What this is about
In this unit, I will be making some self portraits in a rather different way. Most self portraits are drawn by hand, size for size. Whereas these self portraits will be made with the element of chance. I have decided to call this unit self size. This is because in other idea. It involved taking measurements of body parts. Everything came out with fairly unique measurements. So the 'size' represents the uniqueness of it all and 'self' represents what I'm trying to make.
String game
We started by looking at Marcel Duchamp. Who is an American artist and sculptor.
Duchamp's 'New Metre'
On the left is Marcel Duchamp's metre ruler. The way he made this metre is what I will be doing in this task. Duchamp had 3 pieces of strong all to the length of 1 metre and he dropped all 3 of them over a separate piece of black paper. He then created a curved ruler our of wood. The curve in the wood was determined by the path created by where the string falls.
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Marcel Duchamp's 'Network Of Stoppages'
We started off Ms Gibsons lesson by looking at this piece of work by Marcel Duchamp. We were asked to think of a couple of questions about it. I came up with questions like Is this a map?, Directions?, Why start is the corner?, Did you look at a map when you made this?. I was also asked to think about words to describe and represent this art work. I thought of words like Abstract, contrast, paths, composition, figurative form, Lines/borders, layers. After that, Ms revealed to us that this piece of art work was associated with the 'readymade' idea of art. Duchamp had some metres lines he made but didn't really have anything to do with them. Then he found an old painting that he never finished. Then he dropped the strings from the same corner and where they landed, they were imbedded into the piece of art. So in this lesson, me and Emma will collaborate with each other to make out own version of 'Network of stoppages'.
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How they are made
Measure certain parts of your body. Me and Emma decided to measure our arm, leg, foot and wrist.
My measurements were: Leg: 93cm, Arm: 75cm, Foot: 29cm, Wrist: 19cm. Emma's were Leg: 93cm, Arm 73cm, Foot: 26cm Wrist: 16. Emma also measure her waist, it was 77cm. After we have the measurements, we were to cut out sections of string to those measurements.
My measurements were: Leg: 93cm, Arm: 75cm, Foot: 29cm, Wrist: 19cm. Emma's were Leg: 93cm, Arm 73cm, Foot: 26cm Wrist: 16. Emma also measure her waist, it was 77cm. After we have the measurements, we were to cut out sections of string to those measurements.
Applying them
After we had all the measurements. We had to drop the string onto the black card. We had to drop them from the height of that specific string. So The string that is Emma's leg, we would drop the string from 93cm high etc.
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The strings are then dropped. The height they are dropped from is determined by how long the string is. So if we have a string that is 2ft long, it would be dropped from 2ft high. If we had a piece of string that was 12cm long, it would be dropped from 12cm high.
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Emma decided to draw around the string on her ones.
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Edited
After we made these 'Self portraits'. Ms Gibson asked me to photograph and edit them. Ms thought of the trying to add a motion blur. Ms did this my moving the camera very quickly over the portraits. Then I darkened some of them, they sought of look like photograms especially the 3rd one.
Are these photos linked to what I'm doing?
This photo/art installation is displaying than anything can be art. When looking at this. It reminds me of a video about John Baldessari where he said something "It's art if the artists calls it art". This photo seems to be focusing on capturing a certain section of the toilet. When looking at the focus, it appears to be focusing on the lower part of the image. So the photographer might want to draw our attention to the lower section, so the base of the toilet, the screws, maybe the floor. Maybe the photographer is focusing the shadows so the lightning. The photographer might want to capture how the left side is completely illuminated and the right side is shaded. It also appears to be with natural lighting as well. The lighting appears to be natural because the hot appears to be taken on a street, it doesn't look like a studio setting.
This photo is defiantly abstract which links to photos that are surreal. It is hard to tell what we are looking at here. The foreground appears fairly obvious. It looks like bubbles, defiantly water. Whereas the background it very abstract. The background appears to be soft, hard to see which makes it tough for the viewer to understand what it is. The background appears to something like pebbles. Maybe it is something that isn't flat.
These 2 photos seem to be representing a contrast in lifestyle. The top image appears to show someone or a group of people who appear to live a nice, normal lifestyle. Whereas the bottom image appears to represent to someone who lives a delicate, troubled, rushed lifestyle because the best doesn't look made, the dress looks like it was quickly thrown over the 2 beds. However with the top image. The quiz doesn't appear perfect.
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This photo appears to look rather similar to the photograms that I made. The reason why I believe this is because in the middle of the image, there appears to be a ball of dust, which looks like it came from a hoover. I'm not sure what the black objects around the image appears to be. They make the image more abstract than it is. Which is what a photogram is like. They tend to be abstract.
This photos appears to represent someone who doesn't live a great lifestyle. When looking at the bed. It feels like the person who lives here is someone who left in a rush, or maybe it is someone who finds it hard to make a bed.
I think that this photo which was taken by Man Ray is defiantly linked to what I have been doing recently. The first reason why I believe this is because of the lines that are in this image. It creates an illusion of where the photographer is standing. When looking at this image it makes me think is Man Ray up high, looking down on a desert, or is this more of a close up/macro photo of table or card. We have been doing something similar to this with the photograms and string to make self portraits. We were creating a sought of abstract illusion that would make the viewer ask questions like "what are we looking at?". When you look at a certain part of the picture, the left section and the bottom part appear to show it as a macro/close up photo. Whereas the the rest of the photo so the middle and the top right, makes the image look like more like a wide establishing shot.
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Photograms
After making the string self portraits. We decided to do a new version of self portraits this time with photograms. This time the aspect of 'self' in them would be hair and hoover dust. We were asked to bring in our own hair off a brush or a comb and dust from a hoover. The first 3 photos involved me putting the hair and dust into the negative holder. The next 2 involved dropping hair and dust onto the photogram. This was the first element of chance in this idea, because it would be down to chance to where the objects landed on the photogram, whether it was top, bottom, left, right or centre.
This is my 2nd set of photograms. These ones were executed rather differently. With this one I put some dust, a bit of hair and an unfolded paper clip in the negative holder. I enlarged the objects to the largest setting. Then I dropped a 6 by 4 photographic paper into the enlarged area. The element of chance is what area of the enlargement is exposed onto the paper.