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| Projector displaying the film of my mouth |
Friday 20 November 2015
Tuesday 17 November 2015
Filming my mouth
While filming my mouth I have found that the lens gets steamed up if I breathe on it. At first I was filming short clips of about 20-30 seconds that could be edited together to make one longer film, however later decided to film longer takes of about 3 minutes, so that the film wouldn't be broken up so much because it could distract from the feel of the installation. At first I didn't want the lens to be steamed at all as it distorts the recorded image, however now I am shooting longer takes, I'm considering using it to my advantage as another sensory element of the film.
Watching a tightly cropped film of my tongue and lips moving around is quite sickening, so much so that I can't bring myself to watch it with sound yet, although I need to so that I can work out whether I can use the sound on the film or re-record it. It's difficult to look at my own mouth for such a long time, particularly as I am quite squeamish about saliva and mouth noises. This work is kind of a method of perhaps getting rid of some of that squeamishness, or just a way of exploiting it.
Watching a tightly cropped film of my tongue and lips moving around is quite sickening, so much so that I can't bring myself to watch it with sound yet, although I need to so that I can work out whether I can use the sound on the film or re-record it. It's difficult to look at my own mouth for such a long time, particularly as I am quite squeamish about saliva and mouth noises. This work is kind of a method of perhaps getting rid of some of that squeamishness, or just a way of exploiting it.
Thursday 12 November 2015
Mouth Piece
Using the collaged scans of my mouth, I created a sort of wallpaper. I stuck multiple copies of the collage to a wall in my kitchen, and invited a few friends round to discuss the piece and pose in front of it. The initial reaction from most was that it was quite funny, or that they couldn't work out what it was; one girl asking if it was the prints were of bacon. We discussed that the piece would be far more effective if the edges of each print lines up so that the overall look was seamless, or what it would be like if the image was projected onto the wall. If the image were to be projected onto the wall, it would inevitably also be projected onto whoever was standing within the space. At the time I wasn't sure how I felt about the idea of using projections, because it would make the work feel all-consuming.
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| Joseph in front of my mouth |
After a taking a few days away from the work, focussing on other projects, I came back to it thinking about creating a small, intimate space with the walls covered in this image. I fixed the print in Photoshop so that all the edges would match up, making it possible to use as wallpaper. In a group tutorial it was suggested that I could even have photographs of someone wearing a T-shirt with the same print on it in the space. We discussed how much more powerful the piece when the viewer gets to experience it themselves, rather than just seeing photographs of it, so I decided that the final outcome of this investigation will be an installation of sorts.
Thinking about how to make the piece more sensory for the viewer I came back to the idea of using a projection, not just of a still image, but of a video. In my imagination, the video will be grotesque and a little disgusting. My friends and I mess about sending these sorts of gross videos of our mouths to each other on our phones, but I have never considered what it could become on a larger scale. With a phone camera you can get really close up and even inside the mouth, but using a video camera with a regular sized lens would restrict how intimate the imagery recorded can be. Considering image quality I will initially try using a video camera, and hold using a phone camera as a back-up for now.
Wednesday 4 November 2015
Photograms
The idea of photograms may seem simple, but they can raise some interesting questions in relation to photography and form. The photogram as an analogon of the objects that created it. "The photographic image is a message without a code". Other messages without a code (cinema, theatre, paintings, drawings), however they develop a supplementary meaning in their reproduction of reality. The treatment of the image signifies the second meaning, whether aesthetic or ideological (A Barthes Reader - A Photographic Message)
Floris Neusüss
"By removing objects from their physical context, Neusüss encourages the viewer to contemplate the essence of form. His photograms create a feeling of surreal detachment"
With practice, the photogram can be a sophisticated way to record an image, exploring texture through the transparency of your chosen objects.
I began creating photograms using lemons and watermelon, which had strange feeling to them somewhere between natural and synthetic. Although these fruits are natural, a human presence was evident because they had been sliced. The juice from the lemons left marks on the photogram which I was considering using as a pattern in a drawing, like a Japanese print. However, the lemon juice proved too difficult to control, so I returned to more still-life compositions. Creating a line drawing, however, I could do because I had a reel of black thread. I allowed the thread to fall freely onto the paper at first, cutting it at points when it had created a strong form. I quickly progressed to creating type with the thread, but this looked too clumsy, so reverted to composing abstract forms on the paper. As I was creating these compositions, I placed small beads onto the paper, at first opaque ones, then glass beads to get the effect of a hollow circle. These arrangements of odd lines and dots had a slight resemblance to the work of Joan Miró. Similarly to Miró's paintings, certain motifs were reappearing in each photogram.
The "Constellations" are the most precisely executed of all Miró's works. They grew out of reflections in water, showing how Miró could transform an observation of nature into a "cosmic realism". In this series of paintings various motifs (Moon, Sun, comets, eyes, insects, birds and women) would reappear, coexisting in a natural, harmonious order. André Breton said of the works: "They differ from and resemble each other... taken together in their progression and in their totality, each of them assumes the necessity and value of a component in a mathematical system." May 1941 Miró flees a German occupied France for Mallorca, where he continues work on the 23 Constellations, and finished them later that year in Mont-roig, his Catalonian home.
The photograms look to me like broken constellations, as if the black background were the night sky and the beads the stars, but the thread is unable to link the stars to create recognisable shapes. I tried not to think about this too much, as I risked over complicating the pieces.
Floris Neusüss
"By removing objects from their physical context, Neusüss encourages the viewer to contemplate the essence of form. His photograms create a feeling of surreal detachment"
With practice, the photogram can be a sophisticated way to record an image, exploring texture through the transparency of your chosen objects.
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| Floris Neusüss 'Untitled', Berlin, 1962 |
I began creating photograms using lemons and watermelon, which had strange feeling to them somewhere between natural and synthetic. Although these fruits are natural, a human presence was evident because they had been sliced. The juice from the lemons left marks on the photogram which I was considering using as a pattern in a drawing, like a Japanese print. However, the lemon juice proved too difficult to control, so I returned to more still-life compositions. Creating a line drawing, however, I could do because I had a reel of black thread. I allowed the thread to fall freely onto the paper at first, cutting it at points when it had created a strong form. I quickly progressed to creating type with the thread, but this looked too clumsy, so reverted to composing abstract forms on the paper. As I was creating these compositions, I placed small beads onto the paper, at first opaque ones, then glass beads to get the effect of a hollow circle. These arrangements of odd lines and dots had a slight resemblance to the work of Joan Miró. Similarly to Miró's paintings, certain motifs were reappearing in each photogram.
The "Constellations" are the most precisely executed of all Miró's works. They grew out of reflections in water, showing how Miró could transform an observation of nature into a "cosmic realism". In this series of paintings various motifs (Moon, Sun, comets, eyes, insects, birds and women) would reappear, coexisting in a natural, harmonious order. André Breton said of the works: "They differ from and resemble each other... taken together in their progression and in their totality, each of them assumes the necessity and value of a component in a mathematical system." May 1941 Miró flees a German occupied France for Mallorca, where he continues work on the 23 Constellations, and finished them later that year in Mont-roig, his Catalonian home.
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| Joan Miró 'Ciphers and Constellations, in Love with a Woman', 1941 |
The photograms look to me like broken constellations, as if the black background were the night sky and the beads the stars, but the thread is unable to link the stars to create recognisable shapes. I tried not to think about this too much, as I risked over complicating the pieces.
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