When we were given the brief to conceptually develop an "outwardly aware" installation, I was stumped for political motives as I try to refrain from having political messages in my work. However, we were encouraged to use the newest technology and project our pieces potentially enlarged in public spaces, reminding me of something I came across in my research for experimental video which nicely supports and illuminates a potential response to this task. But before delving in further, I wanted to do more general contextual research.
Street Art
Initially when I thought about public art installations, I immediately considered an urban environment, which naturally leads to the ideas of street art and graffiti culture. Historically, street art has tackled political themes and gathered much controversy, but continues to be positively received and encouraged by young audiences who like to engage with social issues. Rooted in New York, graff culture has spread far beyond the murals in the Bronx, now an everyday sight in most towns as simple tags, critiqued as antisocial behaviour. Graffiti is also a controversial medium in the contemporary art world and wider society due to the fine line it treads between art and vandalism. One famous example of using the city as a canvas is Banksy, whose work frequently comments on anti-establishmentarianism, individual liberty, imperialism, consumerism, capitalism, greed, poverty, hypocrisy, surveillance and war. He achieves this through both the actual content of his art and its materiality, being sprayed onto property which he doesn't own. Other graffiti artists I admire are the colourful Stinkfish and abstract Futura.
Though they do not necessarily act as direct inspiration, here are some examples of street art I saw on a trip to Southampton:
After this, I decided to scour Pinterest for some more inspiration. Below are further graffiti reference images I found helpful in developing my own concept. I started out browsing just interesting, funny & ironic pieces, but gradually I fell down the more "vent art" rabbithole that I've explored before, just not through the lens of street art. Collected here are a number of images where people have sprayed or used stencils to release things we all keep inside as a form of anonymous catharsis, oftentimes masking them as reassuring phrases or signs from the universe, something I find works better tongue-in-cheek. On top of this, I've included examples of people manipulating public structures such as billboards and road signs, not to mention advertisement screens, travel information kiosks and public transport announcement LCD displays.
I oddly found these self care affirmations more inspiring than the more creative, figurative designs, as they tapped into this shared sadness that I hadn't considered in a while. It's easy to become caught up in your own ideas of interpersonal relationships, existentialism, loneliness and regret; even dissociation. Thus, when it's broadcasted like this, it feels almost soothing that we are not alone in these thoughts and feelings that can sometimes be overwhelming. It seems to help me deal with my perceived isolation by reminding me that I'm not actually alone in being overwhelmed by these things, and with rising figures in young adult mental health issues, this is becoming increasingly important for people to be told.
Though the brief does specify outward-facing issues, I feel like shared emotional experience is also valid in this regard, especially having taken in these images conveying how people so desperately want to connect over their pain, as the trivial things that happen to us all still hurt - street art is a way to express that hurt, and my concept for an art installation will address that hurt too. I think it fits well to address the way we repress our rage in this concept. However, I'd like to find a way to elevate this concept.
These suggested computer screen images also interested me, as they fit into this hacked screen aesthetic, and with the repetition also remind me of a Mr. Robot episode in which protagonist Elliot uses the idea of kernel panic as a metaphor for his mental breakdown on Adderall. A "kernel panic" occurs when a UNIX operating system detects a fatal error from which it cannot safely recover. It is roughly the same as a "blue screen of death" (stop error) in Windows. Mr. Robot in general has been a major inspiration lately because of how Elliot describes mental health by continuously comparing it to his own knowledge about computing, cybersecurity, etc. I've always been interested in the digital - or perhaps better put, in the relationship between the digital and human worlds, which is why this framework for exploring the human psyche through the digital medium interests me. This scene is more about the effects of stimulant drug abuse, but I believe that Elliot's voiceover narration is very relatable to many people halfway through the clip where he starts talking about "the overwhelming fear building". In the wider context of the series, substance abuse as an escape is a theme that's explored on top of the other psychological drama's narrative events, and the show does a good job at not romanticising the harsh realities of these issues. It's a common thing to be enticed by the appeal of relief or improving your mood, like Elliot demonstrates in the first half of the scene, only to crash hard and realise the inevitable downward spiral you're in for. Something akin to this numbing cycle is something many people struggle to reconcile within themselves. This could lead me to consider making this concept about the issue of addiction prevention, but I don't think this is the route I'd like to take for this project.
