For my third project, I believe I am going to use the combination of analog and digital processes to show how each process takes away from the original. Every copy we make is less than the original, both metaphorically and literally. Isn't what makes fine art "fine", is that there is only one of it? The process and personal labor and hours or intimacy that goes into that piece of work, makes it so desirable and special. Using analog or digital means to copy a piece of work takes away from this desirability because the process of actually photographing the piece was so simple and easy. Each copy you make off of that original becomes more and more distant from the value of the first piece. In a literal sense, every time you copy the original piece, you loose quality through the means of compression in any lossless, compression coping. You see less of the original time and effort put into it because details are lost with each copy. You can copy something so many times that it completely looses the original visuals.
I would like to play on this process by water coloring my interpretation of a photo I took, then have two processes after.
One of taking analog picture of an the piece and then taking an analog picture of that picture and repeat until you can no longer recognize the original piece.
The other process would be taking a digital picture of the piece and then showing the loss of quality in compressing an imagine digitally by, uploading it to instagram, downloading it, uploading it, re-downloading it and so on until you can no longer recognize the original.
I think this will be an interesting project to discover which process becomes further distant from the original, and literally takes away from the original faster.
My overall theme is: which process is more fake?
The picture I was going to start with was this one I took from the Slot Canyons in Utah a few years back. This image is already less than the original, as it is just a digital pixelation of the real slot canyons in Utah. I am already copying it once through my interpretation of the beauty of the picture capturing the beauty of nature in my water color.
The original image:
The medium I will use to paint the imagine above (water color):
The film camera I will potentially use:
The digital camera I will use.
A picture of a water color, similar to what mine should look like in the first digital image of it:
