COMPLETED WORK - Animation

The completed product for the animation component of my B.O.W differed greatly to the stated intention in the original proposal. This is largely due to time constraints. My original idea would have required the manipulation of each individual image in photoshop, which unfortunately I just wouldn't have had time for. My alternate idea was inspired by the growing significance and meaning of a 'profile picture'. The animation essentially forms a parody, inspired by a couple of girls that feature in my news feed quite regularly with a new 'dolled up' picture of themselves taken on their laptops using photobooth. While I am quite happy with the overall concept, I'm not entirely satisfied as to how it works as an animation, however do not have sufficient time to rework the idea.

WEEK 10 - Innovation in Presentation

The link to 'Roaming Sweets' by Anita Bacic & Natalie Woodlock, provided as inspiration for the development of our animation, was connected to a traveling exhibition called Portable Worlds 2nd Edition 2010, presented by Country Arts SA in partnership with The Australian Network for Art and Technology.

All works within the exhibition 'utilised mobile phones for both display and creation, exploring connection and intimacy, portability and community, scale and distance' (http://portableworlds.anat.org.au/). The mobile phone enables a vast proportion of human interactions as is an integral component of everyday life. In addition to this, the mobile phone is increasingly changing the landscape of digital art and how it is viewed. A mobile phone now has the necessary functions for creating and viewing digital artworks.

The mobile phone, as a means of presentation to an audience, negotiates any issues associated with getting the general public to physically attend galleries, especially small privately own galleries. This essentially enables any digitally produced artwork to be highly accessible to an audience of considerable breadth, with no constrained time period.

The mobile phone additionally holds a connection with the user, with individuals constantly interaction with the device it's almost like a relationship forms. This is an interesting environment for artists to consider when presenting their work.

Bellow is an image off the ANAP website that reveals the sense of intimacy when viewing artwork from a mobile phone:

COMPLETED WORK - Digital Painting

The digital painting component of my B.O.W was created using the program 'Corel Painter'. As I had not used this program before, I was unaware of it's capabilities when writing my proposal, and as such the work I produced took on a different direction than that articulated within my original proposal. My digital self-portraiture painting was inspired by Patt Brassington's work 'The Secret', adopting a similar framing within the work to generate an intensity within the composition. I incorporated a sense of ambiguity through the placement of a plus symbol taped over my self-portraits mouth. The result is a disquitening reference to integrity, as the overall theme of my work, questioning the contrasts of editing or addition of expression between online and offline selves. The selected colour palette additionally alludes to illness, through the use of sickly green tones, an inference to the potential sickness of self when a disparity exists between expression in reality and expression online.

Brassington's 'The Secret' 2010, Pigment print, 80 x 62cm, http://www.stillsgallery.com.au/artists/brassington/index.php?obj_id=folio&image=3&nav=1

Digital Self Portrait

COMPLETED WORK - Video

Through the use of the program 'ScreenFlow' I was able to capture my screen interaction and myself in one shot. The result was a kind of dual self portrait, simultaneously revealing my online and offline selves. The projection of a video game style environment was enabled through the choice of music, which interacted with the video footage to create an almost carnivalesque surreal feel. The footage will have resonance with an audience who similarly engage with online sites, an almost disquietning glimp of how the online realm may well be homogenizing society at large. Through the blatant capturing of my highly personal interactions with online sites, the footage aims to awaken a realisation within the audience of just how public our personal identities have become.

COMPLETED WORK - Collage

Keeping the fundamental genre of portraiture, in the collage component I wanted to reveal the often sleak and glossy presence associated with digitalisation and online identity. I was inspired by the luminous images associated with advertising, including the image featured bellow:

The final product is an image of self, overrun by digitalisation:

CATFISH

Catfish - a documentary or mocumentary?! - one cannot be sure even after watching this intriguing film, a true product of the current obsessive online social media climate. The film documents the sheer lack of integrity (the key theme for my B.O.W) in the labyrinth that is the online world. Filmmakers Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost capture the relationship that forms between Nev, a 24 year old photographer in New York, and a family from rural Michigan that connect initially through Facebook. When Nev determines to meet the family in person he is confronted by the startling disparity between the online projection of the family and the offline reality. The key message from the film is not in fact whether the film is a set up or not, but rather that the scenario is unquestionably possible in an online realm where identity is invariably malleable.

The film was provoking in light of my current efforts in working towards a body of work that is concurrent with the themes and issues connected with social media and identity as expressed within the film.

WEEK 5 - Video Artist

Spanish artist Greta Alfaro's work conveys a similar agenda to the intended theme for my B.O.W. Alfaro comments 'My work addresses the lifestyles of contemporary Western society and its relationship to the image, highlighting the difference between what we want to be, what we say we are and what we are actually among the public face of life and life in the the private domain. Similarly, it explores the reasons for the existence of this inconsistency, which is related to how we construct our identity through the production and consumption of images' (Alfaro, G http://www.videoartworld.com/beta/artist_1923.html)

Link to Alfaro's blog: http://gretalfaro.blogspot.com/
Link to video art: http://gretalfaro.blogspot.com/search/label/2009%20-%20In%20Ictu%20Oculi.%20%20Video