Front cover on book jacket

Work in progress

flaps on my book jacket

Work in progress

Photos taken myself

iv taken some photographs of a instruments, a recorder and tin whistle. I edited one of the images in photoshop and used it on one of my book jackets flaps, i then duplicated the image and copied it a number of times placing it under my drawn music notes.

Book jacket background

Iv taken an A4 piece of paper and scrunched it up in a ball, i then spread it back out and used a tea bag to stain the page. I rinsed the tea bag onto the page, i then used a lighter and burned the edges of the page. I used this as the background on my book jacket.

Music Note Drawings

Work in Progress

Iv started to add on the sides of my book cover.

Work in Progress

Work in Progress

The Brain

The brain is the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals. Some primitive animals such as jellyfish and starfish have a decentralized nervous system without a brain, while sponges lack any nervous system at all. In vertebrates the brain is located in the head, protected by the skull and close to the primary sensory apparatus of vision, hearing, balance, taste, and smell.
Brains can be extremely complex. The cerebral cortex of the human brain contains roughly 15–33 billion neurons, perhaps more, depending on gender and age, linked with up to 10,000 synaptic connections each. Each cubic millimeter of cerebral cortex contains roughly one billion synapses.These neurons communicate with one another by means of long protoplasmic fibers called axons, which carry trains of signal pulses called action potentials to distant parts of the brain or body and target them to specific recipient cells.

Songs/Music which inspires me.

I love to listen to music by Irish artists such as Mumford and Sons, The Script, Aslan etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7bHe--mp1g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DTQsJ6ZaOQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHeiVDSdoCM

A lot of other music inspires me also as I love to Dance therefore a lot of different styles of music is used throughout different ways.

My Opinion

Iv looked at other book covers by Oliver Sacks.

This book "Migraine" is about An investigation of the many manifestations of migraine, including the visual hallucinations and distortions of space, time and body image which migraineurs can experience. I like this cover as it is an illustration which looks hand drawn. I think it shows how it feels to have a migraine. 

In this famous book "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat" In his most famous book,Sacks presents a variety of neurological case studies from the more extreme end of the spectrum. Thus we are introduced to Christina, who has no sense of her body at all; to Mr Thompson, who reinvents his world every few seconds; to poor Jimmie, stuck forever in 1945; and of course, to Dr P., who is indeed unable to distinguish between his spouse and his headgear. I am not to fond of this cover as I feel it is very plain and a alot more could have been done with it considering the title of the book sounds exciting.

 I really like the cover of this book "The Mind's Eye" as it gives the idea of an eye test chart and blurs out some letters making you feel like you can not read it. This is strangely appropriate, though, because The Mind’s Eye is a personal book.  Although there are four patients through whom we learn about alexia, aphasia, and stereoscopy (Sue, a neurobiologist, has the three-dimensionality of our world revealed to her in her fifties), the main character is Dr. Sacks himself.  We observe his diligent diagnostic procedure and delight in his research tangents; we follow him through his clinical experience and into the swimming pool.   But it is when Dr. Sacks himself becomes the patient that The Mind’s Eye separates itself from its ten sibling books.

Musicophilia by:Oliver Sacks Summary

"Although a teaspoon of Mozart may not make a child a better mathematician, there is little doubt that regular exposure to music, and especially active participation in music, may stimulate development of many different areas of the brain--areas which have to work together to listen to or perform music. For the vast majority of students, music can be every bit as important educationally as reading or writing."

There are several scattered networks in the human brain and no one single music center. Every human has the ability to perceive tones, rhythyms, harmony pitch and timbre. We integrate all of these using many different parts of our brains. Most of this action is mainly unconcious but to this is added intense and profound emotional action to the music. Listening to music is not only emotional but is also muscular as we use our muscles to tap rhythms and to dance. We seem to have a great tenacity for musical memory as what was heard in our early years is retained for a lifetime.

However, this wonderful brain machinery is vulnerable to distortions, excesses and breakdowns. This can occur in a widespread range of cortical problems including Parkinsonism, Alzheimer's, strokes, autism, and other forms of dementia. One example of a debilitating syndrome involving music is musicogenic epilepsy. In these individuals, a certain melody or pitch or tone may trigger a site in the temporal lobe resulting in a seizure. These individuals learn to stay away from any event involving music.

Brain Illustration

I have changed my brain illustration in a lot of ways compared to my last one. This time iv changed the font as it works a lot better and iv taken quotes and sections of quotes from the book itself and placed them throughout the lines of the brain,  such as :

"And suddenly," Llinás concludes, "you hear a song in your head or out of seemingly nowhere find yourself anxious to play tennis. Things sometimes just come to us."

"Many people are set off by the theme music of a film or television show or an advertisement. This is not coincidental, for such music is designed, in the terms of the music industry, to "hook" the listener, to be "catchy" or "sticky," to bore its way, like an earwig, into the ear or mind; hence the term "earworms" -- though one might be inclined to call them "brainworms" instead. (One newsmagazine, in 1987, defined them, half-facetiously, as "cognitively infectious musical agents.")


