Developing CCTV imagery

I also saw parallels in breaking up the image with a Conscertina book which would be quite an interesting way of displaying the images, this made me create a variety of 'tracing paper machetes' and moved into different combinations to displace my flat image into a 3D structure. 

I also wanted to look at creating a contour around the figures in these CCTV images that drew parallels with fingerprints, something integral to the theme of identity. I looked at contouring the figures in different ways to give a variety of a possible 'visual fingerprint'. I also did this with looking at contouring with straight lines rather then curved, once again creating an abstract outline of a person generating a 'code' or even a 'barcode'. 

I wanted to further these CCTV images by printing them on a large format printer to get a feel for them being like a wallpaper, an idea inspired by 'story' in New York which is a pop up space where artists go in monthly and try to transform a space into a topic that is based around their practice. I thought it would be interesting to have a wallpaper of CCTV images and have a room themed on CCTV, mirrors reflecting the viewers face.

I found the linear straight image the most effective and saw it as a human barcode as the outline suggested a figure encased within straight lines which is often seen in barcodes. I liked the concept of people having to be scanned, which made me think of creating movement or an optical illusion and making an image move. Creating a parallel with Bridgette Rileys work and optical art which due to close wave lines creates the optical illusion of movement. 

Bridgette riley warped

This is something I want incorporate in my major project as I feel it has a lot of potential and is very current with QR codes not to mention I could see myself further developing this idea into a publication.

Broken up CCTV

I experimented printing them on a larger scale and also printing them on tracing paper, seeing whether I could layer them in order to create a more three dimensional CCTV image. This was not very effective and so I decided to take elements from the disposable images such as the linear structure and transfer this onto some of my other market street scenes. 

When I think of CCTV footage I think of an image on a TV screen that has a slight delay so it breaks up the image, I tried to replicate this in my images and it worked well because it made the street scene more interesting and also highlighted certain people for the viewer to look at and focus on in a busy scene. The varying widths of the lines that broke up the scene and the fact that they vertically break up the image makes it resemble CCTV more closely. I did this with a number of different scenes to create a timeline and act as stills to CCTV footage. 

The one element that I felt wasn't that effective was the colouring from the disposable camera image because it just seemed quite sporadic.

CCTV

Due to my initial research for identity when taking photos of the objects around Manchester I decided not only to observe objects but also to survey people around me. I did this by using my own camera and a disposable to have varying qualities of photographs. I took these photos of random street scenes with a variety of different people appearing in each image and I did the same with the disposables. 

The disposable images were less detailed and therefore looked very similar to a CCTV image as they had a grainy quality. Also the colours appeared to be slightly muted drawing parallels with the black and white CCTV images. The most effective of these images were the ones that I took inside a shopping centre, having a birds eye view of the escalators because it seemed like it could be an actual CCTV camera observing a shop. The linear structure of the escalators broke up the image nicely, what I found surprising about these images was that the colouring came through in pink and blue. 

Objects forming an Identity

Developing on from my mark making I wanted to explore objects that could form an identity, the idea that people buy possessions due to what other people want to see them as or what they aspire to be. Candy Jernigan explores objects creating identity or leaving evidence of an identity as she collected objects throughout her life and stored them in a journal catalogued as her existence. 

Candy Jernigan Evidence 

I wanted to further this idea by asking people what objects they feel could represent them. Another quality that I like about Jernigan is how she presents her work in a publication format; on every page she considers the layout of each item and how it sits. This is something I am very interested in as last year I found myself presenting my work in a publication format. I started by using less tangible objects to create an identity. An image that stood out to me was a pavement with a cigarette underneath a bottle cap, this image looked to me like two columns in a layout format. 

This image immediately made me think of a businessman on his cigarette break, I saw the two slabs as a suit jacket with the cigarette and cap reflecting a tie, also the parallel that many men who work in business have stressful lives and can often be found having a cigarette on the pavement outside their work. I did this with other photographs I have taken such as 'The Construction Worker' that consists of three footprints engraved into the pavement. This took my mind to construction workers because they have left their mark on the urban landscape in buildings, roads and pavements and so these footprints become their initials/signature.

I move this on to looking at people I knew and giving them objects that could mirror their identity. My most effective images were 'coffee face' and 'camera face', both of which were developed in Photoshop and both were created by layering the object over the top of the face and manipulating the transparency.

This gave the effect that you see certain aspects of the object and certain features of the face making them appear as one. I also wanted to support this with a brief amount of text similar to how Sophie Calle does in her 'appointments' book. She has an object and then a small narrative to support it and to describe a certain person that has impacted her life. These images worked well individually however I wanted to bring all these different elements into a publication to illustrate my progression in the theme of identity, and also to trigger my brain into thinking about the layout of said publication. For research I went to Magma and looked at a variety of publications to see how they have laid out their images and text for me to find my own unique identity on the page.

Paper experimentation

As I see my practice mainly based in paper I decided it would be beneficial to experiment with this material, I collected all different types from recycled, thick, thin, different coloured, different textures, and decided to print on them with a detailed image that could show what qualities the paper had as shown below. 

I stuck to neutral tones and found that I liked the texture of the 'velum' paper which is second to the left as it has watercolour paper qualities, not to mention the tactile qualities of the paper. Colour-wise the recycled paper was just off white, I found this worked well and still kept the detail of the image. The printer paper at the University definitely gives the image more definition and picks up on all the details and gives the image a glossy finish, which I believe works well.  Investigating the Paper gallery made me think of my audience and who Paper Gallery are drawing and designing for. So far my work as been quite abstract and has been for more of a fine art  context, however I don't see myself as a fine art practitioner.

