'You don't know the half of it'

We first painted the mask using acrylic black paint, we found this paint to not be the best quality so we then bought some poster paint and found this worked better. The poster paint was thicker and easier to work with. We painted one layer and then left it to dry over night, then we painted the second layer. The two layers were sufficient enough to cover the masks completely black. One layer of paint on the masks. The masks drying. The finished product.

This week, we went into the studio in college to test out a similar space that we would be presenting our project. We tested out different lighting, using different lighting strengths and different colour lights. We tested out the different heights the masks will be hung at. The masks will be hung at different heights to represent different people's heights. Testing height of masks Testing lighting. 

Today, we went to the 77 Million Paintings Exhibition by Brian Eno in the RHA. It was amazing to see such a famous audio and visual instalment in real life. The visuals perfectly match the audio. There were tree trunks and piles of sand scattered around the room. These helped to create an atmosphere in the room. The room was pitch dark which and the only source of light came from the visual piece that was on the far wall of the room. The colours from the visual piece really stood out in the black room. We really enjoyed the exhibition and will definitely be taking inspiration from it for our own installation.

This week we focused on finalising the way the photos will look when projected. Below you will be able to see the different ideas we were playing around with. The first image below is the original photo.  This is the original photo. We thought it might be a good idea to have a black background behind the person. We thought this would correspond with the atmosphere in the room.  We then decided that the bright colours on the black background might be a bit too much so we decided to make the image black and white. We then brought this image back into photoshop and cut out the black and white version of the person and put it on a black background. We also paid attention to the framing of the image here and found this is what we aim to do. We want a close up shot of the person.  We tried blurring the background. We decided we didn't want to completely blur it so you couldn't see colours so we liked the middle range blur so you could still see some sort of...

In everyday life, we all wear masks.  It’s part of the reality of living that we have different “masks” or personas we project to the public. https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/minority-report/201803/the-masks-we-wear https://www.huffpost.com/entry/5-masks-we-wear-and-why-w_n_7786922 https://www.theodysseyonline.com/social-masks-wear https://steveroseblog.com/2017/09/30/how-we-mask-our-authenticity/ https://psych2go.net/five-ways-drop-social-mask/ https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/43402/ https://blogs.psychcentral.com/emotionally-sensitive/2012/01/wearing-masks/

Arthur Zmijewski Democracies by Arthur Zmijewski We will take inspiration from Zmijewski's audio and visual piece in our final project. We will make use of projection. Thomas Ruff 'Stoyal' by Thomas Ruff Thomas Ruff is a German photographer who specialises in portraits. We will take inspiration from his work in capturing the images of the people for our final project. I found this video about identity by MoMA which I thought was really interesting.  Andy Warhol, 'Gold Marilyn' How America saw Marilyn Monroe in 1962 This was a representation of how the media and the public saw Marilyn Monroe. Exploring Racism by Kara Walker Echo Chamber , Matthew Nevin

We went up to Dublin to ask the public did they know what a social mask was and if they'd share their masks with us.  We first tried Grafton Street but we found it was too hectic and people were in a rush and just trying to go about their day. We decided to try St. Stephen's green as it would less hectic and the people there would be relaxing and going for a stroll and we figured people would be more likely to speak with us. Grafton Street We found that our theory was right, people were much more open to talk to us. We decided that we would open with "Are you in a rush?" So it meant people had the option to not talk to us if they just wanted to enjoy their walk or chat with their friends/family.  St. Stephen's Green Gate Most people we asked said yes and we explained what a social mask was and asked them to fill out their's on a paper mask we made.  Some people were more open than others. Asking People about Social Masks ...