What To Do Next

For my fmp blog I intend to continue my research about immersion by finding other photographers that explore this within their work.
Here are some of the things that I intend to look at:

- Bettina Von Zwehl – Portraits of people listening to music

- Lucy Levene – Ministry for sound

- William Eggleston – Black and white club portraits

- The notion of the social mask. 

- The slippage of the social mask by Sontag
- The way music affects us bodily

- Theories of affect by looking at Affect Theory Reader. 

- Berger's notion of 'who is looking at who?' 

- Barthes (pg 10 Camera Lucida) notions of posing and being looked at.

Research - Philip-Lorca diCorcia

Following on from immersion and Walker Evans, I felt that I should talk about Philip-Lorca diCorcia as he is very well known for his series 'Heads'.
For this series, he rigged a strobe light to some scaffolding in Times Square and he captured photographs of his subjects from 20ft away. As the photographs were taken in broad daylight, the subjects had no idea that it had been taken.
He took more than 4000 images in total for this series but only ever used 17.

Revised Proposal

I have only added a small paragraph to my new proposal which I have highlighted.

Proposal - Exploring the influences that the music we listen to has on our fashion choices

Key Words

Portraiture, projection, projector, psychedelic, psychedelia, drone, folk, space, space rock, garage, neo-psych, music, influence, fashion, style, genre, sub-genre, clothing, experiment, experimental, studio, immersion.

Overview/Topics of Interest

My area of practice tends to have a psychedelic theme to it, which includes a range of everyday objects, nature and people. I am inspired by work that uses bright colours and I like to work using bright colours myself. I am majorly influenced by Karl Ferris and Ira Cohen because of their use of colour and materials used within their shoots are very experimental, notably 'The Mylar Chamber' series.

The idea for my final major project was influenced by visual light shows that I saw at Liverpool International Festival of Psychedelia and a piece entitled 'L'Expedition Scintillante' by Pierre Huyghe at the Reflections From a Damaged Life exhibition.

Title:

Refractions

Introduction/Research Question

How does what we listen to affect the way we dress? Does the genre we listen to cause us to dress stereotypically? Or do we not dress stereotypically at all?

Aims and Objectives

For my final major project my aim is to explore the relationship between clothing and fashion and how they influence each other. There are many different genres of music that influence the wearer to dress a certain way. This could be down to the way a famous person from said genre of music dresses or the fashion of a certain era.

I intend to photograph people whose clothing choices are clearly influenced by the music that they listen to. The way that I will show the relation between music and fashion is that I will be using an overhead projector to play a video onto the subject's face and backdrop, for example, post punk and a video of frequency waves (this would connect the subject to post-punk band Joy Division through their album Unknown Pleasures which features frequency waves on the front cover.)

Rationale

I think that this will be an interesting idea to pursue as there are many genres of music that I will be able to explore and every outcome will be completely different to the others. It would also be interesting to see if the viewer(s) of my work will be able to make the connection between the genres and fashion styles.

I would not be able to use any video I pleased and what I personally thought related to the fashion, so I would have to ask my subjects about what they listen to and who they are influenced by amongst other things as not to create a stereotypical piece of work.

I would also like to play music that the subject likes and photograph their natural reaction to the music that they are listening to as I would like the subject to be fully immersed in the music.

Previous Research

Below I have compiled a list of sub-genres of music, along with the main genre of music that they come from, that I have researched into and that I think would be interesting to explore.

   -      Psychedelic Drone
   -      Psychedelic Folk
   -      Psychedelic Garage
   -      Neo-Psych
   -      Space Rock

General Methodology

    ⁃     Plan questions to ask the subjects. Doing so will enable the subject and I to choose an appropriate video to project.
    ⁃    Print final pieces to either a2 or a3 poster size

Data Collection and Analysis

As mentioned previously, I will ask my subject some questions about the genre they listen to. This is mainly to avoid using a stereotypical projection relating to the chosen genre.

Specialist Needs

I intend to shoot my work in the studio with the aid of overhead projector. I will experiment using black and white backgrounds before I have the subjects come into the studio to see which would look best with the projections on it.

Research - Immersion and Walker Evans

noun

[mass noun]

• 1 The action of immersing someone or something in a liquid:his back was still raw from immersion in the icy Atlantic sea
• baptism by immersing a person bodily (but not necessarily completely) in water.

• 2 Deep mental involvement in something:a week’s immersion in the culinary heritage of Puglia
• a method of teaching a foreign language by the exclusive use of that language: as a teacher she advocates learning by immersion [as modifier]:an immersion school

• 3 Astronomy the disappearance of a celestial body in the shadow of or behind another.

Origin:

late 15th century: from late Latin immersio(n-), from immergere 'dip into' (see immerse)

 As mentioned in a previous post, I would like to look at immersion. I would like to make my subjects look 'as one', with the projection. This will be shown by the clothing and the projection chosen. I will also play music that the subject likes and photograph their natural reaction to it, rather than getting them to pose. 

This led me to research Walker Evans's series 'Subway' in which he took photographs of people riding on the subway in New York and going about their daily business, completely unaware that he was documenting it and thus capturing a range of natural emotions.

Below are some of my favourite images taken by Walker Evans. 

Timetable

I am required to make a personalised timetable for part of this module. In this I will divide up the 14 forthcoming weeks over which I will be doing my final major project. Creating a timetable will enable me to manage my time effectively and make the most of the time that I have.

I will divide my timetable into five parts:

- Theory
- Practical
- Contacts
- Framing and printing
- Exhibition

For the 'theory' part of my timetable I want to

- Undertake artist research and any other relevant research
- Spend a minimum of 5 hours a week reading relevant texts
- Post a minimum of 4 blog posts a week.

All in all this will last 12 of the 14 weeks. I have decided to have this long to do blog work to guarantee that I have a strong blog.

For the 'practical' part of my timetable I want to

- Do a test shoot
- Experiment with my images
- Do the real shoot
- Edit my images

This will last 10 of the 14 weeks.

For the 'contacts' part of my timetable I want to

- Find participants/models for my shoot

This will last only 3 of the 14 weeks.

For the 'framing and printing' part of my timetable I want to

- Find a suitable printers
- Order my prints
- Find suitable frames for my work

This will last for 7 of the 14 weeks. I chose to have this period of time as 7 weeks to allow for any printing errors or in case anything was to go wrong and so I would have enough time to rectify it.

For the 'exhibtion' part of my timetable I want to

- Send invites
- Set up
- Finishing touches

This will last for 3 of the 14 weeks. I chose to have 3 weeks to allow enough time for invites to be sent and to give people plenty of notice about the exhibition.

My Professional Practice Pack Part 2

I found making my second practice pack incredibly helpful as it gave me some starting points, like looking at psychedelic art festivals in other countries. Through researching this, it gave me a lot of new artists that I was not familiar with and could potentially influence my work.

I also researched past galleries and exhibitions and when I explore these further, I will be able to add to other categories that I have, such as 'photographers and artists'.

I decided to research into magazines also, and stumbled upon an interesting magazine called Oz. I will definitely be researching this further as the covers alone were interesting enough.

My Professional Practice Pack

The past week or so I have spent time compiling a list of useful websites, galleries to visit, where to find arts based jobs, stock libraries etc. for use in the future. I also have to make a second and more personalised practice pack for this project which will help me with my final major project. Below are some screencaps of my first professional practice pack.