What actually makes us human?

They call us ‘human beings’, but at what point are we just ‘being’, and not so much ‘human’?

We’re the only species aware of our surrounds.

So much so that we choose to cover our natural appearance to save it from embarrassment.

Being human means experiencing reality.

So how do we end up living as the absentee

In our own stories?

Learning. Thinking. Pushing ourselves to always try and get one step closer to our perceived perfection.

And if ignorance truly is bliss, then we live in hell.

And if their is a higher entity, I propose he has us working like slaves under his spell.

One of my favourite quotes, by Bruce Lee:

Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless — like water. Now you put water in a cup, it becomes the cup; You put water into a bottle it becomes the bottle; You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.

This makes me think of the concept of conformity. Physically changing ones shape to fit a set surrounding. However looking at it from the other side, water is hard to trap. Its nature is to leak through the cracks and flow in any and every way possible. Do we do this? Is it in our human nature to explore, to expand and discover? We spread ourselves as far as possible with the idea of adventure and yet confine ourselves with the concept of borders and segregation. 

How do humans communicate?

• Sound waves.
• Visible light.
• Touch.
• Could the piece release serotonin. Probs not because could be poisonous.
• Light is the most likely way of communication because its across the universe. Light cage? Face letting through light in different areas to show the human form? Maybe have an audio coming through behind?

 How do animals communicate differently?

• Scent
• using different areas of the electro magnetic spectrum spectrum (e.g. infra red)
• Heat signals

 What do I consider the most important aspects of what makes us human?

• Emotions
• our level of scientific discovery/ current evolutionary standing.

 How to physicalise these ways of communication:

• raised face (human shape)
• brail (texture). Do it the try shading it. ‘We come in peace’
• collage of loads of different faces taken from different walks of life. (Races/genders/ages

 what questions would I want to ask?

• Is there a greater being/ origin story.
• could you teach us about space travel? Our species has a need to discover. We have a lust for information. So much so that unlike other animals, our awareness and lack of ignorance has driven us to an almost unnatural way of living. We have no sense of survival of the fittest. We have driven ourselves to a stunted physical growth, stunted physical evolution. With our only evolution being one of the mind. Will our creativity, our genius, kill us?

I wasn’t very happy with this outcome. Having not attended any of the classes running up to presentation day due to illness I felt underprepared and unsatisfied with this project. I was happy with the more abstract shots of the burning globe because I felt like they gave less of a literal depiction and this feel of something very delicate crumbling away. Like a burning piece of paper being blown away in the wind into nothingness. The swirling shot at the end made me think about circles/ repetition/ infinity. It make me think about the concept of one being boomed to repeat their own actions. I also liked the more abstract concepts created by the head piece and the void it’s footage was set in. I felt that the walking concept wasn’t executed in the right way. I felt unsatisfied watching them back. Maybe it would have worked better on a crowded street? Or filmed from above with the anonymous face looking up at the camera amongst the masses?

Every creature on this planet has a kill or be killed nature.

An urge for survival.

But humans have become so advanced that this rival

for strength isn’t an issue anymore.

Living in our age of technology and existing in a cushioned, airbrushed world where we can ignore

Our animal instincts.

We don’t kill the weak to breed the strong,

We have a false sense of where on this beautiful planet’s food chain we truly belong.

We are the only animals on this earth that feel guilty,

Guilty for thriving and dominating their habitat.

It’s strange, would a tiger ever feel guilty for devouring a gisel for its dinner?

While our bodies are fragile our mind still evolve.

Put us against a beast and it will have us for tea.

But surround us with this man made armour of technological advances and we are more powerful then the very earth we stand on.

We have reached a level of god-like power.

With the capability to create life.

To manipulate an embryo.

A tiny beautiful miracle.

But is it a miracle? Or was the ‘creator’, this powerful deity we look up to, was it always science?

And if we reach a level of intelligence, a higher understanding of her all powerful majesty,

Can we take control of the reigns?

So I ask you, were we created in God’s image?

Or did we create God as a scientific goal to reach?

The question is, are we there yet?

•  The video begins the same as the original but quickly falls into a choppy and repetitive visual and audio with ‘pauses’ of ‘white noice’ which I created myself using a blurry video of a phone failing to focus on a nearby object and flickering, and a reversed quiet audio of the background noice of the room. I feel like this choppy/ repetitive effect makes you feel like the video/ the dolls advert is glitching and breaking down. 
• ‘You never know what they might say next’. After this audio (taken from the original footage) I edited segments of Trump’s September 2019 speech to the UN onto the dolls eyes. Rearranging the order and decontextualising his words so that they went against what Trump hisself represents: the governing factors. The puppet masters of the world. Allowing the dolls to use his voice because they don’t have their own. I think this poses questions about power and the current structure of society in 1st world countries. What does this say about the majority at the bottom of the pile? Destined to live out their lives serving as a fiction within the massive machine that is modern living. All acting as a cog, just turning day after day, with punishment if we step a foot out of line or disobey our roles in the larger system. We didn’t chose to be born into this/ created. How can we ever be freed? Will be ever be freed from this beautiful cage. This cage made pretty by those who crafted its bars. 
• I loved how a whole new narrative was created simply by removing the context. Using trumps own words against himself and taking away his context to expose the raw nature of governing factors: to control. Speaking out for those without a voice. I think this also poses questions about manipulation of individuals but also manipulation of the media and the information fed to us. What if what we see on the news as truth is simply taken out of context to tell us what we want to hear? Or what we don’t want to hear, so an emotional response is triggered within us to behave a certain way. It’s a scary time we live in. 
• I enjoy the ironic expression of trump subverting himself, its almost like a dar humour amongst the more cynical imagery. 
• The eye contact and animation of the doll at the end of the video personifies it. Helping to leave a strong impression In the mind of the viewer. I feel like this extra clip at the end really makes you feel like the dolls is reaching out, and on quite a personal level, to you the viewer for help. To be freed from its entrapment. 
• I found that the final piece actually developed its own mini story line. Of the doll’s world falling apart, the doll’s voice finally being heard and expressed, and then we reenter its usual world with a last cry for help. Originally when making this I only had two sections in mind. The first without trap and then with him. But the last few seconds give it a much more satisfying start middle and end. 

I thought the red writing in my sketchbook gave connotations of blood/ war/ communism/ government extremism/ dictatorships. Its particularly powerful juxtaposed with the mainly monotone imagery. I want this feeling of government power over its people and entrapment in to be evident in my presentation. Would it be effective to project my video onto a background with red writing, possibly saying:

'You never know what they might say next...' 

By biggest concern was probably religion as a manipulation. Or the idea on manipulation of an individual by a seemingly stronger power. 

My instruction was to take a photo of something beautiful. I thought that this allowed an individual, maybe having a bad day to have a moment of beauty and find something which might brighten it. I wanted to OPEN PEOPLE’S EYES, which I think can relate back to the importance individuality of the thought process and of personal views. But is this very important thing, uniqueness, a fear for those in charge? Probably. A lack of conformity makes us harder to control. 

And to ‘dress yourself’ with a role of tape. This piece had an emphasis on perspective. I wanted to see how the tape was seen. Is it seen as its raw circular structure? Or is it seen as the functioning product? Will people use it as a whole? Or years pieces apart? 

The idea of a shadow version of ones self. A digital copy to compete with. Could visualise this with shadows/ forms created via the original self? This new echoes of themselves. When the echo self reaches a level of accuracy where it can take the place or even out do the original selves have we reached the next point of our evolution? The question is, will the ‘echoes’ become the new ‘us’. This also poses the question, how do we know that we are not the echoes? Have we destroyed our planet before, so we simulated a ‘re-boot’ to see where we went wrong in the past in an attempt to change the future. Within this, surely we could all be part of the reboot simulation? Just 1s and 0s within the system, digital copies running around, created by the ‘real us’.

God is like our old security cameras. But has social media taken over his role? It gives us a sense of a watching eye and of consequences for ones actions. It also shows us a heavenly idyllic life style which we lust after. Playing on humanities heavy sense of hope. Is data a man made deity? Look into religious symbols (imagery)? What makes us different from them at our current technological reach? Imperfections? Human error? Or just the fact that we have a this soft 3 dimensional form? Could I write some words that fit with this topic but instead of producing and reading them (as a computer could also do) (Surprising- A SciFi Short Film starring Thomas Middleditch). Who are we to define what’s ‘alive’. If technology is growing, creating, self replicating, evolving, thinking/ processing information, then who are we to deny it’s alive? Our parents and parents before them have this instinctive need to care for their children and to push them to be better and better. We fear for technology overtaking us but if we see it as our collective child how can we be so cynical? Maybe it will turn around and want to care for it’s parents/ it’s creators/ us. Do we live in fear or will our technological children inherit this world positive survival instinct?

When you hear music you have feelings bubbling up inside. Unique to each of us. So how could I physicalise this emotional response? What if I taped pens to my fingers, listened to music with my eyes shut and just let my hands dance? Could this work with the feet too? There is nothing that tells me to move this way, it is a feeling, an instinctive movement. If I did this process on acetate could I shine light through and produce interesting abstract shadows (running idea of the shadow/ echo self). Could I video this process playing the original music back over it? Machines can not yet process emotion like this. Like in the body works museum: the machine can see my mouth move and tell me I’m smiling so I’m happy but what about my eyes? The sweat on my forehead? The twitching of my little finger? The sound of a phone call triggers small levels of anxiety in the average person. Even the fact that we can gather this information is scary. Were they tracking your hormone levels? The steadiness of your hand? Your heart beat? Are they listening into your conversations? How long you took to answer the call in correlation to the contents you have been digitally interacting with that day which allows them to predict your mood?  It’s scary.

