Fields and Frames "Expiration du moment"; Research, Display and Self Evaluation

The concept I have produced for my second innovation and interference project is titled “Expiration du moment.” (Expiry of the moment / Expiry of time) 

Poster:

I basically took a picture of one of the boxes I made for the project and used photoshop to create a sort of demo of the box placement, a recreation that was accurate down to the 10 columns I had planned for the display. As the title translates to Expiry of Time or Expiry of the Moment, I decided to play with the concept of the boxes looking like a clock from over head.
I further took inspration from Salvador Dali's melting clocks and tried to make my own interpretation of it. I also decided to have them printed on holographic sheet in varieted colours for a stronger impact and to try and pay a bit more homage to Dali's surrealism and interest in workinng with holograms with this small detail.

Moodboard/Inspiration:

Research:

The research I have compiled is to back up the statement I made about the diminishing worth of photographs due to the availability of resources (phones) that allow them to take as many photographs as possible until a well framed or a not-so-bad photo is accidentally taken. There has been a steady decline in interest in portrait photographers by the general populace due to them being satisfied with the family photos and general photography done on their phones.

I have compiled a list of facts that are related to the rising usage of phones and how common they are becoming, which can have its positives as well as negatives, but in this scenario, we are focusing mainly on the photography aspect of the smartphone and how it will become more common and potentially either further us away from the initial value we had placed in the photographs as they were difficult to produce and preserve or bring us closer due to the awareness the internet is able to raise.

• Smartphone usage statistics suggest that an average person spends 2 hours and 51 minutes per day on their mobile device. (source)

• More than 5 billion people in the world own mobile devices. (source)

• Kids get their first mobile device around the age of 12. (source)

• Mobile owners worldwide will increase to 7.33 billion by 2023. (source)

• The average attention that mobile owners are capable of giving posts is 15 seconds. (source)

The last point is especially important to note because for me personally, I remember when I was growing up, sometimes my elder siblings and I would pull out family albums and spend hours going through them.

I remember so many days at my grandparents’ house, with my grandmother showing me pictures my great great grandfather took of his family and showing me people important to her that I never got to meet because of their early demise. 

These were images from the late 1800s and early 1900s, they were the size of postage stamps and still quite blurry, we would hold magnifying glasses to try and see faces a little closer, yet in the 21st century, we have ultra-HD media, and are only looking are them for 15 seconds at a time?

COVID-19 was a bit of a slow time for photographers in 2020, where an estimated 1.12 trillion photos were taken. Which, mind you, is a 21% decline from 2019’s 1.44 trillion. It then rose again by the end of 2021 and is continuing in 2022 as another generation gets access to a phone.

Logline:

Is the value of the memory you are capturing diminished?

Concept:

The concept is to discuss the worth of photographs.
I want to discuss how technological progressions make access to photography more common and also make it easier for us to retake them as many times as we want, as compared to single takes we would have of images during the time of its conception and also during the era of film camera’s where a roll of film could only take so many pictures, so you would think about each photograph thoroughly before capturing it, as compared to the hundreds of pictures you can capture now with so much ease.
The project discusses the expiry of each new invention as they are replaced by a NEW new. An expiry that is put on our phones and laptops, upon which all our images or memories reside. The same phones and laptops that have begun to put an expiry on how much media we can endure till our eyes ache, or our fingers begin to shake. 

Theme + Motivation:

The idea falls into the fields and frames category, due to its discussion of our digital futures as compared to the history of moving images and revolves around how in the 21st century everything has an expiry date. Many things did before but now the expiry has begun affecting things such as our memories and the way we choose to remember them.

As humanity progressed, individuals came up with many new inventions. So, when we look back at how photography was invented, struggling to exist on pewter plates and brought into existence from the camera obscura, we look to the mini supercomputers we hold in our hands every day, capable of taking pictures a hundred times more detailed and quicker than the first camera to exist. 

Yes, the development is an achievement for all of humankind but it has changed the worth we place upon photographs. During the 1800’s, people would have to stand still for a long time as cameras had to get a certain amount of exposure to create the image. One single image would take time, participation from both the subject and the photographer to stay as still as possible, and it was something that would be cherished due to how long the process was and how it was not commonly available.

Pictures of their families and lovers would be nestled by soldiers in the trenches during wars. Lockets were made to put pictures into and although all that is still possible, a photograph now stands for much more, we are able to take hundreds of them in a row, we can pick and choose which ones we like, we spend hours at events taking them, but it’s no longer for documenting special things, it’s for showing the world your lavish lifestyles, indulgences of gluttony or in aid of capitalism and easily manipulated news.

