Sarah Cusack

B&W, Luminosity & Colour inversion Digital photograms of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) worn by Australian frontline health workers during the COVID-19 Pandemic. To commemorate all the selfless individuals who put their own lives, health, safety and those of their families on the line for their communities. Their armour is only thin, lightweight yet hot, suffocating and uncomfortable. May light shine through them and all they do with protection from infectious particles, trauma, exhaustion and numbness.

This illustration series with fine liner pen plays with bold graphic line in anatomical illustrations with some references such as Da Vinci and Grays Anatomy Illlustrator Henry Van Dyke. Some creative license was used in detailing to portray a unique pattern not unlike that of a fingerprint.

We are all similar yet unique. Although people traditionally identify variation with our physical exterior, it is also reflected in our anatomy and genetics. The saying goes that we are ‘all the same on the inside’, however we now know this is not true. Although internal diversity has always been a crucial influence in people’s circumstances it is my belief the growth of science and medicine are reducing the deterministic power our genes and anatomy have over ourselves as humans.

This unit covered topics of clinical patient photography in which the physical representation and dimentions are accurately portrayed and correctly lit for pre and post operative purposes, introducing the frankfurt plane in portraiture. Multiple exposure with strobe technique to capture range of movement. Other exercises include using Macro lens, fluorescent and infrared black light with ultraviolet filter.
 

All subjects observed live and drawn in graphite, charcoal and charcoal pencil.
 

As part of my university education I was accepted into an AIM Overseas study program "Biodiversity of Peru" with other students from around Australia. The course was a four week intensive curriculum covering topics from of flora and fauna as well as social-economical issues regarding conservation of Peru's natural reserves. This involved a three day stay in the Tambopata National Park of The Amazon Jungle. For the final assessment students paired off and designed their own projects. Another student and I documented, photographed and completed field sketching of the animals we observed on our trekking over the three day period. We created and presented a formatted visual document featuring our work and related their biology and morphology to the environmental zones and canopy layers of the Amazon rainforest from an evolutionary standpoint. These photos were shot by myself and used in the final project.

I underwent an 80 hour work placement over 10 weeks in the medical illustration department of The Royal Melbourne Hospital.
Observed Retinal Fundus OCT scans and retinal scanning devices.
Observed studio photography sessions for pre and post operative purposes.

Entered appointments and job types with Job Management System- JMS integrating with the Medical Photography System- MPS part of the hospital PAS system attaching photographic images electronically.

For instance job types as either studio photography ie breast, skin mole mapping, dental - or retina OCT fundas photography. Additionally the patient's diagnosis, referring doctor and consent level for the patient's images to be kept as a record, used for teaching purposes etc.

Assisted digital work flow and editing, processing including metadata.
Observed on-ward photography.

Applied national standard medical illustration photography procedures in self directed studio sessions.

Dental views

Nasal- "bird and worms" perspectives

portrait, frankfurt plane and profile facial pespectives

3D Space, Object and Layout

Using Maya AutodeskWith a selected genre of steampunk the final project consisted of a 3d modeled object - the mechanical fish in an environment of our own design- the underwater cave and submarine with 30 seconds of animated camera and fully rendered frames.

3D Character Animatiom

Animation to 11 seconds of dialogue of our choosing that was embed using Adobe After Effects. It was suggested that we incorporate a character tripping in part of the scene, we completed character profiles, storyboards and created our own video references.

3D Character Design and Rigging

Uncia Iha Mo- ‘Snow Leopard, Princess, lady, goddess’

Uncia is a female, anthropomorphic snow leopard warrior who strives for survival and to defend her endangered species against human poachers and climate change. She is intelligent and a talented huntress with bow and arrow. Climate change has caused the tree line to be higher in altitude resulting in the decrease of the wild prey that depend on the plants for food. Snow leopards have therefore adapted to hunt prey from increasing distances and attempt to keep humans from getting within firing range but which is often in vain.