"Although a teaspoon of Mozart may not make a child a better mathematician, there is little doubt that regular exposure to music, and especially active participation in music, may stimulate development of many different areas of the brain--areas which have to work together to listen to or perform music. For the vast majority of students, music can be every bit as important educationally as reading or writing."

...and plenty more.

Brain Illustration

Iv worked more on my brain in illustrator, iv added text along the outlines of the brain itself. Iv used the sentence '' tales of music and the brain ". I highlighted each outline then used mt text tool to write over the line.

Brain illustration

Iv done up a quick illustration of the brain

Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain

Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain is a 2007 book by neurologist Oliver Sacks about musichuman brain. The book was released on October 16, 2007 and published by Knopf. 

On October 21, 2007 Sacks spoke with Andrea Seabrook of NPR's All Things Considered about music and its relationship to the human brain.

Four case studies from the book are featured in the NOVA program Musical Minds aired on June 30, 2009.

Music Book Covers

Here are some music book covers.

Composite images produced by Designers/Artists

Picasso, Pablo.

Still Life with Violin and Fruit, 1912.

After the spareness of Picasso's papiers colles with newsprint from December 1912, this "Still Life with Violin and Fruit"...delights us with its indulgence and provocation of our senses. It has the charming, and, at that time, rare combination of a violin with a compote of fruit on a table behind a ladder-back chair.

He fashioned the bowl of the compote deftly out of newsprint, as he did a skirt for the table, a support for the scroll of the violin, and a rectangle behind the glass that leans toward the right. He also used part of the masthead to indicate the newspaper itself resting on the table.

Although Picasso worked positively with our pleasure in pattern and color, he did introduce ambiguities into the work, for example, in giving the table two tops, one faux bois and angular, the other white and round, or the compote two bases, one the pillarlike pedestal, the other a combination of angles and the profile of the faux bois soundboard of the violin. But it is the violin that he made most paradoxical by tearing it apart turning one profile of its soundboard into imitation wood-graining, another into a heavily textured and contoured area of paint, pasting on paper for the light and dark side of the fingerboard and the beautiful blue paper for its sound holes and bridge, and then drawing strongly over the newsprint to transform the violin's scrolls into eyes and its pegs into sprouting double moustaches. The degree to which Picasso broke apart this violin letting us look at it from different directions in different, if contiguous, spaces, can be seen by comparing it with one of the purer papiers colles, "Violin" where the newspaper clippings have never been securely identified but since they refer to an incident in the Balkan War of 26 November 1912, they must have been printed the next day or the day after that. This violin is much simpler, more restrained, and definitely more stable as it stands erect with almost military precision. In "Still Life with Violin and Fruit", the musical instrument, on the other hand, tilts dangerously to the right and contains within it all sorts of rhythmic relationships that seem to lead appropriately to the expressive scroll and pegs. In apposition to the violin is the retiring compote whose rectangular white pedestal leans insecurely to the left but is somewhat stabilized by the vertical of the chair below. Nevertheless, the compote and the violin need each other to achieve equilibrium, which gives the work much of its animation. 

Added effects

Iv added shadows to my guitar using the drop shadow tool on Photoshop, i found this made the guitar look alot better, iv also added in some music notes.

Similar Ideas

These are some images which I found on Google of Guitars made from objects.

Before and After

This is my chimera which is made from objects on me.

Instrument Information

The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number but sometimes more, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with either nylon or steel strings. Some modern guitars are made of polycarbonate materials. Guitars are made and repaired by luthiers. There are two primary families of guitars: acoustic and electric.

acoustic guitars (and similar instruments) with hollow bodies, have been in use for over a thousand years. There are three main types of modern acoustic guitar: the classical guitarsteel-string acoustic guitar and the archtop guitar. The tone of an acoustic guitar is produced by the vibration of the strings, which is amplified by the body of the guitar, which acts as a resonating chamber. The classical guitar is often played as a solofingerpicking technique. (nylon-string guitar), the instrument using a comprehensive

electric guitars, introduced in the 1930s, rely on an amplifier that can electronically manipulate tone. Early amplified guitars employed a hollow body, but a solid body was found more suitable. Electric guitars have had a continuing profound influence on popular culture. Guitars are recognized as a primary instrument in genres such as blues, bluegrass, country, flamenco, jazz, jota, mariachi, reggae, rock, soul, and many forms of pop.

starting to add colour

Iv placed my traced images into Photoshop to try colour it. I first coloured it in the original colours of the items, I then decided to changed it all to a brown colour to try make it look more like a guitar.

Progression of work....

 

Guitar Chimera, testing out different filters on Photoshop.

started trace out for chimera on me

Iv taken the objects which were on me and drew out an image, I then scanned it onto the computer and then placed it into Adobe Photoshop and traced around it using the brush/pen tool.

Guitar like image.

I then edited it to make it more shaped like a guitar. 

chimera in a bag, idea's

After looking through my objects which I found in my bag for college, I found i had a lot of big objects, therefore I had an idea to create something big, relating to my idea from chimera on me I thought I would stick to the instrument idea. I have made an attempt at creating a Drum Kit.

chimera on me, idea's

Iv come up with the idea to create a musical instrument with the objects that I found on me, from looking at my objects I found a Guitar suited well.