Digital Practices

Monument Against Fascism (1986) - Gerz, E. & Gerz, J. Image found here.

Final Projection video

Here is a video documenting the final projection piece on the building model. Unfortunately the camera wasn’t able to capture some of the finer details, with the brighter windows disrupting the focus. However, i think this gives a good overview of the work in its final state.

Of course, I believe this could investigation could be taken further. It has the potential to be revisited and improved upon. Given the chance, it would have been good to test the projections on the buildings present in the high street, or eve just some larger windows. Because it is a temporary piece of public art, it is of the moment, reflecting upon what the high street is and represents at present. In the future this might change and so the projection could change accordingly.

It was pointed out to me that the single red dot that moved in the centre building, reminiscent of a recording light, brought the whole piece to another level. It was subtle an yet brought up questions of observation and surveillance, influencing the other frames.

‘The meaning of an image is changed according to what one sees immediately beside it or what comes immediately after it’ Berger, J. (1972) Ways of seeing. London, Penguin Books Ltd, p.29

Above are images of my model, pictured during the exhibition and before taking down.

Reflection

I believe my work was fairly successful. I think Chelsea’s text helped to point out that what I was presenting was a proposal, and explaining the context a bit more behind it. The intention was for people to view the work from the front, so as not to see the computer and projector behind, and of course to get a sense of the experience the public may have, however I found the audience seemed interested to view the back of the piece, and therefore seeing how the piece was created, which I discussed previously.

I received good feedback from the work, with people asking how I managed to project all the screens at once, and some telling me what particular windows they enjoyed the most. I did on occasion try to point out the more subtle windows, encouraging people to really observe the work, but as the exhibition was quite large, understandably people would not view one piece of work for too long.

I think the display worked well with the model, with the model remaining the focus of the whole display. I feel that the height of the  model worked well also, being able to view the whole piece in the centre of the room, but having to bend down slightly when up close to peer into the windows.

I was glad how clear the individual screens were, as originally I worried they would be lost due to the light from the other works in the room. However, there was enough detail present to accurately portray what I had filmed or photographed. I was slightly disappointed with the loss of detail of the building model, due to it being in a dark space to allow for the projection to work, and of course to mimic the evening/night time of the high street. However, I noted how the light from the windows illuminated the surrounding frames at certain points.

Somehow Synonymous Exhibition

Above are some images of the Somehow Synonymous Exhibition, taken by myself and Jazz.

It was really interesting to see how the exhibition would come together as some of the decisions towards it were decided not too long before hand. However, we all agreed that it worked well as an exhibition, leading us into third year. As mentioned before, with the inclusion of another module’s work, it was a challenge to decipher how the works could be labelled and connected, which brought the ‘.5′ system to accompany the texts Chelsea had written for each of our works for this module. This, coupled with the playing card style texts meant that the audience was not told where to go and in what order, the viewer had the option to view the works as they wished. The only issue  encountered was that people gathered in the main gallery space, not realising there were works placed throughout several areas of the Garage, and so a few of us managed to encourage people to venture into other rooms. This allowed us to view each others work, having not seen them since the last group crit. It was good to see the connections between works - not only between our own for the two different modules, but between other people’s works. For instance mine and Amy Inston’s work felt quite similar as they both dealt with glimpsing through multiple frames and the absence/presence of a human.

I also felt the works were well-spaced and the audience participation with the works was great to experience, having not experienced this last year.

Absence of Sound

I decided that the projection proposal should be silent for a few reasons. The first being that I want the projection to be stumbled across, to be unexpected in the high street. The second is that usually when walking past buildings at night, although you may see for instance the flicker of a TV light, you cannot hear what is going on. Finally, the lack of sound adds to the mysteriousness of the visual elements within my projection. Sound is a comforter as it gives clues as to what might be going on. If this is taken away, the mind speculates through the eyes only, and this is when a narrative starts being created in your head.

Choice of clips

As explained previously, I wanted my projection piece to be both realistic and have the potential to suggest something else may be going on - something unusual and out of the ordinary. Therefore some of the clips I staged were made to look reasonably normal - the curtain tests for example. However, even in these, I wanted to be something going on that may bring up questions. For instance one of the clips used has a shape slightly moving in the corner on a loop, whereas in another the curtains sway slightly until arms force them shut.