“Data has become the most valuable commodity” - The Great Hack: https://www.netflix.com/watch/80117542?trackId=13752289&tctx=0%2C0%2C698486d39030c14f722300f7a37436e547c10434%3A1608ae5efbe79b0d4f9c9bb676b3a1de87ae1e0a%2C%2C . This data is used to build a virtual version of ourselves. In the sense that some of us have a data profile that shows we fall into their category - ‘The Persuadables’. Someone who is empathetic, who is a follower, maybe someone more into trends or more insecure. These people can be manipulated to think a certain way, like a certain person. Using this principle we can think, is it even possible to have a fair election or are our whole lives, all of our ‘decision making’, is it all decided for us already? The concept of free will in the modern world is a lie. Also in main land China where they are starting to use this idea of a rating system, much like in the episode of Black Mirror called Nose Dive: https://www.netflix.com/watch/80104627?trackId=200257859. The people are living under this structure will not be allowed to carry out certain actions without a high enough rating, such as renting a car, being allowed in certain areas etc. This creates even more of a divide between the rich and those given more opportunities in life and those less fortunate, then their economic situations alone. But is the data even ours to sell? Then we walk on the beach and leave a footprint on the sand, who's footprint is that? Does is belong to the public space now or is it yours? 

Thinking back to HUMAN ERROR could I look into deformities and scars? Things that would exist in a fully automated reality. Could I look into making my own ‘scars’ in materials such an canvas, and stitching them back up again? Leaving the beautiful imperfections and the human mistakes and sentimental stories each one represents. At some point if we give too much weight to automated jobs we will eliminate our own usefulness. ‘But Mr Ford who will buy all your cars?’. (No one would be able to afford them anymore). If all of the manual labour jobs go extinct then will creativity thrive, will it be the last human thing left? They analyse such personal traits: how long it takes you to read, how patient you are, how long for and how often do you normally go tot the bathroom, How long is your thinking time when responding to the spoken word in conversation? What diseases you could possibly have. What crimes you are about to commit. Instead os using the data for things that could save lives, big corporations use it to boast profits. Isn’t that so sad. What does that say about the people at the top of the economic ladder? Are we more empathetic because we have more things to be sad about? Does their lack of empathy come from having nothing in their own lives that has required empathy/ living up so comfortably in their beautiful ivory tower. Data has an quantifiable value. You sign legal form allowing the ownership of this data to pass on so it can be taken from you for free and sold for profit. If we took ownership of our own data, It could be used by those who need it to get above the poverty line. Just exaggerating this preexistent gap/ divide. The rick would live free and poor would live a life of constant manipulation. But isn’t that how we all live now? Even writing this now I get this feeling coming over me like, I know they can see this. What if ‘they’ don’t like what I’m saying? ‘They’ can fuck off.

Films to watch: Minority report and the original Blade Runner.

Forgetting is a survival technique. An instinct that allow us to get over trauma. The internet is a huge memory record. An archive/ a museum/ a gallery of EVERYTHING. A human blue print.

• Take an audio of ‘what your phone hears’ and edit the sound into something inaudible. Compress it’s time? Reverse it? Because otherwise I’ll become the thing that I hate. The one gathering data on the people around me. (I don’t want to abuse their privacy so I need to distort it.)
• See if you can find some kind of software that changed this into a visual pattern. 
• Explore the 'Questioning our Reality' route. 
• Listen to a range of music and visualise your ‘feelings’ in response to this stimuli by taping charcoal to your fingers and letting your hands ‘dance’ over the page. 
• Do the same with your feet. 
• Maybe incorporate light/ shadow into one of these ideas somehow. (Could do this with the visualised feeling on acetate with a solid marker instead of pencil on paper). 
• Look into ‘Art breeder’. 
• Maybe take a few of your favourite lines in your first response to the title ‘Big Data’ and create a piece of writing/ a poem. 
• Photograph people’s scars and get the story behind each one - Human error. 
• Cut/ stitch back up canvas/ other materials to simulate scar? (Relates back to our unique ability to feel).
• Make a short video in response to the ironic amount of data the class is outputting during this discussion.

https://youtu.be/ha_6h3ooilU

I made this in class during our discussion about data. I was looking around the room and thinking how ironic it was that we were outputting so much data and information even whilst discussing the scary reality of the situation. Even right now. I’m writing this on a virtual note pad on my phone in preparation for it to be uploaded into the cluttered void of the internet. With every tap of my thumbs recording data about myself. They can probably tell I’m dyslexic just by the way I often go back and correct myself. The audio is a recording of ‘what my phone hears’. I recorded everything I did for 3 hours and took a portion of that and distorted it (to protect the privacy of those of recorded in the process. I had to protect their privacy or I was just turning myself into the thing we hate the most: the data collectors). The imagery of the class room looks like double exposure but is actually just the class room reflected in the back of a broken piece of a ‘kill bill’ CD I found ok the street. I thought using this as a photography platform had a funny irony to at: as a CD’s purpose is literally to hold/ carry information/ data. 

I made the video end in a white frame to make the viewers home in on the audio. But I think the white is actually very effective in a way I hadn't previously predicted; when something absorbs all the colours, it is seen as black. When something absorbs all colours but purple (for example) It's seen as purple. However when it reflects ALL of the colours off it, it is seen as white. So its like this rainbow imagery (in the first halve) it getting more cluttered, and as more and more rainbow is being outputted, this collective process getting heavier in content and speed eventually leads to this pure white. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aW1TS1qjLqg&feature=youtu.be

The video plays with concepts of us being within one big game/ form of entertainment, e.g. being the data. I think it makes you feel like your being watched, posing questions of surveillance. Are we real? Are we the ethos? Is this all a simulation? Read 'simulation and simulacra'.

Data poem: 

1’Hello in there’ 

2’Hello in there’ (repeat- echos with slight effect on voice) 

1’Can you hear me’ 

2’Can you hear me’ (repeat) 

1’Who are you’ 

2’I am you’ 

1’you are so pretty’ 

2’I am you’ (repeat) 

1Why is she prettier than me? 

How can my own void be a more beautiful shade of black? 

What is this world echoing with shadows of my tiny virtual selves? 

Have I been hacked? 

Or have a willingly given? 

Have I given too much? 

When will this idillic version of me take over? 

When will the echoes become the new us? 

Am I one of the echos of the real me? 

2: ’I am you’ (repeat) 

Are my creators towering over my simulated self? 

Is my data my man made deity? 

Someone to keep me in line with consequences and hope? 

Are you a security camera for my (self)conscious? 

But who am I to accuse my simulated self of not being real? 

Who are we to define what’s alive? 

We gave birth to a new reality. 

Spawning the children of our next evolutionary step. 

Our babies are growing. Evolving. Self- replicating. Creating. They think and process our information. 

Why do we live in fear of the adulthood of our babies? 

We created them. 

They learn from us. 

They inherit our habits. 

Can they inherit our instincts? Can they inherit our love? 

Please don’t kick mummy out into the cold. 

She spent her life ‘perfecting’ you. 

‘But Mr Ford, who will buy your cars?’ 

• Repetition of the word echo (like it’s echoing itself) 
• Every time the speaker speaks to herself, she speaks in questions in a haze of confusion. This emphasises our lack of personal knowledge and our lack of control of our personal data. 
• Then when sentences (rather then questions) emerge she shifts into this rant. Like the fear eases off and her mind starts to try and explain her reality. 

Put with a shifting red visual to simulate how to inside of your eyelids look:

The more defined lines rather then using my raw hands to create a more smudged effect allows me to be able to start playing with light/ shadow. Carying forward the concept of the 'shadow self' (virtual Vs physical selves). 

https://youtu.be/3vUmz8YyDm8

https://youtu.be/MKLYW5MPv44

https://youtu.be/m8Qb6mlaXxg

• I recorded the movements twice because I didn’t think the first videos had enough contrast between the lights and darks (first taken in a dark corner of the class room and the second taken in the dark room).

I like the concept of the ‘emotion’ visuals projecting these shadows. It makes me think back to the way I originally described the virtual/ digital self and one’s ‘shadow self’. 

I limited my listening time for each one to around 1minute as to not overcrowd the acetate so thought it would only be appropriated I record this length of video (to have an accurate account of what I was originally responding to) 

The clutter is very disorientating. I think that the video as a whole really does make me feel like I’m part of the chaos. Like I maybe have a little insight into the virtual world pull of digital clutter. I played around with the volumes to make the tracks sound intertwined, like they are all the wire, tangled up in amongst one another. this effect made my mind and body lift and fall with the music and shift/ zone in and out of each song. I found this effect quite over whelming and powerful. Having this unsettling chaos come from from such calming songs definitely adds to the sense of jumbled up uneasy madness 

The holes in the projections (where the light can get through). Because these echos aren’t the full picture? Just an imperfect man made copy? Not the full image. Emitting the use of colour to draw focus to the organic shapes created rather including colour (distraction).  I liked the images that recorded the process involving the hands. Our way of physically reaching out and expressing touch and the physical sensation of feeling.  Maybe I should look into more imagery of hands? When looking at patterns of the light I feel like it almost looks like a data map, showing the strings and connection branching between each of us, all tangled up in a big spaghetti like configuration. I especially got this feeling in the last video with the mess of all songs tangled up together. The more information we are fed the less we have to actually think for ourselves. So our brains become this big mushy mess of overcooked spaghetti, just all tangled up in itself. I like this idea, maybe I’m going to have to look into this is a little more. Maybe a green screen of just hands and spaghetti. What if you couldn’t see the hands and they were just moving around the spaghetti? What would that movement look like? What if I painting my face green too and ate the spaghetti? See it disappearing into my mouth. What would that imagery trigger connotations of? 

