Tutorial Feedback

Methods of display - How would you display your work?

• create a system or design a platform to put your work out in the world
• test it out, mock it up
• who is my target audience and how can I engage my work with them?

 1. "Mirror Mirror" An installation using projection to explore the different dimensions and reflection of the human faces.

• gallery installation
• interactive

2. "Hands Up" A short film exploring the movement and choreography of hands in public spaces from a humorous perspective.

• youtube? vimeo?

3. "Mix It Up" One-day collaborative project with Hanna combining two ideas - Hungarian identity + Body Language.

• print out final outcome and place it somewhere with reflections and faces. ex: bathrooms? fitting room? By the water?

4. "Shadowplay" An experimental film exploring the relationship between body movement and light & shadow.

• upload on youtube, vimeo, etc.

5. "All Eyes On You" Body movement + reflection on mirrors + suitcase

• print out final outcome and place it somewhere with reflections and faces. ex: bathrooms? fitting room? By the water?
• campaign for the suitcase?

6. The Broken Legs

• online campaign store & instagram page

The Broken Legs

Today I shot a new outcome - a leather shoe campaign called The Broken Legs. I came up with the name of the brand because my idea focuses on photographing certain body parts in various compositions and angles. By casting three models to wear the shoes with their hands and pop out from some sofas, it looked as if as their body parts were props used for showcasing merchandise. This makes the campaign visually captivating and intriguing that it drags the viewers' attention and curiosity. I incorporated the idea of reflections by including circular mirrors into the shoot, reflecting another pair of shoes, hands, or legs in the mirrors. I have also created an instagram account for this brand to promote my shoes and interact with the costumers.

Crit 

Peer Analysis

practical methods and skills - Is the student exploring a range of practical methods and skills in the development of their project? Where might they benefit from trying out in a different material or process?

• Emily: He originally played around with mirrors in film, and created an large amount of work around the idea of manipulating the face through mirrors. The development from that to these professional outcome is great and shows his perseverance in his work.
• Lili: Consider shooting on film or motion video.

presentation - Is the portfolio well-presented? Does it communicate clearly and effectively? Can you suggest any possible improvements?

• Emily: It could be layed on white card and more easily accessible.
• Lili: The images are strong and visually captivating. The full page images are stronger than the contact sheet spreads.

what next? - Can you suggest which work you feel the student would benefit from developing further. How might they do this? Do you think they need to change scale, material, process? Do they need to be more ambitious? Do they need to place the work in the world?

• Emily: Create some sort of publication or posters from your most recent shoot. These would be amazing as advertisement or campaign shoots.
• Lili: The image of the close up portraits and two mirrors is very strong and works effectively as a strong final outcome. Consider experimenting with typography and paper type?

Self - assessment

During the break I did not produce any new work because I was really ill. However, I did experiment with video editing on the footages I took from the shoot with the suitcase. The film turned out confusing and lacked a clear concept or storyline. It was mainly because that it was more of a no plan experimentation rather than a well-planned film, so I didn't really have a clear direction when shooting. As for this week I plan to produce a new outcome - starting a commercial leather shoe campaign based on the idea of body language by using certain body parts like hands and legs. I will also carry on incorporating mirrors and reflections into this shoot.

A Martin Parr Day

Exhibition: Only Human by Martin Parr @National Portrait Gallery

The exhibition was really amazing! I would say it is my favourite exhibition I have seen this year so far. I have always been a huge fan of Martin Parr. I love how his unique vision to capture the humour in our ordinary lives. In the exhibition, there are several rooms separating his work in different themes and topics. There are the celebrities room, dance room, sports room, brexit room, etc. I really like the way it is curated, very logical and gives the viewers a sense of what the work is about without having to explain. Out of all the rooms, I am most inspired by the dancing room because of its set design. I was surprised by the disco ball hanging on the ceiling as I walked in and saw colourful dots moving on the pictures of people dancing. It made me wanna dance! It is such a simple but effective idea, making the experience more interactive and wholesome. Another thing I found really interesting was that there is literally a cafe in the middle of the exhibition. What's special about it was that it is decorated in a very "British" way, a down to earth, not boogie at all kinda British way though, as if it was a scene from one of Martin's photos.

