Humanity’s Journey
Artist statement
Hello I’m an aspiring artist called Fleur, I study at St Benedict’s Catholic High school; art has always featured heavily in my life, and my natural creativity has been guided by my parents, teachers, art packs and my own exploration in and out of a studio environment.
During this Golden Record project I worked with images and sound to capture my ideas of ‘Humanity’s Journey’. The themes I studied involved the shared experience and emotions of life, death and growth through time as a journey. I am exploring new ideas in this project alongside my interest in other people and life, I develop my understanding of the virtual and digital means of documenting art- as many others have had to over lockdown. My usual means of study being painting with acrylic, oil and watercolour media, sketching with oil pastel, chalk and charcoal or pencil and recently I have been exploring textured studies with fabrics, machines and thread.
MOVING IMAGE
To study the effects of sound on time as a journey I looked back at videos from the past, and found a video of my sister at four- inspired by the artist Gillian Wearings ‘2 into 1’ where 2 boys lip sync over their mothers voice and vice versa. The end result is a reflection of time as my sister reiterates her old words 14 years apart with a new ambience.
ORIGINAL VIDEO-Shadows of time- the process of this piece began with the original video audio.
Refinement- In order to create the best video, my sister had to practice her words, and the attitude she wanted to portray to best convey her present self. Although this took time, it proved effective as the breathing and movements she made became more natural to her and translated well to video.
ARTIST RESEARCH; Gillian Wearing – 2 into 1
A video of a mother and her 2 children swap voices to show the extent of parental control, they talk about one another lip syncing over pre-recorded audio. Visually, the expectation of the voice we expect the mother to have is drastically different therefore unsettling the audience. I liked the abrupt effect of this as it made me think about my own prejudices and projections I make based on social stereotypes instilled in me. It also made me reflect on the normality of time’s toll on humans, their voices and their physical appearance.
Inspired by this, I created the video “shadows of the past” to show how these conversations remain in the past through memory and digital recordings like a video, photo or diary entry as we grow and move on with our journey. The physical change of my sister contrasts the voice of her childhood that the video captures.
GILLIAN WEARING ‘2 into 1’
IMAGE
Before exploring Image I went out and collected photos of things I did on my journey through lockdown, the majority being mundane and routine events – not really worthy of capturing.
PHOTO COLLECTION OF LOCKDOWN JOURNEY
Having explored these journeys, I was interested in further developing the journey of food. I was introduced to artist Sam Taylor wood, who recorded the decaying of fruits over time. The fruit was engulfed by mould and overall the focal point swelled in size as bacteria thrived and fed off the food, then shrivelled and disappeared. The process and growth of complete decomposition is an insight into the natural world, often regarded as grotesque. I decided to explore this process by doing a timelapse of a plum, which I recorded over three days
Sam Taylor Wood original
Stills from my three day time-lapse
However, I didn’t feel as though the journey of food decomposing best captured the idea of “Humanity’s Journey” so I looked back on my original ideas in which I looked at the growth of plants, people walking, a drive and other menial journeys made during lockdown.
PHOTO EDITS: To Re-Inspire and Re-direct my study of ‘Humanity’s Journey’ through photographic recordings
In digital edits I made of my Dad and Sister picking out our food, I altered the colours to capture the feeling of a different reality giving a sense of disorientation. ‘Normal’ tasks like shopping felt serene during lockdown with the looming thoughts of COVID-19- the pixelated look would confuse an outsider as to the time the photos were taken. If these photos were to go onto the Golden Record and an extra terrestrial were to see them, this is how they may be viewed depending on their colour receptors!
I also cut out a person on a journey walking along with a car, to show the importance individuals have in the world. I liked this edit as it showed me that despite taking a person away, a shadow of their existence is left in the photo. The void left affects the immediate surroundings.
Having now looked at individuals and the effect each body has on humanity’s journey through time I looked at artist Hannah Starkey.
HANNAH STARKEY: is a British contemporary photographer, who through staged settings/scenes creates an alternate reality through a false narrative provided by the lense. She has said of her own photographs that they are “explorations of everyday experiences and observations of inner city life from the female perspective” The women featured in her photos are actresses and anonymous strangers whom she asks to pose for her, often set against reflections and strategically illuminated.
HANNAH STARKEY images:
BVD0245H_05.tif 
In an attempt to better understand Starkey’s style, I re-created an image of hers, a woman’s silhouette by a window, to do this i lowered the lighting to create the ambiguous and intriguing isolated woman image that focuses on the solitude moment. A journey taking a pause.
Starkey’s use of solo women being relatively unproductive and comfortable within a home environment felt relatable to me in the time of lockdown, whilst also evoking feelings of fear and worry for the women in photos where the lighting was darker- a feeling of awaiting danger, control shifts in life, power shifts, plot changes. The relaxed state of the women I felt seems as though they’ve either accepted this as fate or as though they’re unaware of this and don’t care about this control- I feel like my image successfully embodies this state of mind as it looks ominous. These images symbolise uncertainty for humanity and other raw emotions felt throughout life that are the catalyst for pivotal changes in the course of someone’s journey.
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SOUND
To look at the effects of sound on humanity and humanity’s journey I created a board to bring together my original ideas- and then create an audio clip that will represent my lockdown journey.
ARTIST RESEARCH; Janet Cardiff
THE SOUND ROOMS
Cardiff is a Canadian woman who works with sound producing studio walks, sound installations, films and photography.
Cardiff uses small rooms, outdoor areas and art galleries to bring sound and visual elements to life, creating an atmosphere that captures and enables her audience to become engulfed and transported through their senses and own mind into a new world, that has been guided by Cardiff’s interest.
Cardiff captures the element of science by manipulating the way sound travels. She positions speakers in circular formations creating distance between each, the effect is a split of voices and harmonies – the overall feeling is intimate and emotional. She categorises bass, baritone, soprano, alto and tenor enabling audiences to distinguish a variety of tones in the singers voices described by Cardiff as like ‘ripples on a moving river’
Cardiff figures out the correct frequency that the sound has to be transmitted through the speakers in order for them to work as one and not become distorted. As you stand in the middle of the speakers the eight choirs can be heard as one like an enchanting song, once you walk around the gallery each individual choir can be heard through the singular speaker that it is played; Cardiff describes this as ‘climbing inside the music’
Although for my recording of sound I didn’t use choirs, I was inspired by the idea that through one speaker you could hear multiple moments of noise. When piecing together the moment of sound that I captured I envisioned them being played in a dark room creating an eerie atmosphere, like a shadow of the past, personal to my lockdown but a shared memory and experience for millions who also experienced similar days.
In this recording ‘Snippet’s Of Sound’ I captured noises that represented my lockdown and were personal to my journey, coinciding with familiar sounds that unite modern civilisation due to their place in a society so progressive. The snippets are ordered randomly, although I considered making them chronological to my daytime routine, or ordering them according to volume so the recording would get progressively louder representing the intensity or repeatability- however the random order reflected the lack or structure experienced in lockdown, the varying duration of audio emphasises the distorted feeling of time and potentially tests the patience of listeners due to ongoing clips of the same sound and repeated audios.
Golden Lockdown 