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.

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.