Project 7: Articulation and evocation through rendering

I explained in my previous post what I wanted to achieve with this project – that is to provide a sense of what it’s like to live with constant physiological failure and fear of its implications along with a reflection on the form of the failure. So the image must offer both an immediate impact and then allow the viewer time to inspect and reflect.

This means that the image will need to be large so that when viewed at a distance the subject matter is seen and registers, but as the viewer gets closer the image is large enough to see both the detail of the subject matter and the representative artefacts. That is the forms of its representation. For example if you look at the detail of the above image at 100% it speaks differently and its this multiplicity of voices that I want to offer the viewer.

Detail of Blood, Peter Mansell, 2015

I began playing with different representations of the image and after some time realised that a single representation would not work because the image would either emphasis it’s documentary qualities to the detriment of its aesthetic or vice versa. This it would either be visceral or graphic but not both. Here is an example of what I mean.

Blood rendered graphically, Peter Mansell, 2015

The above image has removed the quality of the blood in a way that weakens it as a source of fear. The weakening continues when viewed in detail.

Detail of Blood rendered graphically, Peter Mansell, 2015

So I was clear that in order to achieve my intended statement I would need to offer both types of visual statement and so experimented with producing one image with multiple renders. For example, in this image below I applied the different renders in strips leaving one as the original.

Blood stripes, Peter Mansell, 2015

The image didn’t seem to work as well at a distance as it did when viewed close up and in detail – see it below.

Detail of Blood stripes, Peter Mansell, 2015

In fact the detail of the image worked really well – better when I rotated it to vertical stripes – and may be the final project image as it overwhelms the viewer with is multiple renditions of blood. (But if this was to be a final version I would even up the stripe widths so the renders were each equally weighted). However for now I want to continue experimenting.

Advertisement