This was the first side of my installation with the 8 pictures of CCTV cameras and 8 facts to go alongside them. I got these facts from various websites on the internet. I checked lots of different websites to make sure the information i was going to print was valid and up to date.
I really like how my images ended up being displayed like this with the alternate order of picture, fact, fact, picture.
This was my first side of my installation. I decided to keep it separate from my images of the girl as the two sets didn't really go together very well and they took something away from each others concept. At first I was just going to display these separately than my pictures of the girl and I was going to display them in a gallery style. Then I thought it would be interesting to display facts with my images to emphasise on the theme and make it scarier knowing how many times we are seen on camera and how many cameras are in the UK etc.
This is what the other side of my installation looked like. I set it up to look like a security room. I recorded lots of different videos of my model and other people walking around York from lots of different vantage points to make the videos look like they were actual CCTV footage. I then edited them together and put them onto 3 different DVDs. When it came to installing my work, I got three small televisions and linked three DVD players to them and played my videos on them. I then set up a table with a coffee cup and a newspaper with puzzles completed on it, a waste bin with some rubbish in it, a chair facing the televisions and a coat on the back of the chair. I then pinned up pictures of the girl with map pins as if someone was taking advantage of their job in the security room and printing out images of a girl they like the look of. This changes my original concept of 'fear of big brother' to a slightly more stalker-ish idea. I only made this decision at last minute but I think it was a good decision to make because it makes the project and installation seem scarier than before.
I was really pleased with how my videos looked on the screens. The video on the left side didn't actually have a black line on it like in this photograph, it just appears this way because of how I photographed it. I really liked how my model wasn't in every single video and she was only in some, this made the audience watch out for her to see if she's in each video or not. I heard someone who viewed my installation say "how did they get hold of CCTV footage?" this is a compliment to me as it must have really looked like CCTV footage and not that I had just recorded videos from the York Walls.
Here I had a coffee mug and a newspaper on the puzzle page which had some of the puzzles completed. This made it look like someone was really there in that office. I think it would have maybe looked better if I had used a cup with a coffee stain inside it then it would look more legitimate, however, this would have been difficult and messy for me to transport from home to the space where our exhibition was being held.
I displayed my images like this with the most zoomed in picture of my model in the centre and all the other ones surrounding it to show who the main character in my images was. Then this would make the audience look closely at the other pictures and notice my models orange hat, scarf and shoes. I think that if I had taken and printed more photos and filled the wall which would have possibly made it look scarier and look like the person who was watching my model had been watching her for a longer period of time.
Here are the three DVD players which I used to link to my small televisions to play my 'CCTV footage'.
I then decided to add something else to my wall of images with my model on, I decided to add post-it notes to emphasise that someone was really watching my model and interested in everything she did by writing times that she had been seen on post-it notes and sticking them on the walls. E.g. "seen in train station at 14:31"
Overall I am quite pleased with my installation I think due to my planning and organisation it came together well. I chose my theme because the project was called abstract fear and I thought that it was an abstract take on the theme of fear rather than just going for spiders or zombies. I was really pleased with my choice when I saw it all set up in the space along side everyone else's. I think they all looked good together and everyone had approached the theme in a completely different way. I was disappointed when I realised that my two sets of images weren't going to work together because this went against all my plans and threw me off course and put me in a rut for a while as I didn't know how to move forward with my project once I'd realised they didn't work together. I was really pleased that I'd worked out how to incorporate the two projects and display them separately from one another so that my work on the images of the cameras didn't go to waste. When we were given the brief and were told to do an installation involving lots of different media and video etc I was very worried as I had no idea what to do and didn't like the thought of doing an installation. I wanted to avoid video but when I established my concept of CCTV I thought it would be good to record videos and have them displayed on the small televisions to make it look like a security room. This made me feel more at ease as I had figured out a way of incorporating different medias, techniques and processes into my work. I knew that to take images in the style of CCTV they wouldn't have to be very good quality. I tested a few shots using a very rubbish camera I have to see what they would look like, but the quality was really quite awful so I decided not to use that camera for my final works as I would have been disappointed. I then decided that I should take my images in good quality using my DSLR and then edit them in photoshop afterwards to make them look worse quality. I liked this because it felt like I had more control over the finish of my images and because the images were good quality to start with it was easier for me to make my models orange clothing stand out more and add grain to my images and do it subtly. To create my videos I knew they wouldn't have to be very good quality and since my DSLR doesn't have a video feature I just used a compact digital camera to record the videos. I went into York with my camera and my tripod and positioned myself in various different places on the York Walls. I then asked my model to walk in and out of the shot in various different videos. I really liked how these worked in my installation and I loved how the audience could look at the images of her then look at the screens and then notice my model on the screens and link the two together. I think to improve my installation I could have taken more images of my model and pinned them up on the board to make it look like the person had been stalking her for a longer period of time. I could have also disguised/hidden my DVD players to make it look more like a security room rather than some DVD players linked to some televisions. I asked peers what they thought of my installation and this is what they said :
"genuinely freaky- all those cameras everywhere!" "Brilliant! The angles of the camera and photographs seemed real and it kind of felt live." "I loved the engulfing set up of Liz's installation, it felt like a real office and added to the creepiness of the idea that someone's always watching! The pictures were also amazing, really awesome how she managed to take them like cctv style. Overall; spine chilling."
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