Group 3 Post - Conception + Questions for Simon

Questions for Simon:

1)   Why do you focus on people as the subject for your work? What made you decide to work in such a way?

2)   What is the worst, or most emotional, experience you have had when pursuing your work?

3)   How do you choose a location for your work? Is the location the deciding factor or is it the people who make up an area?

4)   Do you take your photos manually or do you have your camera take them automatically?

5)   Do you take your photographs or ask people to talk about themselves first? Do you get permission or not?

What we are going to talk about (In bulleted form):

1)   What is the concept behind the piece and how did you come to it?

a.     A large basis of our concept was inspired by Simon’s work

b.     Viewing his work posed the question: Who are these people?

c.      By seeing these people, we are able to form stories based upon their appearance. This judgmental quality is a basis behind our work as well.

d.     We wanted to learn more about our subjects on a personal level so we asked the question: How do you perceive yourself? How do you think others perceive you?

e.     We chose to keep people anonymous in an effort to make the subjects more comfortable in answering the questions as well as holding true to the theme of judgment. We wanted people to have to correlate the sound of their voices with the images on the wall and forcing viewers to judge others based on the answers to their questions and the appearance of their person.

2)   Why did you choose these questions?

a.     We wanted people to be able to think about themselves and see how they are related to the community.

b.     These questions are designed to do two things:

                                               i.     Have people reflect upon themselves while simultaneously thinking about…

                                              ii.     How you are judged by others

3)   What did you do with the material once it was collected?

a.     We stitched together all the audio clips into a singular sound file and collected all the photographs into a single print on the wall. It was a collective group of stored perceptions, hence our title, Collective Perception.

b.     We kept the photography and sound editing to a minimum to keep it in its raw state. We feel this symbolizes the raw, unedited nature of the responses from our subjects.

c.      Without knowing who provided which response, keeping the subjects anonymous, it allows people to come to any conclusions they may choose.