8th Nov 22
I shared with the group my project at its current stage, so the bank of assets and the 5 proof of concept/ test collage compositions focussed on communicating the lived experience and linked feelings to neurodiversity, specifically my own of Asperger’s, probable ADHD, and mental health conditions of anxiety and depression that are more prevalent within neurodiverse individuals. The goal of this is to create these images as a way of expressing these things outside of the traditional and expected norm of written/spoken word form, something that can be hard to fully encompass these things without other connotations or associations to the words that might not be appropriate or even derogatory in tone.
An example of this came up when talking about the juxtaposition of natural and manmade objects/scenes in my work, I described how I feel that the neurodiverse/ aspergic mind can often run very logically, factually and more artificial/compatriotic/synthetic way despite it being a natural divergence of an organic structure (the brain) and also how this could also reflect the feeling of outlying from natural society and the mannerisms and procedures that form social society, something that should be natural and free flowing like other natural institutions/structures compared to the rigidness and standouts nature of more artificial constructs. The use of the word synthetic here was a prime example of how words are a somewhat flawed method of describing the lived experience or characteristics of neurodiversity, the manner in which I applied it was to mean the opposing tone to the natural current of socialising, the almost flowchart chain of processes that I go through in a conversation to assess tone, response, body language, all those aspects and how that ends up creating a very unnatural or systematic style of navigating socialising, however on the flipside the word synthetic has connotations of fake, artificial, cheap, chemical, unnatural and other negative associations. This is precisely why I wanted to make a nonverbal way of expressing these aspects to avoid the pitfalls and very neurotypical nature of written/spoken words.
Some feedback I got was
· The compositions worked well and neurodiverse members of the crit ‘got’ what I was trying to put across, at first they were more mysterious and unclear but as I spoke more and described the nature of why I’m making them and the reflections of my own experiences into these images they got stronger and more effective as communitive pieces. The suggestion here was to accompany the images with some written text akin to what I described and expressed about the reasoning behind the project to strengthen them in situe.
· The use of colour in some of the images which is still an experiment and not a definite was mixed, some feeling that it felt different to the other compositions and so felt like an outlier to the body of work, but others felt they still fit with the original theme as the use of colour wasn’t natural it was added artificially, possibly mirroring the synthetic aspects mentioned previously.
· I mentioned my intention to capture some nondescript portraits of hands, boots, rings, as elements of myself to put into the image to reinforce the personal nature of the project.
· The composition with the pylon/tower in negative, that was felt to be one of the more outlying comps in the PT was seen by some as a good depiction of the intrusion and chaos of mental health such as depression or anxiety and the fallout from it.
· I mentioned that I aim to produced maybe around 30/40> comps and then with PT and crit help narrow these down to a strong 20 for the book, with 3 of these being printed large (A0?) as a triptych for the exhibition, and my plans to present the images in a projection sitting to maximise the scale of the comps.
· I talked about how I like to have a natural, an artificial, and a detail asset in each comp as that blend of which ultimately is what most expresses the nature of ND.
· I described how having the intense levels of detail and complexity in the images is a reference to the hypervigilance that can be developed as an effect of ND, and how this whilst done in an effort to make socializing easier and not miss cues or miss details that might show or signify tone/mood/expectations thereof, and how often this becomes equally as loud, draining, and hard to read as not doing so.
· I talked about how I like to keep the comps ‘muddy’ and nondescript to keep the comp open to interpretation and to invite the viewer to ‘read’ the image for as long as possible, as it seems the longer someone views the image with the information around its inception in mind, the clearer and more effective they become. Some feedback of this was very present from the ND members of the group and I like that within the community we were able to understand each other and the things that were being depicted in a sort of ‘if you know you know’ kind of way, whilst the nondescript nature of the comps keeps them open to interpretation and digestion by NT viewers, shifting the balance of expectation from us having to adapt to their preferred methods (words,speech) to one that better reflects out nature.
コメント