Jess’s Emergent Aesthetics Project

Music

I was very lucky that Barry Komfur created a couple of sound tracks for me to accompany my site and presentation, very handy when you have problems with everything else

Project Description

Translate was created with the intentions of producing pure sublime by finding the magnificence in the disgusting. The human body is a fascinating entity; it is one of the only components that have elements that can range so exceedingly between the revolting and the beautiful. The body is also one of the most unnoticed subjects, what is seen by the naked eye and what is actual, can be a completely different thing. With this project the focus was to find the sublime within the human body and reproduce it in a way that highlights these elements. To illustrate this point, the best way to experience the whole impression of sublime was through the use of an interactive website. The website enables the viewer to have a more personal understanding of the imagery that is being viewed.

The name translate has been used as the title of this project as my intentions is to translate the viewers opinion on subjects that they would ordinary find revolting. By viewing a subject from a microscopic pattern, what may have repulsive sight originally has a completely different effect and can be quite beautiful. The imagery that was used for this projected was developed all from photographs taken by myself. These images include from the photographs of the brain in a whole form and several layers in to a microscopic view. Unfortunately within the series of photographs I was limited to subjects that could be captured, being that I didn’t want to cut open someone and there aren’t any royalty free images of separated limbs. The photos came from a different animal parts that replicated human organs, bone from a cow but skin and tongue from a person. Having more repulsive shocking images would have had a better effect in the contrast being portrayed. The layers represent the different levels between beauty and disgusting.

An interactive website was chosen to display my findings as it was the best method of exploring the body from a different perspective that represent the repulsive and beautiful elements. A website allows the viewer to almost become apart of the project, to be able to have control over what they are seeing so that the user will fully experience the sense of journey and sublime that is trying to be portrayed. It has been collaborated and display in a basic way where the images are the main focal point. The colouring has been kept in white and grays to produce a clinical gallery like effect. The navigation through the photographs is a simple zoom effect into the next layer of the body part. By having it zooming in and out in of organ subjects the images bleed into and out each other to emphasis a layered effect that travels down the body starting with the brain, the tongue, the heart, lungs, intestines and bone. This was the most time consuming component of the project and limited the way in which the images had to be layered was having the images layered on top of each other. Having the images to look as if two photos are one flat image and positioned correctly meant many hours in Photoshop as well as some visible square patches in some of the images.

Going along with the theme of keeping the display clean and simple the navigation through each layer has been situated beneath the photographs and the buttons have been integrated into the title of the project to keep the focus on the photographs. The other components to the website have similarly been keep small and discreetly out of focus of the central theme of the project.

Finished Project

Below is the link to the final project. I would have liked to add more layers into this but it was a bit hard finding body parts to document and then aligning them perfectly so that they bleed into each other. But i did manage to include some disgusting images into it, which hopefully people will be able to see both sides of the project and won’t be too overwhelmed by just the revolting parts.

The layout is based around the photographs everything else has been kept very minimalistic  like a gallery so  that all that is basically focused around the images.

link to project

The Experience

These images have been collaborated and displayed through an interactive website  The idea is to get the user to be able to have some control over what they are seeing as well as experiencing the body in a way that you have never seen before

I hate flash!!!

it never does what I want it too

index - part one

just completed my first part of my index and i’m so proud of it because I sux at flash and coding and i figured out how to do this all by myself without anyones help, and I think it looks good and aesthetically it’s an abstract found the human body but put into a gallery form as the theme of my project has kind of an arty form looking at the sublime in the human body. This represents looking at the human body in a different format. I’ve kept it black and white because I tried with full colours first and I thought it would be to distracting from from the main context of the project. Check it out in the link below

square index

Explanation

The images below should add a more disgusting factor to my project, they make me feel sick when i look at them and had to photograph them so I hope they have the same effect on other people.

So what your seeing below is a sheep’s brain and heart. The brain was frozen when i got it and this is an image of it as it has defrosted. The heart has been photograph whole as well as cut in half cos i was curious to see what the interior of the heart looks like.

To come I have a photograph of the kidney and bones

addition to my photos

These should be more shocking images to add to my collection

Disgusting Art

Dr. Gunther von Hagens

Born in 10 January 1945. His art involves dissecting and distorting the human through sculpture.  von Hagen is known for being the controversial anatomist who performed a live autopsy in a london theatre in 2002.

Bodyworks

Francis Bacon

Born in 28 October 1909 in Ireland, he was a figurative painter who was known using bold, austere, homoerotic and often violent or nightmarish imagery in his painting.

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