Project 1 Artist Statement

My work seeks to reflect how desire for an object can so easily lead to a quick spiral downwards into dependency on and addiction to that very object. Sugar dependency has become a real problem in this day and age, turning an innocent desire for sweets as a child into a serious addiction later on adult life for many, causing many of the obesity problems in our country, and yet sugar is never seen as the addictive drug that it really is. Its bright colors and energy distance it from crack, heroine, and others, leading to avoidance of the ever-present issue. This visual collage endeavors to bridge this gap and relate the gluttonous desire for and dependency on sweets and candy to the addiction of other drugs.

Project 1 Final

Project 1 Research Post 5

Giuseppe Acrimboldo, the original food portrait artist, back in the 1500s.

Project 1 Research Post 4

Desire

noun

1. 1. 

   a strong feeling of wanting to have something or wishing for something to happen.

verb

1. 1. 

   strongly wish for or want (something).

Project 1 Research Post 3

http://www.intelligentlifemagazine.com/content/features/wanting-versus-liking

There's a certain part of this article that particularly interested me, where it talks about "hedonistic hotspots" in the brain. They recorded that rats lick their lips when they taste something sweet, and they thought that this pleasurable reaction was due to the rush of dopamine in a brain's system, so they gave these rats a dopamine-depressing drug. The interesting part was that even with this drug in the rat's system, they still reacted to the sweet taste the same way, leading scientists to believe that desire and pleasure aren't solely based in one area of the brain, and that pleasure and desire might originate in different hotspots in the brain, what scientists refer to as "hedonistic hotspots," which I just found incredibly interesting.

Project 1 In-process Work 3

This dude looks way more human, and I'm gonna keep laying pieces of candy over limbs and such for now.

Face Off

When you always told everyone you were a masterpiece and now you are

Digital Painting Still Life

Project 1 In-Process Work 2

So I gave my little drugged up candy humanoid some legs, and before my aesthetic vision was to have it blocky and vaguely resembling a human but now I'm wondering if I should give it an accurate to life form to make it more recognizable, so I'm not sure where to go from here, I may just tinker around and finish this one and then attempt another separate piece that has an accurate human form and just compare the finished two and see which I like better.

Opacity Exercise

Project 1 In-Process Work 1

The carrying out of my vision: constructing a person out of candy bags and boxes. I clearly still need to do the other hand and the rest of his body, I'm just debating back and forth between having the subject hunched over the needle shamefully or not. However, I wanted to use this brightly candy-colored background to not only make it seem more graphic and because I really enjoy vivid colors, but also to make it seem light and fun and nonthreatening, which is exactly how most people see a dependency on or strong desire for sugar.

Project 1 Research Post 2

In light of these ideas about desire being a physical need that our body craves, I started thinking about how many people think certain foods are at this level of vitality, when, in reality, they aren't, like coffee and candies. This desire turns to dependency, which can then become even more extreme and turn into addictions, in which desire is increased exponentially. Addictions to coffee and sugars are so extreme in our society today and no one really puts much worth on their significance because no one relates any type of food at the same level of severity as, say, heroin or something. Which seemed interesting to me, and made me start to decide create my project based on the idea that society holds these to the same standards, candy and heroin. So my idea started to develop as a person made of candy wrappers with a hypodermic needle also made out of candy wrappers, or something along those lines, so I began to scan a bunch of pictures of old candy wrappers and will go from there.

Project 1 Research Post 1

I didn’t have any clue where to begin when I first thought about this project, so I just started out searching for some research on desire, what it really is, different explanations of it, or even how it affects different people or affects our perceptions or actions, and I came across this article that had some really interesting points.

“While desires are often classified as emotions by laypersons, psychologists often describe desires as different from emotions. For psychologists, desires arise from bodily structures and functions (e.g., the stomach needing food and the blood needing oxygen). On the other hand, emotions arise from a person's mental state. A 2008 study by the University of Michigan indicated that, while humans experience desire and fear as psychological opposites, they share the same brain circuit.^[8] A 2008 study entitled "The Neural Correlates of Desire" showed that the human brain categorizes any stimulus according to its desirability by activating three different brain areas: the superior orbitofrontal cortex, the mid-cingulate cortex, and the anterior cingulate cortex.^[9]

While the "neuroscience of happiness and well-being is still in its infancy", research on the "distant cousins" of pleasure and desire show that reward is a key element in creating both of these states. Studies showed that a chemical called dopamine is the brain's "pleasure chemical". Research also shows that the orbitofrontal cortex has connections to both the opioid and dopamine systems, and stimulating this cortex is associated with subjective reports of pleasure.^[10]”

This article describes the relationship between dependency and the brain and an object. It further goes on to say that some theories state that desire arises from a scientific bodily need, rather than it coming from an emotional place. This is such an interesting concept, the fact that desire, something so closely related with an emotional want or need, might actually be based on a chemical reaction in our brain. I also thought it was so interesting that it arises from bodily structures, so our desire isn’t anything to do with emotional needs, but rather with a part of our body being in need of a specific solution. This almost made me think that desire is a survival instinct, our body’s efforts to keep us alive and sustain us.

Digital Painting Exercise

A Brief Biography on Sydney Griffiths

I'm a second year Photography major originally from a suburb outside of Orlando, Florida. I really like to travel around Florida to keep things interesting and I avidly Netflix in my spare time. My art tends to vary greatly between whichever medium I work in, from architectural lines and geometry to the relationship between religious and pop culture icons, to a mishmash of colors and textures in collages, which I've really been digging lately.