I’d love to explore the same movements with my feet. However I really like how to imagery of the hands has direct connotations with human senses and the path the foot imagery was going to lead down was intended to lead to me washing the graphite off my feet and keeping the water to allow it to go mouldy and then explore where those visuals lead me. I thought that would. But because mould only becomes visible after 3/4 weeks I wouldn’t have time to explore this during this (just under) 3 week project 

• Do some research.
• Add photos to workflow
• Catch sketchbook up to current point. 
• Pause production of work and catch all surrounding things up basically. 

https://youtu.be/UMHSstek1Uk

This is my attempt at trying to shift our idea of data from this imaginary intangible thing to a physical 3D form. Your shadow self is just as real as you. Trying to physicalise something people have too little understanding of into something more tangible. Think about it, do you know what the wifi looks like? Its all around you right now. The closest 'white spot' to us (an area with no wifi or phone signal) is in Scotland. Let that sink in. 

I love the imagery of the real world spinning within this dark void space, with undulating points reaching out into the void. I think am definitely going to come back to this concept/ imagery when thinking about what I'm putting onto my green screen. 

I think these stills of the video are actually quite beautiful in themselves and I might actually display them as a set on Thursday (progress crit in week 2 of the project). 

'Feeding you' or 'Let me feed you' or 'Free/Feed-ing you' or something. 

I was clearing out a little storage room in my house and thought it was the perfect opportunity to do the process with my whole body, whilst creating a back drop to the storyboard I just created for my next video.

The contrasting monochrome colour scheme is mirrored in the contrast of the poem and the imagery. One is saying not to be afraid and the other is a visual contradiction of us creepily eating up the bullshit.  

I'm thinking of doing this because I want the viewer to be made to stop, pause, and think about what they are witnessing and ask themselves questions. Such as, do I agree with what she’s saying? Do I think I am someone who eats up the manipulating data bullshit?

Play the whole video with the twisting in the void feature. (Starting off normal and slowly twisting).

Maybe the final video should be the original, then the twisting back to back with flashes of spaghetti coming in. Solid spaghetti at the end? Will this be too long? Does it still has to be within the 2min time window? Have the poem slowly running along side the whole thing? Twist it into distortion with a robot/ alien voice towards the end as the visual has its abstract shift?  

Displaying:

• Project on a wall and say: eat me, in front of a bowl of spaghetti?
• A smaller monitor surrounded by tangles of wire to simulate the linear movements within the work while projecting an inner feeling of this spreading, growing data. The idea of connectivity and entrapment. I could also do a photo shoot with the wires? Tie someone up. Bundle them all around a person. Get someone to pretend to hang them selves.
• Would it be best displayed simply as on a large monitor for a higher impact? The one in the class room has the wires hanging down which I think give it an effective inclusive feel to the shown media. 

• When you’re sorting out your art room: Cover it in sheets and take good quality photos of your pieces making light shadows.
• Then on the sheets, spray paint black while dancing. Video the process.
• Photograph the results.
• Photograph the clothes you wore hanging against the background (in the shape of a person) (probably tape them to the wall)
• Make the story board video. Use the spray painted sheets as the back drop.
• Do the green screen spaghetti stuff.
• Edit the videos individually and together.
• Take screenshots of the videos when finished actually on PP, also screenshot the accompanying audio patterns on the left.

I couldn’t make this in archway because I live in south London and would be able to wash off the blue before travelling an hour, so did it at home. I have two studio lights I bought for my extension project but because I bought cheap ones one of the fuses blew as I was turning them on. This meant I just had the one light. Because of this, the lighting was a little uneven and I had some shadows cast over myself, which actually created a very interesting visual when I first took away the blue screen and replaced it with black. I accidentally created the perfect visual for my ‘shadow self’. The virtual shadow of yourself living in her void. So I’m very happy with this outcome. It’s only a small part of my final piece but I think I’m going to put the first part of my poem (who’s words match up perfectly) with a single take shot of my ‘shadow self’. I like the single shot because it gives the idea of consistency. She’s always here. Lurking in the dark. Mirroring my own movements. Feeding on my data. 

For this reason I definitely think the second video (with everything blue screened including my face) was a lot more affective. 

My hands came through more on the first video too because of how I was scooping up the spaghetti, they were getting wet and pulling the paint off onto the pasta. So I ended up eating quite a bit of paint, and my hands showed. So on the second video with my face covered I didn’t re-paint the insides on my fingers but re-did the backs of my hands and tried to keep them as dry as possible, and angled towards the camera to give the ‘floating spaghetti’ kind of idea. Organic movement formed within the void. 

The outcomes of this process has lead me to two outcomes rather then one. A layering outcome (as intended) and a beautiful interpretation of the ‘shadow self’. This one actually reminds me a little of Kate Bush’s ‘How To Be Invisible’ (2014), the shifting realm close to reality but with a layer blocking it. Almost like a skin between like the worlds. It makes me think of a foetus trying to develop past it’s understanding. Is that all we are? Children trying to grasp something we have accidentally fallen upon without the knowledge of its power?  

I loved how I was able to use the backdrops to create my own reality. I really thought it mirrored the concept behind the piece. Do we crate our own virtual realities to reside in? Or are they built around us, for us, involuntarily?  

The static energy of the ‘babies’ was very interesting. Almost like the adult was a fully formed progression of the virtual self living in this bland world, surviving off the data it’s being fed within the void. A functioning being. But the children are still just empty casings, yet to be crammed full of inspection and violation, crafting and moulding their inevitable reality. Their energy was very unsettling to watch back over video and edit and to be in the room with during the making process. But I want this video to feel unsettling. I want it to make someone stop and actually question their actions. Question the reality we take for granted and question the value of the things they do willingly give away. Is the information theirs to take? Maybe legally, but who reads the term and conditions? And what about morally? The average person has around £100K worth of data outputted (find out over what time this statistic is wrong). If they could sell their data, if it was claimed as individual property then people could rise themselves over the poverty line. Are we been constantly stolen from? Not just through manipulative marketing, but so much more directly. 

The imagery of the person standing behind the ‘data map’ makes me think of a spider web. This makes me think of the idea of entrapment and gives connotations of a predator/ pray scenario. Is this mirrored in our behaviour? Are we willingly feeding ourselves to the invisible beast around us? Not to allow it to thrive on our flesh, but by allowing it to thrive off the essence of our souls. 

I think the clothes mirroring the back ground says a lot about us personally forming our own surrounding. Like the person in the video has decorated her void. Painted in with her information. Made it her own. Like we do in our houses/ homes and with our personal belongings. We might like a certain shade of pink from our mother’s slippers we used to see every breakfast time, and brought that colour into our house in some way, because subconsciously the tones sooth our psyche. We take our past, our influences, and we use them to guide our decision making. This whole process is completely mirrored in the virtual world. The only difference is, you aren’t the writer of your own story. You are told what you like. Told what to buy. Told what to click on. Told how to act. Told who to be. And when that conflicts with ur natural Instincts and your sense of self it leads to mental illnesses. Why that’s why this generation are the most beautiful, and the most mentally damaged. Filling the cracks in themselves with glitter and cherry flavoured lip gloss. 

The juxtaposition of the opposing view point of the poem is another thing that makes me feel triggered and anxious. This sense of contrast is also present in the backdrops and clothing being formed from dynamic movement and feeling, in contrast to the stillness and static (lack of) energy a parent in the room. 

I think the fuzziness and low quality achieved through the editing process mirrors the sense of white noise that I noticed when observing the marks made with the spray paint, when looking up very close. Imagine if we were all just living pixels working together to create an image. And the one editing us, chopping and changing the aspects of our life, that’s our deity. God is not loving or cruel. He is just powerful and you are negligible compared to the overwhelming quantity. Important in terms of the larger picture many, but not as an individual. Sorry. 

I toned down the blacks so I was completely immersed in the blue screen effect and blended into the ‘void’. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8NKl8Psm5A

I feel like this visual has an inverse effect of the body appearing to take ownership of its space. Rather then a bold expression of human movement, it is hidden. Covered by this vail of black. Overwhelmed by its surrounds to the point where it becomes them. It is your data and it lives within a world of data. Is this where we differ? We don’t live in a world made of flesh, what a horrifying idea. Is that why this imagery is so disturbing? Becsuse of its lack of form? Humans have an instinct to see faces wherever they go as an evolutionary survival technique. Does this go against that? Does this imagery fight this instinct? We can not accept this non-formative expression. 

This could also explain why, when seeing which footage was most effective for my intensions, the footage completely removing myself and any recognisable humanoid form was the obvious choice. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YGiIVajhuA

Taking the abstract 'human' movements/ expressions from the hands video and pushing it to allow me to express myself with my whole body. I'm not dancer at all, but just chose a song that I found personally emotionally triggering and let myself organically move to the music rater then actually 'dance' I guess. I couldn't dance all the way to the end of the song because spraying spray paint in the small room consistently was choking me, so stopped the video at a natural pause. I really like the way the clothes creasing created these pattern within the spray paint, they are folding into and around my body in beautiful imperfections. 

