COLLECTIONS PROJECT:

I became inspired by Richard Wentworth's work and decided to loosely build upon it.  He explored photography of mundane every day objects we take for granted and this interested me heavily.  I brainstormed different ideas towards furthering my project and settled on taking graphic photos of light switches and plug sockets.  I scaled the images up to the real life size and reduced the colour and saturation whilst bumping up the contrast and brightness.  I felt this would be beneficial as haveing a whiter image, the more likely it would to be able to fit into the real life.  Instead of creating scenarios out of the ordinary, I reversed this, contrary to Richard Wentworth's objective, and placed these standard high detail images of switches and sockets, over the real ones.  The aim would be for people to not notice the images, as they would blend in over the top of the actual sockets and switches.  This idea to me resonated street art and could be linked towards the Dada magazine era.  I went around the class space pinning these images up perfectly and only when people turned around shouting ''Whoa!'' after realising the small detail in the room that had been altered, was I truly satisfied.   

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Switch & Socket

Note

All of the provided Images are primary

 

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MATERIAL NEWS (SCULPTURE) PROJECT

The process towards furthering this project began through picking out anything from a newspaper that interested me.  It came to my attention as my first idea that it could be interesting to explore contradicting scenarios and taking things out of context, like I did with the text session.  I saw an article talking about farming and the country side and thought about my composition, and layered it with a headliner "Remain A Londoner".  The entire composition contradicted itself, a city, or at least parts of a city, would be considered high end, clean, classy - the total opposite of a pig farm.  To then bring this to a sculpture I though about how to include a piece of hide or leather and put it next to a chunk of metal - abstracting the piece completely.  However, I found it more interesting to incorperate lumps of metal into an enviroment setting, to replicate machinery harvesting and tearing up the countryside.

Idea number two that came about originated from an image of about 30 women standing in a line with raincoats on getting drenched in their dresses.  After drawing the basic shape of them standing there, a fleeting image of a large group of KKK members came to my mind with their triangular heads and sweeping white sheets.  I didnt develop this idea further but it was still fun and interesting to play around with.

After deciding to continue progressing with the idea of mixing the chunks of metal with the countryside, I decided that it would be more intriguing to see how far I could get away with abstracting the concept as a whole.  I went through the process of branching out different final pieces that could come about from this, whether they included photography, projections, or just left as an instillation.  The decision was made to curate a large pile of dirt and have a lump of metal just wedged into it.  To elevate this I felt it would be better to find parts that could look mechanical of sorts, even parts of an engine - as this would provide a better link back to the original storyline of the articles.  After assembling the sculpture, I didnt feel that it looked very impressive and was not satisfied with the outcome.  Therefore, adding parts hanging above the ones in the dirt, to symbolise more pieces being thrown into the natural wildlands, would be an effective idea.  In result, I made a brace out of wood that would attatch to a wall 600mm outward and hold 4/6 pieces of steel hanging down.  If i had more time I would have painted the brace white to merge with the wall, and the cords holding the pieces of metal in black, representing tendrils of darkness, lowering more artificial objects into nature.  

After look at the piece again I wanted to add yet another aspect to it to improve it.  I decided to prject a looped time-lapse of a piece of metal rusting onto the hanging pieces of metal and the wall behind.  If I could change anything about this I would have specifically projected the looped process onto only the pieces, or have rusted some of the lumps of metal and taken my own time-lapse of it, to then project onto the specific pieces.  

Overall, I was happy with the final product and would have tweaked only some small aspects of it.  As a whole I felt that I went through a process, eliminating specific ideas and building upon the root idea of artifical metal invading the natural wild-land.

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Rusting Video

(4D) SELFIE PROJECT

The project began through taking 2 photos of yourself and trying to create weird angles or distortions of the face or body as a whole.  Whilst other people just took a front on photo of themselves standing infront of the camera, I decided to hone in upon a specific part of the body and I chose the eyes.  I decided to experiment with different shots and lighting differences, increasing the decreasing teh ISO, the exposure, contrast and saturation.  To build upon this, I realised that after removing the eyes, you can dehumanise the person as a whole.  Removing teh eyes closes teh door to access the person.  Looking into someones eyes adds emotion.  Eyes can increase the intensity of a situation, creating intimidation, allowing understanding, or evoking sensuality.  By focussing on a specific portion of the body instead of the entirety, you can make a small space enormous.

