Presentation Day!!!!!!!!!

Layout of presentation with other student's work.

Worked hard all morning mounting prints onto foam board and hanging prints. The final series is 5 A4 prints all in a row separated by about 50mm. I think they look good presented like this, better than I was thinking they would look when I imagined them. In the layout I have attempted to balance the colours throughout the series. There are 3 that are similar in colour and 2 odd so I had the 2 odd Images 2 and 4 in the series. I think this works well in the presentation because grouping the similar coloured images would have made the other two stick out too much.

The foam board mounting I think has worked well as it brings the images off the wall 6mm which contrasts the work to the white walls.

After many dramas in the last few days I am happy with the result and think the series works well and kind of works as a finished series. I think it is time for me to move on technically and I'm excited about delving into the technological online world of photography and experimenting with all these new crazy tools. Also In my holiday break I will catch up on some photography work that I have put off for a while and I will be travelling to Northland, Central Otago and Christcurch in the next 4 weeks. I am excited about taking lots of photos and I will try to keep my blog up to date.

The day before presentation.

Chilly start to that day with Dunedin covered in a white blanket of snow, made the most of that and went on a photo mish. Might put a few up on my www.jessesimons.blogspot.com blog.

Got to Polytech to find it was closed and I was pretty much the only one there, so much for printing my final work! I had a good attempt at printing on the large format printer but was unsuccessful and couldn't get a good result.

Tryed printing with the Smaller ink jet printer which had blocked jets that wouldn't unblock. I did manage to get 4 or 5 semi-desent A4 prints done so I think I will have to make do. At least it made a few decisions for me. A4 single prints it is. I could still foam board them or matt board them.... foam core backing would work and I think it would be good to bring the prints out from the wall a little. Presentation day tomorrow, and then a month long holiday yeow!

Presentation time

With our mid year presentation in a few days and the 5000 word essay finally out of the way, its time to think serious about presentation. I now have about 10 in my '50 iconic google images' series. Of that 10 there is about 5 or 6 that I think I can use for presentation. Thats getting rid of the two foreign Icons and probably Moeraki Boulders because it is in a more panoramic format.

So the questions are:

How many do I present? I think 3, 5, or 7 would be good. 3 if I'm presenting them separate would be enough to suggest a series in progress. 7 if I decide on the size that isn't too big (and expensive) or 5 if I want to display them all on on piece of paper.

What size should I have them?
huge - pixelated. reversing the small icon idea, why not massive!!
big - big enough that they look good up close and you can see them from far away
small - they look best quite small, resolution is ok and you can see whats in the image
tiny - play on the 'icon' idea and present them the same size as they appear on a computer screen

Colour or Black and White? b&w would look good framed with black frames and black matt board. Colour kind of works better conceptually as I am talking about the state of digital photography today, which is usually colour. Do I subvert this? Having them black and white would be paying homage to old photography techniques.

What Kind of Paper? I'm liking the semi gloss on the ink jet printer. I am thinking about looking into using some nice textured paper and I think this would work well with around A4-A3 size prints with the image floating in the space.

Frames? Not much time to make frames and I don't have much money to pay for them. Maybe just matt board around the edges of each image (or all if presented together)

Singular or all on a roll of paper?
good question....... I think these images work well on their own, each one is like a finished piece.
But having them all in a big strip would suggest unlimited possible iconic places, symbolising the nature of the tourism industry today.
I think they look better on their own but I am wondering if its the most appropriate way to present...

So theres a few things to think about, In my next few posts there might be some answers with a bit of luck, CHur

Black and White

When I change some of these layered Icons to Black and white they have an interesting result. I did this first to see how it would look compared to Idris Khan's take on Typologies where he has layered images of the same things giving a dream- blurred effect.

I do like how they look in black and white but I'm not sure if losing the colour is what I should do. Like this they relate to Khan's work more than in colour for sure.

Typologies

I have been looking at typologies because it relates to the aspect of having numerous images of the same type of thing.


Using ideas influenced by Martin Parr's work. I have taken pictures of the normal and mundane, to give them new light. They are photos of Dunedin Garages and I have used the typology technique to display them together.



Then I have digitally deconstructed this image by resizing repeatedly. It gives a dream-like out of focus effect.




Just thought I'd do something different. It could be interesting to subvert the idea of the 'iconic' place by using not so picture-perfect places. Instead of working with the familiar sights like Mitre Peak I could use more 'normal' icons of our identity, like garages for example. Things we would normally walk past and not notice.
We would notice them however, if we were in a foreign land. You tend to find the familiar things in life boring, the things you see everyday, seem mundane. When visiting a foreign land you notice more because everything is different than what you are used to.