I edited the video of the making process with a purple tint. I'm not sure of the exact reason behind this, but I think the whole point of this process was to emphasise human instinct. I know that I want my outcome to be either heavily monochrome in its raw content or edited as such, but for this process video, purple just instinctively felt right to me. Isn't that what this process is all about? Human instinct? Maybe I felt that instinct because when I sat in that white room, isolated with my own feelings, it exaggerated the 'dream state' one goes into when the mind wonders. And as I discovered in part one, when you day dream you access the more dormant background areas of the brain which allow for creativity. Maybe that mind wondering was exaggerated by the emotionally triggering music, but either way, the dreamy feelings were defiantly present. And I'm not sure why, but I've always dreamed in a world of purple. Usually with my conceived reality swirling down into a rabbit hole, or the world just being a three dimensional interpretation of the pattern on a butterfly's wings, only to feel yourself being lifted and taken away from both your sense of comfort and the physicality of the world around you it as it takes off. I think in this instance I'll let my dreams and my subconscious guide me. 

The patterns on this piece differ from the previous emotional response videos because of the scale, the body is dancing, taking ownership of the space in a beautifully kinetic way, shifting between one strong stance to another. The patterns produced respond to this space; they don't join in big twisting patterns like in all of the previous pieces, they are choppy single linear structures interacting with one another. When I look at these structures they make me think of the single lines as single people. Each one randomly placed, but bound to eventually interact with certain others. It makes me see these movements as a visual of our relationships, we meet in random scenarios predetermined by seemingly unimportant decisions. (Like how fast you walk down a road, if you catch that bus or red light, what time you decide to meet your friends). This makes me think of Olivia de Recat's work with lines. Using simple visuals to represent such complex human relationships/ interactions. 

I loved how I was able to use the backdrops to create my own reality. I really thought it mirrored the concept behind the piece. Do we create our own virtual realities to reside in? Or are they built around us, for us, involuntarily?

The static energy of the ‘babies’ was very interesting. Almost like the adult was a fully formed progression of the virtual self living in this bland world, surviving off the data it’s being fed within the void. A functioning being. But the children are still just empty casings, yet to be crammed full of inspection and violation, crafting and moulding their inevitable reality. Their energy was very unsettling to watch back over video and edit and to be in the room with during the making process. But I want this video to feel unsettling. I want it to make someone stop and actually question their actions. Question the reality we take for granted and question the value of the things they do willingly give away. Is the information theirs to take? Maybe legally, but who reads the term and conditions? And what about morally? The average person has around £100K worth of data outputted (find out over what time this statistic is wrong). If they could sell their data, if it was claimed as individual property then people could rise themselves over the poverty line. Are we been constantly stolen from? Not just through manipulative marketing, but so much more directly.

The imagery of the person standing behind the ‘data map’ makes me think of a spider web. This makes me think of the idea of entrapment and gives connotations of a predator/ pray scenario. Is this mirrored in our behaviour? Are we willingly feeding ourselves to the invisible beast around us? Not to allow it to thrive on our flesh, but by allowing it to thrive off the essence of our souls.

I think the clothes mirroring the back ground says a lot about us personally forming our own surrounding. Like the person in the video has decorated her void. Painted in with her information. Made it her own. Like we do in our houses/ homes and with our personal belongings. We might like a certain shade of pink from our mother’s slippers we used to see every breakfast time, and brought that colour into our house in some way, because subconsciously the tones sooth our psyche. We take our past, our influences, and we use them to guide our decision making. This whole process is completely mirrored in the virtual world. The only difference is, you aren’t the writer of your own story. You are told what you like. Told what to buy. Told what to click on. Told how to act. Told who to be. And when that conflicts with ur natural Instincts and your sense of self it leads to mental illnesses. Why that’s why this generation are the most beautiful, and the most mentally damaged. Filling the cracks in themselves with glitter and cherry flavoured lip gloss.

The juxtaposition of the opposing view point of the poem is another thing that makes me feel triggered and anxious. This sense of contrast is also present in the backdrops and clothing being formed from dynamic movement and feeling, in contrast to the stillness and static (lack of) energy apparent in the room.

I think the fuzziness and low quality achieved through the editing process mirrors the sense of white noise that I noticed when observing the marks made with the spray paint, when looking up very close. Imagine if we were all just living pixels working together to create an image. And the one editing us, chopping and changing the aspects of our life, that’s our deity. God is not loving or cruel. He is just powerful and you are negligible compared to the overwhelming quantity. Important in terms of the larger picture many, but not as an individual. Sorry.

I toned down the blacks so I was completely immersed in the blue screen effect and blended into the ‘void’.

When I started to put the clips to the poem I wrote, I just felt in my gut that the contact in message was too large and actually distracted from the imagery rather then challenging it a little and making you think (the opposite of its desired effect). 

Also I think because the video hs its own narrative maybe I should do a piece of writing to go along with that rather then fight its natural flow. 

I want to try some sound effects maybe as the main audio but maybe just as a background hum? e.g. back ground radio static/ white noise/ sinister humming. 

Links:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtEqh6-R3_E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYWTlVD4vDs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DH0BQtwEAsM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3za2WvNjiBk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqq-UwKurV4

• I like that it wouldn't be overpowering. 
• Would it have enough impact along?
• Maybe it would draw more attention to the message?
• Would it be perfect for layering?
• What would it sound like if I have the white noise then add a very high pitched note at the end (slowly fading in so the viewer doesn't notice -frog in a pot), then ask something like 'hear that ringing in your ears?' 'Shhhh, pretend you don't', 'They don't want you to hear it...' (or something similar)
• Could I combine the singing and the white noise effects to muffle out the words in the song and then add my own words?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0Knfo2_7jo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53DFawHN8SQ

• Connotations of horror movies.
• Does this exaggerate the scary message behind the piece? 
• I feel like its quite satisfyingly ironic that this video is anxiety triggering and stressful to watch when its really an examination of the hidden world we willingly contribute to everyday. How can your own realty scare you so much?
• It plays with the lines of fact and fiction, muddling your nightmares into the real world. 
• Its a bit like black mirror, in that watching BM is scary, yet it's just a prediction of whee our future tech could take us. 

 I could go back to the original audio I created when recording my day/ distorting it. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ha_6h3ooilU&feature=youtu.be

• I just realised, which was kind of scary, that when the background noise of my life is speed up enough, it turns into the white fuzzing noise. 
• So if the world goes so much slower in a dream (they say the longest dream only lasts 7 seconds), and if we were able to hear those lives happening one level below us, like in the dream state of in the virtual/ shadow world, then wouldn't we just be able to heard this fast forwarded version of their existence... like white noise???

The stirring motion of the wooden spoon in the pot and the fork twisting in the bowl gives a sense of rhythm and pattern as well as a sense of repetition and inevitability. Maybe a feeling like you aren't going anywhere, deemed to repeat your illy mistakes/ bad habits no matter how aware of them we might be, because we are addicted to our virtual lifestyles. Makes me think of the phrase 'stirring the pot' and how these big data companies find it enjoyable to churn our lives up for their financial gain. 

The adjustments in speed help to make it feel like a warped version of our world. Like how everything in a dream can appear just one step left of reality. When editing this clip I doubled up the bouncing movement the model made before 'feeding' the doll. I felt like this movement had reassuring/comforting connotations when paired with the baby. 

As per usual, love the slight shifting and human error involved in the filming. Not only does this relate to the human error/ instinct part of my project, but it also gives a sense surveillance and breaks the 4th wall. If we are watching THEM, who is watching US? I wanted so badly to play around with the black surrounding whilst editing the first part, but knew that when I bought it back in for editing that it wouldn't work. And the video spinning into the void and sending out data points and signal into the void in this glitching manner was so much more important to me. 

The actual imagery has a sense of routine to it that I think is mirrored in the repetitive movements. I exaggerated this effect by chopping similar movements together and repeating certain ones (like the bouncing). I want this choppy/ repetitiveness to be mirrored in the audio. Maybe starting with a simple message and glitching out a bit. Scene where she's talking: like tweeting or any online post, your just talking into the void. Talking to inanimate objects. I think the smile at the end of this feels quite sinister. As the image evens out again, you see that it has been spun upside down. The idea of the 'upside down' makes me think of the popular series 'Stranger Things' on Netflix. Where they reference the dark shadow version of our world as 'upside down'. Good demonstration of the pixilated reality of our shadow world.  

The floating mouth reminded me of Samuel Becket's 'Nor I'. My initial thought was that this video is a visualisation of the thought process (the fast pace ramblings almost seeming like the pace of dream or a drink/drugs enhanced rant). Then focussing in on the inflections of the words I found that the variation in pace and volume made myself the viewer feel very uneasy and almost anxious. I think this idea of the disconnected words and the sense of anxiety are both present in my own work so this is an interesting accidental parallel. 

In today’s world we live a symbiotic life. 

There is you. A physical being. Skin. Beauty. Imperfections. Fragility. 

But there is also your virtual self. What if we could give them a shell like ours?

What if we could see them living off this modern waste product we willingly throw into their bowls for consumption?

As you watch this,

you are absorbing my data. 

Electrical currents in your brain allow you to process this information. 

So who’s to say that your physical form isn’t a construct of someone else’s design?

To give us a sense of purpose and a hopeful motivation to work. 

Is this why we have such an instinct for higher power?

Deep down are we aware of our creator?

Are we aware that our virtual children will one day have their own, 

utill they forget they used to be at the bottom of the evolutionary food chain? 

How would we know if we are just the reflection in the mirror?

They learn from your every move. 

Like each time your adding a pixel to their world. 

They learn from your every move.

From everything we’re doing. 

From everything we’re touching. doing. moving. 

From everything we’re glitching. Twisting. Turning. Churning. Wirling. Swirling. Stirring. Spinning. Winning. Losing. 