I see this part being the development stage of my work that will then inform where my practice goes. The only thing I can determine so far is that my work is for more of a marginal audience then a mainstream, due to the complex ideas and reasoning behind how my work is created. It is very conceptual like the work of Gosia Wlodarczak who looks closely at existence through drawing. 

untitled Gosia Wlodarczak

Facing up to ones Identity

With identity still as my main theme I wanted to bring in the face as it is an important element to suggest a person, and it is what most obviously identifies us socially. I took my most effective work ‘Salt Ticket Headphone’ and lay a portrait image on top to give the piece a physical identity. 

I experimented in Photoshop with revealing only elements of the face within the marks to see certain features such as the eyes or mouth. Including these elements within the charcoal marks was effective as it gave a suggestion of the physical person but doesn't make it immediately obvious. This made me think of layout and how moving certain elements on the page can really transform an image and its meaning. I also looked at using my previous hand written notes on observing people as a way of masking the physical being, contrasting the use of less frequent larger writing to more frequent smaller writing and the success to which they masked the identity of the human. The words I chose intentionally describe the human behind the text.

Salt, ticket and headphone

As I was using the image 'Salt Ticket Headphone' over and over again I wanted to produce and create more charcoal marks influenced by objects that I had found, adding more coding and figures from a variety of tickets and receipts that I have collected over the weeks. The charcoal drawings were not hugely effective however the figure marks I created worked well. 

By putting these on tracing paper I could layer them together to create different combinations of the information that I believe was an effective abstract identity. Because I used tracing paper each page loses slightly more focus then the last creating a translucency, blurring the information as you go further away from the first page. However I wanted to go back to what I had done in my original mark making and combine the charcoal with the figure tracing paper, but add in more figures then I previously had done. Similar to the artist Roman Opalka who uses transparency and coding in his work. 

Roman Opalka 1965

In the image below it shows that the identity of the individual has developed because I am giving the viewer more information. Bringing in features of the face such as the eyes and experimenting with colour and seeing whether this worked to my advantage are also furthering identity. 

Colour created a more detailed image and overall a more pleasing aesthetic of the face, the colour gives it a natural transition making it more lifelike. The element of colour gives the piece more of an impact and appears to evolve from the monochrome and mundane. 

Abstract Identities

To develop my marks, figures and writing I started to combine all these elements to create abstract identities looking at how the different combinations of materials, lines and figures could work together as one. Some were more successful then others, one being a combination of loose marks from the charcoal combined with the fine liner influenced by the string of a headphone wrapping around it. Also the numbers from a train ticket, the space around it the combination worked really well, I also liked how it moved from one end of the page to the other. I decided to use tracing paper, as a means of combining all these elements to see if layering one on top of the other looked good. Having not had any of the human form visible so far in my work I wanted to bring in an element of the human figure.

I did this by photocopying elements of my body, some stationary and some moving to have a suggestion of a human. The most affective body part were my hands as they have a clear outline and have a good structure to them, I looked at combining these with the marks and figures from the tracing paper images I mentioned before and seeing if they worked well as a whole. 

Documenting People

Moving on from mark making I wanted to make a variety of different accounts of individuals and was inspired by the information that I found in the receipts. Like Sophie Calle I wanted to record people in their everyday activities, however not with a camera but through journalism. I did this with continual line drawing with each word joining the next creating a long line of information, at a distance making it appear hidden due to the fact that it is hand written. 

Simply it is a fine balance between the distinct marks of the fine liner and the hidden words in the sentence. I was writing what I was hearing whilst not looking at the page creating a blind drawing of loose lettering and this in turn created an organic pattern across the page. The artist I looked at during this time was Vito Acconci, an artist who is known for using language as an art form and using words and their layout/perspective in an unconventional way to create structures. Therefore they become more then just words, they become the medium, the form and the line.

Vito acconci 'the city of words' 1999

Initial Inspiration

My initial Inspiration came from my surroundings and looking at ones identity. At how we see ourselves and how others perceive us, due to the choices we make in everyday life and the routines we carry out each day. Looking at the conceptual artist Sophie Calle’s work, who investigates human behaviour, prompted this. In particular I found her process of collecting information very interesting and was something I wanted to explore further, her practice is focused in photography often with a narrative supporting. In doing this she herself has become a human surveillance camera. 

Sophie Calle; Father, Mother and son 1990 

I decided to follow in Calle's footsteps and collect initial inspiration from the streets of Manchester. I focused on a trace of where a human had been, such as footprints engraved in pavements and materials left by humans and I then tried to imagine the human that left this trail behind. This is also where I took inspiration for my initial mark making using charcoal to create a large basis on which to refine and develop later. I chose charcoal as my primary medium because of the vast array of textures it gives to the page, which I could later work on to give a more detailed account of identity. It’s a material I have always like to use and I find that sometimes when I use charcoal the marks start to look quite human like, from the shadows created which links to the idea of documenting human behaviour was something I wanted to explore further, her practice is focused in photography often with a narrative supporting. In doing this she herself has become a human surveillance camera. I decided to follow in Calle's footsteps and collect initial inspiration from the streets of Manchester. I focused on a trace of where a human had been, such as footprints engraved in pavements and materials left by humans and I then tried to imagine the human that left this trail behind. 

This is also where I took inspiration for my initial mark making using charcoal to create a large basis on which to refine and develop later. I chose charcoal as my primary medium because of the vast array of textures it gives to the page, which I could later work on to give a more detailed account of identity. It’s a material I have always like to use and I find that sometimes when I use charcoal the marks start to look quite human like, from the shadows created which links to the idea of documenting human behaviour.