Tutorials with Anthony Luvera

TUTORIAL ONE

In the first lecture of the 352mc module, we were set the task of writing a proposal to be looked at the following Wednesday. I had several topics that I was interested in, particularly the digital age and the effect on photography and culture; I connected with the Phonar module extremely well. I managed to narrow down my interests into two quite similar areas however I became aware through consideration that I couldn’t combine them both together. The first interest was artificial intelligence and its prominence in society, the other was anonymity and the effect on emotion and culture. I decided to choose anonymity and I wrote a proposal on this concept, this proposal can be seen in a separate blog post. In preparation for presenting the proposal I booked an apt with Anthony Luvera to discuss the validity of my concept.

I gave Anthony the description part of the proposal to read and sought his opinion on the topic, the feedback was good and he gave me some research ideas:

• Photography and Science – book from Reacktion Press by Kelly Wilder
• Look into photography and technology in a broader sense
• You could view each emotion: responsibility, guilt, compassion as different avenues or research projects
• Karent Brett – Conversations with myself, is a video examined the individual obsessive habits from OCD sufferers
• Patricia Paccini considers science, technology and the body
• Examine media discussions and academic publications, new ways of tech allowing people to connect
• Consider trolling
• Performed Photography is a concept – look for Dr Paul Geoff
• Look at Susan Bright, Auto Focus: Self Portraiture
• Paul Geoff – photography, performance, participation, photograph as evidence of process? Consider methodology
• Phil Collins (artist) The World Won’t Listen
• Consider staged photography – The Hustlers, Geoff Wall and Gregory Crewdson
• The piece could be video/online/gif?
• Katrina Sluice is a curator of digital pieces
• You could use the Internet to source people, John Stezeka – appropriation
• Leigh Deale – work around Mother
• Gillian Wearing

I was really pleased and motivated by the response to the description of my idea, Anthony suggested that I should go away and complete my proposal as accurately as I could before the following 352mc session. I completed this task straight away and began to research the ideas Anthony had given me.

 

TUTORIAL TWO

Following my second tutorial with David Moore, I changed the concept and practice behind my images. I pursued the ASL idea further and produced the set of images of my friend’s profile pictures using binary code, inputting the textual Age, Sex, Location’ information. It was these images that I brought to the session with Anthony to see what his thoughts were on my new direction. I was quite apprehensive about this apt because although the research behind my idea is strong, I didn’t quite feel like the visual appearance was complicated enough to constitute a good response for my Final Major Project. But I presented these images to Anthony, explained the process behind them and heard his feedback on them, the notes can be seen below:

• The ASL part in the actual images is quite visually distracting, the images might work better if it was just figures and the ASL information was either the title, or the caption
• What is the relevance of the people in the images? It might be better if the subjects were more appropriate to the concept, for example Edward Snowden
• The terms and conditions of social media is interesting, perhaps there is a way of integrating that
• If these images are to act as portraits, the appearance and presentation method should reference portraiture
• Research portraiture, both historic and contemporary, to analyse the decisions made and why, apply these processes for your own project
• Go to galleries, think about presentation strategies, if you can’t go to galleries then seek installation shots
• Look at ABC books, Andreas Smit, Constant Dullaart – in relation to technology, visual culture and digital culture
• Research the Carroll Fletcher Gallery and the artists featured there like Thomson and Craighead
• The ideas are interesting, the project just needs more experimentation and refinement

 

Reflection:

It was brilliant to know that the appearance of my images wasn’t too simple, that actually making them cleaner would be more effective. His comment on my use of subjects was completely justified, without realising it I had just chosen subjects by convenience rather than really focusing down on what it meant to use them. Although it is true that everyday people use technology regularly to represent their identity using communication, it would be way more appropriate and accessible for the viewer to use notable subjects. In order to make a real statement and encourage the viewers to relate to the images I will need to use subjects that they know of and therefore will try and seek some familiarity with. In addition to this, I needed to become a lot more self conscious about my decision-making process in order to make sure that I am choosing the most appropriate choices for my project. The research into portraiture and other artists who have tackled similar content and their approach to the installation of pieces will enable me to then start analysing my own project and what would be the most effective method for it.

 

TUTORIAL THREE 

Following the second formative feedback review I made another tutorial with Anthony to discuss the changes and decisions I had made to the project. I came to him with a Photoshop mock-up of what a sample image might look like on the wall of the exhibition, the image with a black aluminium frame on the white wall with a caption below stating the name of the subject. I talked to him more about how the idea has progressed and how I had changed the subjects in my images to politicians. I also brought along my critical rationale for feedback as well because I feel it is necessary to be with my work in order to provide the audience with a bit of textual support. The notes from the feedback session can be seen below:

• In relation to the text, read the book Art and Text to see how different artists have incorporated text in their work
• You could consider instead of having captions on the wall, actually including the text in the image and printing it with a white border
• When thinking of how to present with text, you need to consider whether the text is really part of the work or whether it is just a caption

He then gave me a few corrections to for my artist statement, which I made and it got rewritten a few more times before it was right as it was a little bit gimicky.

 

Reflection:

I had not even considered putting the text as part of the image so that is an aspect I need to consider and evaluate in my research and decision making process for the presentation methods. Once I have researched the book Art and Text I will be able to make a more informed decision on whether to consider the text as part of the work or whether it should be just a caption. Another thing I learned later was that each artist in the exhibition is only having their name, title and medium of the work. To have any captions or the artist statement on the wall would require additional work from me and I would need to make sure that I display this in a method that is suitable for my own work. This tutorial was very useful to further define my decision-making process and prepare me for the exhibition as I had a better idea of what I am required to produce in relation to textual support.