As my research has moved to a different field and direction, gradually through this assignement, I started exploring it practically. I am intrested in the skin as generator of new material and archive of events. During this assignement, I worked with objects and their adaptability and fuctionality on the body. I experimented with materials that mark the body and the skin, and looked into how persistent, evident and lasting this impact can be. I also experimented with other mediums such as video, photography and photoshop in distorting and documenting the skin.
note: After each experiment/ studio time/ logging, I have attached the video that documents the process. It is up to the reader whether they watch it before or after the written text.
March 9, 2020
For my first studio experimentation, I wanted to work with somethinng new, so I went to HEMA and had a walk. Some rubber bands and a pack of balloons caught my attention. I tried to not think ahead and make no plans as to what I will do with them, in order to be as spontaneous and playful as possible in the studio. I often find this randomness to serve me well, because although I am a very methodological and organized person, the unknown and random triggers my imagination.
As we started on the first day of this module, I first begun with a brainstorm for each material. :'What can I make it ?'. I noticed that as I was trying to think of more ideas, I would imagine different scenarios, spaces, activities, but mostly I would scan my body in order to think of how, where and why this material could be used on it. Although many ideas came to me while I was thinking what I can make, when I actually started practicing, a new relation emerged between me and the objects, that I couldn't imagine before.
BALLOONS
I started off by learning the qualities of a balloon. I felt its texture, I stretched it fully to its limits, I smelled its plastic, I tried to see through it, I turned the in -out, I heard the sounds it makes, I squized it. I then starting giving it some air. I made a small balloon and I started biting it. I got intrested in that and spended some time on the idea of biting it untill it pops. It did not. I continued by chewing it, pulling with my teeth but it would not pop.
Looking back at the video, I am wondering:
Do my teeth leave a mark on its surface?
For how long will it continue taking back its form and shape?
How long will it take to change its appearance?
Then, out of the blue, I had one of those ideas that don't work, but still, manage to take you somewhere new. I decided to make a matress out of balloons. As I started blowing up the first balloon, I quickly made a plan to lie on this balloon matress, until the balloons run out of air, until I change their shape, until my body has an impact on them.
Little did I know that I am incapable of blowing up balloons anymore. I was trying for several minutes, I blamed the balloon and took a new one, I turned it inside out, put my finger in it to make space, lyed on the floor, used my stomach for breathing, but nothing.
Having this red half blown balloon in my mouth, I picked up another one and added it between my teeth. I got up to 8 balloons. Yes, I was aware that aesthetically it was pleasing, but this happened almost on its own. I started inhaling and exhaling, and I felt like I was giving music into them. I was listenting to this music in my head, a music that was being created because of the balloons. I was feeling like a maestro, giving instructions to the musicians - the balloons. I got intrested in the sound of squizing the balloons, and the sound of the limited air coming out from the open holes.
Looking back at the video, I am wondering whether I used the same amount of air for 1 and then 8 balloons. If I was using more air, could it blow up properly one balloon? Could I get to the state of blowing up 2, 4, or even 8 balloons at once?
My failure led me to something unexpected. The biggest lesson I got from this balloon experience is that the simplest action can be very generous. It is not always about making an airplane out of a balloon, because even the very simple breathing and blowing has much to offer. However, I regret not insisting more on biting the balloons and leaving my teeth marks on them. I think this would serve my research in the opposite way: instead of looking at marks on the body, to look into the body leaving marks. It is always beneficial to look at the other side of the dime.
RUBBER BANDS
I bought these rubber bands that come in a ball, one circling the other and I thought to work with the whole ball instead of single ones.
My first instict was to put it in my mouth and bite it. From the first second I felt discomfort, disgust and nausea. I took it out and then decided to try again and see what it does to my body and how time affects the experience.
My whole face transformed. There was a lot of saliva, tears (the ones that come up on their own when you throw up), and many moments when I would have to keep myself from throwing up. I had to move my head backwards in order to shallow, but at some point I got scared of choking on the bands. My breathing became heavy and loud. My right side of the jaw line started hurting.
After that, I started placing the bands around my tongue, first losely and then tightly. I noticed that I was enganging my whole face in rearranging my breath, my tongue, my saliva.
To be honest, this black tongue didn't have much to offer. Of course I could develop, revisit and work on this idea, but the exact point of trying out things and experimenting is to see what works, what excites you, what has potentials, what is boring, etc. The black ball was much more intresting to me, and I continued working with it.