It has arrived!!!!

BING is here!!! Microsoft's answer to Google went online on June 5th, 2009. To me theres not much difference apart from the daily scenic photos in the background of BING which give it a nice and kind of cheesy look. When I did an Image search however there was a big difference. Instead of just having 21 thumbnails per page you can scroll down and down and down and images keep popping up! It gave me this funny idea of doing one of my 'iconic' image searches and on a roll-printer printing out every single image result!!! For some of my searches that would make 100s of metres of thumbnails, it would be rediculous!



Anyway I had a go at making another 50 layered iconic thumbnails this time of Lake Matheson by Mt Cook. This was one of the easiest yet, most of the photos were pretty much the same, no dramas.

Messed up the resolution but you get the picture.

So there you have it, art using the new BING seach engine.

Visual layers, a common ground

I was thinking about it today and the way I am layering here has featured in my work in the past. In 2007 I did a screenprinting project where I mimicked an urban alleyway with pin up posters and peeling back layers of different posters and pieces of graffiti. Here I was using the aspect of layering as a measure of time within the urban environment. In the work I'm doing at the moment the layering is more to reveal similarities in composition and subject, and to show the idea of mass information through the Internet.

Urban poster wall, 2007. Screenprinted on layers of fabric




I am also looking at other Artists who use alot of layering which I am posting on. www.jessesinfluential.blogspot.com

Deconstructing the Landscape

from this (+49 others)

to this

to this

to this


For a bit more conceptual development I have started to deconstruct the images I am creating. I have taken my image of Mitre Peak and Moeraki BOulders and turned them into negatives and then printed them onto mylar transparencies. Then I have taken them into the Darkroom and using the photographic chemical process made images onto resin coated paper. I scanned them onto photoshop and played around a bit more to get these pixelated black and white results. The pixels happen at various levels as some have happened in the original process of getting them off Google. Some have happened in the scanning and printing them onto transparencies. So there is a process of deconstruction, a loss of information in which we see a breakdown of the image which has originally come from either a Tourist, a promotional website, or whatever other reason these images have popped up in Google for the World to see.








See Scientific Explanation Below:

Happy birthday Auckland Harbour Bridge

The Auckland Harbour bridge turns 50 sometime soon. What better way for me to celebrate this national icon than to make a piece of art for it, using 50 images of it off google, I would be stupid not to really.

And here it is in all its pixelated glory. I quite like this one actually, and it is a national icon, not so much to people coming from overseas but to New Zealanders.

What my presentation could possibly look like

Obviously I will clean up my messy desk and move that photo board etc but this is kind of the scale and layout that I am thinking about.

Idea for end of Semester presentation.

(click to enlarge)
So far this is the first 7 images I have made using the first 50 google results for iconic places in New Zealand and abroad.

For my presentation I thought I could have them layed out like this and printed using the roll ink jet printer. This layout would suggest a work-in-progress and an on-going process. It works with my concept and study of the mass tourism industry. I will make more images and maybe think about getting rid of the two that aren't New Zealand icons.

I think the scale of these images works best at about A4 size per image, any larger and you lose alot of detail because of the tiny thumbnail icons that I am using. I like how they are kind of floating in the space surrounded with white but if I presented this on a plain white wall it might not stick out enough. I could add a black boarder or frame it somehow.

Heres one for the Hole in the Rock, Bay of Islands.

Messin about

Here's a few of my layered images with the colours inverted, just thought they looked cool. I'm kind of subverting and deconstructing the tourist shots to make them more interesting.

I was looking at an artist who has a big series of photos with the colours inverted, can't remember who but I'll find out and add it to my research blog www.jessesinfluential.blogspot.com

Moeraki Boulders with Black background

I'm liking the black background, it brings out the colours more

Take2

A bit more experimenting, I don't think I'll keep working with the tower but its a good way to develop my process at the moment.

Eiffel Tower Photomerge

I made a quick clip of the Eiffel Tower images to see how it would come out. Its the same 50 thumbnails as the layered image but I have repeated it to make the clip longer. I like how its so small in the video, like the little thumbnails that they are. I will experiment more with the scale and speed of the transitions and opacity levels. And maybe try to align the relating imagery a bit better. I also think the black void works well, maybe I should try this black background more with my still images.

Another thing that I will try to do is make the images look like they are merging and kind of morphing so you can't tell at first that its different images.

Moeraki Boulders