I wanted to play with the idea of censoring my work. And to do this, I thought of how I would prevent children from viewing my work. I then decided to build a mock screen, with a viewing slot, too high for children to see. Then playing with the idea of having a lower viewing slot, but obstructing their sight line.
I made a video screen by attaching the four video walls `I made before, but I think I still want it to be bigger. To perhaps fill a whole wall. I think this is necessary to make my audience feel aware of the overload of media and information. So they feel almost bombarded by the enormity of a virus.
Above I playing with the viewing slot.
The bigger I make it, the more you can see around the video wall. I really don’t want my audience to see the adages of the walls, not only for the aesthetics, but they won’t feel as consumed.
The smaller I make the gap the better, but I think i will still have to build some sort of tunnel so that my audience won’t see the corners.! However I don’t want it to be as small as a peep hole. Peep holes as I have learnt in my previous project have very specific connotations. INstead I want to build the viewing slot, wide enough for people to fit both eyes comfortably.
I asked people to look through, with various viewing slots. The feedback I got was good, and seemed to get part of my idea across very well. However I realised a fundamental error in how I was visually representing my idea. I was making the lower viewing slots.. the ones the height of children obstructed. However my point is that children ARE seeing the stuff I am projecting onto my video wall. I need to show that children ARE seeing what adults are seeing. I need this message to come across in my work without it seeming like I am taking a black and white opinion on the porn industry. For it is such a nuanced one, and my opinion is multifarious and pretty balanced. I just want my audience to question the availability of the porn industry now.
So I started to think of how I could visually represent this. I started to think of the plastic little step chair children use, say when they need to get up onto a high piano stool etc. I think now I want to make something similar but out of the left over children’s video tape cases?
However I think these won’t reference children playing, say on the internet, stumbling across imagery that they are fear too young understand/ see. I have started to think about the possibility of making blocks/ cubes that reference children’s building blocks.
I’m not sure how I would colour them? Perhaps with primary colours?
lilyvanlennep 