Day two of the project allowed me to experiment with the photos take of my eyes.  Slicing the images of the eyes allows the viewer to focus specifically on the portions of the image.  Something about disconnecting the image of the eye relates towards a loss of vision or clarity of the image.  There was also a strong sense of something very grotesque about slicing the paper right next to an open eye and my audience often told me that it made them cringe. 

The idea of offsetting specific slices of the image draws attention to a skewed loss of vision.

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(4D) SOUND PROJECT

After being put into pairs, I felt that it would be interesting to explore the use of sound through total extremes.  Combining whispering and relaxing orchestral music with an incoming screeching northern-line train approaching from the left and exiting to the right seemed very interesting to experiment with and we proceded  to mix the audios with one another.   

To enhance this idea, we sought to play around with the already existing soft sounds.  We did this through raising the gain and increasing treble or bass.  The entire concept of our project was to not only shock the audience listening to the audio, but give them a false sense of security.  We sourced a relaxing documentary to play as visuals in the backgroup of a polar bear walking on ice.  Playing over the top was an asmr video - the pinnacle of a relaxing experience for some.  We slowly increased the volume of a different audio strain.  It was one of two girls screaming at the top of their lungs as they were on a rollercoaster.  The volume of this increased so much that many people who were watching with earphones had to take them off.  The idea of making an experience change so quickly from being smooth and serine to a jarring, aggressive, banshee scream made the viewers extremely uncomfortable..

We were not finished here.  Just to add to the experience we calmed the scene back down again.  A calm, melodic, orchestral symphony began to interrupt and brought the piece back down again.  Just as the music begins to heighten, an audio queue plays from a recording I took when on the northern-line train into archway.  The unbearable screeching of the metal dettering the tracks cuts in and out repeatedly, yet again creating an atmosphere of a false sense of security with the viwer thinking that the piece was coming to a closing.

The use of audio in a project taught me that including this sense can severly alter a piece if harnessed successfully.  I feel that because we experimented with both extremes, we got to learn more about volumes and mixing a lot more than if we tried to just create an atmosphere of bliss or one of blaring aggression.

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PLACES PROJECT

To begin this project I investigated different places I could visualise from memory alone.  Past houses, old cars, my Grandparent's house's.  However, one that resonated with me was my hospital.  After undergoing treatment for a solid 8 and a half years throughout my childhood, it was a specific place that could be graphically remembered in my mind.  I therefore created outlined sketches of the rooms i remembered being within, as if trying to create a map from memory.  

Furthermore, I felt that a media that could progress this project in an impactful visual way would be to utilise photography.  I gathered first hand imagery of one of the classic blue sterile curtains, the metalic bins, and then mid way through a blood test I took photos.  After cropping these specific images they became more abstract ewith the vidid orange and yellow caps being offsetted with the deep blues of the gloves.  Just seeing these images excited me and inspired me to transgress this project into one that would utilise skills from 4D over sculpture and painting.

Deciding where to take this project however was a problem for me.  There were so many options on how to create an outcome for this place being my hospital (The Royal Free).  My initial idea would have been to move this through taking images and distorting them to an extent to make them look extremely disturbing.  For instance, taking the image of the needle piercing my skin and manipulating the image so the pin looked extremely long, like a fish-eye view.  I could create a range of images like this.  I could take a piceture of the curtain and make it extremely long, as if the audience were in the perspective of a young child.  I liked the idea of experimenting with this however, I did not feel that it would be sufficient enough as an outcome for this project.  Therefore, I felt that I could take the idea of distorting the images but move into video instead.

With this, I wanted to create the atmosphere of being trapped within a fragmented set of memories.  The idea began to look as if the audience was stuck in someones dream/nightmare, with high contrast and low saturated videos cut together.  

I was watching a music video for an artist called SCARLXRD and there was an effect that I felt heavily could link with my project as a whole.  There was a flickering text which was scattered around the screen, increasing and decreasing in tempo.  I felt that this would add to the idea of a fading or somewaht lost memory but how to include it would be the challenge.