March 11, 2020
Having set the camera, I started bitting the black ball again, now with the idea that I will edit this footage. Knowing that I want to edit this in a different way than just a documentation of the process, changed my relation to the camera, my placement because of lighting and my mental focus. I tried to dedicate my energy to the endurance of bitting, but having the camera in front of me in a different context, created a louder sense of spectatorship.
In my suprise, although still uncomfortable, it did not have the same impact on me, as I didn't feel as nauseous as the first time. This time, I focused a lot on my teeth and the amount of effort and force I would bring to bite the ball.
As I was looking at the camera, I could feel by saliva dripping on the floor and after a a few seconds I decided to start collecting it in my palm. The saliva collected was what was left behind in the real world, outside of the video.
I continued with putting the bands all over my hands, face and feet.
Finally, having discovered that the bands can open as big as to circle my face, I started distoring my face. As soon as I lost my sight, I started being disconnected with my face, what it looks like and how the bands are arranged. As I was writting now, I found two forgotten bands on my ears. When I was taking the bands off in the studio, I was pften momentarily confused in recognizing whether there were still rubber bands on me or not.
There comes the justice for the randomness. Buying and biting the rubber bands were a random choice that led me to the specific plan of shooting a video of the biting, that led to the spontaneous idea of putting the bands on my face, that came out to be very sourceful. It was the first time I could recognize my research in the studio. The most suprising outcome to me was that there wasn't just a distortion of my skin but also of my sense of reality.
small damage: blood was collected in my left top eye, so I still have some small red spots.
March 21, 2020
I laid down yesterday around 03:00am, my 6th day on quarantine. Instead of panicking in regards to the fact that my research has changed, I decided that in this chaos, I need an order. It makes sense for me, to first create a map of my body, since this body will be the incarnation and embodiment of the research.
I started by shooting a video of my mapping. I won't claim that I rediscovered the stories of my body, had an epiphany about my skin as canvas, or discovered details of my marks. I was mainly pre-occupied with dealing with a camera that doesn't have the best quality, has a black spot in the middle of its lens, bad lighting and no ideal space. The technicalities of the shooting were my main focus since I tried to do it alone. I am always confident and even excited to find ways to make things that don't work, work. I am putting my faith in the edit, where I will attempt to create a visual map.
Although I started shooting with the idea that it would be a continuous shot with some edited intervensions, because I used a mirror, and mainly shot the image on the mirror, I realized that the camera was often in the frame, I often blocked the light and I had to be extra careful with not adding more information from the backround, because that would be very noizy. At some point I realized that it wasn't working as I thought and wanted and thus also started shooting partially body parts.
I initially wanted to use Premiere, but since my dying laptop can't afford much now, I used my first good buddy, the old good Movie Maker 🤘. It might have limited options but I think that it can still do some wonders.
I realized that my visual map as I had imagined it, wasn't possible with this program and this footage. I re-organized my thoughts and returned to the idea of the skin as a palimsest that I discovered while writting the Bodies in Dissent reflective essay.
I tried to apply a multilayering aspect in the editting. I cut each shot into smaller parts and layered them on top of one another as a transition, with the effect lasting from 0.50, 1, 2, up to 3secs, depending on the lenght of the frame. Ideally, I would prefer to have the frames constantly on top of one another but with this program I could only do it as a transition.
I instisted on this idea, when I noticed that it gave to the video a sense of unstable, old, broken effect. As if the video is getting stuck. As if it loses seconds. The quality of the video is bad and so I tried to play with it. Funnily enough, I ended up using mostly the zoomed in, unfocused, blurred and unclear shots, instead of the lighted, clear ones. Suprise - suprise the marks that I intended to map are not visible afterall in the video. I would be lying if I said I am content with this result. I am happy that I was able to make something out of this footage, and as I mentioned I enjoy these kind of challenges, but admittedly, I want to remake it. Something I have to realize, is that I don't always have to use everything I make. It is ok to throw away what doesn't work.
Lastly, I intentionally left the sounds playing in the video, especially the sound of the camera zooming in and out. By keeping the sound of the camera, I am trying to underline the fact that I am self-shooting and that it is my body, my hand that is holding the camera and I am creating this map.
March 27, 2020
For the past two days, I have been looking for visual references related to skin and body transformation/modification.
I was particularly intrigued by this photo and so I made a plan.
I put my hand in a bowl of water for about an hour and I was planning to photograph it after, and play with its surfaces for imprints. About an hour later though, I thought; why not implement here the rubber bands? So, I threw a couple of those inside the bowl, and tried to tie my fingers around them with this one hand. Then I stayed for half an hour more in the water. During all this time, I discovered the opportunitties that the bowl with the water gave me photographically. By placing the camera close to the bowl on the sides, I was able to create images of distorted fingers, water and space.
With the rubber bands, the distortion grew.
90 minutes later, my expectations for the tremendous soaking didn't meet. Maybe if the water had been warmer there would have been better results, but then again, my fingers soak a lot when I am for that long in the cold sea. I was discussing it with my father and he gave me a possible (obvious?) answer. Since I added the rubber bands and the circulation was limited, the skin on my fingers stretched and thus the soaking wasn't possible. Indeed, the top of my index finger had turned blue and almost immediately after I removed the rubber bands returned to its natural color, as blood circulated.
Of course the contact of the rubber bands with the skin was evident.
So there I was, having new information on my body that I had not thought through and I had to act fast. I run to the bathroom looking for something to fill in the marks on my skin. I found a white powder which I spread in my index and middle finger, that were mostly marked.
Again, the image transformed. My fingers in the picture look like carrots, snowed tree trunks, frozen loafs of bread or ladyfingers.
I washed it off. I took a blank sheet. I wanted to leave something behind.
I run to the kitchen. I grabbed the tumeric. I spread it on my fingers.
It couldn't leave a visible impact on the sheet.
I opened my make-up bag and took a blue eye-liner. I underlined the marks on my fingers.
I was now confused. I couldn't understand whether some lines were my natural wrinkles or the bands' marks. I tried to remember the marks and trace them.
I started rolling my fingers on the sheet and the imprints of the marks appeared as quick brushes.
I took the sheet, went to a window and played with the shadow of my fingers behind the sheet, taking the fingers from the front line to the backstage.
my thoughts:
1) I started with an idea and ended up to something else.
2) There are 3 different 'results' : a. the photographic material generated in the water bowl
b. the photographic material from the white powder
c. the imprinted sheet
3) Are the last two independent and irrelevant to the first part?
I believe that even if they appear to be (since the water didn't have much visible impact on my skin afterall), and even if they could happen seperately, it is important that it happened this way. It is a butterfly effect. The one action brought the other, and I wouldn't have reached that end if I hadn't put my hand in the bowl in the first place.
4) I look at this sheet and I am torn between laughing on myself and looking at it from a perspective of the process. A way I could develop this would be to continue adding traces of the marks that happen to my body and thus treating this sheet also as my skin (going back to the idea of the palimpsest that keeps gathering new information and never truly loses the old).
5) Similarly to the visual map video, I had a clear plan with steps and intentions but it didn't work. In this case, I had to act fast and perhaps a bit randomly, because I was afraid that my skin would take back its shape and would lose the marks. However, in this case, it is the photos of the process that worked most for me. I didn't expect that they could be more than just documentation photos but I believe that they turned out to be a work on their own. The photos I have presented above are completely unedited.
April 3, 2020
For my last experiment, I used Adobe Photoshop. It was my first time time using it, and I think I was resisting it unconsciously because of my inexperience, but I when I got my hands into it, I stuck there for hours. I attempted to distort my skin and its form through another medium, since so far I have used water and rubber bands.
Above, is a photo of my fingers after having the rubber bands on. I used mostly the real forced marks in order to create the more accentuated edited cuts in the fingers.
In this photo above, I proceeded in using the natural lines of my hand in order to create the cuts, but I also distorted the map of my palm. In the future, with more persission, I would like to also do that on a photo of my fingerprint, playing with the idea of the unique identity of each body that can be altered.
Then, I managed to do what I wanted to have done for my visual map. I created palimpsests from different photos of my edited distorted fingers.
With the same pattern, I returned to some pictures from my second experiment and did the same on my face.
I am consious that throughout all these experiments I tried out different things and thus didn't really take my ideas further. But with this last one, I did got an epiphany of deliveries. For instance, I learnt that I don't have to necesseraly mark my skin. I realized even more the idea of achieving a goal from various paths, and that each path has something different to offer. I haven't realized till now, that I was playing somehow safe, using technologies I was comfortable with and didn't push through. With photoshop I got reminded of the excitement on working on unknown territories, and I appreciated the results that it gave me. I don't feel like I am done with this process, as I felt with some of my experiments, but rather that I want to explore this even more.