Final Idea

I had my eureka moment last night!

For my final piece I wanted to create some sort of interactive piece that would embarrass my audience. And in the seminar group last week, one of my peers suggested that I used skype, and got my audience to do something embarrassing in front of the camera… but without them knowing, I’d be secretly filming them and displaying this to the other room for everyone to see.

I liked this idea, but the only difficultly I had was what to get them to do that would be embarrassing enough to humiliate them, and also whether people would actually approach my work and do it.

So I was talking to a tutor about my work, and told him the idea. He said it needed more thought and development, but he also said that what he finds most awkward are passport photos, and how you have to keep your head in that circle, and hold your pose the entire time… maybe I should look into that?

THEN it hit me! Why don’t I make a photo booth??? If I made my own photo booth that my audience could walk in, sit down, close the curtain… this would solve the privacy issue. People would join in with the exercise because they would be concealed from the other people when they close the curtain (or so they think)

In this photo booth are going to be instructions telling you how you should smile. They’ll be in a similar format as the instructions on how to take a passport photograph. But these are going to be even more awkward, because instead of holding a straight face, you will be trying to force this unnatural and awkward smile.

Then the whole time they would be filmed, and publicly displayed to the other room… and when they eventually walk into the other room and realise they have been filmed the whole time… it will be embarrassing.

But when they see the rest of my project, hopefully they will realise, it wasn’t actually that bad, they’ll understand the purpose (i.e. fake smiling is awkward and unnatural, you should be more genuine and worry less about your image) and they will see the fun of it. Another thing is that when they eventually come to the other room, they will not know who has actually watched them, which to me makes it even more awkward!!

Also alongside my interactive piece (the booth and the projection) I am going to display my screen prints. The awkward smiling prints next to the booth, and the genuine smiles next to the projection in the other room (as well as my sketchbook) And the project will be explained in the projection room!

Hopefully my audience will leave the exhibition thinking differently about how they appear in photographs. I hope that the next time a camera is in their face, instead of doing this posey fake awkward stiff smile, they will go for a more natural beautiful genuine smile, and not take it so seriously!

Here is a plan of how it will hopefully appear: