ecnuscollins

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Final Project Completed + Artist Statement

Below are a few photos from my final project: Storytelling with Shadows. 

(update) Just realized I never posted the link to see the rest of my final project photos. I did have the link on the utdallas box, but not here. Below is the link.

https://eac160030.wixsite.com/shadow-storytelling

Artist Statement - 4/28/2020

             Shadows surprise me sometimes. Although they seem very simple, these dark forms can be very telling. Without any other detail, the shadow’s form or silhouette can communicate a story. We would never confuse the silhouette of a ballet dancer with the silhouette of tree leaves blowing in the wind. It is in this premise that my final project takes root. I wanted to create plausible stories or places through only shadow.

               While combining shadows to create new worlds or stories was fairly easy, the inherent grey-scale nature of shadows left some of the images feeling bland, so I added color. Like shadows that tell the story of unseen actions or objects, color can change feelings and one’s sense of time. For instance, the shadow of a wrist brace becomes a car driving during a stormy night with its yellow headlights on. Even the blues on the silhouette of water bottle merge with the yellow of a flash light to create a desert palace. The combinations of color and shadow are seemingly endless with infinite constructed narratives, settings, actions, etc. possible. The only limit is one’s imagination.

               In fact given the current coronavirus situation, being at home gave me time to play around with found miscellaneous objects and discover the uses or weird angles that their shadow might create. Of course, trying to stage everything in front of the camera was hard, so I opted for taking photos one by one of each object’s shadow and then later merge them into a scene through Photoshop. Trying to keep the photoshop to minimum, I mostly manipulated layer blending modes, color and scale. By changing the scale, I could make the shadow smaller and then use it more often in a scene. For instance, a picture of one penguin stuffed animal can become a whole group of adult and baby penguins by manipulating placement and scale.  Ultimately, my work aims to show  the transformability of shadows by manipulating our inherent sense of their forms to create fictional scenes that could be real. This was all inspired by the Lotte Reigner films of the 1920s where she used cutouts of silhouettes to tell whole films.

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Final Project - In progress Photo

This photo was my take on a steamboat adventure. I used the light through a water bottle to create the moon. The ducks were a clay toy. The seaweed was made using an old Kinetics toy set. The boat was made using the silhouette of my camera case. I had fun combining the various elements in photoshop. I have definitely found this keeps me busy during quarantine. 

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Artist Research - Laurie Simmons

I researched artist, photographer, and filmmaker Laurie Simmons. Her experiences as a child growing up contributed to her construction of narratives. She uses miniature dolls, ventrilloquist dolls, life-like dolls, or even costumes to creature her work. Her work challenges conceptions of women, femininity, and sex. Overall, her photographs and films span across 40 plus years. It is interesting to look at her older works that reflect on the 50s and then look at her more recent works. It is neat to see the different conceptions that Simmons challenges with each decade. In the 50s there was the housewife, then there was the feminist movements of the 60s, the challenging of sex in the 70s and 80s, and then today the worries of body image. 

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Final Project Proposal

For my project, I want to focus on shadows and silhouettes. I was inspired by the 1926 film “The Adventures of Prince Achmed” by Lotte Reiniger and the America’s Got Talent group Silhouettes. I was amazed at both for their ability to tell complex narratives through simple forms like silhouettes. 

My process for making the two photos involved finding objects in my home, taking photos of their shadows separately, then combining them in photoshop. For me, it is neat to look at these photos because the shadows are not representing the object you might think. For instance, in the image that looks like I am cracking an egg, the pot shadow is from a paper crankshaft while the egg shadows are from polished rocks. In the second image, the human is from an old basketball trophy, and the birds are a combination of my hand and a seashell. 

By working with shadows for my final project, I can really play around with different forms and narratives. Since I am stuck in my house most of the day, this will also help me to stay creative and engaged. 

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Week 2 - Blog Prompt - These Four Walls

Because of Covid-19, I’m stuck in my house. However, I take a short walk around my neighborhood just to relax and breathe fresh air. Although I am surrounded by walls most of the day, there are other walls that have been created due to social distancing. These photos reflect symbolic walls: the ones we put up like caution tape, or the ones we place on ourselves by choosing not to sit on a bench.

As a kid growing up, I have fond memories of each of the locations in the photos. My brother and I would swing and runaround, or play basketball. Even the swinging bench, I remember being really relaxing on a hot day. Walking around now, these places feel like they belong in a ghost town. Seeing these places makes me feel sad because my walk turns into a reminder of the coronavirus. To capture this sadness, I removed all the color except for my subject. There may one day be kids playing on playgrounds, swinging, playing basketball, or sitting on a bench, but not right now. 

