the definition of culture facing the sky. The definition is: An integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning.

The color red symbolizes the vital entity (the blood of life which is culture) that touches all aspects of life and death. I chose to display the definition of culture because as most people know WHAT it is, the actual definition is often overlooked.

The thought process of our project was successful, the actual body taping was mildly unsuccessful, though I was still able to produce a body shape. When I first started this project there were grand illusions of a cement hard body shape that I could turn in AND use for future halloween decor. Yet, I have to admit that I'm disappointed in the final results. The body was done in class with the help of my Partner, let's call her 'K' and the head was done at home with the help of my husband. After one weekend with the body hanging around the house, I could tell that it wasn't going to be rock hard like I wanted it to be. At no fault of K or my husbands, I think we should have used more plastic wrap. I also mixed cheap tape with expensive tape and used a ton of both, yet still the body would not stay upright and bent at the ankles. After leaving it in the classroom for the weekend, it was again smashed under two other bodies and I had to reinforce the pelvic area with wire. If I were to do this project again, I would only use the most expensive tape and wrap a second layer of plastic wrap. I also would not do it in sections, as that seemed to cause some weakness in the shape.

Collectively, people were very helpful and seemed like they were having fun. As an observation while scanning the room, everyone seemed to be participating in assisting their partners. However, there was a snag during installation with the fishing line and I felt that people could have better prepared. I also understand that it’s unrealistic for me to assume that people have had previous experience with fishing line and the high probability of knotting, not everyone has been fishing.

This project defintely proved to be interesting but way more time consuming than I think intended. However, I would recommend it and it would be perfect for a tween summer camp craft.