ok, so i pitched ideas in class yesterday and they are definitely starting to feel it. I started to do some research in social psychology, and I’m starting to see some major parallels. I’ll post some more in depth thoughts later, with a pdf of my thought process. but i think i have settled on the themes, but only cause i’m having to move forward and really nail this down. i think you guys will have a lot of fun with these, i’m pretty excited about the possibilities. obviously feel free to shoot down anything that doesn’t feel right or congruent to you. i just think by having more constraint things will become easier.
themes:
issue#1 Narcissum: the love for one’s self
• I have been looking at both the harms and needs of narcissism in our lives and i think we could have a really fun time making comments on fashion and art and whatever else under this topic.
• I was talking to jonny about setting up a series of shoots, or if i have to illustrate them it would be fine, of a person always staring at their reflection in a window or car mirror or something and then having some catastrophic event happening right next to that person that they could help out in but don’t even notice that is going on because they are too busy staring at themselves.
• I’m also highly interested in the idea of everyone have myspace and facebook and how its basically ones distorted mirror that they broadcast to the world. I think justin’s facebook shoot with names and people could go well in this issue.)
issue#2 Enjoyment: exploring the ideas and avtivities behind having fun.
i think this one will really be a blast to do. capturing and studying happiness? think it could be great.
• this is definately where dan parnassus and the nudie suits will shine through brilliantly.
• i sent out an email about taking photos of crowds in movie theaters and trying to capture their collective emotion during pivotal points in the movie. Could we get shots of 20 or so people in a frame all laughing their heads off at a joke in a comedy? and the name of the shot could be the joke in the movie. i think it would be great.
• i think this would also be a great place to put the enlarged pixel ideas. I pitched this in class and people loved it. The way i’m invisioning the abstration of the pixels would be the same way rothko or albers would. Look at them as color fields of emotion. So what if we took pictures of happy moments, lets say for lack of a better example a flower. then blow it up and see if the portray the emotion of the original picture in 4 massive pixels? ohhh color theory, how i love thee.
• this would also be the spot where the rollerskating man would live. btw, Mclicious are you actively pursuing that? cause if we got moving on it now then we could really make it work design wise.
issue#3 Routine: the day to day
• Serializing peoples lives. I really liked the idea of photographically diagramming or mapping daily situations. it might be cool to set up a tripod out y’alls window and take photos of bike traffic, and then composite the days bike traffic in a way where in the photo it had hundreds of bikers in the picture where it looked like some crazy critical mass, but then really its just a diagram of workers coming home from work on their bike. still a rough idea, but might have some potential.
• The idea of paparazzi chasing a normal grandma doing her normal tasks. i actually loved this idea.
• could do some still lives of people’s toothbrushes, or maybe their bathroom cabinets in general. it would be fun to try and portray one’s daily wake up ritual purely by the way their bathroom is set up.
• the outlandish but still hilarious idea kicked around in our first meeting of photographing ones meal for the day and then photographing their shit and having them side be side. bathrooms= funny is the rule i think haha.