Project 1: A Line is a Dot that went for a Walk.
FINAL PRODUCT
The project itself is done with various experimental monoprinting methods with random available materials. The final product is below:
TOP THREE:
Of the entire print set, the ones I felt best encapsulate their stipulated emotion is:
ANXIOUS
With this particular emotion I first considered the idea of anxiety and anxious feelings. Inspired by a friend, the idea of social anxiety popped into my mind, and it would be interesting to be able to depict this through the print. I decided to dip my fingers into the ink, and rapidly tapped out this piece, making sure they were as random and arbitrary as possible. I wanted to depict the idea of a constant overlapping of people in one’s life and how too much of it becomes overpowering and terrifying, even dark. When someone with social anxiety is faced with a large group of people, they tend to become fidgety and anxious, and they won’t be able to stop moving. What I wanted to go for is an almost fearful aura, especially because of the numerous fingerprints, but I really wanted to depict that anxious, terrified feeling one would get from social anxiety.
PSYCHOTIC
I really wanted to convey the idea of impulsivity here in this piece. What I decided to do then, was take a piece of plastic, crumple it up, unfold it, and dip it in paint. This resulted in varying textures as the plastic wrapper would form different folds and contours. When I then started pressing the wrapper onto the paper, it was able to form a varied texture. Some parts will have thicker paint which therefore leaves a large patch on the paper. It was able to recreate the texture of splattered blood which makes it visually interesting.
FRAGILE
I decided to go experimental with this piece and utilised the side of a brush. I dipped it in ink very lightly, and the contours of the brush was able to form this interesting texture that felt like paint lightly running across the paper, but yet with a strange structure to it. I made sure my touch was light so that I could really capture the essence of fragility, and the odd spots of paint only adds to the illusion of fragility.
Contextualising Photography: Anchoring and Relaying
CANDID: Medium Long Shot
Finding the best in the casual and the spontaneous.
SUPERMAN: Low Angle Shot
“Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound!
– Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superman!”
UNASSUMING: High Angle
Beguiling innocence; delightful maturation.
Task 1B – Fire and Ice
After reading through the poem, the idea of representing two different kinds of destruction came to me. What I decided to do then, was depict the journey of two individuals, braving through and both being the survivor of their own type of apocalyptic world, coming together in a culmination of fire and ice, and yet with the distinction between them as individual elements. For all three photos in the sequence, I took stock images of the internet, and manipulated them using photoshop, but in the end, I wanted to be able to depict the idea of a journey through destruction, and their meeting each other.
The first picture is meant to show the path of a lone man on a journey through an icy wasteland. This one is meant to depict the destruction of the world through ice and how lonely and cold the world would be if it were to happen. It not only depicts the external coldness of the environment he is in, but also the emotional turmoil and coldness within the man as he makes his journey.
The second picture is meant to be a transition from the first image in the sense that now it’s another figure on their own journey, this time through fire. The ground beneath them is literally on fire as sparks fly and stones glow with heat. Their apocalyptic world is one in stark contrast to the one before. Instead of stillness and stagnancy, this one is wild and passionate. But despite the warmth of the picture, the fire is still clearly burning at the feet of the figure. In addition, the steps of the second figure may be a continuation of the one before, but the journey they are about to take is wholly different from the other.
However, both these individuals finally meet each other in the last image. It’s meant to show the idea of ice and fire coming together, not to neutralise, but to complement. The man is meant to represent the journey of ice and the woman the journey of fire. Two kinds of destruction meet, but they are strangely meld together in complementary shapes. The ending is ambiguous; we do not know what happens to them after they meet, and what this end of their journey were to signify, or whether they would continue their journey. Even the figures themselves are not completely combined; the whiteness of space between them is to show how they are both still very different from each other, and that though the kinds of destruction may meet, they are still mutually exclusive. I wanted to depict the ambiguity of their relationship, but still show the coldness of ice, and the passion of fire within these two figures, that came out of their long journey.
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Image sources:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6e/Iceland_Grimsvoetn_1972-B.jpg
https://fanboychlop.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/walkingaway.jpg
http://pngimg.com/upload/fire_PNG6001.png
https://thiswildwakingjourney.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/sensual-bodies.jpg
http://img01.deviantart.net/a2cb/i/2010/055/1/b/fire_png_by_cikeno.png
https://americanicetheatre.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/12495ice_surface.jpeg
Task 1A – Me, My Object, My World
For the project, I thought it was important that who I wanted to represent in these photos is truthful to myself as a person. Hence, I decided to embark on this project with that in mind: finding images that were true to me.
Me –
For the first part of the project, I wanted to take shots of the things that were closest to me, as I felt they represented me most as a person. My collection of books, my computer, and the belongings I carry with me daily in NTU are representative of the journey I am on right now as a student. As material as they are, they are the greatest representation of my character.
My Object –
For the second part of the project, I started out by looking at the objects closest to my life as well. I realised that Les Miserables is the closest thing to my personality and my character right now. I wanted to find a physical representation of this importance to me. I finally settled on the book because it’s about the book’s transition from musical to movie, as I was first exposed to the musical through the movie. The colour scheme of red, white and blue to show how the book’s ideals can bleed into real life.
I wanted to depict my relationship with the musical itself. The hugging action is meant to show how close it is to my heart, and the book being a part of my face is meant to show how my character and personality was formed through the contribution of this book and how it’s now metaphorically part of me.
The next picture is meant to show my emotional death after seeing the movie, and how deeply it had affected me. It’s influenced my ideas and my character, and I not only wanted to show the emotion I experienced after I watched the movie, I also wanted to depict the dying of my old self together with this book. My exposure to the book elicited a deep change in the way I viewed and experienced the world, and I want to illustrate this in the way I positioned my body.
My World –
For the third part of the project, I wanted to show the importance of a library to me. The aesthetic of the Orchard library particularly appealed to me, in addition to the collection of books. I wanted to be able to document the process of reading in the library, almost akin to a journey.
Starting from the bookshelf to the fantasy feeling of finding yourself lost in another world, to the compact feeling of reading in privacy and the actual movement of reading. I also wanted to show music and media sometimes contributes to that feeling as well.
Reflection –
From this project, I was able to learn how to weave emotion into the pictures, and how I could convey sequence into my the pictures. All three parts are to culminate in a representation of myself that people can understand. Through the process of the photo taking, I really had to look deep within myself and search for the things that I thought represented me the most so that I could make use of them in the photos. I not only learned more about the photo taking process but I was also able to explore various facets of my character in conjunction with the project. By gaining a better understanding of myself, I was more able to translate the various emotions I felt into the photos that I took.