Re-Visiting Old Ideas with New Knowledge

Today I started re-collaging over one of the original masks that I didn’t care for at the beginning of my process.

I really regret to say that I threw the scraps of the other mask away after I used it in my attempts at digital collage.

But… today I was thinking about the piece I had seen at the Tate Modern by Romare Bearden and how he has influenced my work. On my digital croquis I was playing with scale (like he and Nick Cave do) and color. I thought it may be interesting to take some of these elements back to the 3D realm. I started collaging over my mask with very loud colors, and it definitely created more visual intrigue.

As I was ripping up my papers, I was thinking about how Bearden took his reality (as a black man living through the Civil Rights Movement), and used collages as a method to re-imagine how life could actually be and communicate his reality or story.

I was listening to the sound of the paper ripping.

I was thinking about Olafur Eliasson’s immersive exhibition that I had seen (how he utilizes all of the senses).

And this idea that media bombardment is not just a thing you look at, it’s a space you’re in. It’s where we live, how we live, it’s what we smell, what we see, and in a way it is part of who we are and how we live.

And this all culminated with the idea of creating a short clip of a person ripping the mask off themselves. It is kind of symbolic in a way of somebody freeing themselves from this media bombardment. In my group we talked a lot about what our, “resolution” is and we decided that we wanted to promote this idea of critical thinking when the public is viewing advertisements.

So I think in the video I want to have my model pick up a newspaper after she rips it off her face, and she will read the newspaper and look content and less serious because she will have this newfound knowledge.

This way, the video clip is me using my materials and my subject to re-imagine how people could live and be. (perhaps my model will relax and slouch a little when she is reading the paper).

Note to self: think about the how the audio will change at this point in the video.