#5imag004w.2

Name: Pietro Panza

Electronic Journal link/password: pietropanza.tumblr.com

 Project Evaluation (approx. 1000 words)

An important part of the way you develop your own photographic practice throughout the course is the relationship between your research (in all its forms) and your own creative practice. You should have been making regular updates on your blog throughout the semester and using it as a space to think through and develop your ideas. Project evaluation is an opportunity for you to reflect on, and summarize, these updates so that your tutors can have a clear overview of your working process, progress and development during the module.

Use the headings below as a guide and feel free to add to this and include images if you wish.

 Project Title

How did this develop and what was involved in the decision making process?

 Alienation is the title of this video project. I was sure I would have entitled it like that since the subject was of my personal interest from the outset. The reason why I decided to call it Alienation is because the word refers to both the process of alienation occurring between natural and urban landscapes and between human beings and their natural environment.

However, alienation takes inspiration from the concept of simulation by Jean Baudrillard. Indeed, most of my sequences reflect on the idea of simulation being so ubiquitous that it becomes difficult to distinguish between reality and its representation.

 Subject

Reflect on the subject matter of your project.

 The main interest stems from my deep interest in sociology and in particular in the way in which the latter can be a great source of inspiration for artistic purposes. The choice of the subject is more a commentary about the current status quo of the social discourse around how people interact with the environment in which they grow.

What are the differences between a natural and an urban landscape? Can we witness actual differences? Are there any effects on man deriving from the environmental contest that surrounds him? These are all questions that I try to answer through my video project.                                      

   Visual Research

Reflect on how key photographers / visual artists who are relevant to your project research have impacted upon the development of your project?

 The main photographers that inspired me are interested in landscape, but also conceptual photography. Among them, I found particularly relevant Sebastiao Salgado and Andreas Gursky. Audio-visual artists include Darren Almond, Chantal Akerman, Gillian Wearing, from which I applied the same principle of swapping audio material between two different visual sequences.Absolutely essential to the initial development of the project is Adam Curtis and his Hypernormalization.

   Aims, Objectives, Concept

Discuss your aims and objectives and the main concept for your project and evaluate how successfully these have been resolved.

 The main aim was to highlight the differences between natural and urban environments. The way I thought would have worked best was to juxtapose their ambient sounds. The result is a feeling of estrangement from the visual contest the viewer approaches. The next mental stage - which is to me the most important one – is the moment in which the spectator asks himself why did the author of the video choose to contrast the ambient sounds of two different environments. The answer lies in the fact that the audible contrast between the two opposite landscapes is laying emphasis on the artificiality of the ambient sound governing urban landscapes. The peacefulness of a few trees and people’s absence is cancelled by an innumerable amount of artificial sound waves, ranging from claxons to huge drills used for engineering works. Conversely, the intense traffic of the metropolis is imbued with a sense of serenity stemming from the sound made by few birds singing.

There is one last consideration to be made. The sequences are regularly interrupted by the picture of a green leaf being gradually submerged by the blackness of an unidentifiable liquid. The meaning behind these two symbols is that the green is the colour usually referred to hope, whereas black to death. Eventually, since we are not able to see if the leaf is completely disappeared, I wanted to leave space for imagination on whether humanity will sooner or later realise and move towards a better world conservation.

  Production

Reflect on the specific production methods you have been exploring and how these approaches and visual strategies have affected your project development.

The simplicity of the concept was enhanced by the type of video camera I decided to use. Indeed, a simple and compact Canon helped me achieving the visual result I was looking for.

  Presentation

How effectively have you communicated your ideas in relation to your identified audience and context?

This time I decided to project the video in a room where a number of people could have access to it. Eventually, I can say that I am not entirely sure it was the best way to do it. In fact, although a numerous public could feel more part of the alienation process, I think that that it does not communicate in the way I wanted to.

  Evaluation

Identify the strengths and weaknesses of your project and what you might do to improve it in the future?

I believe that my video project works nicely as its subject is very direct and simple to understand. At the same time, I think that this video was able to effectively make the viewer think about the differences between the two distinct kinds of landscapes.