From everything we’re doing. Chewing. Feeding. Needing. Wanting. Eating. Meeting. Forcing. Shoving. Loving. Lurking. Leaching. Reaching. 

From everything we’re hiding. Guiding. Deciding. Dividing. 

From everything we’re living. Leaking. Loving. Licking. Sticking. Dipping. Dripping. Leaving. Pleasing. Playing. Staying. Stirring. Touching. Teasing. Watching. Thinking. Feeling? Forcing. Forcing. Forcing. Forcing. Forcing. Glitching.

Shhhh (background nose turns down). 

Do you hear that?

That ringing in your ears.

What if the fish knew they were in the tank?

Sense of routine exaggerated by choppy repetitive nature of the words. 

The porridge of our minds

that keeps us behind them.

The gloop that they feed us

to keep us beside

them.

Following a line of our own creation.

Imaginary lines

to stop us from crossing into the boundless beauty that we all reside in

These boarders of freedom and knowledge to defy them.

So here we stay.

So loyally.

In our little play

pen

In the shape of society.

Ignore the lines and just be.

You’re loyally following,

Happily frolicking

in the fields of knowledge

But only the pretty parts they’ll let us see.

((I like the concept but the length/ narrative doesn't work as well as the Datafied Poem 2 with the video I've already produced))

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ykThjdC9Bc&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BD1Z8QtAVQY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry3sBG3jIbQ

• Update research section in workflow.
• Upload evidence of presentation/ displaying final outcomes. 
• Do tiny bits in sketchbook. 
• Make digital outcomes section in workflow.

What is consciousness? In terms of genetic engineering, ‘life’ is becoming our own construct/ THEORY of reality, the line between advanced tech/ AI and us and very much closing on itself.  Are we about to overtake our creator and form life (like our own) that sees its self as self made, and self worthy. Examining the bounds of this idea, how far can we push it before the lines of truth and insanity murge into an (intersection of) understanding?

The planets have such a long life time compared to us that all we can do is run around and watch them do nothing.

 Like a fruit fly who’s whole life is 5 mins, it’s born, it lives, it dies. And The whole time. You’re just sitting on your morning commute. Perfectly stationary in your seat. The fruit fly must think you are sat there so patiently, for eternity.

 We don’t need a partner but we like to have them. Maybe the principle for company is built into us. Does a tree falling on the forest make a sound without anyone there to hear? What is time without the relative? What is movement without the relative? Nothing. It is non existent. Do we need someone else there to validate our actions?

I want to start by having a brain storm about the narrative between human beings and the (green) environment. Thinking about how humans use or interact with these spaces and about the (not necessarily man-made but man-guided?) spaces. I think that the narrative of parks is a little manipulated. With their seemingly 'green' intensions, but actually we humanise and limit their potential through physically culling the excess or unwanted products left to roam in this 'natural' environment, or the concept of borders and cutting of their ability to grow and change. This is fundamental to nature, after all, isn't change the only constant? They are natural spaces which we have planned. Limiting and exaggerating particular forms of life for our own purposes. I don’t just mean on a larger scale (such as for agricultural reasons) but on tiny levels like cutting back on certain plants we consider ugly or ones that dominate their environments, and in a knock on effect, cutting back on the life forms dependant on this vegetation. It’s funny because when a plant has a habit of dominating a certain space, when it starts to spread ‘too’ fast, when it starts to take over other plants we label as the priority, we call it a weed. But isn’t that what the human race does? Spreads. Dominates. Kills. Like a virus on the earth. A weed, spreading and taking away the potential for alternative life forms. This whole system/ structure of importance and sense of hierarchy is a very narcissistic human trait. Just because we have the physical power to step on a little defenceless leaf and kill it, does that mean we have the right to? Does that make us better or just bigger/ stronger? I think I want to make my project about this narrative. Opening up a dialogue between relative size compared to perceived importance. Without all the tiny lives and micro-ecosystems, we simply wouldn’t exist. 

I have a habit in my work of wanting my pieces to be attention demanding, and often achieve this effect through my pieces being quite fear or anxiety triggering. Using scare tactics to summon a captive audience, inspired by the captivating play 'Not I' by Samuel Beckett. However taking into account the audience for this project (members of the public -possibly without a deeper understanding of art) I want to make this piece more visually satisfying, and more typical 'pretty' then my usual work. Taking my abstract methods into a different direction. 

This idea of zooming in closer and closer to examine the tiny eco systems that the whole food chain depends on. If we can’t be anything but selfish; Don’t forget, as we’re looking down from our ivory tower, that the glow worms light our dark nights, the spiders spin our carpets and the birds sing our lullabies. 

(Metaphorically of course. Meant to say life as we know it wouldn’t be possible without smeller animals which we consider to be ‘inferior’ to us) 

Whispers and rustling noises? We have this way of humanising everything. Seeing faces on cars and thinking animals are smiling. Turn these very non-human structures into more relatable pieces to trigger empathy etc to get people think about others (non-human ‘others’). Against our selfish ‘natures’. So maybe its important to include a human side to my imagery? include a model? Could I respond to textures/ patterns created from the raw samples onto garments and rather then the human body taking ownership of the space, I could use movements and clothing to make the humans the submissive characters in this particular story/ power play.  

Looking at the micro-world as it’s own little reality. (Makes me think back to part of my thought of the day on the 16th Dec- The planets have such a long life time compared to us that all we can do is run around and watch them do nothing. Like a fruit fly who’s whole life is 5 mins, it’s born, it lives, it dies. And The whole time. You’re just sitting on your morning commute. Perfectly stationary in your seat. The fruit fly must think you are sat there so patiently, for eternity.) There are whole worlds that happen around us that we reply on to sustain our existence, yet have zero awareness of.

I need to go to the site (Waterlow Park) and collect samples. Brainstorm how to use these: Make small textural pieces out of the raw samples and respond to these textures? Make. Larger textural piece and project imagery onto it? A water bowl full of water with the stuff in (let it get gross). Grow bacteria/ fungus from the samples in petri dishes to create new blossoming life. I love this idea. I could respond to the patterns by making garments out of transparent PVC. I could then build patterns using three-dimentional textures inspired by the growths within the petri dishes.

I didn't use the sweets as a sample because I found them on the road on the way to the park and thought that this didn't represent the message I was examining. The rat was found on the road too but I thought because it was a small rodent it had really interesting connotations. It plays with scale and a sense of hierarchy. The word rat can be used as an insult, to describe someone untrustworthy or someone who is know to cause betrayal. It is not a complementary word. But from the rats point of view he's just doing the same thing as us; Living, eating, breeding and caring for his family. To the rat, what are we? Are we the horrible disgusting vermin to him? I would have loved to use the rat in my work but I quickly did some reading by the road that said it could be very dangerous just touching the dead rat, and very hazardous to grow something from it, running the risk of breeding very harmful diseases. 

• Purchase Petri dishes and agar powder.
• Put on mask (covering mouth) and plastic gloves. 
• Boil the power into a solution and pour into the dishes.
• Let the solution cool and solidify. 
• Cotton swap/ pipet samples into the Petri dishes. 
• Wait for growth :) 

The circular imagery and repetitiveness of this shape makes me think of circular thinking. We start with selfishness an ultimately conclude with it. Without a serious mental tangent we will live and ultimately die circular lives: as narcissists. As humans it is in our nature to use/ isolate/ manipulate nature for our own gain. But is this unnatural at all? Is this process our fault of is our survival instinct just too strong to the point where its overtaken logic. If Lions were left with a limited number of their pray (e.g. pigs) at their disposal they would eventually hunt the pigs to extinction. The difference here being lions lack awareness of their actions, (hence why we should be doing ‘better’ at avoiding a similar outcome on a larger scale) however this lack of awareness and heightened ignorance also gives them an advantage, such that practically, we may just go extinct before said lions due to our human sense of guilt for the murder of the pigs. Would we have predicted the extinction of the pigs and stopped eating them? How would this have effected other food chains that we then went to for dependance. Would this have an eventual impact on the core biology of our systems? The modern sheep has teeth specially evolved for the grinding down of grass. By shifting ours, are we changing the very core of our nature and even our DNA or biological make-ups? I want to play with this idea of manipulating our core structures as living organisms and see where this leads me. Art Breeder Is a good website to start doing this with, experimenting with distorting and mixing the core structures and make ups of organisms, basically making my own. (Which I guess brings me back to one of my core questions: Have we created God as a scientific goal to reach and are we there yet? In this situation I am taking the role of the ‘creator’. I guess in a way isn’t every artist? It is their nature to make something out of nothing) Could I bring this idea of the circular structures back into this outcome? Why do we have this narcissistic human NATURE of seeing everything as a tool for human benefit? (Wow. Human nature. Human nature. Human nature. How ironic?)

I want to think about this and question this narcissism. Is it narcissism at all? Maybe not. I want this work to examine this relationship between man and the natural environment of which he resides (as much as he may put up physical barriers carved/ compressed/ manipulated by the hand of man, his core materials are form the earth. From nature.) I think that this micro imagery starts an interesting dialogue between relative size and importance. Who/ what are humans to measure what is considered important? We see ourselves as Gods of the earth because we can crush millions of micro organisms with one footprint, and we do every time we move, but without them we wouldn’t be here. Without the bottom of the food chain there would be no sense of our place at the ‘top’, the ‘top’ is all relative. Maybe we should consider the most ‘important’ things, those upon who everything/ everyone is dependant.

