After my research with all the points considered, I began to think of how I could portray the prevalence and almost hypnotic nature of screens, and how they distort our perception of time passing, in a portrait. Hiroshi Sugimoto's Theaters came to mind, as they evoke this haunting power of the screen, its illumination washing outwards through whatever is in front of it. Capturing a whole film's duration worth of exposure meant that Sugimoto was able to produce these unearthy images. To this end, I used long exposure times for an experimental test shoot using myself as a subject, editing them to give this ghostly effect. In PS, I created custom brushes in the shape of the screens and experimented with this.
Another idea I had was using layered effects in Photoshop to create an obnoxious, jarring look, almost "corrupting" the face of a portrait, borrowing principles/techniques from the glitch art movement to demonstrate the way having several copies of one's identity in the digital landscape forms together a whole new entity. For this experiment, I used images Diana took and sent me for another edit.
In a recent tutorial with Anne, I was encouraged to conceptualise the internet in a more modern way rather than using cables as a way to visualise its impact. I agreed that there were definitely less literal ways to come at the topic, so I researched creative portrait techniques on Pinterest and created a moodboard:
I was told to maybe focus on one idea rather than trying to do everything at once, so this moodboard will likely be reused and expanded at later points. It became certain that visualising the internet is a tricky job. For this project, it makes sense to revisit the crystal kaleidoscopic effect with some interesting lighting, as the internet is very much a place where your identity is fragmented - like the wavelengths in light rays splitting apart through a prism. I also like the idea of one's online identity being so attached to them that it follows them in shadow, which is inspired by the bottom centre-right image with the white polygonal illustration. I'd like to achieve this half-lit look and experiment with collaging other textures and images into the model's shadow, to represent their identity being intertwined with their online activity. Overlaying colourful moire that appears when capturing a screen is also an interesting starting point - I could use the warp and liquify tools to mould it over the model's skin & face, then manipulate the colours and use filters to achieve a pixellated look. I included some more abstract, painterly images as well as an album cover because I enjoy the colour stories and aesthetics. Isolating different colours through using curves & colorise features in PS, as well as using gels, is also another way to achieve RGB split/anaglyph and double exposure effects, which could look interesting composited inside a screen of some sort.
My next steps will be testing lighting setups and re-thinking the page layouts in InDesign.
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