The largest remaining population of snow leopards is located in the Chinese Himalayas, Tibetan Plateau and Altyn- Tagh, also located in the Tibet region. I decided to give Uncia a Tibetan cultural heritage because I felt there were parallels between the struggle for survival of snow leopards and survival of Tibet under Chinese occupation. Additionally the nomadic lifestyle of Tibetans and close relationship with nature is fitting. ‘Uncia’ is the snow leopard’s scientific classification species name of ‘Uncia Panthera’ and Iha Mo has a Tibetan meaning for ‘princess, lady, goddess.

A defining feature is the thick long tail where they store fat and helps snow leopards keep their balance in the mountainous environment. I created this character to help create awareness of climate change and the environment and how specifically it is affecting endangered animals such as snow leopards. Secondly I aim to promote interest in animal biology, positive female attitudes and cultural awareness. I would like Uncia Iha Mo to be featured in a film media or television where it would have a wide audience.

Using  Powerpoint I summarised and formatted each component of a research paper using layman’s terms and a Glossary section so it can be understood by those in the science community to the general public. Imagery are used to assist conveying concepts and results with visual engagement. Pixel quality is considered regarding the intended used for the poster i.e for printing or web purposes.

Animation Practices and Principles

This unit of animation principles and practices introduced digital stop animation and adobe flash animation symbols, walk cycle development, squash and stretch, tweening, storyboarding and design research. Students were to produce 30 seconds of animation featuring a character and sound for the final project. I used a combination of hand drawn animation using a graphics tablet and tweening, I also featured background panning with many scenes of of the final project being fully animated.

Story.
The main character Sarah draws a Triceratops with her pencil on a wall which comes to life, they ride together through evolutionary time. Sarah and the triceratops come across amphibious fish struggling on land so Sarah uses her magic pencil to draw it some legs sparking the evolutionary lines to the birds, reptiles and mammals. The story continues with an asteroid and extinction of the dinosaurs, the emergence of primates and human evolution. Sarah uses her magic pencil to draw an opposable thumb for the gorilla who's evolved form uses it to turn on her and the ticeratops throwing a spear in their direction.
Sarah is saved by the bell, waking up in the classroom of an evolution lesson and a doodle of a tricertops on her texbook. The book closes to reveal the character's and owner's name "Tri-Sarah-Tops".

The ArtLab Project was the main assessment of unit "New Worlds- Intersections of Art and Science" where I determined a research question and produced a research paper and visual works with a connection of art and science.

Summary

My question(s): "How is the phenomenon of symmetry explored in biology and art and how can this be applied to the asymmetry of the internal world? Can symmetry be used to influence behaviour when viewing internal organs and asymmetry?

Da Vinchi more accurately illustrated the asymmetry of the human heart and its off-center position in the chest cavity. Before this there were unconscious bias towards symmetrical representations and centered positions. Da Vinchi’s observations however lead a deeper understanding to our circulatory system and our developmental evolution.

Symmetry seems to be the natural default in vertebrates and across different biological domains, even down to the molecular structure of DNA double helix. Although asymmetries and abnormalities play an important role in providing insight to the ways our genes control our development.

There are also instances where asymmetries have benefited, strengthened and provided spatial cost benefit to our internal systems. Symmetry however is regarded as a marker of genetic quality for orderly development. This carries over to the world of art in composition with symmetry creating sense of balance.

I used a flat bed scanner and methodology of "scanner art" with lambs heart, kidney and brain to employ the symmetry operation of "reflection"(rotation across a perpendicular axis). I also drew inspiration from other artists such as Adam Fuss to compose symmetrical dissections in a biologically symmetrical radial pattern. This attempts to create more 'restful' viewing of internal organs and asymmetrical structures to detract from the graphic content and reflection of mortality.
 

Nikon SLR camera with Macro lens.

White carnation flower- Dianthus caryophyllus, bought, from local supermarket, yellow highlighter ink felt soaked in water, black ultra violet light lamp.

Photograph 1-4 at 15 minutes increments, 5-7 half hour increments. Approximately 3 hours 15 minutes in total (7 images).

Demonstrating the biological process of water transport in plants. Water is transported in plants through the xylem vessels moving upward by capillary action against gravity- a result of transpiration from the plant surface and tension between water molecules. This also captures fluorescence where light is emitted from a source at a lower energy level than the absorbed radiation giving luminescence. The luminous highlighter dye in the water absorbed by the stem of the carnation shows where in the petals that the surface area is greater and where water evaporates leaving the dye from the highlighter behind.

Title Sequence Final project for unit Effects and Motion Graphics

The project aim was to incorporate the different skills covered over the unit into a composed sequence with sound drawing from a reference. I drew inspiration from the title sequence of David Shore's TV medical drama series "House" in tone, text and composition.

The Project was created in Adobe After Effects with all original artworks(excluding video footage of microscope). With imported works from Adobe Photoshop and Maya Autodesk

Animating Text- also featured animation using  "Alpha Matte"
2D motion Tracking
Green screen filming
Pulling a key and colour correction
also Featured masking and tracking mask

I made particular use of animating opacity with the added effect of a "camera lens blur"

(These photographs were taken in low light and although have been re-edited for low resolution were not able to match the true appearance of the originals. Also due to copyright the original music has been removed)

In this photography series I aim to reflect the instrumental music in a Melbourne music venue in addition to emotional themes of desperation, realization and longing, angst of the instrumental celtic alternative rock song ‘ Everything is Fucked’ by Australian instrumental music group  Dirty Three with musician Warren Ellis on Violin. There is a fusion of acoustic and electric, classical and rock instruments, country and inner city music scene vibes.

Live music photos were taken inside a well-known Melbourne music venue ‘The Wesley Anne’ on High st Northcote. Live acts pictured include ‘Lucy locket and the Sometimes band’, ‘Hugh McGinley and the Recessive Genes’ and ‘The Lazy Colts’.  I shot the images on my DSLR camera in RAW format, some of the stage shots were taken with a wide angle lens while the audience shots were taken with a zoom len. In such a dark environment it was difficult to get enough exposure. I edited the RAW files in Adobe Bridge to reduce clipping in the shadows and highlights and further editing in Photoshop. A small amount of colour correction was made in the audience and candle light to reduce some of the redness and create a liquid gold colour. Some brightness and contrast alterations were made to counter for the Ilford Platine Rag paper simulation.

The burning candles and amber electric lights reflect the longing and escalation in the music. The Darkness and shadows I aimed to also portray the combination of acoustic and electric sound through visual elements in photographs with. In some live music shots I used long exposure to capture expressive movement to create the effect of action and desperation. I also added so more abstract elements of city and country to further represent the acoustic, organic and country sounds and inner city for the electric, live music Melbourne scene of North Melbourne.

I drew inspiration from Bill Henson’s “Paris Opera Project” of subjects and expressions as they observe live performance with the stylistic lighting – faces illuminated in the dark. This was also to provide more information of the atmosphere of the music performances and any reflection of the music in the expressions. In research I found that this effect in Henson’s photographs were restaged from sketches with more sophisticated lighting, his style being reminiscent of 16th century painting or ‘rembrant’ lighting. My images are slightly more documentary style with incidence lighting of the environment. I would perhaps continue the work on this series by staging the audience images.

For printing purposes I chose the Ilford Platine Rag for a slightly more vintage and handmade feel that I felt complimented the dark shadows and black and white acoustic and alternative style of the music but still with a gloss for the electric element. The platine rag was slightly warmer to contrast the dark images but did not which did not alter the blacks too significantly.

themes- celtic, rock, alternative, instrumental, music, country, city, acoustic, electric

Emotional themes- desperation, despair, longing, love, angst, resignation, realisation

This unit involved using analogue medium format film cameras such as Mamaya 7s with black and white film, developing film and dark room printing and tray processing.

Assignment 1 explores Formalism within the university grounds where I focused on the textures of different surfaces with a formulaic method and feature of my own converse shoes to tie the series together.

