End of year Project Evaluation

Why did you create this project/program?


I decided to pursue this project because I wanted to challenge the paradox of documenting the human consciousness, the further challenge i presented myself was to do it with just a camera, this pushed me to break down the medium of photography in an anthropological way in which i considered every basic fundamental of the camera and how it captures light.





Considering i didn't know what my project was for most of the year i am surprised to see how much work I ended up creating, to start with i wanted to experiment as much as i could and i knew it was something to do with documentary but nothing specific, so i carried out photoshoot in the studio, experimented with different darkroom printing methods while researching mostly philosophical book and essays.


This year I created:


3 - 4 videos with self-produced music


4 darkroom printed photographic series


2 digitally printed photographic series


5+ essays on human consciousness






What processes were planned and how were they implemented in the project? Other questions that might be helpful: Was the right audience reached? Are appropriate staff in place with necessary skills? Did you have the right mix of activities?

For the experimental phase I wanted to explore different ways in which i can document and present documents:


-Video


-Double exposure in the darkroom with and without custom printed


-I also wanted to document the states of reality which exist but cannot be seen by the human eye, to do so I carried out multiple experiments to better understand how lens work and how one can use techniques from macro photography to capture surfaces on extreme magnification levels.





Were there any variations in the process and why?

Due to most of the year being experimentation a conceptualizing the project there ended up being a lot of variation in the process, it evolved from video documentary to a break down of the document itself. because I found it easier to document with video, I wanted to challenge myself with still image and how one could record how we view or represent objects and subjects in the present





How could the project be improved?


for most of the year i found that the project didn't have a clear heading or a goal but towards the end of the year i narrowed it down to documenting how we view the consciousness in the present, this ended up being a lot harder of a task then i thought it to be because even scientifically you need a lot of high end hardware such as electron microscopes to document the working of the brain let alone the consciousness which makes it all work, due to the paradox of documenting something which cannot be seen but only represented i found that it was a lot easier to document how the human consciousness is represented and also how it interacts with object and sign, specifically in printed images or visual representations of everyday objects.





What were the short-term outcomes?


All experiment went well, some failed and some succeed but from all valuable data and experience was gathered, for example, i now know how color and black and white acetate interacts with sandwiched color and black and white film in the darkroom enlargers and also how lens itself interacts with a light-sensitive surface, be it digital or analog. The Summary of the conclusion from the experiment with lens was that the further away from the lens if form the sensor the more magnified the surface is, you can increase magnification even further by flipping the lens, i tested this by creating multiple various sized tubes made out of black paper to avoid fogging. So far i have managed to go as close as a tp of a needle covering the whole picture with just a 50mm lens and a DSLR body.


In Addition to the above i also to start with working on some audio-visual documentary work at the start of the year, this had a very positive outcome short-term but left me confused on what to do with it, the lack of a serious platform i think has to do something with that, by that i mean i could put it on an online video website like youtube but it will be lost in the saturation of content which is put on there, i want to plan other ways in which i can show these videos to people.





To what extent have the intended outcomes been achieved?


The only intended outcome i i had at the start of this project was to document reality to achieve change, hopefully in the present and the future, i don't think i achieved that so far but i have gained more knowledge due to the experimentation to get closer to that goal.


I also had the goal of documenting the human consciousness, this soon i found was a paradox of sorts and turned out to be impossible. So i failed again. In this case, i believe i learned alot about the subject of the human consciousness and a lot more so i see both these failures as positives


Try, fail, try again, fail harder





Were there any unintended outcomes?


Unintentionally i think i became a lot better at portraying beauty in my art, the starting idea was only to use it as a hook to pull in the audience then make them think about something but in doing so and in creating this much work i find myself a lot more comfortable in composition and colour scheme.


I also found that i gained some more experience with working with music and video also.





What factors helped and hindered the results?


I could have made a lot more work if i only concentrated on the work itself but in a way all the research i did for the project and my dissertation which was somewhat related hindered me from experimenting more in the darkroom and in the studio.





What lessons have been learned from this project?


Everything has already been done, all that is left are pieces, and we can only put these pieces together to make something. This project so far has made me appreciate all art in general more due to the realisation that al art no matter how realistic or abstract makes a record of something (how that something or someone is viewed and represented can give you a clue on how roles of objects and subjects have evolved over the years and how they differed before through simple comparison research) i appreciate the value of documentation in general, especially it it is a topic which we see negatively in the present, by documenting it in hope that it would change, the other realization i had while doing this project was that - if one can portray a reality better than ours realistically enough, the chances of that reality becoming real increase.





What are the expected long-term outcomes? What can be done to further enhance sustainability of the project?





I am planning to carry on this project the long term goal for now is to document something which visually represent something world with our world in the present.