Post-Assessment Thoughts

My assessment has given me the realisation of my ideas not fitting well together, with displaying my photographs in lit boxes not creating the visual outcome I had expected. I have decided to revert back to printmaking, incorporating the photographs I have taken and taking them even further, using mixed printmaking styles. Still with the same contextual ideas, but explored through a different media.

I plan on taking the photographs and creating photographic screen prints this will be the background for my prints, and incorporating these with other plates to create a layered effect. Using drypoint, etching, lino, and collagraphs.

Documentation and Contextualisation Key Points

 

Degree Show Proposal / Rethinking Ideas

 

Contextualisation Key Points

Surrealism and Freudian Theory

Jackson Pollock – Drawing from the Unconscious

Anna Veronica Janssesns

States of Mind: Tracing the Edges of Consciousness opens at Wellcome Collection

Sleep Disorders

 

 

Documentation Key Points 

Individual Perception – Photography Experimentation

Dreams – An Alternate State of Consciousness

Recreating Alternate State of Consciousness

Degree Show Work-Up

Experimentation for Degree Show

Recreating Alternate State of Consciousness

Are our dreams unconscious alternate perceptions of reality? I have created photographs that mirror this inbetween state, I have take images of myself and familiar paces, rooms in my house, places I frequently visit, and distorted them, recreating my perception of my surroundings while waking in a disorientated state.

Dreams and Perception

Our brain in a conscious state create an easily digestible perception of our surrounding, for example, there is a blind spot in the middle of the eye in the centre of your field of vision. This is because there is a total lack of photoreceptor cells where the optic nerve connects to the retina. How reliable is our conscious view of the world? Are our dreams unconscious alternate perceptions of reality? I’ve created photographs that mirror this inbetween state, our perception of what reality is comes down to our experiences and our memories of those experiences. With false memories how reliable is our view of the world? True view through unconscious minds? I have take images of myself and familiar paces, room in my house, places I frequently visit, and distorted them, recreating my perception of my surrounding while waking in a disorientated state.

 

Dreams – An Alternate State of Consciousness

Dreams for a long time have been considered an unconscious experience, and there is an underlined assumption in our society is that everyday waking consciousness is the truest expression of how things are in “objective” reality. Consciousness has evolved like most trait to aid survival, this does not necessarily imply it is the truest reflection of the world surrounding us. We assume it to be more valid than say dream states or other forms of Altered States of Consciousness  such as visions, trance, hypnosis, meditative states or hallucinations brought on by substances such as mescaline, as I have previously researched.

Our brains seek to create a coherent, stable perception of our surroundings. For instance, colour vision is our brains processing wavelengths of light, we think it is that colour due to our brains telling us so, with other species possessing a completely different visual system and viewing colours in a completely different spectrum.

Experimentation for Degree Show

This is my second experimentation with creating the boxes, using sturdier materials. Although I am happy with the outcome of the box, I prefer the colours and lighting of my first attempt. My next step is to combine all the positives from both boxes and combine them into one.

Degree Show Proposal / Rethinking Ideas

Original Proposal 

My work deals with the subconscious, what is it? What does it look like? Questions artists have been dealing with for a long time. I delve into the work of both psychologist and artists, whose interest in examining the brain still to this day go hand in hand. Inspired by Freudian theory of the topographical mind, and the three layers of consciousness. I have been focusing around the subject of memory, dreams and repressed motives, all things we try to cling to, with our imperfect brain fading the memories of what have created our personalities. These snippets of not quite memories are the subject of my work, creating a fictional landscape where all these elements reside. Using processes such as automatic artmaking, trying to let my uninhibited subconscious mind make my art, combined with a multitude of printmaking techniques, I hope to represent the part of the mind we cannot easily access.

For the exhibition, I aim to create a view into the subconscious landscape, using different printing and automatic techniques combined with one another. Creating a series of 3 boxes, roughly 2ft x 1.5 ft. Made of black card displayed on plinths, with the finish prints covering all sides and the top and base of the box. I plan to use LED lights to light the inside, situated in a darkened area, to draw the viewer to look inside the small hole cut out of the box.

Re-thinking Ideas

I want my work to explore the region inbetween consciousness and unconsciousness and how these states can alter our individual perceptions of reality. Looking at the meaning of dreams, and how hidden thoughts/ feelings/ motives/ are manifested within our unconscious and released through dreams.

I still like, ( and have begun experimenting/ creating), of the boxes, with my work concealed inside, and lit up using LED lights. I now want to, instead of displaying on plinths, hang the boxes, using fishing wire, to make them seems like they are in mid air.

Degree Show Work-Up

 

While I am happy with the aesthetic outcome of the images combined with the lighting,the materials I used where too flimsy. My next aim is to experiment further with different materials/ imagery and lighting.

Sleep Disorders

For the past few years, I have experienced waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to recognise where I am, usually accompanied with a feeling of terror/ dread. Even though I wakeup in my own home, surrounded by my belongings. Some doctors believe some sleep disorders could be other illnesses manifesting themselves, these can include multiple psychiatric or medical issues. Unconscious worries/ thoughts/ perceptions coming through to the conscious mind?

I have captured images from my room, using a slow shutter speed and overlaying imagery to create a sense of that moment of completely confusion of my surroundings, my new perception of reality.

Anna Veronica Janssesns

The more I analysis my dreams, the more I realise they are mostly consistent of feelings of a situation/ person/ memory, and when I wake, I allocate an image that corresponds with that particular feeling. I think this is due to the perception that dreams are made up of actual images, and not just our unconscious feelings, which may not be able to be represented by a particular image/ object/ person/ place, but made up of light and non-recognisable forms.

I think this is represented in the work of Anna Veronica Janssens’ work, particularly her 2015 installation for The Wellcome Trust – State of Mind: yellowbluepink, which inspired, State of Mind: Tracing the Edges of Consciousness, which I have recently visited. Ann Veronica Janssens is a contemporary visual artist who works primarily in light. She was born in 1956 in Folkestone, England.

This installation consumes the entire gallery with light and mist, creating outlined objects, void of any detail. Colour is caught in a state of suspension, obscuring any detail of surface or depth, creating a dream like quality. Instead, attention is focussed on the process of perception itself. Janssens’s work is both disorienting and uplifting as the daily wonder of conscious experience is given renewed emphasis.