A profile of Matt Price. No. 52.

For this experiment I decided to create a physical form of a Facebook profile. And whats more physical than  book? For this piece I picked a friend at random by choosing a number and counting down to that number. I liked the idea of giving him a number rather than a name as it took away the personal aspect. Inside the book I displayed his information taken word by word from his profile. I then displayed his profile photographs, his own albums and his tagged photographs. By creating his profile in a physical form it felt strange to have all of this information in my hands, almost like it wasn't my right, but how is this different from having all of this information at the touch of a button? If someone approached us asking for all of this information surely we would find it strange and probably refuse to give it out. Yet we give it away without a thought. In a society which is so careful and so suspicious towards people what is it about the Internet which makes us feel safe? Is the Internet safe at all?

Dodgy layering.

This piece began with the idea of facebook photos. On facebook each person has their 'Profile Picture' this picture represents you throughout facebook, with it showing whenever you leave a comment, like a page or join a group. For most people this is a photograph that they like and people normally will spend some time choosing this image and changing it whenever they prefer another image of themselves. Another feature on facebook is 'tagging' and 'untagging' photographs. Whenever you are tagged in a photo this will then be shown on your profile but you have the ability to untag any photos that you get tagged in. Essentially trying to hide any photos you don't like from your friends. I wanted to highlight both of these images as this is perhaps on of the most common ways that facebook users edit their lives online. To do this I planned to present the profile picture as the main focus, however I then wanted to show the untagged image coming through behind. I wanted this to be subtle and still partly hidden. This was to highlight the fact that even if a photo is untagged it is still online for people to see.

Practically this didn't work out. I started by printing both photographs on to translucent plastic. Whilst doing this I was reminded of Nan Goldin's work that I saw whilst in Berlin. She also used a slightly translucent quality to allow light to shine though, and I remembered how much I loved this technique. I tried to create my own light box (picture still to come). This had potential but the second image was coming through too much and making the overall piece too messy. I thought that perhaps the photos needed to be further away from each other, I tried to do this by hanging the images with the use of paperclips and translucent tread, but the same problem presented itself. I decide that I may need to change my approach and began to hang up the 'untagged' images, the idea was to then hang up the profile pictures in front, making those the main focus. I wasn't happy with the end result, it seems to look much messier than I had hoped. Although I like the idea of these photos being blown up, and hung from the ceiling to the floor, the viewer could then walk and move through these images finding the untagged photos hidden away at the back. Almost like a translation of how you move through peoples photos on facebook, starting with their profile images, going on to their tagged and perhaps ending finding some untagged images on a friends profile.

I would also quite like to go back to the idea of using a light box, trying to figure out a way to hide the second image a little more, however I'm not sure whether this would be a lost cause and if I should actually just move on.


Although the focus is off I quite like how the main image is the 'Profile Picture' yet the one your eye is drawn to is the 'untagged' photo in the background.

Photos blown up, hung ceiling to floor, allowing viewers to walk into.



An afternoon chat with Gary and Matt.

After discovering my tutor Matt ran his own secret blog we began to discuss the power of social network sites and how free expression is becoming less possible. Being a teacher Matt feels the need to keep his blog anonymous, this way he can express his true feelings without worrying that this could later come back to haunt him. This made me realise that perhaps we should all be more careful when putting our names to sites. If someone wanted to find me online they wouldn’t have to look far, simply type my name into google, with a bit of searching they would soon find my facebook, twitter, tumblr, msn and email address. The internet contains a character profile of anyone who uses these social sites, the more that you use, the bigger your profile is. And this character predictor is becoming more powerful, with adverts being moulded to your likes. Take facebook for example, the right hand side shows multiple advertisements, earlier on in the day you may have googled the shoe shop ‘Office’ later on these adverts will be showing you the shoes you viewed and other shoe sites, tempting you constantly. Basically if you use these social sites regularly, and don’t worry too much about what you put on there, your whole life if displayed at the click of a button. Quite a scary concept when you stop to think.

And even with our lives displayed on these sites the majority of us allow unknown people access to this. Taking my facebook for example, I have 501 friends. Now in real life I’m pretty sure I don’t have 501 friends, even 501 regular acquaintances. 23 of these people I have never met. The majority of them are well known faces from around my town, or people that I’ve spoke to a handful of times. Friends? I don’t think so. Yet I allow them to see my conversations with friends, photographs including me and my friends, my Blackberry pin number, my two email addresses, my twitter, my tumblr, my birthday and where I study. As we spend more and more time on the internet, these social sites become the story of our lives. And all anyone would have to do to find me in person would be to wait for one of those times I put in my status where I am, the rope and anchor pub perhaps, the local starbucks or even priestley college wouldn’t be too hard to find.

