Title
Give your project a working title
Image on The Screen
Overview:
What is your area of interest? What are you intending to do. What are you trying to communicate/ how are you intending to engage with your audience?
The core context of this final unit will be bases upon the transitions of the photographic image into digital digestible content that exists online and how this is redefining what we see and what we experience. I am particularly interested in the changes the habits of the fine art photographer and how new technologies are being embraced and utilised in a world that has a constant fascination with looking at itself.
The death and resurrection of the photograph seems to have become a bi-annually occurrence. There is no doubt that a transition into a digital world has left the medium very confused. I aim to work amidst this confusion, embracing and utilising sources of images and technologies that are available and assessable to anyone. The work will challenge the parameters of photography in a traditional sense but I will try to avoid a head on confrontation with questioning the purposes of photography. There may be subtle conations of this but I intend to embrace what Stephan Mayes describes as a transition into photography’s adolecense. “The moment of photography’s “puberty” was around the time when the technology moved from analog to digital although it wasn’t until the arrival of the Internet-enabled smartphone that we really noticed a different behaviour. That’s when adolescence truly set in.”
I want to use the photographic image to question how we see, experience and respond to a world saturated with imagery. This has the potential to take on many forms. I will use work from Reflect and Research as a base to work upon. There were many themes and initial project ideas that I had started in the last unit that I simply didn't have enough time to continue with. I am sure that this will also lead to new projects along the way and I will have to come to decisions of which paths develop into a realised project.
How I am going to do this:
What is your project plan? How will you take responsibility for managing the project? What is your Working Methodology? Organisational requirement for the project (e.g. access to locations / travel)?
I think these ideas are currently a little convoluted and a bit vague but I can afford a certain amount of ambiguity at this stage coming into a project that will last me 5 months. The most important part in the initial stages is to use my research to embed thoroughly thought out ideas into the context of my practice. This will hopefully lead to ideas being generated elevating my work into the professional standard that is required for this unit.
Research is key but not as vital as the work its self. Therefore I plan to work my experimentation into my research helping my to realise my ideas having both support each other in an attempt to create a strong, contextualised, body of work. I have got into the habit of using a blog as a my reflective journal. I feel that this suits my needs and I plan to do the same in this final project. Working with a lot of digital imagery and potential for moving image means that I need a platform that supports this. It also allows me to work in a proficient manner, not having to spend to much time creating a physical sketchbook. I am aware that blogs can become very image heavy and I was certain to make sure this was not the case in my last unit and feel now confident with how I am balancing image and text.
There is no definitive path for me at this initial stage and have purposefully chosen not to pick a distinct project to engage with from the beginning of the project. I feel that I was working with the start of some really interesting themes and projects in my last unit and it was unfortunate not to have to time to develop this work. The criteria for this unit expresses a body of work for submission and I am interrupting this as something that can be formulated from more that one project that falls under the umbrella of wider themes set into my practice. I hope that this will allow me to play to my creative strengths and broaden the possibilities of what I can achieve. The time scale of this unit allows me a certain amount of creative freedom but I am also conscious that this time is going to go incredibly quick so work needs to start straight away.
What processes I will use:
What facilities and technical equipment do you need? What processes do you need to learn/develop? What craft skills will you focus on?
I feel very competent with the manner in which I work and the process that I take whilst creating the work its self. A big part of my practice is utilising various image sources in order to create, manipulate and interpret work. Digital manipulation, selecting and sourcing found imagery will all be fundamental to my practice.
In terms of technical skill, I feel that this will be concentrated around presentation of my work. Developing skills required to present my work will come from a variety of places. Taking ideas from exhibitions will be key and I must make sure I am visiting relevant, informed exhibitions that suit the themes of my work. Also being ambitious in making my work stand out will require a element of creativity but also the knowledge of how to create installations for example.
It is crucial for me to be adaptable and being able to respond to short term and long term problems that I may face. Critical awareness of my practice in a wider context should also be taken into account. I am not just showing my work off in a degree show, but presenting my work to a professional artistic world.
Inspirations:
What is the wider context for your practice? What artists will you research? What are the key themes you will research? What galleries / exhibitions / key texts will support my work?
The key context for this project is how the photographic image has changed from a object full of truth to a ephemeral flicker on a screen surrounded by a atmosphere of delusion. The internet and digital technologies have been instrumental in this development and it is through them that I will start to unpack how we become creativity in a world split between online and offline contexts.
Fortunately this seems to be a contentious issue currently facing the world of art and design and there is no shortage of great contextual sources to research. I have been inspired by the work of James Bridle and Trevor Pageln in how they are confronting the new boundaries that have been set. Neither of the two are photographers in a traditional sense rather artists and writers who are working with photographic image.
There are two major exhibitions in London; ‘Big Bang Data’ and ‘Electronic Superhighway’ that sit perfectly within some of the themes I am hoping to address. I will make sure that these are on the top of my priorities to go and see. Also I am planning to revisit the “Right Here, Right Now’ exhibition at the Lowry to learn form how this work is being exhibited.
Walter Benjamin’s ‘Mechanical Reproduction’ essay still seems to have so much importance coming in our contemporary age, I feel that its important to return to this text and find other pre internet, pre digital influences that give indication to changes in a creative world. This combination between contemporary and modernist influence will help me ground my work a lot easier, but I should try to be aware of and conversations that might begin to appear from collecting inspiration from such diverse eras and sources.
What I aim to produce:.
Is the intended output photographic? (e.g. an artists’ book? Writing? A time-based piece of work?).
Production was one element that I felt needed to become more realised in my last unit. It was very well creating these ideas and making some of the imagery but to then just present this through a couple of low quality jpegs on my blog detracted from what I had been intending to achieve. I feel that it is important to place this work into a public context, that may be as simple as printing the work and exhibiting it on a wall, or develop into dedicated website that act as online galleries to support the work.
I have no doubt that my work will span a variety of medium and manifest in photographic, textual and screen based art. It will be important to present this as a portfolio and is up to me to experiment and to develop ideas that are not necessarily a typical black boxed portfolio.