There was a subtlety throughout the majority of the clips, showing only glimpses of what was there or what could be happening. In order to encourage people to stay and really observe the piece, I felt this subtlety is needed - separating it from the usual building projections on shops that promote their brand for instance. (Something I am trying to move away from in that area - the consumerism and ubiquitous nature of branding, which I have been reading about in Naomi Klein’s No Logo and George Ritzer’s The McDonaldisation of Society)

I wanted my projection to be dynamic, with constant change and activity happening throughout. Because of this, I decided to stage and film clips with varying paces and to also include stills within the work. As well as this, I staggered the clips, with some beginning before others and also each clip ending at different points, leaving just one central window on until the piece loops again. I feel this makes the eye move around the work a lot more, and encourages you to view it more than once as it is likely windows will be missed the first time. Hockney said how a linear arrangement stops the eye, whereas a piece with multiple frames makes the eye move around the piece far more freely, rediscovering the images, which is something I wanted to explore.

Lack of human presence

I found it interesting to keep human presence to a minimum in the clips used. I feel as though the suggestion of someone being there is enough, created through the events shown. This also adds to the curiosity of the piece, the viewer believes or is aware of someone being on the other side of the window, but cannot be sure of whether they actually are or what they may be doing. Again I believe this pushes my work away from the normal entertainment projections onto buildings and into a realm of fiction/non-fiction and abstraction.

This idea is quite different to the artists I have looked at over the course of this semester, however the object of my work is not really the projection, it is the area it is situated in and the people that may stop to observe it.

Presentation/Display

For the exhibition I had to think about how I would display my projection. There had been discussion to place the model onto a table the Fine Art students had made as it was well done, however the table top is square, meaning the model would be a greater distance from the projector, and I felt it would not work as well as the rectangular table used previously, working with the overall rectangular shape of the model. As well as this, I had measured out all the distances for the projection, meaning the tables properties in relation to the model and positioning of the projector was already decided and important for the accurate mapping of the piece.

As the computer had to be present whilst projecting the work, I had to think about how I could reduce the light coming from this as it interfered with not only my work, but also Amy and Abigail’s. Therefore I placed a piece of black card/paper over the screen to try and block out as much light as possible whilst still being able to use the computer if necessary.

Before the exhibition, there were a few alterations I wanted to make to the building projection. One of which was to brighten one of the curtain clips so you could see more clearly what was going on through that window, as previously it looked blank.

The second alteration I wanted to make was to create one window that was a bright, blank screen - relating back tot he Theater work by Hiroshi Sugimoto. I wanted to do this to highlight the surrounding architecture, and therefore shifting the focus. However, I realised when viewing the projection piece again that the TV light screen do this at various points and so was not necessary.

Another aspect I checked and altered was the positioning onto the building model. As mentioned in a previous post, there has been great difficulty mapping the screens accurately, even with the mask used before as the conversion into Quicktime would distort the whole projection. Therefore I double checked and adjusted the projection before rendering it and leaving it as a Final Cut Pro file - to avoid any further distortion.

Finally, as it was decided between myself and Amy that synchronization  was not needed for the exhibition, I had to ensure my projection would run continuously. As the file was not converted into Quicktime, there was no option to loop the projection. The only option was to copy all the files and paste them one after another. One projection was around 1 minute 40, and the looped file ran for and hour and a half. I thought this meant that I could play the projection just before the start of the exhibition and be able to leave it for the duration. 

As well as focusing on our individual investigations, we have also spent time considering the curation of the exhibition.

For this, we as a group have had several meetings to discuss the placement of works and how people could approach them as a group exhibition.

Throughout this semester Chelsea has been writing texts on each of our works which will form a catelogue/guide that people can take round with them. However, we noted that these texts and numbers only correspond to our work for this module, and not for the Art & Design 2 module. Therefore we had to come up with a solution to this, creating a ‘.5′ system where our numbers for this module were continued into the other. So for instance my work for this module was number 12, and for the other module it was 12.5. As well as this, the pieces were not in order and so it was more of an exploration for the audience to find out where the works were. 

My work for this module was placed in the lecture room opposite Amy Inston’s work and to the side of Abigail’s. Originally there was the issue of our work affecting each other due to the light used. Therefore we considered syncing our pieces but came to the conclusion that our work would be fine to run at the same time. My work for the other module was place in the Lantern space as it required the light and space in order to be viewed.