Tuesday 29 October 2013

Development : Projections on the human body (Warning nudity)



After showing my progress and discussing my project with my tutor their was an idea I had to try and do projections of tree's and natural textures on the human figure. As a way of taking the human form and the collected photography into a higher progression of combining the two themes. Other ideas were of to paint my body and make it part of the landscape but projection's seemed to be medium that would portray these themes just as well. That doing this would also back up my research and theory in previous posts about the human condition and why we try to bring our humanity into the natural world. As well as the visually imagery that has been portrayed so far for this project.


I've also had my open tutorial with Graham Fagen who was also one of the artist's included in the McManus exhibit I saw. We had a really positive talk and it made me feel a lot better about my project and we discussed the theme of  'place' a lot. Since my project was about a place I felt safe in and most of the project was taking shape in a natural environment. He suggested the importance of place and trying other places to document and explore my project. Of places that feel safe to be in for me such as the forest but maybe even places that make me feel uncomfortable. That's why I wanted to do some work in a studio setting as well which is a urban environment instead of the forests. Even the progress of my project has been contrasting with humans and nature as well as urban and rural environments. Graham made this idea more clearer to me and for me to think about which I appreciated and will explore this a bit further.


I had never worked much with projectors before even for displaying my work so it was a learning process to use one in this project as well. I had the help of my two classmates Aimee Stewart and Sarah Smart which I appreciated greatly. We had a couple of issues with the projector as in the colour was pink for a while but we managed to make the settings go back to normal again.


We tried lots of different compositions and body positions to get different effects and visuals since this was us trying out for the first time. I tried putting my body in the same positions of the branches and trees as well as using textures of the bark and fauna. It made a lot of interesting imagery and camouflaged my body a great deal almost as if I was part of the scenery. None of these images have been edited so far but I've included the ones that I felt were the most appealing visually and have a range of colour, mood and form.




























It reminded me a lot of when I was little and would play hide and seek in the woods and we would hide behind trees or in bushes a lot to be concealed. I tried to direct my classmates as well and they me cause I couldn't see very well from the projector shining directly at me. So sometimes it was a little tricky to know where I was positioned with the image.






























Got a lot of different visuals to work with and experiment with the only thing that was an issue was the shadow out ling my form. So I'll be back in the studio to retry this technique again but without having shadows against the screen. And possibly try some different lighting but it is a little tricky since the projector is most of the light source. This was an experiment some of the images worked and some of them not so well as well as different poses. We also took some video footage but I have yet to edit that but would like to do some of that again as well possibly. Will take some of these and edit them and will have to get back into the forest as well for more photographs and materials. Will try some other images next time maybe of just single trees and make them the similar to my body. Possibly could project my limbs and body onto tree's in a rural environment as well. Will have to see because of time wise as well.