For this project I really wanted to play with the idea of what a performance is. Prior to this class I would have really only thought of a concert or a theater performance as a form of performance art. In that line of thinking I wanted to capture in photography a parody of a rock concert. In this series a group of friends are simply playing a video game but when presented in a tweet and given context through the description and hashtags it begins to take a different meaning. Additionally in some of the shots it captures moments not usually seen when playing this game due to the script given to the performers. The script which was essentially “be a rock band, perform with lots of energy” has the gamers step out of that role and into the role of rock star.

The picture above also brings into question the role of an audience. Lighters, or now cellphones, are commonly held up during rock shows. However, in this series there is an audience of one, an appropriate size for the “show” that is being put on but the behavior exhibited is unusual from a spectator of video games. Again the format of the tweet and the hashtags used also give some comedic value to the situation as the tweet would seem completely appropriate if sent out at a real rock concert.

In these two pictures above I tried to capture different angles of the concert for aesthetic purposes. However, considering the audience and platform on which the photos were going to be presented the captions about sneaking backstage had to be fabricated in order to keep the context consistent.

The response was fairly interesting. There were not a lot of replies and the ones that I did receive were mostly from bot accounts which automatically scan for certain words or phrases and respond by retweeting or liking them. This response was received due mostly to the hashtags utilized in the tweets.

While developing possible ideas and themes for my performative photographs, I kept coming back to being interesting in exploring how social media affects our everyday lives, primarily in social situations. I had begun by shooting people in some of their daily routines, like studying, sitting in class, and getting ready for bed. I would take a photo of them doing these things while using their phones or laptops, something that occurs constantly but is near really thought about. These devices have become another one of our limbs. I then attempted to capture the discomfort once I removed the device from the situation. However, I was not happy with the results as this discomfort was difficult to portray well and I thought the series lacked a performative element.

I moved on with this same concept of devices influencing our lives and began to think how I might show this in a more performative light. I thought of the many times I have reacted so strongly, positively or negatively, to something I saw on my phone or laptop, whether it be a conversation I had over text message or a post I saw on social media. The reactions I have to these things take place over a period of time. This introduced a crucial element of performative photography into my idea.

In my series, I tried to capture the range of emotions that anyone would experience when seeing something they do not want to on social media. So many aspects of our private lives are available for others to see. People tweet about what they are doing at that moment, post pictures of who they are with, and share a multitude of things on sites like Facebook. Having access to these parts of other people’s lives addicts us to social media. Although we know we may not like what we see, we cannot help but explore what other people are doing. What we see can significantly alter our feelings.

When I began shooting with this new idea, I was well aware I did not like to be in front of the camera. However, I could visualize the emotions I wanted to portray, and thought it would be best executed if I had optimal control over it. Since I was not actually seeing something on my phone that I did not want to be, I had to pretend. I soon saw I was not the best actor. I attempted to capture the range of emotions I believe occur when seeing something that would have been better left unseen.

I felt very uncomfortable uploading these to social media. I found it interesting that I was selective about which form of media I ultimately decided to post on. I did not see Snapchat as a practical way. I rarely use my Twitter anymore. I do not often post on Facebook. SO that pretty much left Instagram and Tumblr as platforms to share my images. When considering Instagram, I realized how extremely selective I am about what I post on Instagram. Like the discussions we’ve had in class, people, including myself, truly only do post things they want the world to perceive them as. I think not being thrilled with the final product also contributed to this. I also do not post pictures of myself on Instagram, unless they are with other people, so I felt uncomfortable about this as well. Tumblr was a comfortable alternative since I am relatively anonymous. Although, after posting this sequence, that has changed slightly.

I struggled to come up with the right definition/idea for the term performative art. In my own words, performative art is a performance in front of the camera in a way that tells a story or a shows a specific scene. I had a lot of trouble trying to come up with ideas to portray this in my own way. I first got some inspiration when I thought of the different performances around me. My mom loves yoga so I thought about having someone who doesn’t necessarily know how to do yoga, perform different poses. I had my friend do as many poses as she knew while I took pictures from different angles. I wanted it to seem like she was just doing it on her own or maybe even teaching a class in order to show that narrative.

