keeping things moving

So we finished up last time with a sense of direction. The basic premise of the final project had been decided upon and I had some idea of where to go next. To briefly recap my project is going to be about blank spaces. But this alone is not going to be enough to form a body of work as it just too broad an area. So my notions about what constituted a 'blank' space had to be defined a bit more rigorously before I could start making some images.

The decision I came to was that these blank areas had to be spaces where you would usually expect to see information presented. This is why the projector screen worked but the home made screen did not. So I began to think of the sort of places where you could expect to have information given to you. One of the first that I thought of was a sandwich board. These are often outside shops and inform people of the latest offers and other such things. But what set me on course to using a sandwich board was this image from Open Empty Spaces

It helps that a piece of paper has been pinned to the front of the board and it is this I think that really gave me the idea to make my own sandwich board. I thought I could make a similar board but just use a white piece of paper on the front. So that is precisely what I did. After a trip to the DIY shop to buy materials and a few hours work I had my very own sandwich board. With board made the next questions was where do I take it? This is an important question and the locations where I place these objects will go a long way to defining the nature of the work. What I decided to do was to take the board down to the hight street and place it outside a row of shops. I wanted the board to look like it could plausibly be there. Having a blank notice on the board is unusual in itself and i did not want to accentuate the oddness of this by putting it in some location where you would never expect to see such a thing. The reasoning behind this was that i want the viewer to be able to take something from the images that invigorates their perception of reality. If the image felt totally contrived this would direct the viewer somewhere beyond reality. But by presenting a location that is relatively familiar at least one aspect of the image should be easy to relate to.

When I set about photographing the board I initially wanted to have a straight on shot so that only the front of it was visible. This was the composition that I had used for the projector screen and one which I felt worked well. It really helped focus attention on the centre of the frame and blank space found there. But when it came to the board I was initially not convinced by the sraight on shots that I took. It felt like it was not clear enough what this object actually was. With a projector screen we are used to seeing straight on but this sort of board is something we usually view in passing. So I took an angled shot as well that showed the side of the board and hopefully made it clear what the viewer was looking at. But now I come to look at the straight on shot again I am not certain that is should have been discarded so quickly. The conceptual aims of the project may be better served by having a consistent viewpoint throughout. This would reinforce the act of looking at a blank, information free, space and possibly be more effective in creating the relationship between viewer and image that I hope for. At the moment I can't quite resolve this issue and I think it will become clearer once more images are made. Something to ponder.