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Assignment - Dallas Art Museum Tour

Date of Trip: February 28

Earlier this year, I went to the Dallas Museum of Art. I saw the Ragnar Kajartansson exhibit. The exhibit was “The Visitors,” and even now I wonder if I was the visitor. Upon entering the video exhibit, I was immediately taken back by the dark and narrow the viewing space. There weren’t many people there, so it was also extremely quiet. Then, the 9 screens that lined the walls came to life. Each video screen featured a person inside a room of a house with an instrument and microphone. I don’t really know why, but the amount of light and the color overwhelmed me a little but in a positive way. I felt calm and happy, and when the music started playing it almost felt meditative. I just wanted to close my eyes and feel the music, feel the sound hit me, vibrate my chest, and listen to the lyrics. As I watched, I began to realize they were all in the same house. This must have been filmed in one take. I was then amazed at the technical quality of it all.

The exhibit’s set up was also interesting because it allowed me to walk to various screens, and whichever one I stood in front of, I could hear that person’s voice and instrument the best. I felt like I could pick and choose which instruments and singers I wanted to listen to the most. By doing this, I chose the feelings I wanted to feel.  I liked standing near the feminine voices, piano and drums.

The song itself, I believe, is a short poem which was not necessarily meant to be played for an hour long through music. Every time the group repeated the chorus, a repetition of the words, “Once again, I fall into my feminine ways,” the words just hit me. I think I might have shed a tear at one point, but I could not honestly tell you why. Altogether, the videos and music felt almost religious.  In part this could have been because of the way they dressed and their beautiful harmonies. By the end, they even walk out of the house just joyfully singing out into the middle of grass field like a mini parade.

Lastly, I want to talk about the visual of each video. Each one felt like it could have been its own painting like those of the impressionist days. Knowing now, that the house was an old mansion in New York, adds to the old style.  In the image my dad took of me, you can also see an example of the color contrast between two video screens: one blue and one orange. It is almost like each screen was its own expressionist painting come to life and singing. Ultimately, this was the spot I liked standing, because I could hear the warmth and sadness brought out by not only the color, but also the person playing the music. Eventually, when the coronavirus passes, this is definitely something I would recommend seeing. It is definitely better in person, too.

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Video Assignment - PASSAGE 

For me, passage relates to time and movement. With all the worries and stress around covid-19, I thought it would be nice to see what nature was up to around my family’s house. I found it comforting to see various animals just go about their day. A friend of mine once told me that “time is meaningless” now because of the stay at home order. I have to admit that before online classes started, I was starting to lose track of the days. However, after observing nature, I realized that time is not meaningless. Obviously, the animals still make the most of their day looking for food, shelter, mating, etc. Just because our days, or lives, are different now, does not make them any less meaningful. 

 4/2/2020 

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Blog Prompt – Video Art – Week 1

3/30/20

Though video art can trace its roots back to the development of early motion picture devices in the 20s, video art as an art form really emerged and became popular in the 60s. Artist Name June Paik is often considered the “Father of Video Art” having pioneered many of the techniques used today. What makes Video art different from other video related forms like film, television shows, home video, etc. is its lack of conventional cinema technique. Video art can be a collection of sounds and images without discernable narrative or plot, without actors, or perhaps even without dialogue. Today with the evolution of computer technology and other digital forms, video artists are free to work on a much broader scale through installations, projections, broadcasts, and more.

In learning about some of the various artists like Paik, there were two that interested me the most: Tony Oursler and Joan Jonas. Oursler and Jonas both focus on video art in the form of installations. For me, Joan Jonas stood out because of the feminist themes in her work. Her use of mirrors in Leftside Rightside to showcase her different faces and her film Vertical Roll showcasing her body with random images just felt really intriguing. This breakdown of physical forms in communicating objectification or perceptions of women was really cool.  Where Jonas’ work features a societal message, Tony Oursler’s work is more abstract. Oursler’s  work with projection installations seems to find its intrigue in its technical feat and science fiction like abstraction. His use of the face as communication goes beyond just a recording of a face. Some of his works include weird sounds, or a sculpture with a mix of various parts of faces like eyes and mouths to create a new fantasy face. It is like a dream or nightmare depending on the setting. For me it is hauntingly beautiful.

Of all the artists and videos, I had looked at; Andy Warhol’s Eating a Hamburger video was definitely something I found most odd. It genuinely felt boring and I was unsure as to why I was watching. Even Andy Warhol’s Sleep (1971), which is an hours long video of a sleeping man, just seems to ordinary. Although, I can understand Warhol’s work as defying a traditional film norm and focus on capturing everyday consumer activities, it is hard for me to watch some of these videos. This may also be the point, for it is art and not an entertaining film narrative. In short the mundane and familiar is what makes his work, for me, at least uneventful and not as intriguing as those of other artists like Oursler and Jonas.

