Leanne Sheth - Project 4 Proposals - 11-24-14

Project 4 Proposals

Within the past year of doing art projects and assignments, it has become incredibly apparent to how easy it would be to lie to my teachers and peers about personal experience that would inspire or influence my life. We are not graded on accuracy, and some facts observers have no way of checking. This concept inspired my first idea, which would combine sounds of strangers with my own performance piece. The sound aspect will come from myself calling suicide hotlines, and recording the conversations. I am still considering wether or not to include my own voice, I may only record one side of the conversation. The visual aspect will feature myself in a neutral "truthful" state, and as the piece progresses I will begin to change my appearance. I would like to find a way to make these changes "surprising" and unpredictable. I want the performance aspect of this work to reflect my deceit. I envisioned myself entering a bathtub and cleaning myself while actually becoming more dirty.

My next idea continues my experimentation using spoken word from my last assignment. I want to write a poem or speech and deliver it to a large group of people, similar to Dan Grahm's Mirror. As the piece progresses, I slowly want to add gibberish into my perforce, delivered in the same manner as my normal speech. By the end of the work, I will be speaking purely in gibberish, equally, if not more passionate about what I am saying, as if I had not noticed I stopped speaking english. This piece was inspired by the concept of rapture, evangelists are often speaking in "tongues" to show their body's loss of control to the higher powers. I want this piece to show the irrelevancy of our thoughts and opinions in context to the entire world/universe. We might as well be speaking in gibberish, time still continues regardless of our thoughts. I feel this piece would be appropriate to close the year with since it deals with time in this conceptual way.

My third idea deals with the contrast of realities and routine. I want to appropriate mundane things with specific uses; toothbrushes, lipstick, etc, and use them in ways thew were not meant to be used. For instance, I would apply lipstick to my eyelids, brush my hair with a toothbrush etc. This piece could also be minority altered to imply something about the feminine routine, and the insanity of preparations we make to appear more beautiful. To present this piece, I may use a split screen, one with a normal routine, and another with this alternate universe method I created.

For each of these pieces, I would like to consider experimenting with non traditional viewing methods. Perhaps a complex split screen such as seen in the video we watched in class that was Mondrian inspired. I would like to include spoken word, and confuse and interest the viewer with a different audio track to the performance. I may use multiple cameras to increase the aesthetic value.