I also went to New York City the other day and noticed that almost every other person I walked by was smoking a cigarette. I find it so interesting how normal this act has become despite all of its harm. I wanted to show how weird it looks to see someone “smoking” an everyday object, yet we don’t even think twice when we see someone smoking a cigarette.

Overall, I enjoyed this project and I thought it was really fun to show/tell a story to the camera. My pictures did not get much recognition on social media (twitter) besides favorites from some followers. I didn’t really expect the yoga pictures to get much feedback only because it seemed like an everyday occurrence. Though I was surprised about how little recognition my “smoking” pictures got.

I found this assignment to be extremely difficult as far as finding inspiration for what my Performative Photography would be, basically I needed a starting point. After Professor Skvirsky had recommended that the class began first by choosing and audience, I figured I would try and start with whom that would be. In addition to that advice I found myself inspired by the outside participation in performative art work examples shown in class, particularly “Cut Piece”, which produced a highly unpredictable and interactive form of art. I also found inspiration in the idea that selfies are absolutely preformative which definitely resonated with how interpret selfies. My last source of inspiration, and what led to my “lightbulb moment” was actually a talk during my Thermal Fluids class where we talked about how powerful graphs and figures are in communicating ideas, and I figured I could attempt to translate that into my Preformative Photography. It was the intersection of these four ideas that consequently to create a combined sequence of four images that encapsulate these goals: Translucency.

The idea was simple. I would find 5 selfies of both guys and girls. The hope was that each one of these selfies was different in how Preformed they in fact were, meaning the first would be extremely stage and the fifth would be a mistake or capturing of true emotion. In was pretty incredible how the sources of the collection of photos varied greatly but correlated between the guys and girls group. The more staged ones were mostly collected from pinterest and Instagram while the true emotion came from confessions of suicide attempts and reactions to world events. While I believe they all were somewhat preformative it was interesting to attempt to find the silver lining between it all.

The second step was to show each set to my roommates. I had them rank them from most authentic looking to the most staged (they are both guys and picked the same exact order which was pretty interesting).

Finally, I laid these photographs on top which different transparencies, both going from the most staged to least and the reverse as well. I added the numbers to help provide the relationship being shown so that the photograph sequence would be stand alone with an explanation (this was derived from my Thermal Fluids inspiration). I was upset with end resolution of the image as major editing and techniques reduced the quality and decided to proved the individual segments as well to help the quality of the project. I put the photo in a GroupMe that I have with friends from home to see how they interpreted and they almost picked it up immediately with no explanation. It was also interesting to see how they had very different comments on the different gender and order combinations.

Selfies are preformative, and arguably Narcissistic, and I wanted to show that drawing in inspiration from my recent experiences and in that regard I think I succeeded. Although this was the most difficult assignment I also found it rewarding and very enlightening. Although I definitely began with the notion that preformative art was “weird” and “pointless”, I can now say I have a deep respect for these pieces and recognized how challenging they can be.

TRANSLUCENCY:

THE FAKE GIRL

THE REAL GIRL

THE REAL GUY

THE FAKE GUY

I really enjoyed creating my idea for this project and the execution. One day when I was driving back to campus I saw an old train station covered with murals. The murals show old fashioned figures waiting for the train. I wanted to recreate the murals with people standing in front of them. In this project, my friends are performing as the murals show and interacting with the people in the murals. The project as a whole is my friends performing waiting for the train and seeing the train arriving, without actually seeing the train at all.

On social media, this project got very little feedback. On Facebook, the series got some likes but not a normal amount. None of the pictures show me, and many of my Facebook friends may not know the models, discouraging them from commenting or liking. On Instagram, I posted the first photo in the series. This photo got many likes but not as many as normal also. My social media accounts normally depict what I do in my daily life, and these photos do not depict that. My audience may have seen the photos as out of place or unusual. My social media accounts are also private so no outside viewers were able to see the content. But overall, I do not think the lack of feedback speaks to the meaning behind the photos.

I struggled to come up with an idea for this project as performance art seemed to have such a broad spectrum and I couldn’t quite grasp an idea that fit my initial understanding of the concept. When I think of performance, what comes to mind are sports and dance performances that have photos taken of them. Having Clifford Owens come to our class and show us those videos of people performing in front of the camera and his talk later that day opened up my understanding and also confusion about the topic.

I finally wrote ideas down about my interests and narrowed it down to performing my interests while using my body as the performance. I sketched up drawings of what I wanted to portray and then drew enlarged versions of my sketches in the studio to have my body proportioned to look realistic. It was difficult at first to find the right angles to fit into the drawing, some had to be taken from the ground with a bird’s eye view shot.

I uploaded my five images to Facebook, which is more open to posting multiple photos at once, unlike Instagram. My closer friends in particular liked and commented on the photos and thought they were quite amusing. I am very impressed with how the photos turned out and happy I finally decided on an idea I liked. These images were based off of an Instagram account I found called “abstract sunday” in which the artist used objects like scissors and fruit and drew off of the objects to turn them into something they were not supposed to be.

Power of the Hood

When brainstorming on what to do for this project, I knew I wanted to do something that not only served as a performative art piece but also included a meaningful narrative behind it. Even though I initially struggled with coming up with an idea to base my photo series one, I enjoyed the freedom of being able to run with whatever idea I finally chose. In this series, I aimed to compare and contrast the reaction of an audience to how different people wore their clothes, hooded sweatshirts to be specific. While these five pictures were taken with my phone and surely do not seem to be of great quality, they surely met my expectations.

The difference in gender, skin color, and overall size between my models surely seemed to impact the way that the surrounding bystanders reacted to their presence. During the process of snapping the hooded vs. unhooded photos of each model, the looks of uncomfort from bystanders tipped the scale toward the photos where the models were told to have their hoods up. You can see in the photos where they are unhooded, no one seems to be paying the models any attention even though they are uncomfortably and awkwardly placed. I posted these pictures on Twitter as a series of 5 photos, and they did not get much of a reaction from my followers. Possibly because the post isn’t the most aesthetically pleasing, or because it is hard to understand what is going on in the photos without an explanation.

POTH 1

POTH 2

POTH 3

POTH 4

POTH 5

POTH POST

The sealed part of your soul that…

… needs a striking light…

… to help you overcome the fear…

… of embracing your vulnerabilities…

… and become strong.

For this assignment, I wanted to explore how one can perform using props in front of a camera. In the end, I played a lot with lights and the reflection it has on white- the white t-shirt, white backdrop, white toilet paper. I also wanted to implement movement in order to make it more explicit that the subject was performing. At the end of the photo session, I looked through the photos and carefully chose those that I will be including in these series. After choosing them, I organized them in order to draw a story among the images and write a quote across all the photos that would represent that story. The quote itself contributes to the lie of the artwork because it puts the photos into a context that they were not initially in.

Before posting these photos, I felt a little uncomfortable because I normally do not post my photos/artwork. I personally appreciate more the privacy of authorship because it allows the images to keep their quality as an intimate work of art and become exposed to a selective audience. Once posted on media, anybody can claim authorship and/or use the images to satisfy their personal desires. i have no control over what people do or don’t do once they are on social media.

I really enjoyed this project because I was able to pretty much do whatever I wanted and perform for the camera. I wanted the chance to recreate the style of pictures you see on muradosmann’s instagram but with a more normal twist of not being in an exotic place. I have always been fascinated by his account since I have started having an insta.

I posted the pictures to my instagram account, every hour, to get a more real reaction since this was my most used account and I surprisingly got a nice amount of likes. I am most surprised about the fast that I lost around 6 followers from doing this project. I did not post any captions with these pictures, so i guess people thought my posts were annoying. When people asked me about the pictures, their questions really consisted of the same thing: “were they taken on different days?” “where are they?” “why did you post so many”. I guess if the timing of the posts were spread out over a few days it would have been less of an annoyance to people. the editing of the pictures are close to the style of muradosmann’s in the sense that they have a deep depth of field and lots of colors. I really enjoyed looking at them after.