Live project

For this project we had to put ourselves into small groups and come up with an interactive piece of art from doing research into various artists, pieces and concepts. In my group, we knew that we wanted the viewer to be wearing or holding some form of interactive piece that would work with the experience of the installation so that they could have a personal connection with it. We came up with the concept of fragmented vision and virtual reality as inspiration so our first step was researching into various ideas to do with these subjects. We clearly knew it was impossible to create a virtual reality headset and considered creating a smaller, non digital version but did not want to just simply copy the idea of visual reality but use it as a starting point.

After primary and secondary research into these areas, we came up with the idea of making an immersive space full of projections and then creating a head piece to enhance the viewers experience. We wanted this head piece to be made from fragmented, reflective material as to bounce the light and colour off to create a strange warped vision. As well as this, we wanted to make a theatrical face or head piece which would not be something that could be worn by the public such as a makeup piece. We considered using abstract paintings to project onto the space as this was something that would be very visually appealing and colourful.

For inspiration, we all visited the V&A to see a piece called Glastonbury: Land and Legend which was an installation in the shape of a tent which was projected with filmed moments from Glastonbury festival, along with an audio of people explaining their experience there. Inside the tent, there were pillows for the public to sit on so that they could lay down and get a full experience from the installation.

Due to the fact that the 4 members of our group all did different forms of art and had different interests and skills, we wanted to final outcome to reflect all of these different areas to different people, depending on what their strengths were. Kiara, being a fine artist interested in 3D sculpture and making was looking into the physical construction of the head piece. Sadie and Beth, who are both painters were assigned to create the abstract paintings which would later be projected onto the space of our installation. As the field I am going into is makeup and prosthetics, My job was to deign and create the theatrical head piece/makeup which would be photographed with the final outcome. As our theme was all about fragmentation, cracking and distorting I had ideas of sticking pieces to the skin to add this sense of breaking pieces. However, after experimenting with this I decided to do intricate makeup to make the actual skin seem as if it is shattered and broken.

 At first I experimented with this idea on my brother at home to see what kind of techniques worked well to create a realistic cracked design. I did this using skin coloured foundation that was slightly lighter than the models skin to  highlight the areas around the cracks. I then used brown eyeshadow for the hollows of the cracks to make the under layer of skin appear to be deeper than the surface skin. Lastly I used a black body paint to draw the cracked pieces and slightly to shadow the underneath part of the skin.

(The final piece done on the day)

on the day i did the fragmented makeup on myself as we thought that it would be much more practical to do it on myself than prevent another group from moving forward with their project as when practicing the makeup I realised that it took over 2 hours to thoroughly complete. I again used the same brown eyeshadow and lighter foundation to accentuate the highs and lows of the fragmentation. I used a very fine angled brush to achieve very precise lines to make it as realastic as possible. When this makeup was projected with the moving images of the paintings done by Sadie and Beth, it created a very strange and interesting effect, almost making the face unrecognisable when photographed.

On the day of the presentation we set up projectors in an empty white room while having the curtains shut. This meant that the projected images were extremely clear and vibrant. Using this space also allowed us to create an actual space for people to come into. We also used turned white tables to help reflect the art in different positions. The actual projections of Sadie and Beth's art was created into moving GIFS by Sadie which heavily enhanced the immersive experience with and without the head piece. Before allowing a viewer to try on the head piece and interact with the art, we tested it ourselves and took photographs of the inside of the head piece.

I feel as though our piece was successful as when having the head piece on with the lights reflecting from the mirrored pieces, it did become a full experience.