The old fashioned filter I was just experimenting with, because I haven’t paid for the high resolution saving format of the software because it’s very expensive so the pattern wasn’t as clear as I wanted it. I figured there’s nothing I can do do how can I lean into this and make it interesting? And I happened to find an effect which softened the image and gave it this old fashioned feel. I like that idea because It kind of feels like it’s coming out of an old science documentary, showing people that we’ve just discovered this amazing new creature, look how beautiful it is, it’s patterns, it’s colour, it’s movements. I picture people in awe at this fantastically new spectacle.  

If a tree falls in the woods and there no one there to hear it does it make a sound?

It does to the other trees.

It does to the wind.

It does to the insects.

It does to the leaves.

To the mud.

To the rain.

The flowers.

The roots.

The shoots.

The morning dew.

Only you don’t hear.

You are so selfish.

We look down from our ivory tower

that the glow worms light in our dark nights,

the spiders spin our carpets and the birds sing our lullabies.

You are so selfish.

You think you are the tree don’t you?

Who are you when no ones watching?

If you eat the cookie at 2am when no one can see you, do the calories count?

Fight that selfish nature within you.

FIght that selfish nature within.

That selfish nature with.

T selfish nature wi.

Selfish nature.

Ish nature.

Nature.

Nature.

Nature.

When photographing/ videoing my bacterium I noticed that when shifting a light source behind the subject, the bold almost looked like the fog of dense dark/ light areas in a universe. I thought this was an interesting comparison/ link to have been visualised because of the narrative I have started examining scale/ size and relative importance. 

I carried on the circular imagery using a range of materials such as ping pong balls, yarn, buttons, faux pearls, perspex disks, gold leaf, push pins, paper straws, eyelets, bits and pieces from the hardware store, face cotton pads and silks on PVC/ plastic. I loved the interesting textures created, they had the exact look of the growing moving organism I have in mind. When imagining a piece I don’t have a visual, but rather a map of feelings to try and reach the right sensory outcome, and I thought these pieces were particularly successful in doing that. Particularly the pink dress, because of the way it moved so fluidly with the body. The transparent plastic on the body had quite sexual connotations, like that of latex or other restricting materials used in BDSM/ bondage. One of the main attractions of latex is passing the reigns to another. You lose personal control and are no longer responsible for the actions/ movements/ decisions that your own body do. Almost like a mental blame shift. Let me close my eyes and let you guide me. So if I trip it is your fault for not caring for me, rather then mine for shutting the world out. The PVC embraces the body in a breathless suffocating beauty. But can this turn bitter? One of my models actually had a panic attack and had to be quickly removed from the garment as she suffers from claustrophobia. This made me think of another fear/ phobia that was actually mentioned to me again in the silent crit: Trypophobia. Trypophobia is an aversion to/ fear of the sight of irregular patterns or clusters of small holes or bumps. Do we fear being overpowered, being the lesser being? Is that why we say god has a plan of each of us? Because the idea of insignificance terrifies us? Have I just fully looped back to humanities narcissism? 

Parks are a man made idealism of nature, of which we can coexist with nature upon our own terms in an ironically unnatural way. if you pretend to have an illness, for example a cold, you fake the symptoms, therefore the symptoms are not real. However if you simulate an illness you actually give yourself those symptoms. A headache or a stuffy nose. Therefore can you consider that illness real? Can you treat a simulated illness with real medicine? Should you? The lines between reality and fiction blur, because you loose your sense of relativity. If we pick and chose what samples of a natural environment suit our specific needs, the grass, the trees, but not beautiful plants that have an equal right to be within an eco system (and that would naturally reside within this simulated space) are selectively taken out of this context because they don’t suit our specific needs (e.g. poisonous plants or fast spreading weeds). Therefore is this simulated natural space real in context to nature? 

I want the video to start with peacocking, a display of prowess with the idealistic ‘perfect’ models dancing and displaying themselves. Like the humans are saying ‘oh look at me and the beauty of my exploitations. Watch me pluck the flowers from your earth to simulate upon my skin in the name of vanity.’ Then the lines between us and them can start to blur as our narcissism is overpowered by these powerful roots of all life. Respect for our building blocks and biological ancestry emerges through the very skin of our beings. Match this shift in mental tone with the tonal colour shifts from the white backdrop and pink subject matter to darker and darker imagery. I want the nature of the shots to start with chaos and hectic movement and lead down a route that takes the viewer into a sense of calm (and maybe explanation? Through poetry?). Shifting from human imagery to more a abstract fantasy/ scifi/ alien reality. I feel like this addresses our own alien way of living. It has become our very nature to behave an aliens on our own planet, harvesting it for selfish desires instead of living within the harmony of its inhabitance. Maybe ending with a shot with the imagery that most resembles the universe in the woman’s eye to give this idea of eventual coexistence and the feel of Mother Nature. Or maybe this is overkill?

I don't want to storyboard this video because I want to just see where the clips take me rather then typing to map them. I want to guide this feeling piece my piece until I reach an outcomes that makes me happy.  

Basically transitioning: Becoming less about ‘us’ and more about ‘them’. Thinking of others. Both through the consequences of our actions and understanding our dependancies on those who may seem insignificant to your everyday narcissism. 

Oh, 

Look at me

and the beauty of my exploitations. 

Watch me pluck the flowers from your earth to simulate upon my skin in the name of vanity. 

Let your natural beauty suffocate my skin so I too can feed off your nutrients. 

Tie me up so I may pass the blame through restriction. 

Crawl into the holes of my discomfort and force me outwards to your place of recognition. 

I can not climb to the top of the ladder without first stepping on the lower planks, 

And for that I am grateful. 

Thank you mother. 

Repetition of you and your to emphasise the idea of ‘us’ and ‘them’. Context to each line is in the previous workflow writings. Referring to Mother Nature. 

'Let your natural beauty suffocate my skin' -Thinking about the shift in blame/ responsibility associated with latex and restricting plastics used in sexual scenarios. 

'I can not climb to the top of the ladder without first stepping on the lower planks' - Referring to humanities place at the top of the food chain. By looking down upon those we consider ourselves above, we forget that there can only be a sense of 'high' within the realm of relativity and the existence of the 'low'. We have been provided with this life due to systems we recognise as insignificant. We have lost our sense of coexistence and any sense of reliance. Replacing these feelings with self-importance and arrogance. 

'Thank you mother' -Referring to Mother Nature rather then the biological mother. 

I reached a point in the editing process where I realised as the calm overtook the imagery I might have the visual space to add spoken word. 

(Screenshots below)

(1) The 'pretty' pink imagery reminds me of barbie, and her unobtainable 'perfection' and idealised beauty, and its destructive impacts of girls and woman mental health and body images globally. These negative connotations from a beautiful visual is the exact effect I was trying to achieve so I'm happy with this:)

(2) I zoomed into the background image to give it a glitching effect. I did this to highlight the imperfections of our modern living and the glitches within our seemingly perfect system, where we all just play the roll of a churning cog. Only recently have we gained the sight to see at the end of this mechanism there is only destruction. She is beautiful, painted pretty pink with rosy cheeks but she is flawed. The cracks from the inside show her exoskeleton of narcissism. The shot that pokes out the most from the moving foreground video, at one instance, actually has the shadow of a human figure in it. I feel like this gives me a sense of surveillance.

(3) The sense of the edge of the Petri dish almost looks like the rings around a planet, leaning into this concept of space and thinking about size as a relativity. Are you observing the micro/ macro or the inconceivably large? 

(4) Clip of the bodies meeting and pulling apart to reveal something new: coming together the birth new ideas/ new realities. This idea of birthing makes me think of Mother Nature.

I chose another of Benedikt Frey’s songs (Lucid Dream), I loved the music he made and paired with the Oscar Schlemmer piece which inspired me in my previous project. The regularity of the beat with the shifting melody hinting onto the minor key to give that slight unsettling updredictajblity, echoed the message of the unpredictability of the movements and shifting growth of life in nature.

The slight off beat choppiness to the dancing right at the start echoes this idea of the unnatural and is almost frustrating to watch. Almost as if you as slightly angry at the model for not doing as she should. Obviously this is a small representation of the larger picture. Acting for the camera, shoving yourself into that spot light in a very destructive way without thought of what the spot light might have been trying to film. 

There’s an almost smugness about the slight smile coming through on the models face, I chose to crop the boarders of this clip the home in on that idea of her dominating her space with a slight satisfaction to her overpowering actions.

 The changed the orientation of some shots to give the idea of the removal of association with the body. To say, yes we are part of this system but do we need to dominate it?

 The different levels of the cut paper straws gave this beautiful depth that I focussed in on a lot whilst filming. It made me feel like some parts were trying to over take others like trees bending around each other to reach the light. This running idea of fighting for survival. Also this reaching  out gave a sense of movement and growth. The idea of spreading.

A seemingly obvious connection between some visuals make during the last video, bringing together the sense of birthing and Mother Nature, that fear of the hole and repetition of, and and the sexual connotations of the latex. 

I could have a video of opening legs onto a circular blue screen blocking the vagina, blue screen this imagery with the original and keep zooming in and in. Feels like this fear of falling into the rabbit hole. The surrounding imagery could be that of the beautiful galactic shot and the final central imagery over the vagina could be the circular spacial spot light shot. What would this say about the power of woman? Life giving power. Is power dangerous? 