Talk: Inspirational Series: Martin Parr @Sarabande Foundation

Below are some notes on what I learned from the talk.

• To become any kind of artist, you need to have an obsession with what you are doing.
• The only way to improve your photography skills is to go out and explore.
• When taking pictures, engage with the community and observe small details.
• If you wanna make your pictures look good in bad weathers, use flash.
• A lot of good photos are made by accidents, such as photobombing by strangers.
• Photography is subjective, just as the history of it is constantly changing.
• Don't photograph churches and sunsets, they never change.
•  It's okay to photograph cliches as a starting point.
• Find humour in the ordinary things around you.
• Find your relationship to the world.
• Life is never good or bad.
• It's not easy to photograph people now, sometimes they get pissed.
• What makes a good photo: contradiction, tension, contrasting elements.
• Social media could be a good platform for people with interest in photography. 

Crit

Self - assessment

At the moment I have created around 4 different outcomes under the concept of body language. Most of them are still work in process and still need to be evaluated and developed.

1. An installation using projection to explore the different dimensions and reflection of the human faces.

For this piece I have an video as outcome but I feel like it would be more informed if it is presented as an installation where the footage is projected onto 3D objects. I still need to identify how I am going to present it/ how to execute the potential idea of making it interactive.

2. "Hands Up" A short film exploring the movement and choreography of hands in public spaces from a humorous perspective.

In terms of editing it is already quite informed. I think what I have to do now is to identify whether to engage more with public interactions from strangers or to create a character to perform with the hands on locations.

3. "Mix It Up" One-day collaborative project with Hanna combining two ideas - Hungarian identity + Body Language.

Hanna styled our model with a Hungarian dress and accessories while I art directed and photographed the shoot using circular mirrors to play with the idea of reflections. I think the outcome turned out really well and has made me sure that I should definitely carry on with the idea of reflections of different body parts.

4. Body movement + light and shadow

Originally this was a short film, but when I printed out the screenshots and put them all in one sheet, I discovered that it works really well as multiple stills, for you get to see the development of each movement and the differences between them. I will experiment with this idea in different ways such as creating a stop motion film by putting stills together and printing them out to make it into a flip animation publication.

5. Body movement + reflection on mirrors

I did both stills and moving image for this shoot. Eventually I think this works better as stills as I didn't really have a clear concept while I was directing the film.

Peer Analysis

 Carry on with the idea if mirrors and reflections.

Mix It Up

Combining hanna's concept - Hungarian identity with mine- Body movement and body language, we decided to style our model with a Hungarian dress and accessories while incorporating with the idea of reflecting body parts using mirrors and mirror paper. Hanna also brought a beige canvas as the backdrop as the colour goes better with the blue-green dress. I had my model holding two circular mirrors next to her neck, reflecting the two sides of her face while photographing her front face. I also had people holding small pieces of broken mirrors in weird shapes around her face to reflect her face from different angles.

On the same day, I went downstairs to the basement to test out my idea with light and shadow. I turned off the lights and set up a small lamp on the floor. I had my model stand between the lamp and a wall and had her do different movements like boxing and dancing. It was interesting to see her interacting with her own shadow, as it almost seemed like it was two people performing in a theatrical space.

After that we went to the park to experiment with spaces on location. I had my model wear a green coat paired with socks in the same colour. As we got to the park, I saw the basketball playground and its railings happen to be in the same colour as my model's outfit, along with the mini suitcase I brought to carry all the props. I then shot some clips and photos of my model's body movement while experimenting with the props - the mirrors and the suitcase. I had her sit on the ground behind the suitcase with her head, hands, and legs showing and the rest of the body parts hidden. I ended up getting quite a lot of footages, both stills and moving image, mainly focusing on the movement of hands and the face, as well as its reflections in the mirrors.

Crit

Self- assessment

For this project (hands up), I am exploring the humour of body language and its interactions with the public. By placing moving hands in unexpected spaces I aim to make the audience feel absurd, childish and funny. At the moment I think it can exist on art & design or photography & moving image websites such as nowness and ignant. I think the one thing I can improve is the location and cinematography as I didn't really spend much time sourcing location.

