Using the public space

Week 11, 12, 13

The last three weeks I was distributing my postcards in public spaces, especially in those where the described incidents are likely to happen or where they would catch attention because of the topic or the photographic art. In the following you can see the photos I took from some locations:

University

Restaurants

Art Galleries

Beer gardens

Other open spaces

Cafés

Bars & Clubs

Parks

Some people even put them in their rooms :)

Social Media I need help!

Week 9

As I thought just the printed versions aren't enough to get feedback, I'm also distributing my work on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Co. At the moment I'm awaiting responses in order to evaluate them later!

Ready to print

Week 9

Working continuously on my project, I made some print versions out of my photos with a back and front in a postcard format. The idea behind is, to distribute them around campus and Brighton. People that get curious can visit my blog and leave a comment through a QR-code, which leads them to my previous post. The print versions that I have already sent to the printer look like this:

The dog podcast

Week 8

In this practical session I made a podcast with my course mate Oswaldo which is about dogs that live on the streets and in dog shelters opposite to dogs that get bred just because people are demanding for them. It can be listened to in this YouTube video on my channel:

What's your opinion?

Nice to see you here! It means, you found one of my cards somewhere around Brighton and made the effort to visit my blog! Please let me know what you think about my project :) If you want to read more about it, it's all in this blog.

The glow sticks are everywhere

Week 8

On Wednesday I made it happen - with the help of my wonderful boyfriend who helped me choose locations, took the pictures and even was my leg model for one of the pictures. We went out in the middle of the night, have been to parking lots and alley ways and also found some good photo spots in our own houses. It was windy and cold and sometimes the tedious creation of sentences with the glow sticks just was blown away. Hence we're really proud of the results, that I edited with Photoshop afterwards:

Project work and Easter eggs

Easter break

During the Easter break I continued to think about and work on my project "What happens when you turn on the light". I concretized my idea and came to the conclusion that I want to involve as less Photoshop as possible and take the pictures right away approximately like I want to have them. Therefore I ordered 200 little glow sticks and made a list with sentences that will be written through them in a really dark place. I also chose the suitable locations therefore. To express a bit more I had the idea to involve shoes / feet / legs to depict for example pain, aggression, disaffirmation etc. This enables me to put the sentences - written through the glow sticks - on the floor including those human gestures. For the following week I booked the camera Nikon D7000 and have two friends that will help me taking the pictures.

Let's make a movie

Week 7

The task for this week was to find a certain issue, take a camera and a microphone and record people around campus or town, also with the technique "doorstop". As it was "One world week" at Sussex, we decided to interview people concerning this topic, ask them what they know about it and how they were engaged so far. Back in class each person from our group edited the video individually to have different results. I uploaded mine on Youtube and it can also be seen here:

Interesting was that a lot of people really didn't want to talk to us, although it wasn't about a sensitive topic. But still we got some satisfying answers in the end.

Taking the project further

Week 6

Today everyone presented their practical projects and it was really interesting to see how everyone is engaged with certain issues and passionate about them. A short feedback round was also quite helpful. Before I presented my project "What happens when you turn on the light?" I decided not to depict people on my photo work as it would distract too much from the message my sentences shall carry. Two course mates of mine, Theresa and Fanny, also had the idea of using plastic glow sticks and / or holiday lights to make the photos more authentic - and then place them in really dark or dirty places in Brighton. I will definitely consider that!

Donald Trump and the aliens

Week 5

In the last workshop session we experimented with Photoshop. Although I already have some Photoshop skills it was fun and I created this nice collage with the help of paths, masks and layer effects.

The new nomads

Week 5

"The artist needs to learn how to operate as a nomadic sophist in a migrant polis." Krzystof Wodiczko

I just read "The ABC of Tactical Media" by David Garcia and Geert Lovink and Electronic Civil Disobedience by the Critical Art Ensemble which were both really interesting texts! What they both have in common is the statement that the new forms of activism have to be decentralized. In the first reading this happens through tactical media "jumps" which are possible through "the pace of technological change and regulatory uncertainty". The second one mainly states that resistance has to get away from the streets and find its new place in the cyberspace, where the organization is also decentralized - that means it consists of a micro structure containing a lot of organic cells, which have their own identities. These cells work together with the common goal to resist authoritarian power. Hereby the prevalent schism between knowledge and technical ability must be closed.

Isidore Isou you disturb me a bit!

Week 4

There is definitely no better idea than to start to watch Venom and Eternity from Isidore Isou on a Friday night at midnight. Yes, that's exactly what I did this week. In the beginning I hardly could stay awake and find everything a bit odd that I saw. I was also irritated by the French language (which I haven't spoken for a while and forgotten a lot) and the hardly readable subtitles in English. The story of the second part with his girlfriends then got me and the third part finally convinced me that I actually liked what I have just watched. Everything made a bit more sense than in the beginning and I understood that he was actually showing new and revolutionary forms of making cinema. I also had to laugh at a lot of points, especially when he performed the "letterisme". I'm not sure if it was his fault though that I woke up the next morning from very strange dreams!

