CONTENT WARNING!!! THIS MIGHT HAVE FLASHING IMAGES IN IT. CAREFUL!
Reflecting on an old piece…
I’m reflecting on Week 1’s No Ghost, Just a Shell piece with AnnLee.
Here’s the reflection I wrote all the way back in September when we started.
‘I like the idea of my work being a floating piece without context, but Jazmin mentioned that context outside of the format matters a little bit, so I’d probably have taken my piece further contextually by setting it up as a projection on a white or grey wall as an installation, as a homage to the original project. The piece itself could be developed if i changed the background to have a subtle glitch effect to make the meaning more obvious and to add some more movement & keep it eye catching.’
I’m going to use this as an opportunity to reflect on my own reflection, too. I like the piece a lot. It looks like something I drew. But I must admit that I feel like my art style has stagnated over the past year or so, compared to the excited freshness from when I first defaulted back to traditional art in lockdown 2020. My art style has significantly less expression and personality than when I started, and I have absolutely no idea – or time! – to rectify this. In my old reflection, I talked about Jazmin placing importance on contextualising my pieces. Having given it some time, I think I’m going to take this piece of art in a completely different direction and turn it into a p5.js sketch. I now realise development isn’t linear, and can take multiple turns, directions or pathways.
OUTCOME
https://editor.p5js.org/spidermatsu/sketches/3Py_ETdvd
Like I said, flash warning!
DESCRIPTION OF REVISITED WORK
Instead of bringing her into the real world, let’s go chase her around her territory. Dwelling on the fact we as an audience can never connect to AnnLee, you can never touch her. Using two flipped AnnLees that show() and hide() themselves based on the function mouseOver(), AnnLee will avoid your mouse as soon as it comes near her. No matter how hard you try, you can’t connect with her. There is nothing to connect with.
Additionally, this piece has two parts – Click and move your mouse and you’ll see what I mean. For every frame your mouse is moved, a new AnnLee is drawn. I initially discovered this imagery by accident working on another project in p5.js and decided it would feel at home in a broken, glitchy piece like this. I did it to show the existence of these infinite iterations of AnnLee that could have been created due to the existence of the No Ghost, Just a Shell project, where AnnLee contains multiudes – a side of the project I hadn’t seen explored yet within my own research. Anyone can make as many AnnLees as they like this way.
My practice now expands into code.