Pins & Needles

VCP 482 Visual Communication Project II Pins and Needles - Installation Art Project by Ece Uzundemir and Elif Kuvanlık 2020

[thepinsandneedles]

#milestone4

For the last milestone, I have finished the sketches and the order of the objects. I have decided to use broken mirrors inside the little room where the screens are placed and the video is shown. The mirrors will create a reflection through each other as well as the videos reflection, which will look like Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity rooms. 

The left up sketch is showing the exhibition space that we created. The up right one is the video room, there will only be ropes coming out of the screens and broken mirrors all over the walls. 

The sketches below shows how I am going to use the walls, I will use pins, working and broken lamps in variations. I will use different photographs and liquids which are connected to each other. I will use the poems that I wrote, broken clocks, balloons and scissors, a different sculpture with painted worlds.

These objects will represent my stages in depression such as feeling of darkness, escaping from reality, loss of time and space, being fragile/sensitive and so on. 

I have been working on the 3D objects, the online exhibition with a friend of mine who is currently studying at interior architecture. My plan is to complete all the objects and the placement so that the exhibition will be ready to be displayed.

For the documentation part, I have started working on the poster design which we will use to inform people about our online exhibition. 

[thepinsandneedles]

For my Milestone 3, I have started working on the creation of the 3D objects on an application called Shapr3D on iPad. The exhibition space is done in artsteps so we know our space. After learning enough Shapr3D, the objects will be totally clear, I am now doing sketches in order to see the relations between the objects and the exhibition space.

Elif

[thepinsandneedles]

#milestone #ganttchart #pinsandneedles #installation #online

[thepinsandneedles]

MILESTONE #3

MILESTONE#3

For my milestone#3, I have done my research and concept creating part and I finished one of my videos. This video is the basis of my concept. I will shoot 3 videos in total. In each video, I will have a different theme. The themes are; death, life, and anxiety. I did the anxiety video but some other images and materials can be added into that video in the future. That will depend on the other two videos. 

I was planning to shoot my video in the forest and it had a script but during coronavirus events and quarantine, I could not shoot that. Instead of shooting in the forest, I used soil ın my video to represent my brain. Also, productivity and fertility. I put a quince in the first shot means birth and beginning with its seeds. After that shot, we see a doll which wrapped with stretch film. It represents my feeling like; cannot able to talk, move or act in a proper way. After that, we see dead bugs, eggs, and butterfly which represent how short life is. Also, it represents the beauty of it. 

The dead bugs part takes place longer than other parts because the death is eternal. The final shot is with a candle, it also represents the mourning. While I was shooting this video it feels so familiar and similar to what I’ve been trough. Anxiety is hard to maintain especially social anxiety. Because no one can live without other people. We need each other. For me it is hard to understand, communicate, and tell about myself to other people. This video is a balance between life and death. I am trying to say that life is too short to have anxiety. It also represents my mental changing process.

[thepinsandneedles]

#milestone2

For my #milestone2, I had to start making a model of the project, I had to work on the combination of the video with the installation, find a suitable place for the installation and do the market investigation for the products.

First of all, we decided to do our installation exhibition at FADA exhibition hall and for that I have taken the exhibition hall’s plan from Diba and started working on the plan, where to put things, how can they be arranged in the space. So I have started doing some sketches for visual instructions for further process. By this way, we will know how to use the space before our exhibition and it will be easier for us to do it.

At first, I have decided the objects that I am going to use in the installation. In the first stage, I will use and buy black ropes, tulles, mirrors, glasses, lightbulbs, watches and etc. I will buy most of the things that I am going to use from construction markets/fireman bazaar/ulus/siteler. I couldn’t go to Ulus/Siteler but I will go this weekend and will buy the objects for my model-prototype. I will go to Kızılay and buy the ropes and tulles from fabric bazaar. I do not want to exceed 2000 Turkish Liras but I need to go to the places to compare the products and prices. 

I am going to use the ropes to combine video with the whole installation. The ropes will go out of the screens and continue towards the floor, creating a flow like they are leading to places. Some ropes will end up in little screens. The ropes will also represent my inner thoughts, since they will be entangled. I will continue to work on it after I bought the first objects for the project.

Elif

[thepinsandneedles]

These are the bells that I am talking about.

[thepinsandneedles]

MILESTONE #2

For milestone # 2, I wrote a script about the video that I will shoot. I also have shot list and I will start the shootings this Saturday. This script will have an alternative because while I was thinking about creating a narrative this script came up to my mind. It is different from what I thought before. This one has continuity inside the video. The video will be a single shot. I mentioned most of the materials that I will use in the video in milestone#1. I will use a red balloon, ants, a wrapped person, baby doll. In addition to these, I also want a shot in which a person plays bells (bando zili) at the end of the video. The whole video will shot in the forest. In this way, I will create an atmosphere that represents inside of my brain. It will be like a journey to my brain and my heart also because the materials represent my feelings. The pacing of the video will start slowly and reach its peak point in the middle and continue again slowly. I thought about how I feel and how my heart reacts to my feelings when I am in the mood of social anxiety. After that, I found that everything starts slowly. First, so many different thoughts come up and after that, my heartbeats start to get faster. While these are happening sometimes I cannot think clearly and I cannot express myself. After the situation/incident that makes me feel like that stops then my reactions to that situation stops as well. The materials inside of my video will represent that process. The camera movements will be slow and will not affect the meaning of materials. The materials already have meanings. In this scenario, the color of the video will be normal instead of red.  