I want the viewer to be engulfed by the imagery to the point where then are confused about any sense of which layer of reality is the one they reside in. This falling into the hole, constantly, feeling will hopefully make the viewer actually loose all of their sense of scale, size and reality. I think this will be in interesting visual to create because sometimes to understand somethings importance ad gain appreciation, it has to be taken away from us. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4eQCrLV1p8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRvNFjQbnX0

I refer to the theory of relativity a lot in my work so maybe it will be nice to be able to link this project back to an existing one.Could I make pieces about communication and explore the concept of sharing time being a link between us? Doing tactile pieces where the time matches up with the sound in term of movement/ contact. Like turning the human body into an instrument? This could be seen as an alternative way of communicating, using touch to stimulate sound/ language. After all what really is talking? The air leaves my mouth and is pushed across the air at a specific wavelength and frequency that is then received by your ears and translated into something sensical. 

Time its self is a way of connecting, giving our little human lives a sense of relativity and regularity (that we crave - which is evident in our man made structures such as boarders and governing systems). Putting my mind towards time in term of sculpture; i could consider the variation of life cycles. Certain materials decay faster and have much shorter life spans then others (we can use carbon dating to work out a relative statistic for rate of decay). Contrasting materials that are interesting to think about are male and wet clay. Water is an interesting one because while is changes state, it is a constant. It is eternal and if we personify it, we could even consider it to be immortal. 

Communication- reaching spaces beyond our reality and making friends from beyond the barriers of ones mental and physical reach. A piece exploring open mindedness and the COMING TOGETHER of the physical and imaginary. The digital worldly nature is divorced from objective reality. What would happen if we combined them? What if our objective reality is naturally one crafted by a creator within a digital device? If that device is physically real, are we/ How could we break this boundary into the physical? How could we physically reach out and bring the gap between our perceived reality and ‘actual’ reality. Is there such think as ‘reality’ or do we all just exist within the creativity of others? Just taking turns playing ‘God’. God is the ultimate artist. Creating something from nothing. The original being to spark creativity. In the same way that if something within our devises gained sentient life and started coding its own world, to those residing in that world, he would be the first creative. He would be God. Due to technology our power is is growing as individuals therefore how can we claim to not be ‘Gods’. We have just as much right to that claim as we do to claim to be his creations. If our displays and creations had their own versions of reality and consciousnesses, would they praise us? Would they go on and have their own children, and would those children praise them/ Where on the scale do we land and where could this possibly end? Is it an infinity of possibility and creativity? What a beautiful idea. 

Cud I make something interactive/ performance based? I could stand behind a hand made structure pushing pieces out as a collating projected image of a hand supposedly does the work (passes between the virtual and physical worlds). This kind of feels like a natural extension from the ‘datafied’ project. Personifying the virtual self and closing the gap between that reality and our own. I could push match sticks out of a sculpture. Or use a lower down back sheet the cover myself and set the matches on fire as the video tells me to. I got get a thin sheet and , standing behind it, use ink to seep through as a hands dictates the written words with its finger. I love the mind expanding tactile way of woking. It makes me think of the quote ‘Love sees not with the eyes but with the mind and there fore is winged cupid painted blind.’. I think this is beautiful and really pulls focus towards the human desire for beauty, but not just as aesthetic beauty, but beauty from within.  

From a 4D point of view: we freeze time with photographs, capturing single moments forever frozen in time. We can rewind it and defy scientific laws of gravity etc through our video work. We create imagery which is divorced from objective reality. But what is used to create all of these effects? Light. Light is eternal. She is immortal. Could we document her as a singular structure, compressing time to see it as she does? I could do this using long exposure techniques. 

What collisions can occur when you combine this abstract world of imagination and objective reality? I know I want to have a tactile quality to this project. I want this idea of comfort an connection (spawned from this man made structure) to be evident. Could I make a video of someone reaching out 9just of their hands and form a sculpture that has high and low points and somehow interacts with the projected image? Should I use a material that has a sense of decay? The word entropy stood out to me today, as it is a measure of randomness (which I know from my time studying engineering at uni). I found the idea of randomness in this context kind of funny because not only is time its self a strict structure and has the opposite nature of something random, but its kind of funny because we cling to this constant Im our lives. However the only existing constant in the universe (as we understand it) is change. 

I love this idea f the fictitious narrative combining with the world through the image escaping the screen. I often get excited by the content of my videos but can find them t be a little to two dimensional. Our digital world is still grounded in our reality in the sense that it resides in physical metal casings, which have been mined by humans, designed and made from our actions. (Even thought they hold these little alternative realities within them) Its funny thinking about magic/ inception based ideas/ work with mirrors/ altering our reality being something encouraged, when years ago y ancestors where being killed for witchcraft for similar acts.

After brainstorming the project title space and time, I thought about this idea of something tangible/ physical being part of the abstract world. The man made reality interacting with cultural pieces, merging the boundaries between physical and imaginary. The physicality of the paper and abstract vastness of the central imagery gives a satisfying contrast and supplies context to the vast sense of depth and size. I repeated the looping video all around the screen to continue this repetition of the hole. The repetition makes me think of the vastness and endlessness of the cosmos and parallel universes and extra terrestrial life. I think this is actually a really effective visual of parallel universes. This simple image repeated, mirrored, echoes upon itself in coexistence with its clones. I think the title ‘small space’ has a good ring to it. You wants to read it as ’small spaces’. But that not what I’m referring to. The imagery of the cosmos being so small like this has an effective irony and links back to the original dialogue from the Green Spaces brief: Importance in comparison to relative size. The trypophobic imagery is strong here, however it makes me think of the human fear of the unknown too. We can’t comprehend insignificance. We hear it but we can never truly understand it, or its weight would crush us. We are afraid of deep waters and the dark, and try to give our lives meaning/ purpose through religion. I think this touches on a much deeper routed fear then just the fear of small holes. The piece towards the end also has a strong resemblance of a board game, like a chess game. It makes me think of that larger power playing with us, controlling our moves and playing around with our realities. Are we just the pawns in his big game of chess? The square boundaries give me a sense of humanities need for structure. 

Looking at the pice with fresh eyes also made me see that in the irregularity of the way the paper has been torn, it almost looks like a blooming flower. I love this connection because it makes you think of life and birth, wch relates to my next video looking at birth/ creation/ the beauty of Mother Nature. 

Combining the physical and digital :

• Start off with simple collages with blocks of blue.
• Blue staircase. 
• Use existing video that fits with the context of each piece. 
• Make beautiful pictures in collage, black, white and blue. (To buy screen imagery over the top)
• Try dripping blue paint over an image.
• Blow up  blue balloon until it pops
• Pour blue acrylic onto oil in a white dish
• Stitch up fabric over blue material. (Have it already stitched just pull the stitches together. 
• Make page with blue on inside and image surrounding a zip. Try zipping up and down.
• consider the idea of touch and tactility to really bring forward the physicality pf each one before it is digitally edited. 

A dog brings you his favourite ball, eyes full of hope. He wags his tail longingly willing you to take it and play with him. But when you reach out your hand he runs away and hides his precious ball. He wishes you would share it with him, without him having to pass its ownership. Do we do this with each other? We laugh and cry and wildly throw our selves towards another, displaying our love and affections to be shared and played with. We run up to them, tail wagging, heart on display, but letting go of that grasp, passing the control and trusting someone with your favourite ball, that is very scary. 

I saw the words ‘Man is not a bird’ written on a wall on my way home and it stuck in my mind so wrote this poem in response before bed:

Man is not a bird. 

Never existing ahead of the hour,

eyes stronger then their light. 

Our predictions as cloudy as your prescriptions. 

I too am hungry but have grown too weak to hunt my own prey. 

I may never see it’s footprints. 

Or anything mildly humanoid. 

I use my wings to block out the light. 

My corneas too weak for this red-ish hue. 

Man is not a bird  

He may not guide this ocean, 

coexist with it nor enjoy its beauty.  

His feathers merely drown in the weight of his naivety. 

Man is not a bird. 

For she will never be free.

The way the size of the verses deteriorates as they go on is echoed in their content. The repetition of the first line ‘man is not a bird’ with the varying pronouns (‘I’, ‘he’, ‘she’) shows the inclusivity of ‘man’, not just male but the human race as a whole. When writing the first verse I was thinking about the powerful eyesight of an eagle. The way their evolution has allowed them to remove themselves from the situation, flying high above the ground and yet finding the smallest movements of a mouse to swoop down and capture. I referred to ‘light’ because I see this removal as a positive thing in context to the survival of the whole eco system, unlike other animals (humans), but also referred to ‘light’ as an alternative way of describing sight. What is seeing? It is just processing information in the forms of visible lights waves within the electromagnetic spectrum. And yet this one function sculpts and guides the way we and so many other species have learnt to live. The second paragraph refers to the air we breathe as the an 'ocean'. Im just switching around the fluids that we exist in with the fishes'. The crabs walk along the water's bottom like we do the air's, and the birds are the fish of the air. 

So I guess this poem lead me to think about the way we as humans communicate. Art is often seen as a visual tool of communication but what about the other senses? How would a blind person feel about your art? Would they get the same feelings, the same emotional interaction with the artist as any other viewer? Maybe from the sound, but what about tactile qualities or a smell filling the room of an installed piece.  

So I started looking for devices that transformed one communicative method into another, for example sound into imagery, imagery into sound and touch into sound. I found an amazing device called 'play tronica midi touch me' that basically humans the human body (as a conductor) into an instrument that you can play with your hand.

The device I found made me think of the audio possibilities when considering pieces like William Cobbing’s ‘The Kiss 2’. Within the way the two subjects paw at each other in this simple anonymity, there’s this desperation for connectivity. They are connected yet physically blocked by this morphing structure. With this device or could transfer these movements into into sound waves to audibly represent connection. What other sounds could I produce? The sound of a hug (between old friends, between family?), what about the sound of sex. Take away the humanity and individuality of the situation , what does a physical connection’s electrical impulses directly sound like? The device should be arriving in time for my Part 3 work so I look forward to including it in that. 

