Ply - Lin
The following is a critical evaluation wrote from the perspective of a group of people me included this is how we created Plylin.
Derive theory is a relative concept, which means to literally ‘drift’. Guy Debord states that within this moment, we let go of all of our logical senses, and merely move where we are drawn to within this moment. The idea that during a derive you should not distract yourself with the camera and instead take snapshots of your findings for documentation. So, within this state, we are able to perceive our surroundings within a new light. Debord also explained how cities have psychological effects on the individual, changing how they view, and document their surroundings.
The inspiration for our first piece was inspired by one individual that creates ‘movie barcodes, made up of every frame of a movie, for example, the Harry Potter films were condensed into one piece. This piece gave us a gage of how many images we would need. We based it on 100 pictures approximately each. Originally we were going to be able to create the image within minutes. But the software used to create these images no longer functioned. This meant Andy had to hand edit the entire image together by hand. By putting layer after layer onto photoshop Andy made the image after about 4 hours of work.
The moviebarcode only represented mere segments of our journey, when joined together, it created a grander image. By using a mass amount of images, it brought our journeys together. Seeing the image as a whole enables the audience to be able to create your own shapes from the blocks of color you can see. By creating the barcode, it showed the most important part of our journeys, which in this first image, was the time of the day that we started our Derive, as the images slowly get darker depending on the time we had individually picked.
The inspiration for our second piece was from an Instagram post in which Andy discovered a large, pixelated image. This idea was brought to the group and we all agreed that this would be an interesting piece to recreate with the same technique as our first idea. We knew that we would be taking lots of photographs on our trip to Berlin so we did not set a quota to how many we would needed. The idea of using pixels rather than creating another barcode gives the viewer something new to look at and to compare the contrast between both pieces.
For the gallery, we thought about how the two pieces would fit together a lot we looked at Kandinsky a Russian painter known for creating a dual sided piece of work that contrast and conflict each other. One side wild and vivid the other somber a geometric. for example “Black Lines (1913)” and “Several Circles (1926)”. We felt this related to us because our two pieces felt very radical and different from each other “Ply (2015)” a very small piece made of mostly browns with the odd speck of color, but it was also very chaotic. Unlike “Lin (2016)” which was large had a wide range of color and very uniformed and concise. There were also comparisons that “Black Lines (1913)” was created in Moscow and “Several Circles (1926)” was created in Berlin both in response to some aspect of the two major cities. Just like our two pieces each created based on Plymouth and Berlin.
“Ply” was re-edited by Andy as he felt the original piece no longer fit with “Lin”. He took inspiration from the Joy Division cover of “Unknown Pleasure”. We felt this was a good idea to try and replicate as the original image from The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Astronomy of a pulsar CP 1919 as it was a very layered piece of work which was was the one tie in our work layers stacks this way of condensing information into one image. By turning the image on it’s side and going into the image with the liquify tool Andy created the new image. We all felt it was a good comparison to the new “Lin” image.
When editing our second piece together we wanted to create a pixelated image taken from our inspiration. Due to the lengthy process of creating the barcode image we knew that the pixelated image would also be a lengthy process. So when creating this piece the whole group edited their images to create around 20 rows each of pixels. To create the pixels we measured out the right size square which would fit and then layered images over each other using the guidelines on photoshop to get the pixels around the same size. This was then all put together to create our final image.
We decided to print the pieces at 12x12, having them small meant that the viewer would have to get very close to look at the pixels, focusing their attention. The paper choice was very important to us; this was a detail that we wanted to get right so that the concept was strong. The Plymouth derive went on glossy paper and the Berlin derive went on matte paper, this was an intentional decision that corresponded with the concepts behind the piece. Initially, members of the group were concerned that the piece would not look unified using two different types of paper. However, we wanted the matte paper to match the textures and the aesthetics of the Berlin derive and the glossy paper to compliment the smooth lines in the Plymouth derive. Getting the pieces mounted onto foam board was an important decision, this helped unify the pieces and make them look professional. We decided to call the piece Plylin name created by Andy by merging Plymouth with Berlin combining the two derives from one word.
Working in a group was quite interesting even though we were making the piece together; everyone within the group was able to take photos of anything they wanted. We were able to really focus on what we wanted in our derives. Not being able to see any of the images in great detail suggests that our aim was not to focus on what we should photograph but how we should document the derive.
For the media arts second year show I designed the poster chosen to advertise the exhibition. This is the third time my work has been featured on exhibition advertisement. The two posters I submitted with the chance of being picked were the two images I (as a group) was submitting for the gallery as well. Both images featured in the gallery and the second poster was picked to advertise the event.
