Process: A Vision

Exploration of hair as an exploration of identity was the first avenue I pursued when approaching this body of work, but it also felt the most out of place initially, as a piece of design. It's photographic focus and the kind of raw, not overly processed result left me wondering where it fit in my message of finding value in loss.



In the midst of working on other sections though it finally hit me. That's where I got the idea of a three act structure that I the work expresses in the end. This exploration of hair acts as a second phase of the work—the veil passed through in the experience, from confronting the cold absurdity of virtual space and loss and coming to terms with it. Moving out of the corporate, manufactured “public space” of Spotify’s virtual void in the first piece, the second phase brings the viewer to a space of interiority. This piece is highly analog, a visit to the analog site of the self to get the grounding you need to get to the other side, to come to terms with virtual space.



The shower is a place of cleaning, and a place where you experience your body. It's the ultimate anti-virtual space. You may listen to music or a podcast while you shower, but your presence is firmly anchored in the physical rather than virtual world, as you cleanse yourself, become aware of your body, reset your experience of the world, and come out fresh.



There's a way that this phase of my work plagued me. Knowing I had to document my every shower and capture an image of how I put hair on the wall, my actions began to be influenced by the presence of the work. Looking at the images over time, the hair goes from unbounded by the wall tiles to eventually residing primarily within one tile. When I made my master planning document, it gave me a picture of when I could be done documenting my hair. I was coming up on 40 photos and that seemed like a good place to stop. Stopping not only gave me the opportunity to feel like I could see the whole work in its place, but it also gave me freedom--to cut my hair, to be less aware of when I need to shower next.




Before the second half of the winter semester, all I had were a series of photos in folders. Finally having a place to put them on the web gave me the structure to see how the work could come together as a design piece and as a broader part of Age of Loss as a whole. I knew as I developed it that the work's primary form of viewing would be online. At one point, I had thought of merging it in with the mode of the rest of the work by putting the video I was developing in a virtual environment where the viewer could watch it, see each photo on the wall.  In the end, though, I decided that since this is the section most concerned with the awareness of the body, the physical self, it would be the one most like a typical web page; the viewer is observing it, not inside it. It's a 'gallery', but I think not trying too hard to make it feel like a physical gallery space is better at presenting this phase for what it is: an invitation for the viewer to introspect, question themselves, apply this approach of observation themselves.



As I shored up the collection of photographs, I could also imagine and finish the video I'd started as a framing element for the piece. Aphex Twin's song Nanou 2 is an important song to me, part of a playlist I've been curating for years of my favorite songs that put me in a certain type of emotional space. I had wanted to use the playlist in some way in this piece, but didn't find an appropriate way to incorporate it. I think using this song as the emotional framing of this phase of the work is a good solution. The song is sad, but more so it feels contemplative. The video shows the shower as the center point of the work, with its views of water falling in various parts. The combination of video, photo, and music gives the framing for the state of mind I imagine when considering this section of introspection. Even though the video itself is perhaps less a piece of 'design' as a filmic artwork, I still think from a design implementation, it provides the opportunity to put the viewer in the intended frame of mind.



With all the photos visualized in the space of the site, and with the video as the first element, I could get a sense for how I wanted the space to be polished up as a section of the work. The structure of the site, with draggable elements, gave an opportunity to make a space the user could interact with. I'd made these illustrations earlier in the year to show what forms I saw in the hair. I thought interspersing them throughout was an appropriate device to establish my inner thoughts expressing themselves across the catalogue. Without forcing too much, I think they give an opportunity for the viewer to have a starting place in searching for form. Seeing what I see, they can either search for similar forms, or get a sense of what they might find instead. It also gives an opportunity to interact, drag forms around, since they're overlaid on the hair photos.