I started playing around with what the visual proposal could look like - and the results... I don't mind them but I don't like them completely, I'm not that happy with them, but I'm not also not Not happy with them.. I think if I'm sticking to something similar I might need to shift a few images around - especially in that big white cube space, like rearranging a collage, which I am, which is what I want my show to be like, a giant collage...
I first was learning how to use the vanishing point tool on photoshop - which takes some getting used to but has a great range in image manipulation (definitely going to make some digital collages this way. excited to stretch images to their limits in perspective) and I created this first 'room' with images completely filling the wall. the ceiling and floor image is from 'real' nature, real images I took of the sky and trees/grass-like visual. I wanted to create an environment where you question what real nature was, sort of disorientating the viewer, as the taxidermy images, though extremely real like sugimoto's black and white photographs, are obviously not nature that is 'alive' or 'real'. but they might as well be. and I liked the contrast with the black and white and my paintings and collage, though my drawings have a danger of being drowned out. I do have the danger of not having enough work to fill an entire room, but the amount of photographs I have is endless and I can certainly have them displayed as part of this 'live' collage.... I remember tom/zoe saying I either isolate one thing e.g. painting or photograph or present them all at once and I guess here I am really presenting a lot of things at once. and I really like that notion because it speaks to the quote I used in my mcp, about news being received all at once or, in the natural history museum information being received all at once. the artificial plant - taken from the ikea website - was just me playing around with the possibility of using artificial plants in a confined space... I imagine this space to not be that big, almost claustrophobic. perhaps I could use the nature sounds I wanted to put in the other room (with the video of my drawing) here too? I don't even know if I'm using this room or the other room. I'll talk about the other bigger room now.
concept 1
This second concept is more in line with what I imagined from the suggestions given by tom and zoe. things overlapping, none of them more important than the others in my eyes. I really still wanted to play with the surfaces of the ceiling and floor. I also had the more complicated idea (after being inspired by mark dion's installations with the cabinet of curiosities which is super relevant to the things I'm working around) of having the type of desk that I have at home, which was already here in the flat when we rented it, a sort of antique-looking desk with drawers. I wanted to give this narrative of me stumbling upon this planet and making these 'documentations' of this confusing beautiful horrific place, and I wanted it to look like it came from a personal space, I was planning on having the drawings perhaps scattered around on the desk accompanied by texts alongside them,, again, without the drawings, the walls would be quite bare but I have a lot of photographs I would love to show too, which I hope wouldn't take away from the experience. I found it quite difficult to photoshop this desk in perspective (I also tried with a chair below) and I can't picture it in my mind and whether or not this will take away from the experience in the space.... so I'm not sure about this either... but I do like the idea that it is a larger space and you can still see the white walls, sort of like these documentations are plastered over these walls (which is an image taken from the white cube I think, but by no means I am proposing to show there, I think my work has a lot of flexibility in how it looks adapting to the space given as it is a fluid live college alive and breathing.
concept 2 (without desk or chair)
concept 2 with desk
concept 2 with desk and chair
as for the final concept (for now), I think I am certain that I am keeping this room below - I got heavily inspired by the lumen prize winner work 'melting memories' (which I linked in that blog post about the prize) I found it to feel extremely immersive and I want my drawings to be viewed in this immersive way - when dan suggested perhaps I could use the zooming in and out videos of my drawings (cause I said that's how I posted them on instagram, because you cant see some of the details clearly as an image from far away) and I thought that was a neat idea, sort of like traveling through the landscape of this imagined or subconscious landscape. I also thought this is the perfect place to play through the strange nature sounds on the golden record on nasa's voyager - I'm going to experiment with overlaying this audio to see how it combines with my drawings but I think it would work well. with a semi dark space, illuminated by the moving image of the drawing, I think this room could be quiyte eerie and provoke the viewer to build their own narratives...
concept 3 - moving video of drawing
below are just some images throughout the process, inspiration (the chair from the shining), screenshots (when I laid down images and I liked the combination - inspiring me to create more diverse digital collages in the future) and some different angles of this antique desk, also bill viola + joan jonas approaches with projection (for viola, I saw his work 'the sleep of reason' which was amazing in person, so simple but effective)