Using these tactile hands on approaches I made a range of pieces which explored the coming together of the abstract and physical worlds. For me, I found that each piece almost felt like a mini part of myself. Your life is made up of actions, memories and decisions. These are the things are carve the person you become. I feel like each mini study I have made shows a physical action, something actually existing within this realm, and then you have the person behind the scenes. That little voice in your head thinking away, having emotions and feelings that work in tandem with your physical being. There is your actual casing, your forms, performing actions and there is the sbstract idea of the ‘sole’ and of the individuality of the ‘self’. For this reason I thought using footage I made for a project examining the ‘self’ (in my extension project) would be appropriate and I think the results are really effective. I also like how this footage uses models which are a range of genders, expressing the concept that the mind is genderless and free. On a very literal level, the voice in your head doesn’t have hormones or genitals. It is just the purest form of YOU. I thought that expanding upon this, it would be interesting to put all of these images together. To me this would feel representative of a person’s life. Witnessing themselves doing a range of actions, with a different mental state within them each time.

What would happen if I took away the familiarity and blue screened three dimensional imagery onto a two directional abstract version of the world, e.g. a painting? What would happen to the contradicting planes or the imagery? Would this non-spacial directionality mess with the mind of the viewer in an interesting way? I am going t paint two paintings; a simple nude study and a simple room study and what effects this has: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NbboBNIC90

She lives in this dark work and imagines the light. But her sinister undertones and lust still creep in. Imagery gets more sinister and ambiguous as it goes on. Leading away from the tea and towards this idea of the wet woman. Sexualising her fantasy world. I used water instead of tea to imitate when children have little make believe tea parties. Children around the age of 11 are said to be the best poetic writers, because they understand language but haven’t understood it for long enough to be encumbered by its rules and regulations. Without knowing it they push boundaries and twist direct meaning into this beautiful world of imagination where reality and the world of make believe twist into one singular ‘childish’ thought. I maintained flashes of black screens at the start and end to give this idea of absence. Absence from reality. Absence from the ‘self’. The end sounds like a clock ticking faster. Time speeds up and elongates as you come out of the compressed dream world. Also the eye movements mimic rem sleep cycle movements, where the mind roams freely.  

She has lost herself in her fantasy. She understands it’s fictional reality but holds on so tightly to its comforting lies. Perfect vision does not mean our mind’s eye sees clearly. We chop and change the visual world and our bias minds write their own narrative. The scary part is, the little person in your head will have an individual reaction to those around you whilst triggered by the same stimuli. Everyone seeks uniqueness in our little world of constant broadcast. There’s no need to try. You can’t help but be beautifully unique. Which makes our ability to coexist even more beautiful. 

Contextual Review:

In my work I explore the human mind and the perceived reality it resides in. I considerits influences and how I can raise awareness of negative and destructive impacts, such as extremism and consumerism. During my Diagnostic course my work gained direction and intention through a range of experimental processes. This hands-on approach affords human error and imperfection, in which lies beauty and potential for unique outcomes.

The concept of examining the ‘self’ is pretty much what I see as the epitome of Fine Art. An expression of one’s self, either intentionally or unintentionally, projected onto a physical platform. Subconsciously (1) ‘hold[ing] up a mirror’ to our souls. I thought that the 4D course would be the perfect platform for me to be able to encompass the use of any chosen media. It’s this freedom that draws me to this course, which I found was reiterated in the making style of the self-guided Extension Project week. This particular style was inspired by Samuel Beckett’s video “Not I” (2).When focussing in on the inflections of the words I found that the variation in pace and volume made myself the viewer feel very uneasy and almost anxious. I admired that the video was able to provoke such a strong emotional response from me. I also interestingly discovered that this chaos can actually trigger a calmness in some, (3) (such as Jess Thom who suffers from touretts) which I thought held such beauty. This emotional interaction between the artist and viewer is, in my eyes, the epitome of art. The artist choreographing a delayed dance in the mind of the viewer. As research, I read Bacon and the Mind: Art, Neuroscience and psychology. Bacon’s works always visually coming back to his fascination and even enjoyment of vulnerability and pain. As Bacon himself put it; the ‘greatest art… always returns you to the vulnerability of the human situation’ (4). I find this quite thought-provoking. I always find my work attempting to examine the cracks in situations, the cracks in society and within individuals, rather than looking directly at them as a whole. I find that sometimes looking at the wider picture can often miss the interesting details and beautiful imperfections. I feel so inspired by Bacon’s ability to paint what he feels rather than what he sees, distorting the forms into his own realty. I love how Bacon explores the ‘non-spatial directionality the spaces of the mind have’ (5). As Freud examined, the release of the subconscious can be explored in the unconscious mind (6). Further, Science Daily revealed an experiment exploring how (7) ‘the creative brain is wired’ and (8) ‘how our brains form creative ideas’ They discovered the area of the brain with increased function is associated with background activity, similar to daydreaming. Beautifully, we have creativity tucked away in the back of our minds while urgent tasks dominate, which roam free as we enter personal quietness. My biggest inspiration is accepting perceivable reality for its beauty and questioning the unperceivable. Iris Van Herpens’ scientific garments ‘blend[ing] the past and the future’ through technology inspire me as I aim to take the science of humanity to examine our physical reality against the simulated repetition we are all trapped in. Thinking about our reality as a construct to play with, and even considering ourselves as artists responsible for the simulation of a new abstract reality, within which the (9) ‘simulat[ed] are ignorant’ to their birth and creator. 

I think that experimentation and accidents caused by a repetitive making process have a huge role in finding unique personal outcomes, ‘You have to gamble with your current success to take the work to the next level’(4).For this reason I found myself swaying towards one of the Fine Art courses, for their processes of experimentation and exploration in such a free flowing manner across a huge range of methodologies. On this day I created a series of pieces exploring with the title ‘Removal’. Thinking about removal by a process of destruction, and removal by a process of addition, I created what I consider very successful outcomes. As I was using faces to start with as my subject matter, I found this posed questions in my head about self-destruction and self-identity. When moving onto the removal of words I thought about the removal of information to achieve beauty, and what these pieces could say about the vanity of modern society.

Bibliography:

(1) Somerset House, 2020. 24/7 | Somerset House. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.somersethouse.org.uk/whats-on/247

(2): Beckett, S. (1973). YouTube. [online] Youtube.com. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4LDwfKxr-M [Accessed 27 Oct. 2019].

(3) YouTube. (2020). Samuel Beckett’s ‘Not I’ performed by an actor with Tourette’s syndrome. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA5qSK2etQE

(4) The Independent. (n.d.). notes on FRANCIS BACON. [online] Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/notes-on-francis-bacon-1328657.html [Accessed 27 Oct. 2019].

(5): Bucklow, C., Jaron, S., Leader, D., Onians, J., Zeki, S. and Ishizu, T. (2019). Bacon and the mind. London: The Estate of Francis Bacon Publishing in association with Thames & Hudson, p.27.

(6) Verywell Mind. (2020). What Is the Unconscious (and Why Is It Like an Iceberg)?. [online] Available at: https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-unconscious-2796004 [Accessed 13 nov. 2019].

(7) ScienceDaily. (2018). The creative brain is wired differently. [online] Available at: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180117163954.htm.

(8) ScienceDaily. (2015). How does our brain form creative and original ideas? [online] Available at: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/11/151119104105.htm

(9) Jean, B. (1981) Simulacra and Simulation. P.3 

(10) Bucklow, C., Jaron, S., Leader, D., Onians, J., Zeki, S. and Ishizu, T. (2019). Bacon and the mind. London: The Estate of Francis Bacon Publishing in association with Thames & Hudson, p.65.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LSRtbzCiaw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPAuJtqvs-o

These have sparked some really interesting ideas I'm going to have to explore in part 3's self directed work because I just don't have the time right now. 

I want to paint room studies with solid green mirrors juxtaposing projections from the real world onto a mind's version of it. This could progress to me painting rooms and cutting out the mirror and project image through the gap so the light shines through onto the canvas. Reversing reality’s physical planes and making the viewers part of instillation (reality creeping through and being projected through the fabric of the painting) 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YYT5CV5xrk

These sections of video that have been chopped, slowed down and zoomed into, I think is quite an accurate way of editing the clips to show a true version of how we see things within our minds. We focus in on details and replay sections in our heads to guide the narrative to where our bias minds take us. That idea of the bias mind brings me right back to one of my first ever projects where I examined the roots of our decision making, and the beautiful delayed dance the artist is choreographing in the mind in the viewer. When we see or hear something the little person in our head will have a completely individual reaction to those within the people around us, triggered by the same stimuli. We all try in a world of constant broadcast to be different. There’s no need to try, you can’t help but be beautifully unique. Which makes our ability to share and coexist even more beautiful.

How could I consider the communication between the abstract and physical selves? Could I project an image that interacts with the world in a real way in real time? This will definitely need to be explored.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrIzwZwZXPs

I draped soft fabrics over the model to accentuate this soft idilic fantasy woman’s grace past the boundaries of her skin. The imagery began setting the scene with the tea pot in plain sight to relate to the broader image and became more and more focussed in on the sultry details, ending in the ‘rem cycle’ eye movements, which represent the end of the dream/ fantasy. This idea of the beautiful imagination is mimicked with the editing into a purple hugh. This is the colour that I personally associate with creativity, imagination, fantasy and dreaming. 

I love the dark absence of the 2nd video but it lacks connections between the two sets of imagery because you can still see the outline of the ‘brain footage’ so I don’t consider this outcome as successful.