Photographs are no longer single photos of you that your loved ones can carry, instead they open social media, knowing your profile will be there and that your pictures are not vanishing any time soon, and in the process, they can also scroll through thousands of posts personalised to keep their mind off of the rest of the world.

Photographers that photograph beautiful things and colour-grade them to their liking become famous, their photographs are sold to the highest bidder, but is material value truly a good estimate? We run out of space on our $1000 phones, the first thing we do is delete photos, then maybe some applications. Although they can be screenshots it is still, technically, a photograph.

We have lost the value of photos, one can even say a disrespect has been created towards them, authenticity is rare, and value is even less. We cover our faces with filters, and we take as many photos as necessary until we find one out of a hundred that looks best in our eyes, then they are uploaded to whatever platform, from where strangers try and piece together your life, but if you think about it, during the early stages of the concept of photography, images would be given only to those special to you, AFTER you have gotten to know them, not before.

As we have taken the concept of giving our photos to someone special and turned it into something which the entire world has easy access to, we run into a number of issues in the modern era, such as cyber bullying, especially on social media, where anyone can comment on your image, or spread it around by taking a screenshot and forwarding it. 

Simultaneously, I adore the access to photographs. When I moved to a new city for university, I looked back at photographs from back home. Since I have lost my grandparents, I’ve been looking at photographs and videos of them to console myself. I look back on days from my mother’s chemo-therapy sessions on days when I feel ungrateful, so that I can be thankful that things are not as bad as they were back then. I look at pictures I took on the day of my mothers last chemo session to motivate myself to overcome things. At times, I look at old pictures from when I was younger, to see times that I do not remember, or ones that I vaguely do. I see friends that drifted away and family that my heart aches to meet again.

I want to create a project that highlights photos that have immense personal values for different people as well as one that the world has collectively given value to. Whether the value is material or not. I feel that a lot of the pictures that will be submitted will not be one of the 3-4 pictures that we take of random things in our daily life, but more momentous occasions, valuable only to those that know the story behind them.

Link to all the images that were submitted:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/17szPEDnS2XfrLY5SCZHtRvrLGQhrnxZoDZx4m39maJZTjZPggZGimX32z6Nsc9paJMFTk2rj

Treatment:

The project is basically going to be a display of images, it will be a form of archival work. The display will include images submitted by random people as well as some from my own albums. I will also be researching images that are famous in the world, whether they are from wars, protests or generally known throughout the world.
I will be making white boxes that have a wide opening and slowly get smaller towards the end. This is because in pop culture, when memories or the brain are being explored or depicted, they are usually seen as filing cabinets or some sort of store rooms that are white.
The smaller end will have a photograph attached to it and I will be placing dim fairy lights around them as I would like to depict how memories get more distant and become dimmer over time.
The idea is to create a project that the audience can interact with so I will either be creating a semi-circle that the audience can walk into or a circle that the viewers can walk around. Each photo will have text placed with it, there will be varying types of 
The rows of boxes will  be in multiples of 10 and the columns will vary depending on the amount of pictures submitted. I am aiming for 30 pictures, which means each column will have 3 boxes.

Target Audience:

My target audience is young adults and adults. The theme of the project is essentially a digital archive so the audience will have to be interested in archives and also be able to understand that concept and also emit a certain level of empathy while viewing it. So the general target is a relatively mature audience.

BTS and Display:

Feedback:

The feedback I recieved was overall very positive. A lot of comments were made about how interesting the concept was and it was mentioned multiple times that there was a memory there that everyone could resonate with. Due to the execution of the display, a lot of viewers interacted with it and went around the entire display, taking their time to read each text. A lot of the viewers approached me and had long conversations discussing the thought process which was quite exciting for me. I was asked about my own preferences and which box I resonated with the most, to which I replied my own as I had also submitted a picture.

My project was also very well recieved by my tutors. During my evaluation, they mentioned that the concept and execution was brilliant and also one of the few projects that fit into the theme that I had selected.

Self Evaluation:

As with all my other projects, I feel there is always room for improvement. I personally felt that the boxes could have been neater or made from a sturdier material than foam board put together with superglue, maybe wood. I wish I had transported the table for my display a day before as the tranportation of the table caused issues for me on the day of the display.

If given the oppertunity to redo the project, I would probably only change the number of boxes and add atleast 10 more for impact, but overall, I have a personal attachents to all my projects. This one was no exception, especially as my own family members contributed a few pictures too.