I deceided to go back to my hospital, and take videos instead of still images this time.  I recorded from a lower down perspective, walking through the long hospital corridoors.  The idea I always had in the back of my mind would try to create a corridoor that never ended.  It was eternally looped and different effects would pop up and repeat throughout.  People would walk in and out of the rooms, weave between the wards, and the entire cycle would repeat.  I ran into trouble here because I found it difficult to keep the doors at the end of the corridoor static and just have the walls and ceiling looping, as I had never attempted to edit before.  However, I still dove straight into the challenge to try and edit video for the first time.  I felt that this had been the most enjoyable thing I had done so far over the course of Part 1 and would definately want to continue it in the future.

Furthermore, I proceded to overlap multiple videos over the top of each other - furthering the fragmented memory idea and almost creating the atmosphere of being drugged out seeing double of images and videos.  I felt that the project in particular allowed a lot of creativity to be shown.  I played around with different ideas and scenarious.  Focussing in on specific typography, having it flash up, as if it were popping up in memory, created a really graphic setting.  I reduced the saturation on the clips and increased the contrast, whilst playing around with the shadows, highlights, and midtones, to create an eerie, demented, drug infused memonry of the place I spent the majority of my childhood in.  The stretching, distorted corridoors accompanied with the flashing of text and overlayed videos and images came together extremely well in my opinion and I was suprised that I managed to do what I did for the final outcome.  

The feedback I recieved for the piece was very constructive. I was told that it was ''formally really inventive'' with ''beautiful transitions and flaring colours'' and the high contrast apparently worked well with the type over.  If i were to improve the outcome any further, I would include more footage and also loop over audio.  When i converted the video the audio corrupted and I couldnt save the file.  There was the sound of just breathing as if into an oxygen mask, playing over the top of the entire video.  Whether I would change that in the future if I could, is undecided.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the project and my eyes were opened to the topic of 4D, making me more inclined to take it as a pathway in the future.

LANGUAGE AND TEXT CONTEXTUAL PRACTICE

This workshop encouraged me to explore combining text and image to create an all new scenario.  I picked up 3 different articles and began to slice out specific phrases and words that would link together.  There was an image from an article about depression and mental health out of a magazine that I noticed that fitted well with my words relating to a post apocalyptic article.  By taking several words out of three different articles ablout Globalisation, Waste product in the ocean and one with a list of different dates, the final product looked like something that could have been torn out of an article about an apocalypse.  Instead of colouring the background in black I felt that pairing the text with strips of black tape was efficient as they synergised well, with both being obviously very linear.  Whilst actually cutting out the texts, I sliced my thumb by accident.  As a last minute decision, I tore the tissue paper apart and overlapped the piece in the bloody tissue, to elevate the piece to a further degree, adding a sense of human blood being spilled due to the decline in the world, according to the piece.

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Rusting Time-Lapse Over Metal

INVISIBILITY CONTEXTUAL PRACTICE PROJECT

The contextual practice session revolved around what it meant to be invisible.  It made me question if we were trying to accomplish invisibility or deconstruct it.

I instantly felt that moving towards a video or bomeranging clip without audio would be intuative in achieving invisibility.  If you zoom far in enough towards an image, the fidelity of the image is reduced to such an extent that you can no longer percieve what it is that u are looking at.  From this the idea of zooming in and out at such a large extent to create a sense of invisibilty originated.  

I thought that having two videos playing at the exact same time, looping of a clip zooming in on someone in the distance and then zooming all the way out, would be interesting to watch.  Side by side they would cross over in the middle, but just be reversed.  

However, I felt that I could develop this idea further.  Instead of having two videos playing, why not just have one video but starting zoomed all the way in, and slowly zooming out, gradually revealing just how far away the person is.  To achieve such a high level of zoom, I realised that one person could film another persons phone in which was maxed out.  There would be three phones, one fully zoomed into the person, then another fully zoomed into that phone, and the third fully zoomed into that one, creating an inception esc scenario.  The first phone - zoomed into the actual person - would gradual reduce and when zoomed all the way out, the next would follow, and then the next.  The entire idea is hard to explain through text.  The fourth phone recording, would film the third phone and the recording from the fourth phone would be presented with a final snapshot showing the entire process.  

Not only did this project accomplish making someone invisible to the audience, but it deconstructed it to an extent, showing that if zoomed in far enough on something, you loose the image as an entirety and that object you are focussed upon, no longer is the same object you are focussed on.

