Visual Study in Reflective Value Gauges

The more appropriate size for the captured individuals in relation to their effective importance on the environment which surrounds them: the art show (Curator and Artist respectively)


Actual documentation

Here I changed the sizes of the individuals in the original documentation to begin thinking about altering size in relation to importance within documentation. This idea is created in thinking of how Byzantine images varied sizes in their images to create significance and also to begin to think of the relation between old forms of documentation, its inaccuracy (i.e. paintings of Napoleon as a tall man when he was a short man) and how new forms come with relatively new inaccuracies.

How can I say that original photos come with new inaccuracies? Well, I suppose its off to call it a complete inaccuracy, but it depends on what you are thinking about. Photos and video are supposed to represent who we are, but a lot of times they fall short. I could take 10 pictures of myself at a party frowning to trick everyone looking at the pictures later into thinking I was having a bad time, when in actuality I may have been having so much fun that I wanted to trick you into thinking it was bad so you won't want to come to the next party and ruin my good time. Far fetched? Go look at your online photo album and ask yourself how many photos you deleted or decided you did not want to be a part of the reminiscence.

Photos and video documentation are reflective in that they can begin to decipher what we, on an individual level, value to be important in memory. SO, the above scale change of the individuals involved is a study to begin thinking about ways to alter and play with documentation with reference to story telling, ideas of reminiscence, transformation of visual information based on given value or personal importance etc...

Stop Motion Collage

First off, you should probably click on this image to get a better view of it....

This is the picture of a collage I did using various photos that were originally intended to create a stop motion animation. The way the project formed was this: I stood in the street and took a picture of myself, then stepped once to my left and took another photo. I did this repeatedly so that when you string the images together in some sort of video it looks like the background is moving while I am standing still, a typical stop motion technique.

Since I am interested in thinking about ways to play with documentation in regard to the ephemeral aspects of live art, I created a new way to view the same information (at least I think its new).

I took about 40 of the pictures I created, kept them in order and sliced them into 5 equal sections. After that I took the first section of every frame and placed them (in order from first to last) next to each other. I then did the same for the second section, third section and so on, for each of the remaining pieces... make sense?

Well, the resulting image is the one seen above. I was hoping that this cutting up of documenting my side steps to the left would create some sort of new way to think about motion via documentation. What I like is that it ends up sort of creating the idea of motion through a still photo collage.

I was also trying to go for something visually interesting, which I think I did achieve.

Tricking Low Pixels

Head banging


Shaking my face


Head waving side to side

These images were captured using my Mac Book Pro's iSight. I am not sure what quality the iSight is gauged at, but it is apparently low considering the amount of ease at which motion was able to create a large range of blur within each photo. Each time I took a photo I created a quick movement with my head so that the captured portrait picked up a blurry version of my face. The purpose here was to play with the "flaw" in the system (where blur is captured instead of a precise, instantaneous moment).

These images were created to play with ideas of motion in regard to the accuracy of documentation. A lot of things we consider to state who we are come from photos, so it is interesting to me to play with ways to create ambiguous images with a device we can sometimes consider to validate who we are... This is also interesting because of the increased usage of digital imagery present on the web.

...maybe I should play with a photo album

Live Art and Documentation

Welcome to my Live Art and Documentation study blog.

Hello, my name is Tom McDermott and I am a visual artist based in Southern California. This blog is meant to explore the visual qualities captured in the images I gather for the purposes of thinking about art making. Lately my main interests in art making have tended toward live art and installation art.

This blog is an exploration of how documentation may function in regard to capturing live art, possibly creating new projects via means of documenting live art (changing the original project into something new). My projects with documentation attempt to expose the flaws of documentation to create a play with the material in regard to performance (live) art.

My other blog here explores visual images for the purpose of installation art ideas, it may be viewed here: http://installationstudy.blogspot.com

Feel free to leave comments, enjoy!

-Tom-