And recently it is not just our immediate life that people are showing, but they are now scanning old photographs, showing them as children, and showing other family members such as parents when they were teenagers. Why do we do this? Why do we feel the need to show our lives to other people, friends or strangers. Sometimes I think it is all quite self absorbed, not in the sense that your egotistical, but you put this information out there in hope of getting a response, making yourself feel liked. A need for attention, a need for acceptation.

When Gary joined in the conversation we started to think of how I could show just how shocking the extent of these profiles are. The main idea that we found exciting was to simply show it in the real life environment that I had been working with previously. To pick a person at random, choose a number, count down my friends list until I reached this number and display their life. With my interest in imagery I liked the idea of taking every photo that this person had on their facebook, then doing a search to find any untagged photos of them (these would be on other peoples profiles) and displaying them. On a personal level this may feel wrong, I may feel like im somewhat taking advantage and making a show of this person, but I need to remember that by putting these photos on their site they are allowing people to view them, take them and use them in any way that they like.

I could display these images by simply covering a wall with them, in an almost stalker wall or police investigation manner. Or I could be more 'tasteful' perhaps, find hundreds of photo frames and frame each photo, hang them on the walls, place them on the fireplace, wear them in a locket. Taking this family home set up and turning it into something more shocking, and perhaps a little sinister. I wonder whether this almost stalker approach is in keeping with my concept, but surely these pieces would highlight how we feel the need to communicate so much that perhaps we ignore our own safety, not just in a physical sense, but in a character profile sense. Who knows who could be using this information and what they could be using it for.
The reaction would also become part of the artwork, as I would create this piece without the subject knowing, and then face them with the wall of photographs. It would make them face what they are allowing others to see, surely this would be shocking? But would it make them change their ways, or would it shock them for a second, before forgetting that feeling. It is so common now that we will never change our ways? After all I have been talking about this for a week or two now and I’m still perfectly happy to show everything that I do.

One thing that worries me is the pure scale that this piece could reach. Randomly clicking on a friend I can see that they have 1034 tagged photographs, 12 profile pictures and 796 of their own uploaded photos. Now that is alto of printing credit. But I feel the power of the piece would come from this repetition of images. Much like the work of On Kawara.



More to come on the works of On Kawara.



A photo is worth a thousand words...

What I find most interesting about social networking sites is not the way in which we use them to communicate in a physical sense but rather how we use them to edit our lives, deciding how we are portrayed. This seems to have two different results, we either hold back our true selves, creating the person we would like to be. This may be driven from a lack of confidence, either from not fulfilling who we would like to be in real life or believing that our true character is not interesting enough. Or we use this as an extension of our true lives, expressing perhaps more in depth thoughts, gaining confidence from the lack of true human contact.
    
This editing also shows in the images we allow people to see, take Facebook for instance, we decide which photo we set as our profile picture, we upload the photos that we want people to see and we untag the photos that we don’t want to be associated with. I have to admit that I am guilty of this behaviour, as soon as I see that I have been tagged in a photo album I view the photos and untag any that I don’t like. This is either because I don’t like the way I look or the perception that I feel people may get of me. After all a photo is worth a thousand words.
    
It is this area of social network sites that I would like to begin to explore. I understand that this is drifting slightly away from my statement but I think that this ‘editing’ holds certain aspects of my original idea of communication, where we decide what is to be communicated whether through words or images.I like the idea of working with imagery, it excites me more than my previous ideas which had me working largely with text alone.
    
How do I set about creating work based on this idea? To begin I could take photographs from Facebook, taking someone’s profile picture and a photo that they have previously untagged. By untagging this photograph they have made a subtle change, and I feel that my work with the untagged photo must also be subtle, almost like leaving a trace behind, being masked over by the chosen profile picture. I wonder whether I could layer both photographs in a way in which when light was shined from behind, the second image would begin to show through? I also like the idea of combining image and text or continuing to use text alone, each time using contrasting elements. For example I could take an image and a statement from the same persons profile, or take a block of text and mark out another statement within the text. I feel there would need to be some kind of difference/contrast between what is being shown and what is being hidden. This contrast could be mirrored in the way I present the elements, take the block of text, these words could be created with a matt finish, then for the statement I wish to pick out I could add a subtle shine to the surface. There’s also the option of using a glow in the dark/UV paint, meaning that the hidden element will only show up at certain times, much like an untagged photo or a comment once written. They are still there, just not so current that they will be found easily.

