Material News
Damian Ortega, over three months took articles from news papers and turned them into sculptures, his intension was to question and examines the role of the media in their representation of the truth.
Taking the news from a single day we had to identify something in a newspaper that stood out to us. I went through the Sunday Times from 21st October and found a few things that could be used to develop into sculptures.
The Same but Different
The first was a combination of two images, an article on Tilda Swinton at home in Scotland and the cookery section. I liked the pasta dish and the fishing rope and how similar they were. I like the idea that every time the pasta and rope was picked up and put down, it would sit in a different way and the original formation would not be repeated.
I thought about getting thick string and throwing it down in a pile, then taking the same length of string again and throwing that down, then repeating this a few times. Each time the formation would be different yet the length of string thrown down was always the same. I had the idea to set the string once it had settled, so that that form would be kept permanently.
What I want for Christmas
Another idea was the X Game ad, where they had a note to Father Christmas for a list of gifts. Here i could have come up with some ideas of gifts. I was thinking of things that were in the news and relevant today. Like Syrian children who had lost their parents, or their homes, and creating a sculpture of families or houses. But felt this was too difficult for me to produce.
20% Missing
The Boden ad was offering 20% off, meaning 20% off the price. However, I liked the idea that I could have clothing where I actually took 20% of the item away instead of the money. eg. Have a shirt, but remove one of the sleeves.
Talking Heads
Finally I found a page on a Photographer Steve McCurry who was a travel photographer and who had the most amazing photograph of the Asaro Tribe from Papua New Guinea. I found these masks to be quite fascinating.
The Asaro Tribe
These masks have so many characters, expressions and looks; scary, happy, deformed, dopey, alien like that I wanted to create a mask that with out being so formed, showed an expression; sad, happy, angry, scared etc. The Asaro tribe are supposed to have come up with the idea when one of the elder men from the tribe had a dream where he saw a terrifying grey spirit. He told the men of the tribe to make masks out of mud that would resemble the image in his vision. The enemies were so scared that they runaway and ever since, the Asaro Mudmen have made these masks as a tradition.
Speed Dating
This made me think how just looks alone, can have an impact on what people think. There are even some speed dating companies where everyone has to wear a paper bag. This ensures that just the personality comes across and that first impressions aren't taken into consideration. I'm not sure how effective it is.
Shamed sports fans
In America at big games like basket ball, the fans wear paper bags over their heads if their team is loosing badly- to show their shame and embarrassment.
Paper bag heads
This made me think of a project I had done recently, where I used paper bags with a drawn on mouth, nose and eyes to portray emotions. I liked the idea of expanding upon this and making paper bag sculptures. The paper bag heads could even have projections of peoples faces on, while these people are talking about being scared, or happy etc. Or even have a little speaker in each of the heads again talking about specific emotions. The voice could talk about being scared, when the paper bag face is showing the expression of happiness. This contrast on expression and visual could be quite powerful?
I could also paint the inside of the bags with the colour of the emotion that represent it.
For my project, I got three different sized paper bags and using modrock, I covered the paper bags and their handles. Once they had set, I added an emoji looking eyes and mouth.
I photographed the heads while they where moving to add more character them.