Peer Analysis

It was interesting to get advice and feedback from people who didn't join our witness the process of me creating the work because they tend to be more instinctive and accurate as it's the first time for them to see it, allowing me to assess my work from a more subjective and less biased perspective. For my first outcome, they suggested that I present it as an installation where people can interact with it. For example, set up a hidden camera in a room where people walk in and see their faces projected onto 3D objects. For the second outcome, they suggested that I further explore the idea of engaging the hands with the public and also try out different locations like buildings.

I have had a really stressful week just trying to cast models for my film. As I need three pairs of hands, it was hard to get three people all turn up at the same time. Another problem is that the weather should not be too cold or windy as I want to shoot in Finsbury park and would have the models roll up their sleeves.

I finally managed to shoot today, and it turned out that I might take a slightly different approach to this project. When test shooting the other day, I tried to avoid pedestrians going into my frame in order to not distract the audience and focus on the choreography of the hands. However, today when we were shooting a scene of hands moving behind a tree, a kid ran into the frame to the hands curiously to check out what was going on. I immediately bursted out laughing while thinking that it actually created an really intriguing and humorous effect when this idea was engaged with the public. So I went to more public spots such as the playground and got quite a lot of funny clips of people interacting with the hands.

Progress Tutorial

Jo's advice: "Sketchbook - is great and documents your thought process with screen grabs from your film tests. Include stills from your film tests on workflow and also some drawings and storyboarding of ideas as well. Spend time sourcing different locations and print out for your sketchbook. Overhead projector might be interesting to experiment with? Think about presenting your films as huge projections in different spaces eg The Archway site when it’s dark. Continue with your weekly – you might want to plan a 2 week project and show ‘work in progress on Monday."

Jo mentioned that she noticed that the way I work is by testing out my ideas digitally on camera to see what's working and develop them further, instead of by working in my sketchbook with drawings or collages and see where they take me, which I think is true. Since I have been focusing on moving image, I usually test out my ideas by directly going to a certain location and doing test films. I use my sketchbook to document this process by putting in screenshots of the film tests as well as references I look at (which are mostly screenshots of films too). She suggested me that I also document my initial ideas by drawing them down in my sketchbook.

For the next task, I have this idea of doing a film of "dance of the hands", recording the movement of multiple hands when they perform some sort of choreography and interact with different surroundings. I also want to carry on with the idea of mirroring reflection, so I prepared some circular mirrors as props. As for casting, I can literally cast anyone who have hands, for I will not be focusing on a certain aesthetics of the hands. Instead, my main focuses would be the visual effect of the choreography and cinematography shot in a far distance. I casted Holly, Kina and Rayanne as my hand models and went to Finsbury Park to do some test shoot today. I filmed their hands moving behind trees, in the sky, or holding up mirrors above some underbrush. The effect turned out to be quite cool and humorous as well, for it is not usual to see some hands dancing in the park. However, when filming I spent too much time trying to come up with different ideas of choreography. To make it more efficient, I will come up with the choreography and rehearse with my models before filming.

Yesterday I edited two other versions of my video. My focus was to slow the speed down and also match the editing with the music. I also cut down on the number of the faces shown in the videos. One has about 5 faces in the video, the other has only one. They are both approximately one minute long. It turned out that the one with only one face in was the most effective outcome in terms of editing, as I think using only one face not only makes the concept clearer but allows the audience to focus on the editing more.

Scale workshop

Today I experimented with different scales of my video. I took 5 different approaches to the final video I edited (with one one face). Firstly, I projected my video on to an orange. It was really cool to see its scale being minimised and looking very delicate and almost creepy, like a evil pumpkin. Secondly, I projected my video onto a pile of paper that was in a shape of cube. It looked as if it was in an office, giving it a bit of digital era and futuristic vibes. Thirdly, I projected it onto the chairs in the canteen in a huge scale. There were about 50 chairs, breaking the video of various facial features in too little pieces. Moreover, I projected it onto my beige jacket and had Hanna wear it. The effect turned out to be visually good as different parts of the faces were turned into different shapes of her clothes and body. Lastly, I printed out three screenshot from the video in A3 before placing them in a transparent ball-shaped container. I then turned it upside down and realised that it could actually work as a roly poly doll as I pushed it. What's interesting is that when I pushed or spin the container, it looked as if the images were responding to it by squeezing the face.