Sod's law.

College is meant to be a place where you become passionate and serious about your studies. It is your choice if you go to lessons, if your on time, if you do the work, in fact its your choice if you want to be there at all. In my eyes it should be our choice to decide how we use the Internet. If we want to go on social networking sites and waste our time and our education, then perhaps we should be allowed. As human beings we like a structure to be put in place but just how much structure should we be given at college?

I knew as soon as I started this project based on social network sites that I would face some problems. Facebook was already blocked and Tumblr was blocked a few months ago, but I figured I still had twitter, it would be fine. A week or two into my project and I go to log in, a screen pops up saying something along the lines of 'This website has been blocked'. Great. I've been logging into twitter for two of the three years I've been at this college, and as soon as I actually need it, it gets blocked. Sods law. Its strange that the college take these steps hoping it will help, they think you wont loose focus in class and you'll spend your time in college doing what you are there to do. When in fact these steps can actually hinder our work, what some people don't seem to understand is that these sites are amazing sources of information. Take Tumblr for example, there are sections linking you to pages and pages about : art, design, architecture, poetry, sports, news, politics, science, gaming, film, music and more. And twitter is a great way to possibly get in touch with people you wouldn't normally be able to. Artists for example, sure you may be able to find an email address from their website but quite often these emails will be over looked. Where as a twitter account is a personal thing, they can access it throughout the day by their phones or computers, there's no need to open hundreds of emails, they all appear in a feed, meaning you have a larger chance of them reading it. I think that this is a much more personal way to communicate and begins to bring down the boundaries surrounding 'famous people' and their fans.

With twitter now blocked in college it was the perfect time to begin my first piece. I wanted to bring live tweets into the real world. Taking a sentence that could be overlooked and bringing it to the attention of people. Whether it bored people, confused people or amused people it was still communicating to the people. I find it strange that one of these 'tweets' that can be seen be millions of people on a website could find more attention in a small environment such as my college, simply because I picked a pen up and wrote it. Is this finding the value once more in hand written text?

To me a letter is a much more personal object than say an email. Just by the fact that someone has sat down, picked up the paper you are now holding and hand wrote every word, taking time to make sure each word is correct and is in fact what they want to say. As I am typing this now I type what I think, I do this quickly and without much thought, I'll go back and read it over once I'm done. Quickly changing anything I think is wrong, without leaving a trace of what was previously there. It is this fast pace that appeals to us in this fast world we live in. If I was to have hand wrote this I'm sure it would have taken me twice as long, being the reason I use this blog as my journal. With everything being typed, designed and printed in our society, could it be that a hand written sentence could be the most eye catching thing out there?

With all of this in mind I borrowed a small white board, positioned it outside the art rooms and wrote a tweet on it from my live feed on my phone. I had to stop myself from trying to find the most entertaining tweets to write, and just to write the top one as it was the most recent. After all my concept wasn't about amusing and entertain people, but to just simply communicate to them. This piece was combining the personal quick thinking tweet with the personal handwritten action. Every now and again I would go outside and replace the tweet with a new one. As this was outside the rooms people would walk in and ask what it was about, they would start talking to each other and discussing it, every if they didn't fully understand why it was there it was still doing its job.

Once the day was over I reflected on the piece. I liked the no hassle style, the simpleness of presenting a plain white board with hand written text, making the statement the focus, much like the work of Richard Prince with his plain backgrounds and text. But to me the piece as a whole wasn't powerful enough. I placed it outside the art rooms because it was right next to the smoking area where people tended to gather. I also placed it there because I was being polite, placing it somewhere I knew that know one would have a problem with. This was wrong of me, I should have been drawing attention to it rather than hiding it away. The next day I decided to carry on with the piece, this time I took it up to the wicked cafe and placed it on the stage. I also tried to write on it every hour. This was better, it created more of an impact and a wider range of people were viewing it. However it still wasn't filling its potential.