All in all, the three artists I have discussed represent a variety of video art styles. This is important because more and more, video art has begun to blend with traditional video. It is in the ambiguity of what video art can be and how it can be displayed or represented that makes it as media form far reaching. It is in this realm, that the formation, continuation, and critiquing of video art goes beyond the dictation of art galleries. With the web, social media, and television, what we call video art is truly what we as a society describe it as, for it is no longer an art gallery’s selection.

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SA 06 - Constructed Narratives

3/22/20

I was inspired by the Little Red Riding Hood Story for my assignment. I wanted to create a slightly darker interpretation of the story. In the first image, Red is wearing a tattered cape and looks like she may be pleading to the wolf. There are also flowers on the ground below her to symbolize this loss of hope. In the second image, I depict my spin on the grandma’s house part of the story. Here the wolf is a shadow behind the figure’s head. This was meant to imply that it is not necessarily the grandma in lying in the bed. Additionally, Red’s cloak is lying on top, but Red is no longer there. The lack of figure adds to the darkness of the image. This was the first time, I have ever tried constructing a narrative in front of a camera. When I look at these photos myself, I feel like at first glance they do not say much. On a deeper look and when pared together, I think the photos say much more. Lastly, the story between the wolf and Red, I found interesting and relatable given the era of MeToo. The wolf symbolizes this abuse and power over the young girl.

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Reading Response 4 - Photo As Contemporary Art

3/1/2020

In her book, “The Photo As Contemporary Art,” author Charlotte Cotton writes in her second chapter about the various artists who utilize tableau photography. Tableau photography is any photograph that captures a narrative in just the image alone. Although like cinema, Cotton argues, that tableau photography is not cinematic because of its reliance on a single image. It is because of this, that tableau photography can allow for the conflation of time or history. The staging of a photo may be in the present and made with modern things, but it could call back to the past or look ahead toward the future. She argues that it is within this context that tableau photography often lends itself to themes of the uncanny or subversions of common actions. This means that tableau narratives can be both constructions of straightforward scenes or of dreamlike scenes.  

Of all the artists she references, I liked the photographs by Jeff Wall and Hannah Collins. Wall’s photos seem to have a lot of contrast in them adding to the constructed narrative. His constructions, at times, reminds me of the photography we did in class concerning decisive moments. With Collins’ work, I found her size and scope of her photographs impressive. Her photo, “In the Course of Time, 6,” was two meters by five meters in size. It was impressive how she managed to capture so much detail and so much space of the factory in the image. I guess I just real loved seeing the brick detail in her photograph. 

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Midterm Instagram Project - Reflection on Posts

3/1/2020

The screenshots above represent three of the fifteen photos from my Instagram Project titled #ProjectLightIsSong. The goal of the project was to create light paintings or compositions of light paintings to reflect the feelings or themes of songs that I listen to everyday. Some are bold, some are more somber, some are complex, and some are more simple. In terms of followers, I got three classmates to follow me. I ended up following them and two other people. One Instagram person that I followed, squiggly_mcpickins, liked a few of my posts. I’m not entirely sure my message got across, but I do feel like I received more likes for images that communicated song lyrics more clearly. A few of my posts received zero likes. I feel that this is because the subject of the image was not clear. I took this time to experiment with different light techniques and textures, so if I had more time I would practice those shots more. Lastly, although three weeks felt like they went by really fast, I did start to feel myself intentionally start to make light imagery just for the likes. I started spending more time on composite light paintings rather than just capturing light in one long exposure. Ultimately, I felt really good about what I was doing, and felt like I really made some good interesting photos. 

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SA 05 - Symbols

2/24/2020

The images above represent symbols I found around the UT Dallas. In each image color plays a role in identifying the symbol’s purpose. The green of the recycling bin corresponds to its benefits of helping the environment. I found its location interesting given that the area around it is mostly concrete and dull tans. The second image is a fire lane. In comparison with the recycling bin, the yellows seem to be used to alert people of the object’s presence. In comparison, with the last picture of the fire alarm, the red signifies a purpose associated with emergency. Some of these objects have become so common that the text is almost not necessary. The last image leaves out the word text that labels the object as a fire alarm, but we still know what it is regardless. 

