What is Pretty?
My mouse hack evolved several times throughout the duration of this project. One of the evolving elements being theme, in the end the main theme for the project ended up being feminism and what is considered beautiful in today's society.
There are three projected images, one of me without make-up, one with make-up, and the final photoshopped. All of the images include my mouth being covered with a blindfold. The first image reads "Will I be pretty?", the second "Will I be smart?" and the third "When can I be both?" When the eyeliner (attached to the sheet) is touched to the projection it changes to the second image. When the mascara is touched to the projection it changes to the third image, and the blue button sets it back to the first image. There is also a track that plays that is a mix between different feminists speaking about beauty and the feminist movement. The first speaker in the track is a dub poet named Katie Makkai with the beginning of her poem called "Pretty", the second a key player in the feminist movement in the 1950's Betty Freidan speaking on CBC about Women, and the third another dub poet named Staceyann Chin speaking about equality in today's society. If I were to take this project further I would have had the track relate to the movement of the images better so there could be more of a connection.
There are different messages the viewer can take away from this piece whether it being that women can feel silenced by their lack of society's idea of beauty, or that they feel silenced by fitting into society's idea of beauty. My hope is that the piece relates to the viewer based on their experiences.
I think that this interface works much better than my original one where the viewer touched the mascara and eyeliner to a mirror placed on a box. This connects the images and objects much better.
No comments:
Post a Comment