The creative development of this semester mainly focuses in stages of experimental practice with different medias and techniques. While it may seem that there was not much correlation between my studio practice and the research for my dissertation, looking back at the works I have done, I might have been developing the research along with the creative practice. The research for the dissertation focus on the idea of the fictionality of art as a representation of "reality", how artists attempt to present different perspectives of the world through the concept of defamiliarization by Russian Formalist, Victor Schlovsky and alienation effect by German playwright, Bertolt Brecht. Both estrangement techniques are used to challenge viewers' preconceived expectations of things by disrupting the automacity of life, drawing attention to naturalized contradictions.
After reviewing my experimental practices, I realized that these concepts can be applied to them as most of them centers around the idea of perspective, representation and represented. Starting with the the series of mirror works which resembles the kaleidoscope, what we see changes depending on the angle of the mirrors and the position of the viewer. As for the project of matching old photographs with stories I heard or learned about "directly" both play with the idea of fiction and reality. Although the photographs are presented as a documentation of the "represented" events, the discrepancy between the text and the image estranged viewers from the idea that the images are an illustration of the text, thus revealing the fictionality of the "documentations" of my first-hand "experience".
The projections of images on fabric came about when I experimenting with ways of presenting the series of photographs of "hidden identity" that I took. I found it interesting when the image materialized when projected onto the fabric, turning it into something physical. Depth is added to the projected image as the fabric is transparent enough to let light from the projection pass through, distorting the images, changing how projected images are commonly perceived. The image projections have become the main subject, a different kind of spatial experience as compared to the actual photographed event.
The corner projections of blue geometric shapes became a project that I continued to explore further towards the end of the semester. When working with projections previously, I noticed how the image distorts when projected at corners and attempted to right the distorted images by creating them while projected at a corner. However, it turned out that the image is only visible from the position I was working from, the images will remain hidden until the viewer finds the right angle to view it from. I only realized what I was doing when I came across the term, anamorphosis during my research for the dissertation. An anamorphic illusion is a perspectival technique where a distorted image only becomes comprehensible when viewed from a specific vantage point.
As suggested at the critique session, I added the transparent veil over the corner projection as it reveals the original intentionally distorted shapes, removing the illusion that the they are regular shapes. Later on I tried working with animated shapes in stages, from a single rotating shape, multiple moving shapes to moving patterns within frames of the "regular" shapes. As the angles and perspectives changes slightly every frame, it is harder to maintain the illusion of a regular shape when animating frame by frame. Depending on the patterns, some shows an obvious contrast, for example the striped pattern becomes "upward arrows" when projected at the corner, in turn distorting the supposedly "perfect" circle outline whereas the distortion of the spiral pattern is less obvious as it is moving left and right instead of up and down. The animated patterns of the most recent experiments were created from a normal perspective with only the outer mask distorted for the corner. As much as I tried to maintain a consistency, the angle from which the illusion is perceptible differs slightly each series, depending on the position I work from each time. This series of corner projections of geometric shapes can be seen as a direct reference to the concept of defamiliarization as a regular image is distorted so that viewers have to look for it from a different perspective.
Although this semester is mainly about working in experimental practices and unexpected outcomes, some of the research for the dissertation and the studio practice managed to come together at the end. For the open studio and studio assessment, I will have to consider how to set some of these works up and hopefully others will be able to see them from their perspective.
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