Fifty-five ways of seeing.
A JOURNEY INTO THE VIRTUAL WORLD #11
I created the frame for my final piece in the last post - follow the link below if you missed it.
With all the preparations made for the exhibitions and the final words put together for my statement, my second [VR]Ography project was complete. All that remained was the actual setting up of the smaller initial group show, and the larger second year exhibition. When eventually the day came for our group show, I was able to finally see the work in situ, and to perhaps enjoy it for what it was for the first time. Seeing a completed project residing on the wall, where it belongs is always a satisfying albeit fleeting moment.
For the exhibition I was tasked with designing a logo that encompassed the group, and while there was no particular theme that ran through our work, we decided to opt for a simpler approach. There were nine of us, and thus the show was called NINE… bear in mind that we were quite busy at the time. Our severe lack of budget is also to blame for the masking tape advert that blighted the windows of Gallery 40 (which I had used previously for a private showing of my editorial fashion work). My flyer campaign, which involved sticking these small printouts all over the university building was also likely to blame for a rather small turnout - the fire safety officer followed me around taking them down, as apparently they were a massive fire risk.
Once our smaller show was completed, we then had the task of shifting all our work and setting up our second-year show within the university itself. Again, I took it upon myself to design the logo for this. We had been reading the work of John Berger throughout the course, and as his concepts seemed to gel with the overall body of work that we had created as a cohort. I created a design that took inspiration from the many ways in which my fellow students and I saw and represented the world through our photography – thus we named the show 55 Ways of Seeing, to represent us all and as a tribute to Mr Berger (although there were meant to be 56 of us at the start). Some initial concepts of this didn’t work, for example toying with the idea of utilising an image of each student’s eye. While an alright idea, it was too Big Brother, and perhaps a little on the nose. We thus decided on a simpler approach.
After repainting the gallery space, arranging all our work, and transferring the window sticker of our logo (which was a terrible headache due to all of the unconnected squares (lesson learnt)), we made our finishing touches, set up a photo booth, got the drinks ready, and opened the doors for our private showing and the subsequent week or two for the public.
Looking back at the project now, I still remain pleased with the conceptual base, and the boy of work itself, but I can see areas within which I could have focused more, to create something even more interesting. Despite that, I was very happy with the result, and what the rather unique body of work that resulted.
The work that was left by the wayside in this project was, in retrospect, still of interest, and looking back at these darkroom prints, I still feel some draw to them, an intrigue that differs from the final outcome. Perhaps I will find some use for these one day - who knows.
Delving deeper into [VR]Ography was something I wanted to focus more on as I progressed - my goal was to better my understanding of, and my realising of the concepts I created, and that was what the second semester of my second year was really about. However, thinking back to that, perhaps it’s possible to go a little too far into the conceptual reeds, as it were. We’ll be looking into the development of that project in the next post, which starts with one of my more eccentric lecturers giving up our first few sessions together with with the watching of the 1959 film Black Orpheus - if you can’t image how I linked that to videogame screenshots, don’t worry, neither could I at the time. Anyway, we’ll get to that eventually, but for now, ‘A Phony War’ is complete.
If you are new to this series, click the link below to check out the first project of A Journey into the Virtual World - which started with my fading memories of a dying virtual environment and my preservation of it.
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