Assignment 5: Digital Identities 2

The Brief:

Use your tutor’s feedback on Assignment Four to help you develop your digital identities project to the point of resolution.

The method of presentation that you choose for your project should be appropriate to, and complement, the work you make. Your work may suit a print-based submission, or it may be appropriate to present your work in a book, audio-visual form, web-based project or installation.

Your project should involve substantial artistic investigation, and the method of presentation should do your efforts justice. You should view the project as the culmination of the Digital Image and Culture course. Include a 500-word text that contextualises your project and provides a self-evaluation.

After years of invasive procedures, frequent hospitalization and great pain my father passed away on July 9, 2020. I was not prepared for his loss although I saw it coming. There is not a day that goes by that I don’t miss him or wish I have done more for him. I accept that he is in a better place where there is no suffering or pain until we meet again. However, his sudden departure was one of life’s most difficult experience for me. I was about to give up on my studies but thanks to OCA especially Gemma for helping me get back on track and continue where I stopped. Also my father was very keen for me to complete my Bachelor degree at OCA.

To deal with my intense grief, understand it and cope with it, I decided to focus my pain on art. The overwhelming emotions I have are hard to put into words thus expressing them through art is my way to contain those emotions.
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The Process of Selecting the Images:

Going through my family old albums as well as my own, I chose the ones that fit the context and can work with each other. All the photographs in the slide below are old film photographs except the last photo of my daughter is taken with a digital camera.

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The Process of Making the images:

The final selection of the film photographs were scanned to my computer where I adjusted what needed, then some where printed for collage work while others where combined directly with other photos to be used for the final stage which is the animation. I will go through each photo here and explain what process used.

First Selection:

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  Scanned photo of my dad from my archive

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  Added frame using photoshop

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  Scanned photo from my archive of the desert.

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  First attempt to combine the photos on photoshop

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  Final selection of combined photos before the animation

Second Selection:

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  Scanning my daughter’s face

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  Attempt 1

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  Attempt 2

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  Attempt 3

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  Attempt 4

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  Attempt 5 (final selection)

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  Selection photoshopped

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  My hand holding a flower scanned

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  Old ring that belongs to my great grandmother scanned

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  Scanned Image of my hand holding the flower

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  Photoshopped tree branches into my hand that looks similar to “Henna” a reddish brown dye made from powdered leaves of a tropical shrub that has been used by our grandparents.

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  First combination of two images

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  Same images combined but organized differently (this Combination was not selected at the end)

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  Photos from my mother’s album of my sister, brother and I at our birthday party

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  My sister (left) and I (right)

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  My brother between my sister and I

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  Final selection before animation

Third Selection:

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  A scanned photo of a tree in the desert from my old albums

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  Converted to black and white in photoshop

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  An old of photo of me with my brothers scanned to a computer and printed

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  I cut out my photo for a collage using an exacto knife

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  Drawing a crow using sketch markers

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  Rest of the crows were printed, cut out with exacto knife and colored with a sketch black marker

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  Deciding where to add the crows

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  Final selection of crows’ placement

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  Crows painted in black and glued to make a collage

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  Collage scanned to a computer and photoshopped

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  Final selection before animation

Fourth Selection:

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  A photo from my archive of my daughter

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  Planning a collage

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  A hand torn paper glued onto the photo where only the eyes appear

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  A back of a Polaroid photo scanned into a computer

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  Combined both the collaged photo and the Polaroid photo in photoshop, I loved this but it did not fit with the photo I planned to combine with later

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  This darker one fits better

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  An old photo from my archive scanned into the computer

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  The photo is photoshopped to fit the project idea

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  The final combination of the two photos before adding the animation

Final stages of the Project:

After deciding on the final selection and combining the photos, I uploaded it to an application called (Motionleap) and added elements, animations, overlays, effects and audios to each and every one as required.

Below is the final project in the right order:

DAD: Silent Pain..

Art enables me to connect to my feelings when emotions are hard to put into words. It allows me to be a healer to myself when I find it hard to release my emotions to others and explain why I am not who I used to be or when my pain disrupts my physical health where I cannot sleep or think well, when emotions are overwhelming and difficult to cope with and when days in my life becomes more painful, frightening and sad. Turning my words into art is a healthy way for me to cope and deal with loss and grief. It is a therapeutic process that helps me access my emotions and release them without saying a word. I have always used art as a form of meditation that gives me peace and helps me fight depression and that can be found in my previous work such as my project (Grandma).

Looking at different practitioners’ work gave me inspiration especially artist Soomin Ham which I investigated here. She gave life to her images by altering her old photos and blending them with her own images which I tried to do here. I gave life to my photographs by doing same and adding animation.

In the first slide, I combined old photographs of me and my siblings from my family archive celebrating our birthday together with a scanned photo of my daughter. The audio is taken from a video of my twin daughters’ birthday that was celebrated on zoom with the whole family and cousins. It was the last birthday celebrated with dad around but online because of the Coronavirus Pandemic. My dad was waving goodbye and can be heard saying “happy birthday, happy birthday”. This video specifically does not leave my mind, him waving goodbye was like him telling us he is not coming back.

In slide two, I had a photo of me when I was a teenager with my brothers, I cropped my photo out and used collage to combine it with black crows. Crows symbolize change and transformation, more to an emotional change. Crows bring messages usually associated with dark omen and death. The dead tree stands for death and that there is no place to escape from it.

Slide three, is a photo I took of dad years ago, I was a teenager then when I took it. I combined it with another photo taken by me years ago of the desert. Choosing a photo that does not show my father’s face allows one to interpret the moment rather than the expression on the face. It gives access to other issues that I wanted to convey in the photo such as disclosure, departure and farewell. When combined with the other photo, the sort of double gaze here works as a recording of a calm ambiguous moment.

The last slide is a combination of a collage and an old photo of calm sea with empty boats. The sea is calm and endless and the depressed boats are floating empty. Everyone will empty their own boats one day away from the madding crowds and exhausting life. We who are still on this earth can only imagine how it is in the next life. The spider web symbolizes mortality, fate and destiny as well as fear but also wisdom where we connect loose thoughts and expectations together.

I have deliberately left the last two slides with no sound. Click here to go to assignment 5, and here to the reflection and self assessment.