Reading Project #2

"A few people get violently claustrophobic and start screaming," - Diane Ackerman on the touch rooms, page 97

For the second piece, I went with straight up photography (with some slight adjustments in Photoshop) and placed a humanoid figure, which had a screaming expression in the dark depths of my room. Whilst it is just vague enough to make out the face slightly askance, it is primarily a dark photo. It is meant to symbolize those which lose their senses and consciousness in the darkened halls of sensory stimulation. Whilst it is a somewhat tame representation compared to actually experiencing someone screaming across a vast, inky, abyss of a room, it still retains a somewhat creepy atmosphere and is meant to inspire just some manner of discomfort. In hindsight, I wish there was more background space to make this haunting visage even more hidden and frightening.

Reading Project #1: Stamping on Butterflies

"We lifted them from the net one at a time to check their health and sex and to see if they were pregnant, and then glued a small postage-stamp-like tag to the top of a wing." - Diane Ackerman, page 94

This first piece was inspired by the simple idea of stamping a butterfly like an envelope, as the writer so compared the tracker devices used in the field on actual butterflies. I created some simple cutouts of the insects from yellow envelops, leaving the metal tongs to imitate a head and antennae, and by placing a small stamp in the upper corner of the wing. The color scheme was inspired by the mention of cold temperatures which briefly followed the quote (namely the background) and the mention of sex and pregnancy which brings to mind very bright, vibrant colors, such as pink. The background is essentially a close up of some clothes and blankets I had lying in a pile with a photocopy effect applied on top of it. It overall is meant to be a playful take on the actual events whilst also recreating something biological from a mere handful of materials.