In this 60 second video, the concept that I am trying to explain is what it means to me when I say that I am an artist. Painting and drawing have been a huge part of my identity ever since I was a little girl. My grandma was a painter, and she was always getting me involved in this world of color and expression. Ever since then, I have been interested in the power and influence of color and how it shapes people and cultures. My culture is a very bright and colorful one. The people, places, views and landscapes that shape my country are filled with color.
Aside from the things I was born with, art has been a great influence in many of my decisions. I am in Architecture because I want to continue chasing after this love for art in my future work. Given how, throughout the course we have been paying close attention to identity, community and how they all work together to shape each person, I decided to place my focus on art in order to convey how it is one of the main pillars that has shaped my life and continues to be of great influence to me. I want to convey an interpretive representation of what it means to be an artist. Through this video I want to show the viewer how to me, art is much more than a hobby, but is something that has taken a great influence on my life and on the decisions I make. In my culture, my family and my personal life, art has always been present and has always served as a source for inspiration and motivation.
The video is a stop motion that I personally recorded of my mom being slowly covered up in paint. After every two to three brush strokes I added I took a picture, so that when I put all the images together it seemed as though the paint was covering her body on its own. In total there were around 150 pictures taken. The idea behind making the video a stop motion is to show color as an independent being that almost has a life of its own and is able to take over a person on its own. It serves as a metaphorical interpretation of what art and color personally mean to me. Structuring the video this way is key for highlighting the great influence and importance of color and show how, for me, being an artist means being dominated by color. Aside from the video itself, I chose to zoom in on specific parts of the video and make some parts slower than others in order to make the viewer pay close attention to the movement of paint through the body. It is crucial to show how paint covers up the entire body to enhance the meaning of how color takes over a person. By zooming in on closer areas of the body, I wanted to make it seem as though the paint is walking over the person, emphasizing the idea that it is consuming her.
The video focuses on one single element, the body being covered in paint, without adding any extra footage or images to it. I chose to do this in order to enhance the metaphorical meaning of the video and place a greater emphasis on how the person being covered in paint is meant to represent myself. I wanted to apply the idea of how “an image must go beyond serving as a sign” and have a deeper meaning that is “only indirectly connected to its referent” (Foss 144) in order to make the image much more meaningful. Focusing on a small concept allows me to pay close attention to its details and enhance their meaning.
Furthermore, I added the text into the video in order to make it clearer to the viewer what I want them to understand from what is happening. The text is meant to be very short, concise sentences that only aid in the development of what is occurring with the images. It is meant to show the viewer the way in which color begins to take over a person and then keeps on expanding. This idea is further developed by the way in which the video is divided into two sections, one in which only the body is being covered in paint and one in which the paint begins to expand outside of the body. Through this, I want to convey how being an artist is something that begins within you and then keeps on taking over everything that surrounds you. This further shows how, for me, art has been a great influence when shaping my identity and has not only changed me from within but has influenced the activities and decisions I make.
Moreover, the music in the video is also meant to demonstrate and highlight the different transitions that occur in it. Starting with a slow music that begins to speed up as the person is being covered in paint is meant to show the effect of how art began as a small hobby for me and then developed into a highly important and influential part of my life. Shifting the music in the video adds to its rhetorical value since it shows how music is used to develop the atmosphere as it immerses the reader into the way color moves through the body. It is meant to be a guide for the viewer to see and feel the way color affects individuals.
In conclusion, this video is meant to illustrate the idea of what being an artist means to me and how this has influenced my identity and my overall life. It shows how art is not only a hobby or an interest, but is something that has been growing within me ever since I was young. My family and my culture have been of great importance when developing this artistic side of my personality, and I think that having this with me has helped me understand who I am.
Works Cited
Foss, Sonja K. “Theory of Visual Rhetoric.” Handbook of Visual Communication: Theory, Methods, and Media. Kenneth L. Smith, Sandra Moriarty, Gretchen Barbatsis, and Keith Kenney, Eds. New York and London: Routledge, 2005. 141-152.
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