I felt that even though this piece could have gone further it was time to stop and move onto a new idea. If I was to do this piece again I would really commit to it. Personally I would like to have stayed with the board all day, writing the tweets as they came up on the live twitter feed. This could have been photographed or filmed and sped up into a short film sequence.

I find it interesting that I could take a white board from college, leave it where I pleased and wrote whatever I wanted on it within the college, yet I'm not allowed to access a mostly harmless website on college computers. What a strange level of control.

The Easter holidays sounded like the perfect time to really get stuck into my project. Without the help of Steve, Gary, Matt or my classmates I could really just go ahead with my own ideas and thoughts, challenging myself and exploring my concept on a higher level. However it seems its easy to say, not so easy to do. I miss the creative environment, the creative people, and the structure of the work place. Feeling uninspired I decide that rather than wallowing I would just go ahead with a piece of particle work! So I had a shopping trip to Manchester planned and I came prepared with a roll of stickers and a sharpie. This piece was a simple act of leaving my thoughts in a physical sense rather than using twitter to tweet. I quite liked this piece, it was simple yet effective, however if I was to show this as a finale piece I would need a series of around 50 atleast.Here's a selected few, please excuse the bad handwriting.

        

A moment of clarity in a mind of madness.

The beginning of a project is the part I hate most. You have a raw concept and a million paths that you could travel down. Its almost like your head is filled with ideas, yet you cant find them in the vast space which is your mind, sometimes its as if the mind cant control itself, its just too big to handle. I decided that my note making was getting me nowhere, sure it helped to get things down on paper but when I read them back nothing made sense. It seemed I was still stuck in my own head, with ideas going off in a different directions to my original concept outlines and with a feeling that they would all be pointless experiments leading to no conclusion. If there's anything I hate when it comes to my own work, its not having a conclusion. I personally feel that art and design is like a story, it needs a beginning, a middle and an end.
I felt like I was slowly going insane, so I managed to pin Steve down in the afternoon. Talking to Steve can sometimes be a stressful experience, firstly because he seems to think that I'm scared of him, which I find slightly amusing because in reality its just that I'm confused and stressed about my concept, and he actually reminds me of the friendly ranger. But secondly its because his mind is insane! I don't understand how he can take the small amount of explanation that I give to him and managed to write everything down on paper in such a clear manor. Speaking to Steve really does give me a moment of clarity before returning to my own mind of madness. So these are my initial ideas in a rough note form.

• Exploring the idea of how we are desensitised by the internet. For example, you see a photo on the internet of someone with a large cut, bleeding in a violet manner, it would have little affect on us compared to if that person was physically stood in front of us. This kind of violence would be shocking in real life.
• Wikileaks. Wikileaks is a collection of somewhat secret information. After looking through this information I think its safe to say most people would find some of this interesting. It tells of government secrects from many countries including our own, with information which has been covered up and hidden from us. When as a country we find such outrage in information along these lines why is it that we ignore a site such as Wikileaks? Only paying attention to this information when it is reported nationally within the news.
• The idea of putting information back into the public. I see the internet almost as its own world, a world which is present in ours, both feeding into each other. With some often choosing one or the other as their main world to live through.

How can I transfer information from the internet into the 'real world' making people pay more attention :

• If transferring info such as tweets or wikileaks I may want to erase and replace the text. This could be done by using a whiteboard, chalkboard or canvas and paint. This would help show a live feed.
• Creating my own wordsearches or presenting information on ready set scrabble boards. This would be a way to communicate information to those who may not use the internet such as the elderly.Changing the form of communication for different audiences.
• Using paper rolls attached to two walls to have a twitter or facebook conversation. Communicating only by writing on the real life 'wall'. This may show how we act differently, would we let our guard down like we do on the internet? Or would put our guard up more than usual as we can see the people that may view our 'wall', choosing not to say certain things.

Other points of interest :

• Displaying a text message conversation. As these are only between two people it is more private, yet as we leave these messages on our phones do we allow others to have access?
• Recording a face to face conversation, compare and contrasting them to our 'virtual' conversations.
• Looking at how our conversations change under the influence.
• Begin to write letters. Why has the form of communication by letters gone? Would the way that I wrote change as a letter seems more personal than receiving a text or a comment. Do words begin to mean more when written?
• Investigating the college text situation - How the college does a mass text on demand for the teachers. Send a text through Priestley to my fellow students, ask a question get a reply?
• Document the way that people leave comments. 'I hate art' was found written on an isle, look at the context. What’s written where and why?