projects: John Brown

I wanted to develop the idea around surrealism’s ethics rather than just try and copy work from the movement. I looked at the work from that period but the most important part of the model to me is that it is the subconscious understanding. The pieces all are related to ones inner mind.
The piece comes from an imagination/ dream I had while listening to a piece of work created by Mark Owens and co produced by myself. His avatar is “The Screenager”. This name relates to a type of person first coined in Douglas Rushkoff’s “Playing the future”, it means a generation to grow up with television and computers all around them in their natural environment like at home.

Rushkoff argued that this form of person has advantages in processing information and coping well with technological change since they are submersed since childhood in such an environment. This type of being has always fascinated me. The way media has become apart of us right down to the core. I am a Screenager; everyday my life is involved with computers and electronics. I also see change between me and my younger brother who is twelve years younger and has a much deeper development into the Screenager form. At his age I spent a lot time outdoors doing all sorts of activities. He on the other hand is rarely content unless he is watching TV or playing on a computer.

The song “haunt” is a form of jazz, ambient, drum and bass music that uses a wide sound stage and manic drums to a down tempo speed. This form of music can link to surrealism due to the structure seemingly random and jumpy yet has a strong repetitive consistency, like a dream. It is a very underground form and to an untrained ear can sound messy. This form of music however is extremely technical. Squarepusher and Aphex Twin who create similar pieces influenced the song.

I always imagine life as a film with setting up of a camera and seeing through a lense partly due to a massive want and interest to finally be involved with movie creation. While daydreaming and listening to the song I began thinking into the idea of a Screenager and I envisioned a planet empty of humans. I saw a lonely television floating around different environments. On the television are warped faces and bodies flashing and strobing. The television floats through woodland, by and over the sea and in urbanised areas. As the song breaks down the television comes across humans all standing in a street facing the TV. When the music hits again with it’s intense distorted heavy part the TV starts shooting rays at the humans with lasers rays this causes the humans to flash and turn into small squares. The best way for one to get an idea is to look at the “War of the Worlds” as the alien’s first attack. After the song changes back to a simple easy break beat the humans now are all floating TV’s stuck inside the screen.

To me I feel this could demonstrate how we have become so interrelated to a screen that we have become apart of it. The television shooting them shows it is not the human’s choice but a necessity.

So I hope the pictures I took are apart of a larger project in the future. I decided I would show the beginning of the piece, (when the large television is alone) in photos as this would be the simplest and to see if the idea was actually conceivable. I chose the woods, the sea and the city as three contrasting environments all to be linked with the television. I wanted the picture to look as real as possible so rather than just adding the television floating via Photoshop at the end, I was to involve one physically so the lighting would be the same. By taking a picture with the television on a stand and then taking a picture from the exact same place without the TV I would be able to put the two pictures together and remove the stand via a layer mask in Photoshop.

I acquired and old 32” Sony Widescreen from a friend. This was extremely heavy, around 80kgs. I needed to employ a colleague to help me carry the set. My parent’s house is outside Portsmouth in southern England. It is situated just near the woods and also near the sea. The photos of the woods and the sea were taken there and the city shot was taken in London.

I chose the woods because it is such a great contrast to the normal environment of a TV. Also the woods is such a pure ecosystem capable of it’s own survival. The only thing destroying this habitat is us. Having the TV plugged into a tree it plays on a notion that we are taking the life from it allowing us to see the problems with the future and Screenagers. When I am in the woods I lose sight of suburbia, having the TV in this primitive arena casts such a stain on the beautiful canvas.

I used the beach because I wanted to link it to a theme used in previous work of mine, an idea spawned from movie creator “Beat Takeshi” who used beaches to show characters in their original form at peace. An idea that we as creatures originally evolved from the sea so we are at peace with understanding there.

The city shot was created in Tooting where I live. I have fallen in love with the road I used because of the ominous red cross that stands centre and casts it’s light down the road. I felt this was perfect to have the shot here because the theme could show how we look at screen-based media, it has become our religion.

Upon the TV’s I chose to put a mouth, an ear and an eye to show that our sense are now mechanically involved, cyborgs of everyday devices. I felt to add to the idea of seeing someone everyday differently I would show them at different angles. The highly saturated red upside down blurred mouth in the woods, the sideways blurred red ear on the beach and the over coloured upside down eye in the city below the cross. I used the eye in the city scene because of the link with religion, the all Seeing Eye below the cross; the other two could be interchangeable. Thy are blurred to show the distortion of communication.

Overall I am satisfied with my work. I feel I have taken surrealism the way is should be understood by not directly trying to be influenced by work and just showing what I saw in my head. However I do understand that I must of taken subconsciously influences, because human development can only happen if we remember and use what we have seen before. So I would say the most important influence would be the work of Chris Cunningham. A non-conventional director of music videos who has now began to make films that have his own form of surreal work.

If was to do again I would use more environments to aid in the link of the solo Television as a character and use the other senses, smell (nose) and touch (a hand) shown visually in the screen. I would also re shoot the beach and the city shot, as I shot them from a low angle and flat on and the TV seems more out of place unlike the woods where it shot down and one can see the depth of it and seems more alive in it. Also I removed the wire and plug in the beach shot because it was behind the stand so I would involve that to add to realism and look.