What have I been doing (Sunday)

Following on from thinking about contrasts between 'outside' and 'within' I've been exploring this in a variety of ways. I got people to think about the photos of the windows from my previous blog post, which came up with some very interesting results. Everyone interpreted the same image in very different ways, which shows that our assumptions about a person or situation will vary depending on the viewer's personal experiences. For example everyone is likely to interpret a piece of artwork in a different way. I also came to the conclusion that I need to take more pictures in different areas to get a wider impression.

Another way I was exploring out and in was thinking about how I could create dichotomies by putting different objects inside different things. For example, putting something very valuable and rare inside a Tesco bag, or something very mundane or ugly inside a beautiful, precious looking box.

I took some pictures exploring this.

I took the beautiful ornate box and put some very mundane, worthless items in it - a dog biscuit and some old blu-tack. This creates a juxtaposition between what you would expect to be in the box and what actually is. I want to create a similar feeling of contrast with my piece in the exhibition. 

Following from this I then thought about exploring contrast, and the idea of things not being quite as they seem, in a slightly more imaginative manner. I heard that if you write on paper with milk, it creates a hidden message that can be revealed by ironing the sheet of paper to burn the milk. So this creates the illusion of a blank sheet of paper, when really there is a hidden inner message. A bit like when you first meet a person, you only see an outward aspect of them, but if you wait to get to know them, inside thoughts are revealed.

I wrote on sheets of paper using quotes from the stream of consciousness writing I collected from people. 

Here are the ironed papers:

It turned out that ironing the milk only burned parts of it, so that the message came through fragmented. I think this is a good reflection of how we can never know 100% about another person or situation and will only ever see fragments. I want to make the viewing of my exhibition quite fragmented in some way, so that the viewer has to try very hard to view and interpret it. This will help to make them think more deeply and strengthen the concept by making it closer to real life.