What happens when you turn on the light?

Week 3

Concerning my third project idea of the word campaign I have some additional ideas to fill the concept with life. The name of the project "what happens when you turn on the light" describes the dark figure of sexual assaults and rapes in the "civilized" western societies. Especially because of the happenings that took place in Germany on New Years Eve 2016 and even more afterwards - also made-up ones - there is a big discussion about "foreigners" or refugees that come to rape women just because they're not used to our "open" culture. But there has never been a big discussion about that rape, sexual assault or domestic abuse against women is taking place everyday - often trough friends, partners or family members - and that those men who now scream "keep your hands off our women" are partly the first who would grope someone in a club or worse. Often women are too afraid to report their abusers or simply just want to forget about it. That is why the awareness of these things taking place is quite low. The picture where the light has been turned on could for example show this situation in a club, or a situation at a home etc.

About revolution

Week 3

"In the end, this is a story about three crimes. It is also a story about the promiscuity of the Internet, the usefulness of images, and the ways in which they inform, inflect, and hijack how we understand suffering in faraway places."

When I read the article of Negar Azimi "Iran in Pictures - Social Suffering and Three Sets of Images" I was really taken in it. First of all, I haven't heard of all three cases that have been discussed there: the hanging of two gay teenagers called Asgari and Mahoni, the death sentenced Batebi who took part in a student protest and at least Neda Agha-Soltan who got shot during a street demonstration, everything taking place in Iran. All three became figures for the human rights movement in Iran through modern techniques like photo and video and the distribution over social networks. Apart from that I really liked the questioning viewpoint from that reading, that threw up questions like: what about the rape allegation towards the two gay teenagers, that apparently should have raped a 13 year-old boy? Or what if Neda didn't actually attend the demonstration, but was just driving through with her car? Nobody has really mentioned that in their distributed media. But the message at the end is clear: It doesn't really matter if they can change something to the good and if it is just raising awareness.

In this coherence I also really liked to watch the film about Gene Sharp "How to Start a Revolution" by Ruaridh Arrow. The ideas of Gene Sharp really makes one to hope and believe in a better future, the film itself is made up like a promotion and questionable with really dramatic music and a partial view. The trailer can be seen here:

Using Muse and After Effects

Week 3

For the first time in my life I used Adobe Muse and I was really excited to do so! Before that I always planted my designs in Adobe Photoshop and translated those into HTML and CSS with the help of Adobe Dreamweaver or other programming software. This is a bit inconvenient and also requires programming knowledge. Not so in Muse. Being already familiar with the Adobe products, the operating with the software was quite intuitive and easy for me. You don't need to have any programming skills, you can just start to make your design as you wish it should look like. Muse is doing the rest and "translates" everything in the background, so you have an immediate interactive site after the principle "what you see is what you get". It gets a bit more difficult when you want to customize certain "modules" that are pre-designed by the software. But after engaging with it for a while I found everything I wanted to find and adapted it to my conception. To not just have an experiment or "test site", I already implemented space to present my project ideas there. Here are two screenshots of my result - from the home site and a sub site, representing the description of my ideas:

After having experimented with that we took a look at Adobe After Effects, that I - until that moment - was also unfamiliar with. By using it I noticed a strong similarity to Adobe Premiere, which I had worked with before to make some short films with animations. This also was quite nice to use therefore and I immediately decided to use it for the Valentine's garbage bag project I made before. At the moment I'm thinking about implementing this in one of my ideas I've already mentioned. I will write about that more specifically in another post. Here is a screenshot from my first work with After Effects:

How I spent my Valentine's Day

Week 2

In week two we had to perform a gesture in a space, which is accessible in our daily lives and keep a record of it. I chose to take a filled garbage bag out to a nice day to the Brighton Marina – conveniently it was Valentine’s Day! A friend of mine was visiting for a week and consented to help me with the project. So we started our trip, pretending to not know each other.

Firstly, we went to the bus stop on Elm Grove to catch a bus to the Marina. She always walked past me with a little distance, secretly taking photos of me whilst pretending to stare at her phone. We went on the bus and got out at the Marina, strolling along the ships. My friend was always behind me. We even got into a café, then finally took the bus back and got rid of the garbage bin.

Whilst walking around we made several observations. In general, people didn’t react a lot. If any we got some stares. Still noticeable was something in the eyes of passengers, like if they noticed but didn’t want to take a closer look. Those glances and stares got more numerous at the bus stop and in the bus, but we definitely got the most in the café: People were obviously irritated of a garbage bag in that location. Some people laughed, as can be seen on some of the photos we took, others were irritated by the person following me and “staring at her phone”. Some of them probably understood that she actually photographed or filmed me, some maybe just noticed something odd in the whole situation. This is also visible on some of our photos, as the passengers stare directly into the camera. My friend told me later that it was hard for her to act non-involved. Still we had a lot of fun that day but were also happy to finally throw the garbage bag into where it belongs to – the garbage bin.

The whole story can be seen in the following pictures: