With a vast bank of assets collected on various themes, subjects and locations I began to look on to the next stage of the project and put together a series of collaged compositions to start creating a visual representation of the methods and themes I’ve been discussing throughout my project so far. I decided on creating five of these concept pieces with a mixture of variations in their production to see what different processes and qualities did to the overall composition and ultimately whether the overall goal of creating these expressive pieces that speak towards the nature of neurodiversity and its lived experience actually does speak to that effect.
The process behind selecting the assets to use in each composition is done on a much more instinctive basis initially, usually an image that has a good level of contrast as this provides a good layer for the images placed onto to work with when the blend modes are applied, flatter images quickly find themselves buried after 2/4 layers are added on top.
I also like to mix the themes and tones of the assets used to create a varied sense of subject and keep things less direct and create variations to invite a more open interpretation on the weighting, meaning and justifications behind the choice of assets in each composition. This would mainly take the form of mixing natural and manmade heavy assets, more texture heavy assets mixed with more subject heavy assets and so forth.
Once the base layer is added I begin by adding another layer on top, using the juxtaposing method mentioned above, once layered on top I’ll usually then experiment with its orientation and then altering the blend modes of the layer, I found the more effective layers at this level of the composition are the difference set of blend modes that work with the content underneath the selected layer and as the base layer remains unaltered in terms of blend mode, opacity and or other such alterations.
In terms of themes I’m aiming to cover with the compositions I’ve discussed that in earlier writings in more detail but the core of them are surrounding themes of isolation, uncertainty, over-cognisance, and the general level of dissociation with neurotypical society as a neurodiverse individual, especially those that are much harder to put into words. As such I tried to have a scope of these themes in the concept test compositions I had put together, the main variations between the images would be in things such weight, colour or monochrome, size of the assets within the composition, and the ways in which the assets would stack and in turn how their blend modes would react with each other.
(Cropped preview, click for full frame)
From my own perspective, I found the compositions that used colour, whilst visually adding something interesting and highlighting some of the layering and blending, I felt that the choice of colour would end up upsetting the balance of visual weight and would also contain too much variation with people often having their own interpretation of the connotations of colour that may skew the themes that I’m aiming to put across. The compositions that featured a mix of industrial, brutal, and heavier assets along with more natural, bleak and textural assets worked well and the juxtaposition of these assets made for a visually engaging and complex composition that invited viewers to read and interact with the composition in ways that they might not have if the assets weren’t layered and blended in the way they are, ultimately the project aims to speak most with other neurodiverse individuals and remain somewhat murky, ambiguous, and even confrontational in order to reflect the perspective of neurodiverse peoples when faced with a cultural and social hegemony based on neurotypicality.
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