For my Independent assignment series I called “The Lost Environment” I drew inspiration from Hiroshi Sugimoto’s dioramas and idea that ‘Everything looks more real in black and white”. Concentrating it to the location of The Melbourne Museum where the Jurassic World exhibition was showing. The low light levels inside the museum proved difficult without permission for a tripod however I was drawn to the indoor rain forest and interested how the white mist being produced intermittently and creeping through the dark greenery would look photographically. I managed to also capture two Jurassic World raptor models with enough light by a window. Ultimately I decided to combine these two separate elements by experimenting with double exposure. After researching different methods I went with sandwiching the two negatives in the enlarger. I felt there was an interesting hypothetical in this combination creating a visual representation of what the environment may have looked like when the asteroid hit planet Earth 65 million years ago and dinosaurs became extinct.

I chose the constructing suburbia option for the assignment and the suburb of Caulfield North where I am currently and have been living for the past 2 years. I am interested in the suburbs position on the boundary of inner Melbourne to the rest of suburbia in the South East direction and the contrasting aspects that can be observed relating to this. I have observed contrasting aspects such as posh and shabby, urban and suburban, old and new, different religious communities, age groups and backgrounds of people occupying and going about their lives in Caulfield North. I decided to construct the suburb of Caulfield North by representing these contrasts through photography.

I have paired my images in threes, the two images on either side to contrast one another and the middle image to divide and represent the hypothetical inner Melbourne border but also to feature more of Caulfield North. Photographers such as Rebecca Dagnall pair images of suburbia to give meaning and create intrigue. I shot the images on my DSLR camera in RAW, post edited and composed the photos in Adobe Bridge and Photoshop. In particular I edited the groups of three images with a gray scale gradient to further express the concept of contrasting or opposing aspects of Caulfield North.

In my images I have captured new apartment buildings still undergoing construction as part of a new development for Caulfield North contrasted to an apartment block that appears to have been built some time in the 60s or 70s. There is the entrance to Caulfield Racecourse while races are in session contrasted with the locked empty car park in front of the same entrance during the week while it is quiet. The geese of the green Caulfield park are contrasted with the pigeons, dirt and concrete on the other side of the train tracks. A Jewish boy riding his scooter home after attending temple is contrasted with the great St Aloysius Catholic Church Caulfield. The Elderly people playing lawn bowls at Caulfield Bowls Club is contrasted with a young international student crossing the road from Monash University Caulfield. The historic view point of Caulfield North shops and tramlines of the Hawthorn and Balaclava roads intersection is contrasted with the vacant covered up view of a storefront.

Screen and Visual Design Arts Faculty Study Tour- Japan

18 day tour with destinations of Tokyo and Kyoto, visiting Seika University and Tama Art University as well as various galleries and design studios. Worked in groups with a main theme of books to produce an assessed work in 2 days with limited materials in pop up exhibition ‘Journey Through Japan’ at 3331 Arts Chiyoda Tokyo.

Jo-Ha-Kyu Flip

“This work explores the digitalisation of books and animation. By adapting signature facial expressions from Noh, Kabuki and Anime the viewer is taken through a journey of Japanese storytelling and entertainment. The series of flipbook illustrations analyse this relationship between books and animating using the progressive ‘Jo- Ha-Kyu’ movement (‘beginning’, ‘break’, ‘rapid’).

Essentially each storytelling form corresponds to a stage. The slow Noh gesture of changing expression with tilting of the mask resembles the Jo. The Kabuki’s changeable makeup is demonstrated through the Ha and the rapid Anime expressions showcases the Kyu.

Our Installation examines this overall impact of technology on Japanese storytelling, books and animation.”

Nat Kerr, Naomi Driscoll, Sarah Cusack

3331 Arts Chiyoda, Tokyo.

This work is an exploration of the relationship of natural structures across biological domains such as the external and internal environment, the relationship between natural sources used in medicine and the conflict sometimes found between religion, medical science and mental health.

 This is shown with the use of leaf and branch shadow silhouettes and red and blue gel studio lighting, partly separated to produce differently coloured shadows, to have a medical reference on the human form corresponding to human internal anatomy.

