Weekly theme: Observation
Theme: Observation
Method: This theme has typically several approaches to construct a project on in my opinion. To show the result of observation, or present something for people to observe on, or do something research based to experiment on observation itself, to look at the relationship between an observer and the subject. I choose to make something for people to see.
The concept behind the work is to look at the behavior of observation: it is an action driven by motivation, that is, there is something that the observer looking for. And based on that a game can be made, since our will is not the only control of our behavior. The observee is not dead, and it can provide things that force us to change the concentration and somehow shows the feeble structure we impose on our relationship with external world.
When we are watching a movie is like it's an reversed process. The things shown, mimicing the real world is something that has built in intention to make the audience focus on the things that the director want them to see. Stripped of the plot, each individual shot still serve their purpose of showing. Can an audience observe a film the same way they look at the real world?
It is worth trying to show something that is sort of people's concern, while giving the audience a different purpose when watching but the true effort of the thing is to distract from them, and the distraction is actually a serious reflection on the concerning thing that is on the screen at the same time. Thus I make the piece here.
Context: The work I thought about as I was planning for the practice is Antonioni's Blow Up(1966). The cinematography of the piece is as deceptive as the topic. It is the dead body in the picture eventually made the photographer question his "focus", since the corpse, or the murder, naturally concerns people, and the observer's purpose is no longer the focus in the photograph.
Also I watched a some of my favourite movies with their commentary on, and I realized it is hard to shift my focus away from what I was told to look at or think about, which altered the experience when I watched the thing for the first time. Thus I think it's gonna be fun to even give the commentary an image body in the scene. But it was not affectively done.
Respond: I made a five minute video in my apartment,adding some double exposure effect with Adobe Premiere. I do a monologue about my memory and child hood while playing a guessing the cup game with the audience at the left side of the screen, while on the right side of the screen, I put a chicken head mask on, and try to distract the audience from what's going on on the left side of the screen while give some commentary or ideas that I have about myself.