VIDEO: We will see the ants first with an extreme close up. After that camera will continue to its movement and we will see the wrapped person on the floor trying to get rid of the stretch film in close up. While the camera continues its movement we see the red balloon stuck on branches and it bursts. The camera will look to the sky and it will rotate at high speed. We will see the baby doll which head’s off. in the last seen we will see a person plays the bells and the video will end there. I will also shoot the other alternative and try to find out which will work better representing my feelings. This one will have red colors and be more abstract than this one as well.

Ece

[thepinsandneedles]

milestone #1

Hey! I'm Elif and we are planning to do a senior project about psychological problems, especially about what we feel, so it will be (kinda) like a personal project.

For my first milestone I gathered all the feelings that I have been feeling during my mental breakdowns, my times spent alone thinking, when I am in a place that I don’t feel safe, which I can say “out of my comfort zone”. But I also considered the opposite situations: my normal days, when I am with my friends or the ones that I love, when I am doing something that I enjoy or being in a place that I love, the times when I am not alone or when I don’t have much time thinking about myself. So I came up with some explanations of how I feel. Here are couple of them;

Over thinking

Feeling loveless

Everything being meaningless

Feeling tired (both physically and mentally)

Not be able to talk or explain

Wanting to cry but cannot be able to cry

Loss of time and space

Not being able to understand what is going on

Being somewhere physically but not mentally

Being fragile and sensitive

...and so on.

So, for my Milestone #1, I tried to understand what these situations mean to me. By this way, the process of deciding is way easier. So “Finalizing researches.” part is the part that I am being certain about them and now I can see what I want to do more clear. 

Then it comes to the part of deciding about the form of the project. I have seen that I want to do lots of things at the same time but I don’t know how to combine them in a more decent way, and after the last feedback that we got, I started to feel certain about the form. I am going to do everything I want, they don’t have to be combined to each other (not like a single piece), but it will be more like an installation exhibition. It will still be like a journey for the ones who will come to our exhibition, but at this time I am planning to use all the elements, objects in different parts of the space. So the visitors will walk towards the pieces as if they were done by different artist, like an exhibition but all the objects/elements/pieces will lead to one single thing: how I feel. Personally, I have started to think that it will be better for me to use all the things because at the end, they will represent me, they will represent who I am.

After the second meeting, I will start doing the model of the project. I have started the market investigation (where to buy the things I want to what price) so that I will know my limits. I have also started thinking about a suitable place for the exhibition because it is important for me to create an atmosphere with the space besides the objects that I am going to use. Now I have started doing sketches for it to be more clear in my mind. :)

For my inspirations: https://tr.pinterest.com/elifkuvanlik/installation-inspiration/

[thepinsandneedles]

This is the full version of Sonar 2020 Full Line Up Announcement . Another inspirational work for me.

[thepinsandneedles]

Between the 0.55-1.30 was very inspirational for me. 

[thepinsandneedles]

These are some of my inspirations.

Enter the Mirror Maze, Es Devlin's video sculpture, presented by The Fifth Sense. (September 2016). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMbLlN_6AD8. 

[thepinsandneedles]

These are some examples of my inspirations. 

Sónar 2020 Full line up announcement

(January, 2020)

Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sA9QdtrQXA

[thepinsandneedles]

MILESTONE #1

My name is Ece Uzundemir. I am a senior COMD student at Bilkent University. I will do video art as my senior year project. For my project, my Milestone#1 was to decide at least 15 ideas that may work well in my video content. These are the primitive ideas that I have and they will certainly get evolve in time. For expressing my psychological situation I come up with ideas that represent the feelings that I have in certain extents. Social anxiety can simply be explained as anxiety that people feel in the crowd. In my project, I want to tell people this is not that simple situation that one can have. People are underestimating and this makes me feel bad about my situation besides the feelings that I already have. For my Milestone#1, I listed the feelings that I have in situations like; speaking in front of a crowd, passing through a crowd or simply making eye contact with somebody in the crowd. My situation is about the person itself. I wanted to express myself truly to that crowd in terms of getting more understanding from them and also, I want to overcome my situation. After listed my feelings I started to think about how I can express these feelings in a different and is not a literal way. Or I will show one almost literal and one abstract visual to make balance. I will destroy them in editing and make them more aesthetic and dynamic. I will use the ideas listed below.

Visuals that I will shoot by myself;

1- Ants as complex thoughts and feelings (Speeded up)

2- Glass Breaking represents my feeling in the crowds.

3- A person wrapped in a stretch film as I feel trapped.

4- A person trying to talk but her mouth cannot open again feeling trapped.

5- A piano that taped represents not functioning properly even if I can be able to.

6- The hairs in a sink represents the feeling myself like trash when I cannot function well.

7-Heated Resistance as my physical reaction to my psychological situation.

8-An actual heart (25th frame) I want to show the literal heart to people realize the reality of my situation.

9- Slugs eating or hanging around this is the visuals that I feel the thoughts that people thinking about me.

10- A person constantly hits herself to the wall and cannot pass, fells down. As the situation that I cannot overcome yet.

11- A monologue that interrupts the video (we will see only the mouth part) this is me or anybody poetically talking about herself and represents her actual feelings. This part will be me and my audience speaks face to face without making eye contact. 

Visuals that I will use extra programs to make;

12- A person animation which is red-colored in the black colored crowds(people), that person turns black as well after she finds a place to stay alone. (after effects) this visual representation that I am not different from anybody else yet I am different in a certain way. If I can be able to overcome my situation I can show my true self to others.

Visuals that I maybe use stock video;

13- Cameras that are replicated so many times. This represents the feeling that every move I made is watching from somebody else. 

14- Different abstract light transitions will add dynamism to the video and represents the different feeling that I feel in a second in some circumstances.

15- Eyes that belong to different species this is more like I feel alienated from others when they are looked at me.