eyeMessage

Intention & Context

With my project, I wanted to play with the digital messaging world, and the message that, even though your eyes are open, you're never truly seeing if you have your phone there. 

I took inspiration from Andy Warhol, mainly, and his commercialist pop art. Warhol understood that there's a way to get a message across if you just, repeat it enough times (a theme in commercialism, as well). But Warhol also used that commercialist idea to convey a message about commercialism itself. Warhol used regular, every-day items to make art, but in doing so, also managed to send a message. I was drawn to these ideas.

I decided to borrow the idea of putting the same image together many times, each time changing the image ever so slightly. 

My proposal: In the final project, I hope to build the image of the eye slowly showing up to dominate the screen more and more with each iteration of the image(which is a typical iMessage screen on your phone of a person talking to themselves about eyes, which is to be the theme here). The last thing I wanted to subtly experiment with perception; I purposely drew the lines diagonal and smaller to create the effect of it getting further and further away, but without really drawing your eye (haha) to it. I wanted to create something that made you feel off balance, but not fully understand why.

This is my initial idea sketch:

Process

After coming up with the idea, I quickly created the idea in photoshop:

That was my first iteration of the project. I went with the idea, but took a stencil Egyptian Eye and altered the opacity for each iteration, as well as flipping it for the last one. I wanted it to feel slightly off balance and uncomfortable. 

However, I got feedback (through the gallery comments and in class) that there might be TOO many iterations; it takes away from the message that the background gives and draws focus to only the eye. I also received feedback that the Egyptian Eye was too dramatic and didn't quite match my needs. One suggestion I received was to have the eye slowly opening over the course of the iteration, which would emphasize the idea of trying to see, but being unable to.

The final iteration was also made in photoshop, but I incorporated these ideas into the final project:

I changed to a hand-drawn eye pattern that opened, adding the opacity changes and decreasing the iterations. I also played with the sizing of the blocks of text; it's repetitive enough that shift isn't as obvious and is more just confusing, which was the point.

Critique

Although I can see the ways that this could have been marketed and used (for a mental health company, for a vision company), I think that there are ways to maybe improve on it to make it more marketable and more relatable. In addition, I think ther ewere a lot of other things I could have played around with; cutting the image different ways, experimenting with effects on both the eye images and the background, and experimenting with how many different iterations of the image I could go through without changing the meaning. In addition, I could have experimented with different kinds of eyes and different kinds of expressions; after all, in real life, nobody has the same eyes, and eyes change with the emotions. I could have put more thought into using the eye to really convey the emotion I was trying to convey.

Reflection

I thought this was a really interesting project to think about. I was inspired by my trip to the Andy Warhol Museum, and in borrowing ideas from Warhol and making them my own, I really had to fully explore what Warhol wanted out of his art, and what he wanted the audiences to see. I feel like I learned a lot about Warhol and his art, and discovered what it meant to me.