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Inspiration 

Robert Gober’s 1954 ‘Untitled’ sculpture was created in the context of the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 90s, which is reflected in its weakened appearance and seemingly abandoned position on the gallery floor. At first glance, the sculpture resembles a heavy sack, though it is actually a depiction of a human torso. However, the sculpture is divided into a male and female half, with the distinction of a breast on the left side and a man’s hairy pectoral on the other. By depicting the torso as hermaphrodite, Gober is suggesting the fluidity of gender identity.

Assessment Task 3 - Final Work Process:

I started the process by recording various flowers through a kaleidoscope filter on my phone, and basic body movements like blinking, sniffing, chewing, etc, separately, in which I combined both videos afterwards.

I displayed these videos on an old iPhone which I then taped to parts of my body that matched image on the video. I then recorded myself staying still whilst the movements played on the phone.

In the very beginning, I made the mistake of having a pre-conceived idea of what I would transform my box into and what it would like in the end. Initially, I thought that if I created what was in my head (a maze; evident in my first experiment) without really opening my mind to trying new things that I would be in the ‘safe zone’. Little did I know…that wasn’t the case and in fact this assignment has allowed me to contemplate the valuable nature of experimentation. 

For my prepared plan of how I would transform my box, I cut my cardboard box up, planned a draft maze route that would adhere to my final structure and then bam! Finished! However when I finished, I wasn’t satisfied at all. I didn’t have that ‘discovery’ moment of what I was capable of or what the box was capable of. Disappointed, I read the rubric again and encouraged myself to keep going and to keep expanding on my future experiments. 

I brainstormed ideas of what a box meant to me. What did I like about a box? Was it it’s shape? It’s texture? It’s universal structure? I started to gain interest in the actual structure of a box. I found myself caught in ideas of its frame, the way it stood, its rigidity and symmetry. 

I went through my belongings to continue to experiment further. I found these clear frames that were identical in shape. I glued them together to form the structure of a box, in other words; I reconstructed the skeletal frame of a box. My ‘skeleton’ box was clear and completely hollow, challenging my preconception of what a box was. To experiment further, I remembered how light is refracted through clear lenses, compelling me to use light and experiment with the shadows that my unconventional box produced in the dark. I found that the rigidity of my box would translate into two dimensional, complex shapes against the background. I shone the light at different angles and directions, changing the brightness. I was drawn to how a three dimensional form expanded into a two dimensional one, producing geometric silhouettes that grew in size according to the light’s direction. My videography of me playing with the shadows allowed me to see how something inanimate could come to life, in the way that the different angles of the box would form distorted, overlapping shadows. While my structure was simple in form, it’s shadows were quite unfamiliar and obscure, challenging my notions of transformation. 

Following on from my interest in the illusory nature of a box (explored in my previous experiment) I opened up to experimental possibility. For my final experiment, I took upon the idea of illusions, shape and form, depicted in my previous experiment, and explored ways I could express this through ‘alien methods’.. 

Experiment 3 (contd.) There's something very natural and organic about this but at the same time very unnatural and inorganic

How does this connect with my previous experiment?