Dumpster Face

What I Did:

Break down of the week:
1.5 hours making my face into magnets
1 hour putting face on dumpsters and watching reactions
4.5 hours making a large sad face
7 hours writing my proposal/ researching artists and sources/ creating my timeline

I had wished that the dumpsters that I put my faces on were a lot more full like I see them all the time, but unfortunately I think trash day was only a day or two before I decided to do this. I sat by both dumpsters (one located next to the parking structure by my house and one in the diag)for a half hour each. I wished that I had gotten more reactions than I did, because most of the people who walked by either did not see it or just didn't have a reaction to it. I did get a big sense of pleasure from the people who did smile or laugh or point to it though.

I also put my face on a gross vent on my roof next to a huge wall of grease drippings, because I have always been disgusted by my roof. Even though nobody saw it, I still liked to see it there for a second. And since they are magnets, I can stick them on any metal surface with ease.

I just recently finished my large-scale sad face as well, which I plan to put on the doors of Borders soon.

What I Accomplished/Discovered/Encountered:

Through my experimentation and then viewing the reactions, I realized a few things. One was that people walking outside are a lot more in a hurry than the people I watched in the bathroom, which makes them less able to see the work. Another thing I realized was that my face blended in to the green dumpster a lot more than the black one because the graffiti that was on dumpster made the face stand out less. I also thought that since I was sitting by the dumpster, people might have known that I put the face up, which might have made them a little uncomfortable to react to it, because I was looking at them. And finally, like I said before, I wish that the dumpsters were more full and looked grosser to make my message come across clearer. All of these things made me want to improve the way I displayed my face.

Most of my time this week was spent writing my proposal. The artists that I researched for my sources have really inspired me and have made me think of different possible directions that I could take my project in. Two artists that I have newly researched are Claes Oldenburg and French artist JR. They are both public artists.

 

Dropped Cone, Claes Oldenburg

Oldenburg's sculptures of inanimate objects relate to my idea of giving inanimate objects a personality and to make people think differently about material objects. His sculptures are humorous, which I incorporate a lot into my work. His work has made me think about the possibility of getting away from faces.

 

JR, Faces of the Favelas

JR is an artists who I have recently discovered whose content is very similar to mine, but whose context is very different. He takes photographs of people's faces, blows them up, and pastes them on buildings and structures. His reasoning for this, however, is to bring attention to these certain people by making them models for the day usually because of their hard lives and bad living situations. His work has made me think of the possibilities of changing the meaning behind my faces and different areas to put my work. 

Creating the timeline and writing my proposal also helped me to breakdown my project into different sections where I can experiment and figure out just what it is that I want to accomplish for my project. I think exploring with different mediums, larger scales, interactivity, making different kinds of statements, displaying my work differently, and different ways of documenting my project throughout the semester can help me narrow in on exactly where I want to take my project by the end of the semester.

What I Think I Should Do Next:

For next week, I want to make my sad face into window clings and put it on Borders windows. I also want to make another face to put on a different object, possibly a nauseated face on The Cube. I want to see how these different facial expressions on different objects change the way people's reactions are. I want to take all of my findings from the dumpster experiment and perhaps improve the way that I display my faces.