During our first day back in the studios, we formed into large groups and worked together to individually create 5 different pieces, each taking around fifteen minutes. This meant that we had to create work without thinking too hard about what we were going to do, thus leading to spontaneous and interesting pieces – which also caused an element of humour.
The first piece I made was a drawing inspired by a piece called (Telling) Vision #3, 1994 by Tony Oursler (below page). This was meant to get our reactions, debates and thoughts out of the piece we were given. I decided to use charcoal because it was quick and blendable, which is perfect for quick drawings. I decided to concentrate on the face of the piece because it was what intrigued me the most, as it’s a distorted projection of an actual face onto a mask. I wanted to make multiple faces layered onto each other because it’s what I interpreted the piece to be.
The second piece we did were sculptures. I found polystyrene corners and used it for the broad shoulders of the suit and bits of paper for the face and body and copied the face I created from the previous drawing. I think it was successful in imitating the actual piece considering the amount of time and recourses we had, in a way that it did what it was meant to do.
Our third piece was a performance piece, but we didn’t document it in a visual way. What I chose to do was mimic what he was wearing and put a phone torch light under my face to distort it in a similar way.
The fourth piece had to be an image, so I quickly downloaded an app called ‘Ultimate Photo Mixer’ and took a photo of me and a friend with a phone torch under our faces, then layered them onto a strange filter from the app that had similar shapes and colours to the original face in the piece.
The final piece was a painting with only the colours yellow, red and blue. I ended up creating another abstract piece of the face that has turned out both interesting and creepy, which is what I see in the original, therefore it’s turned out fairly successful.
Tony Oursler
(Telling) Vision #3, 1994
Video projector, videocassette recorder, videotape, tripod, light stand, and cloth Dimensions variable
Collection Carnegie Institute, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Second Century Acquisition Fund, Oxford Development Acquisition Fund, and Carnegie Mellon Art Gallery Fund
A cheap, dark brown suit hangs limply to indicate a standing figure in the manner of a scarecrow. Its large head, a stuffed white bag, is widely out of proportion to the rest of the figure and tapers down from a broad forehead to a narrow neck. A real face recorded in video is projected onto the bag, giving the sculpture recognisable features of an actual person – in this case the artist. Because the small projector placed on a tripod in front is trained upward from about waist height, the resulting angle exaggerates the sculpture’s eyes and makes them it’s most prominent feature. Never making eye contact with the viewer, these giant eyes blink and strain constantly upward, as if the subject were searching his memory. Nervously probing the air, the eyes exacerbate the pathetic countenance of an otherwise perfectly immobile “statue”.
For the final piece, I decided to make a short film highlighting the abstract movement demonstrated in the interpretation pieces. I also included flashes as seen in the original photograph because it worked well with the clips.
saratrouble 