Tutorial

In today's tutorial I showed Tim my first outcome. He suggested me to have less faces as I showed quite a lot of faces in the video but they repeated, which makes the audience wonder what message I am trying to convey by casting this group of people. Furthermore, the film itself looks a bit rushed and is not informed in terms of videography and editing. To fix that, I will focus more on the way I move the camera as well as editing by using a certain method like slowing the speed of zooming out before spinning the camera clockwise. We also talked about my struggles of having too many ideas and different approaches that I wanted to test out but don't know which one to go with. Tim suggested me to finish this installation first by projecting it in a different scale (bigger) on Thursday and separate my different approaches of the project (1.film and the moving body through choreography 2. same gesture, different meaning through film with text 3. body language through photography 4. narrative films) into different weeks.

Crit

Today at crit I presented my work by projecting my video into a square box. I didn't really make much changes since Thursday, except that I filmed a lot more footages of many more people's faces to make the video more complete and interesting, and that I sticked mirror paper to all surfaces of the box.

Self-assessment

For this project, I think I could be either working as a fine artist or a image maker for a campaign. My idea is to explore humans' body language by reflecting and distorting our facial features while playing with its form from 3D to 2D (filming real faces into videos) to 3D (projecting it onto a bottle). I aim to provoke thoughts and preferably make my audience discover a sense of humour from this installation by creating contrast between the image (weird, eccentric) and the audio (classical piano). I imagine this installation to be placed in a gallery, with people walking in and walking out while the video loops.

Peer Analysis

In this session, I was not meant to speak but to observe what my group say about my work. It was interesting to see how everyone viewed the same thing in such different ways. Some people saw it as an set design installation situated in a fashion runway show, some thought it reminded them of the exhibition at 180 Strand where they projected videos onto the ceiling for viewers to watch whist laying down on the beds. The one suggestion I got was to set it into a bigger scale, maybe even big enough for the audience to walk in and interact with that space.

Material Workshop

In today's workshop I experimented with my two different materials: mirror paper and projector. I began by analysing the potential uses of the mirror paper before brainstorming what metaphors and meaning it suggests. When I was playing with it I found it interesting how it distorted its reflective objects when I bended it. Even a tiny change of the angle resulted in very strong effects. I filmed Christina and Kindro bending the mirror paper placed under their chins and projected the videos onto the mirror paper. It turned out really blurry as the footages were reflected by the mirror, so I changed the surface to a plain black paper while creating a space with the mirror paper underneath along with two other mirror papers standing on the sides. It was like a kaleidoscpe. I also put a bottle in the middle of the space, creating a really cool 3D effect when different facial features moved onto the object. 

It was proved that the best way to figure out the direction of a project when I am lost is to just experiment with what I have. Without thinking too much of what I wanted the final outcome to look like but just focusing on exploring the materials, I learned to trust the process and see where it takes me step by step.

Commune

When researching what we can do for the commune project, I realised the fact that the aim and purpose of this project isn't about going somewhere cool for sightseeing. It is more about spending time with my group as an opportunity to brainstorm and test out ideas as primary research for our individual projects. To make this experience worthwhile, we decided to focus more on coming up with the activities related to our concepts rather than location scouting.

Since my concept is to explore body language, I made my group do the eye contact experiment - Holly and Shanti staring into each others' eyes through three stages (1min, 5 min, 15 min) while I observed the reactions of their facial features and body movement. I asked them to write down their feelings and things that they noticed in different stages, and it seemed that the longer you remain eye contact with another person, the more relaxed and comfortable you get. Even though eye contact does get awkward at the start, I feel like it still works as a really effective ice breaker. 

Another activity I did with my group is a game called "Head's Up - Act It Out", which a person in the group guess what the rest members are acting out or describing without saying a word. It was interesting to see how we use gestures to indicate an action or object. I also found that different individuals may use their body language to describe the exact same thing in very different ways.