Entering the Rothko room at the Tate Modern after creating my series of images was a very surreal experience. I had become too attached to the images that I was working with and creating that these copies became the most important object to me. The way that the images had been constructed ,completely void of any visual information other than the painting, meant that I when I encountered the paintings physically I almost felt that I'd entered into an online world. I took a moment before actually entering the room to peer in from the outside. Looking into the room felt as if I was staring into a physical version of my own phone, or something to that level of surrealism. The vast scale that these paintings are presented made the work that I'd been creating, and their existence on an iPhone feel so small and delicate.
Entering the room, the figures that I'd cut out of the paintings had reappeared. I could see them in the flesh with their cameras taking versions of the images that I had been utilising. The only thing I could do at this point was to take out my own camera and try to record these figures using their own cameras. In a moments notice I had completely disregarded the paintings and completely focused on the people in this space. The experience felt wholly paradoxical, I wasn't expecting to haves such a strange experience reentering that room but I guess that the transcendental presence of the Rothko paintings created a reverent atmosphere.
The images that I tried to take in the room were truly awful, the poor light quality combined with a desired to not bring to much attention to myself meant that the images were really blurred or blocked by a parts of my body. Standing there with my own camera in that room also began to feel very strange, I had become one of the hoard and it felt a little miserable. There was a strong desire to be in the room alone so that I could experience the mediative essence of the images with out the distraction of the 'selfie society', but it was no use. Looking back at the process, having memories of this space, visiting the Tate through out my life, then to start gathering other peoples images quite invasively, destructively tearing out everything other than the paintings in the image (Something that required me to be zoomed in to the image and see this work at a level where pixels became visible) and finally reentering the room with the experience of this journey all challenged my perception of what these paintings and images are. Online is is so easy to disregard these paintings, its so easy to copy, paste and appropriate the work. But you loose the presence that these paintings have, and it is something that can never been replicated through the screen.