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SA 05 - Glitch/Altered Photos of found images

2/17/20

The first photo was part of an article talking about the sensationalizing of the news. I wanted to enhance its original meaning, but also completely break it down. In essence, the image should now represent unfiltered and complete breakdown of news today. The media polarization and subsequent global chaos are connected.

The second photo was taken at a fashion show on a pop culture, sponge bob, inspired line by Moschino. The original image was to highlight the outfit and it is pretty cool. However, my altered image is intended to show my response to the outfit. In some ways it is laughable. I’m glad pop culture inspired it, but I can’t really see people wearing this everyday. The model does not really look happy either, so I wanted to remove the color from her body to make it look like she was a plastique mannequin. Ultimately, she is a mannequin for clothes that are either going to be over the top, comfortable, laughable, or simply ordinary. It is hard to tell what the critiques and people are really thinking watching the outfit. Lastly I do not mean any negative to the person, outfit or designer. It is actually pretty cool.

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My Instagram Photo Project

2/17/20

For my Instagram Project, I plan on doing a series of light paintings. Each image will be paired with lyrics from a song that inspires me. Song plays a huge role in my life. As for light painting, I am fairly new to it, but I love the control and creativity of it. I do not want to just capture light, I want to capture the emotion and energy that I feel when listening to my music. An example is below.

In this photo light for me, becomes burning love. The image is paired with lyrics from the song Wildfire by Seafret.

“As feelings arrange deep down inside Try describing a love you can't design More and more, every inch of me is holding on This is it, all the flames are burning strong We are bound to each other's hearts Caught, torn and pulled apart This love is like wildfire And to my word now I'll be true I can't stop this breaking loose This love, is like wildfire”

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My Response to Reading Set 3

2/17/20

Of the two articles posted, “Command the Gaze” and “Self-Portraiture in the First Person Age,” M. Whiteford’s article “Command the Gaze” was really interesting and inspiring to me. 

In “Command the Gaze,” Whiteford describes the Instagram Project #girlgaze and its current exhibition at the Skylight Studios in the Annenberg Space for Photogrpahy. The project gained inspiration from the large female empowered women’s movement that came about due to Donald Trump’s election. The movement though important politically was also important socially, for it called attention to women in a way that did not represent them as objects. The project #girlgaze was founded by Amanda de Cadenet, a photographer and ceo of The Conversation, an interview series dedicated to women’s voices, fashion, and art photography. All women could participate in the project by posting a picture of themselves or other women doing everyday things. I just found this whole article really comforting to know that there are others out there in the world who are challenging norms of feminism and beauty. “I am Woman. Here Me, See Me, Let Me Be”

The second article on Self Portraiture was not as interesting to me. This is likely because I do not normally care about social media and how others look. Despite my general ambivalence towards this subject, I found a few points that were interesting. Lauren Cornell, the author of the piece, described her reaction to K8 Hardy’s Outfitumentary (2001-11/2016). The video is in a documentary style and consists of several self-portraits shot over the course of a decade. Lauren wrote that she was caught off guard because the photos did not seem set up or stage in way that would elicit a traditionally selfie. She was surprised that K8 Hardy had taken photos just for herself. Of all the artists referenced in the article K8 Hardy’s photos were really interesting, they just felt natural.  As an artist/photographer myself, when I take a photo, I too always consider myself first as the audience not social media. I just really connected with that natural way of photographing the world. Her video reminded me of a song that’s called See You Through My Eyes by a band called Head and the Heart. It was just really cool. 

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Title of work: Encroaching on the Trees

SA 04 - Photo Montage

For this montage, I was really interested in juxtaposing nature, specifically trees, with urban elements. Trees are something that I always see and appreciate, but sometimes I wonder if urban elements get in the way. I wanted to show nature being infected with pipes, plumbing, and sewage. With the pipes and horizontal bark framing the trees, the image feels like an open wound. As a result of urban encroachment/takeover of nature, man made concepts like recycling, parking signs, and fire alarms become necessary to not only protect the nature from humans but to also help sustain it. 

All of the images are my own except for the white pc board cracks in the upper left hand corner of the image. 

2/10/2020

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SA 03 - Decisive Moments

2/3/2020

For this assignment, I wanted to capture moments both in nature and on the street. For nature, this meant capturing the curiosity of birds, the busyness of bees, and even the fear a squirrel has on a picnic table. For the street, this meant capturing more urban moments like kids playing basketball, an adult looking at his phone, or a unique shadow. 

Overall, I really enjoyed the assignment. I felt like I was capturing fleeting compositions. The grocery bag is a good example because the reds in the image create a line and line up with the rule of thirds. The bee photos were the hardest to take. The bee never sat still and by the time I had a shot, it had often flow off.