Project 4: Artist Statement

I think of my installations as conceptual, thought-provoking visual presentations to bring awareness and draw emotional connections or sympathy among the audiences. I like to incorporate a feeling of relatability or inspiration to the viewers through my installations, but also keeping a serious or political sense. My main goal behind most of my installations, especially this one, is to make the viewers deliberate and put thoughtful and thorough ideas together based off of whatever ideas or thoughts they may get from viewing my installations. The abstractness of my works is perfect for not directly telling the audience any details, but to give them enough clues to figure it out themselves. Not only do I want my installations to spread awareness and inspire change among the audience, but I also want to spread intellectual wellness and for my work to help serve as a tool that helps sharpen several people's mind. For a healthy intellectual wellness, one must keep their mind engaged or stimulated, and through the creativity, visuality, thinking, etc. that my installation provokes, I believe that my installations effectively influence people to consider a great deal of information and values. Installations, in general, are fantastic tools to sharped human's intellectual wellness, so I try to make my installations achieve that to my highest ability.

This installation was designed and created to serve as a call to action/awareness of the growing disaster that is our home and planet. Human activity and pollution has been and is continuing to be the largest cause of deterioration of our world, and damages it in a plethora of different ways. As humans live and produce waste, and the industrialization of society continues to grow, the issue of pollution is expected to continue to worsen to a dangerous level. Although this problem is so large-scale and there is a ton more work that needs to happen that is bigger than this installation, one of the best things we can do individually is to be more aware and do anything, no matter how small, to help clean up the environment. Although we would need just about everybody on the planet to work together to solve; a very realistic yet still very helpful solution can be inferred from this installation. The first part of my installation is to see who/if anyone is even willing to enter the installation space due to all the garbage that they would have to walk over. This is very important because it can show that if some people are too grossed out to walk over the trash in my installation, then they should be appalled by the same thing happening but on a tremendously larger scale. As the viewer walks through my installation, they should feel overwhelmed and disgusted, as they walk through trash and have to watch all of the filthy and deadly images of the proof that human pollution has destroyed the beautiful natural environment. The thick layer of garbage on the floor is to represent/depict how unaesthetic, ugly, and gross the sight of dense garbage is. The layer of trash I created looks very similar to the actual hunormous mounds of garbage in the waters, beaches, and land/dumps all over the world. Once the viewer gets to the end of the installation and sees their face in the mirror, they should feel a sense of either disgust or inspiration in themselves, as they notice that they have been part of the cause of the problem. I will also include a bag next to the installation, as a test/study to see if anyone participating in the installation would go out of their way and clean up the trash if they had a garbage bag ready and accessible to them. Hopefully, whether the audience felt disgusted or inspired, or something else, the installation will have made some kind of impact on them, and bring on a new and lasting perspective. That is my goal.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwHR0T8xp9I

Project 4: Process Post #3

Once I had all the parts of the installation set up, the most important step began. This step was the planning/experimenting to find the perfect or most efficient spot to place the projector. The placement of the projector is so important for this kind of installation, for several reasons. First, because the space is so narrow and small, the viewer walking through it can easily block most of the projections with their shadow. Through lots of planning, moving and checking, I found that the higher up the projector, (above the participant's height) the better it will be, as their head/body is not protruding or blocking the light of the projector. However, when I put it up so high, it only projected on the upper half of my installation space, so I used some extra materials that I had to support the back of the projector to cover the right space. This process made me realize how art and an artist's final product is not just the main/only exhibit of art, but the whole process and planning that goes into an art piece is also a very significant component to the art, the artist, the information, and overall quality.

Project 4: Process Post #2

The setting up of this installation was very tricky. It took a ton of trial and error and experimenting to correctly and efficiently set everything up to the maximum possible potential. I had to try several other kinds of materials before I bought and decided to use the sheet/curtains that I used for my final showing. Some of the other materials I tried, such as plastic shopping bags connected together, a shower curtain, and large sheets of paper just either were not efficient enough to meet my satisfaction or did not allow for good visibility/clarity of the projections. I wanted the material to be symbolic for pollution, but decided that I valued the visibility of the projections over the symbolic deeper meaning; however, I think that the sheets are the perfect material to incorporate both to a great level. It was not too hard setting this up, but certainly not easy. The hardest part was finding a spot in the black box that I could set it up, then using the space and resources around to help make it great. Once I had everything in place, I cut a flap in the sheet where the mirror will be, and then began the task of figuring out the perfect placement of the projector.