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CONTEXTUAL REVIEW

So far, I feel that I have been extremely satisfied with my production of work and how much fun I had creating my work within the 3-day 4D pathway project.  Furthermore, this was amplified throughout the Places project where I wanted to experiment with editing with video for the first time, which I did.  There would have been aspects in which I would improve if I were to develop this project, but out of the three pathways, I feel confident that 4D would be the one in which I would want to study further.  Compared to the other work that I have produced within the other pathways, 4D seemed to stand out considerably more.  I have more of an interest into digital design, photography, film, audio and cinematography than I would in exploring and testing the boundaries of sculpture and painting.  I did find the sculpture project fun but felt that it wasn’t hitting home with me regarding satisfaction at the end regarding my outcome, unlike the pathway 4D.  When editting video for the Places project, I tried 

I feel that I was surprised by 4D in general.  It seemed to utilise my strengths of creatively thinking and proved to have little to no barriers regarding to where I could take the project.  There was such a vast amount of playing around and experimenting with what I could do with effects, audio, and visuals, that I began to forget I was doing a project for college, and just started have fun with it all.  I feel that the programme I was using: ‘Lightworks’ had a strong foundation to allow me to accomplish what I could.  The programme itself was used to edit blockbuster films, for instance: The Wolf Of Wallstreet, which inspired me further to know that what was at my fingertips was practically unlimited.

The works of Sally Mann and Adam Chodzko inspired my recent 4D project heavily with the concepts of being trapped in long, daunting corridors with dark, flickering, overlapped images and videos looping over one another to create an atmosphere of fragmented memories and drugged out stumbling walks down the clinic corridors.  I feel that both artists were extremely useful in influencing my studies and were very interesting.  Chodzko’s concepts were implemented, whilst Sally Mann’s visuals inspired mine with the use of the low saturation and high contrast, broken up, videos.  Not only this, I feel that in the future I would include a large range of references towards film and video games, being brought up heavily watching and playing both.  Not only did they make up a large amount of my childhood whilst off school, being frequently unwell, but I would invest hours on end rewatching and replaying.  A dream of mine would be to progress into either of the industries as it would not only be nostalgic, but a lot of fun and I am hugely interest in the both of them, and studying 4D would be ideal to gain an insight into the makings behind both.

Overall, if I could choose a pathway to be placed within, it would be 4D, followed then by sculpture.  4D interested me the most within the recent project and I felt the most satisfied with the overall outcome at the end, of not only the three-day session, but also the two week project.  Experimenting with digitally created art has always been an interest of mine but I have never had the capabilities or insight towards making video or audio, therefore the extent of 4D work is my photography and editing.  I enjoy the process of creating and setting up sculpture work when it crosses the boundaries into becoming an instillation as well, however, I don’t feel that I would be able to thrive as heavily within the pathway.  4D inspires and excites me to create video projects that I never could imagine and I think will set me up for something in the future as a career.

 

Bibliography:

Rubin, W.S. and Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1968. Dada, surrealism, and their heritage (p. 44549599). New York: Museum of Modern Art.

Shamir, L., Macura, T., Orlov, N., Eckley, D.M. and Goldberg, I.G., 2010. Impressionism, expressionism, surrealism: Automated recognition of painters and schools of art. ACM Transactions on Applied Perception (TAP)7(2).

Renwick, R., 1958. DADAISM: SEMANTIC ANARCHY. ETC: A Review of General Semantics, pp.201-209.

Kuenzli, R.E. and Naumann, F.M. eds., 1991. Marcel Duchamp: artist of the century (No. 16). MIT Press.

Shelley, M. and Nobes, P. (2008). Frankenstein. 1st ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Jenkins, M.E., 2018. Sally Mann’s “A Thousand Crossings” at the Musée du Jeu de Paume. Transatlantica. Revue d’études américaines. American Studies Journal, (1).

Evans, U.R., 1972. The rusting of iron: causes and control.

Blade Runner. (1992). [DVD] USA: Ridley Scott.

Scarlxrd, (2019), Hip-Hop/Rap, GXLD, Album: IMMXRTALISATIXN, Produced By KÜBE, 

Beech, D., 2002. Exhibitions: Location: UK. Art Monthly (Archive: 1976-2005), Adam Chodzko, Better Scenery.

SCOTT, R., GILER, D., HILL, W., & O'BANNON, D. (1979). Alien. [Los Angeles], Twentieth Century Fox.