The images are printed on inkjet transparency Duratrans film to be back lit in light boxes to create a medical X-ray effect.

By showing similarities I intend for these images to bridge the divide between these institutions.

This is sentimental work using large format 4 x 5 camera and black and white film. A series of portraits taken of myself, my mother and nana in her garden in Seaford in addition to a group portrait of the three of us. I took inspiration from Nicholas Nixon’s Brown Sisters group portraits, particularly the first photo in 1975 where greenery is used as the backdrop creating velvety black tones. And more recently such as 2014 they are arranged with contact with one another to express their strong family connection.

I selected a particular space in the garden for the light and fruit tree to emphasis the theme of generations, offspring and fertility. The images were tray processed on Ilford MGFB Multigrade FB Classic- Matt photographic paper to accommodate hand colouring. To further emphasize the sentimental aspect hand colouring with oil paints was applied as a personal touch, as well as the translucent property of oils to mimic portrait paintings. The paint was applied as a thin coat tint to preserve the photographic 4x5 film detail as much as possible. Overall I wanted to capture the strong resemblance and strong ties I have in the maternal line of my family.

Artistic Statement

Inspired by Vanessa Marsh’s use of transparency paper in photogram/ calotype, I wanted to use this to experiment with biological layered shapes seen in modern anatomical illustration where the similar ‘ghosting’ effect has become a trend. By recognising the shapes of the Rorchstach ink blot psychological test shapes as inherently biological by their symmetrical compositions, they made for interesting shape creation. With tea and water stains on the transparency paper cut outs of the Rorchstach and layers there appears to be an inverse effect. The experimental process exposing photographic paper in a darkroom to light under an enlarger and tray processed with developer resulted in images that look as though black ink is seeping into and through the shapes. The shapes are known for their psychological interpretations to reveal personality characteristics of their viewers. In these images they also pose questions of how much are our personality is a result of environmental factors and circumstance, and how much is hereditary? Are our personalities fixed or do they transition and change over the course of our lifetime?

Fujifilm GF670

Ilford Delta 400 Professional Black and White film

Animating to audio of different poetry reading sections ‘Massive Road Trauma’ by Colin Maxwell Talbot featuring lip synching.

Group animation- Drew Black, David Schreurs, Sarah Cusack

Individual animation- I experiemented with combining 3D objects created in Maya and exporting them into ToonBoom Pro with 2D graphic and digitally drawn lip synching animation. However the technical rendering with two programs communicating together was not achievable. After Effects post editing with audio was also used. I would like to rework some of this project further with After Effects.

3D Character Design and Rigging

Uncia Iha Mo- ‘Snow Leopard, Princess, lady, goddess’

Uncia is a female, anthropomorphic snow leopard warrior who strives for survival and to defend her endangered species against human poachers and climate change. She is intelligent and a talented huntress with bow and arrow. Climate change has caused the tree line to be higher in altitude resulting in the decrease of the wild prey that depend on the plants for food. Snow leopards have therefore adapted to hunt prey from increasing distances and attempt to keep humans from getting within firing range but which is often in vain.

The largest remaining population of snow leopards is located in the Chinese Himalayas, Tibetan Plateau and Altyn- Tagh, also located in the Tibet region. I decided to give Uncia a Tibetan cultural heritage because I felt there were parallels between the struggle for survival of snow leopards and survival of Tibet under Chinese occupation. Additionally the nomadic lifestyle of Tibetans and close relationship with nature is fitting. ‘Uncia’ is the snow leopard’s scientific classification species name of ‘Uncia Panthera’ and Iha Mo has a Tibetan meaning for ‘princess, lady, goddess.

A defining feature is the thick long tail where they store fat and helps snow leopards keep their balance in the mountainous environment. I created this character to help create awareness of climate change and the environment and how specifically it is affecting endangered animals such as snow leopards. Secondly I aim to promote interest in animal biology, positive female attitudes and cultural awareness. I would like Uncia Iha Mo to be featured in a film media or television where it would have a wide audience.

Fugifilm GF670

Ilford Delta 400 Professional Black and White film