Jenny Holzer
Neo-conceptual artist Jenny Holzer was featured in our brief; I mainly took a look at Holzer's series of projections on her website as this work seemed most relevant to the early form of my idea. She combines light, text and architecture to confront a variety of social and political issues in a poetic yet arresting way by projecting statements onto large landmarks across the world. Utilising and referencing actual passages from poetry (i.e. addressing gun violence using poetry from student victims of mass shootings), her work strikes an important balance in the way art interacts with politics. In a 2012 interview, she said she enjoys "placing content wherever people look", which informs me of where I should place my conceptual installation and links back to the images of hacked/vandalised public transport on my moodboard. Henri Cole wrote in 2016: "In Holzer’s installations, words—not images—strive to say something true, often about love, death, sex, war, or forgiveness. Sometimes, it is something unspeakable." This expanded the way I'd been thinking about the brief and further helped me overcome the initial challenge of choosing a topic. Since I am interested more so in the philosophical/reflective angles to world issues than big mainstream causes themselves, I decided to take inspiration from the aforementioned ideas, which could also be considered somewhat "unspeakable", as raw and unexplained emotion. Most of all, I enjoy how blunt and matter-of-fact Holzer's choice of texts are, glaring any civillians right in the face. Although they are taken from poems, this arresting tone reminds me of the boldness and subtly pointed aggression of graffiti culture.
Graffiti Research Lab
NYC non-profit centre Eyebeam OpenLab fellows Evan Roth and James Powderly use innovative technology to explore graffiti culture in a digital way. Pioneering the use of LED throwies for guerrilla artists to create mess-free public street art and installations back in 2009, this duo have something in common with Jenny Holzer in using light-emitting diodes to make their statements. Having worked for NASA, Powderly developed a software to achieve what he dubs "laser tagging" technology as a way to allow graffiti artists to tag on a huge scale effortlessly, "moving the art gallery into the outside world" (source). "Laser" is an acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation".
This Creators interview gave me good insight into the project. His project began with LED throwies when he realised that having one LED bulb with a magnet and a battery on it could represent one pixel of visual information. Roth and Powderley grouped them together and continued experimenting with throwing them onto buildings in their local area, inviting bystanders to join in. This led to them developing the "laser tag" prototype using a commercial projector, a laptop and a CCTV camera, as well as a simple green laser pointer as the drawing tool. They ended up using this technology to help a well-known street artist paralysed by ALS, allowing him to continue his graffiti with an offshoot project called EyeWriter.
The above video shows off another project they procured called "Light Criticism", wherein they created and taped stencils over LED advertisments in New York city to criticise the fact that in 2007, natives statistically viewed around 5000 ads each day. This project captures the spirit and culture of graffiti, giving me an idea for how to navigate the subject matter I'd like to address in this project.
I took notes on the process detailed in this video by YouTuber After Effects guru Ben Marriott to help me achieve a spray paint graffiti animation effect to conceptualise this project.
Brainstorm
These are just some of my closing thoughts, leaning on the more poetic side, which could potentially be used in my final concept. It's a bit depresso sadboi hours but helped me understand what it really was I wanted to say with this installation concept. I'd like to convey something unspeakable.
why am i either in a prolonged state of overstimulation or almost entirely dissociated from my own body? is this me or is it the modern world? does anyone else feel like this?
can you teach me
how to be in the moment?
it's so hard to know how you're feeling
when all around you
media, companies
are telling you how to feel
and everyone else pretends
that they don't feel at all
what does it mean to be human, as distinguished from machine?
why do we oversimplify our human things like they're binary numbers
why do we translate our human things for machines to understand
why do we let machines use our human things against us
was any of this supposed to happen
my words are all i have
and they are trapped in this screen, any screen,
every screen i can find
so what does that make me
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