Bibliography

Almila Akdag Salah. (2010). The online potential of art creation and dissemination: DeviantArt as the next art venue, pp.16-22. Retrieved from: http://www.bcs.org/upload/pdf/ewic_ev10_s1paper3.pdf

Angue, L. G. (2014). Heart Bot collects heart rate data, transforms into art. Available at: http://www.psfk.com/2014/09/sid-lee-nyc-intel-heart-bot-installation.html

Appleyard, SJ. (2012). Experimenting with cameraless photography using turmeric and borax: an introduction to photophysics, Physics Education, 47, 4, pp.423-428, Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost

Artist turns your heart-rate into light show. (2012). Available at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/13/artist-danielle-gotells-i_n_1668272.html

Barnes, M. (2012). Shadow catchers: Camera-less photography. London: Perseus Distribution Services.

Collins, K. (2013). The internet is beautiful: Hidden dimensions of the web mapped in striking artworks (wired UK). Available at: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-12/03/internet-artworks

De Saint-Exupe ry, A., de Saint-Exupéry, A., Woods, K. and de Saint-Exupery, A. (1991) The little prince. London: Mammoth.

Derges, S., Barnes, M., Kemp, M. and Bright, R. (2010). Susan Derges: Elemental. Göttingen, Germany: Steidl Verlag.

Edward R. Laskowski (2015). ‘Fitness what’s a normal resting heart rate?’, Mayoclinic. Available at: http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/fitness/expert-answers/heart-rate/faq-20057979

Grant Romer. (2005). What is a photograph?. Topics in Photographic Preservation , 11, 1-2. Retrieved from: http://cool.conservation-us.org/coolaic/sg/topics/v11/pmgt11-003.pdf

John Berger. (1980). Understanding a photograph, 291-294. Retrieved from: https://www.homeworkmarket.com/sites/default/files/qx/15/07/05/05/understand_photo_berger.pdf

Lozano-Hammer, R. (2015) Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. Available at: http://www.lozano-hemmer.com

Richter, R, & Schadler, C. (2009). See my virtual self: dissemination as a characteristic of digital photography - the example of Flickr.com, Visual Studies, 24, 2, pp. 169-177, Academic

Search Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 11 December 2015.

Victoria and Alber Museum. (2010). Camera-less photography: Techniques - Victoria and Albert Museum. Available at: http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/c/camera-less-photography-techniques/

Final thoughts

To be honest I did not enjoy this module. I understand why we needed to step back and think about other ways of creating an image, to think about what actually is photography and a photograph. And I understood that there is a thin line between photography and other arts. However camera-less photography is not for me. Since the beginning of the module till the very end I was hating it and I did it just because I needed to. I appreciate the fact that it made me to think and I believe that it can effect my future work. In conclusion, I am happy that it is finished now and I can move on.

Final video. Rationale

If My Heart Could Talk

Our heart is one of the most important organs in the body. It beats relentlessly without a break. Everybody knows the speed of a normal heartbeat, but how does it change in stressful situations? How does it beat when we are happy and relaxed? That is what I was trying to find out.

We can see a persons exterior but we have no idea was happening on the inside. But what if we could see what was going on in a person’s body. With this project I tried to turn the invisible visible. Antoine de Saint-Exupery said that “it is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”¹ But what if I were to make it visual? Three different people, three different situations and three different hearts and thoughts that have been made visible to the naked eye. The events that are usually captured with cameras are recorded through their heartbeat. It is something more personal that just an image, it is closer to a person and their heart.  

This video consists of three people’s heart beats, which were created from their thoughts at the time that their heart rate was taken. The first one is of person that is heartbroken because her husband lives in other country and she cannot see him everyday. The second one is stressed just before the presentation. And the last one is relaxed and happy, they have just been just woken up in bed with no need to go anywhere.

¹De Saint-Exupe ry, A., de Saint-Exupéry, A., Woods, K. and de Saint-Exupery, A. (1991) The little prince. London: Mammoth.

Dissemination

I decided to show my final video in a very simple way. In a dark room (probably a studio) and projecting it onto a wall. That is how it would look like:

I believe that this way, in the dark room with no distractions, people can feel closer to the video and the heartbeat sound.

For a digital dissemination I put the video onto Youtube. As I mentioned in my earlier post, that is one of the best places to put the video. To make it seen I would need to share it on other media, because so far I have 3 views, which all are mine.

Decision

As I mentioned before I was confused on which project should I present. I did the thing that I have never done before and really hate doing. I flipped a coin. Heads - video, tales - images. Just to be sure I did it three times and all of them I got heads. So decision made I will carry on with my video, the first idea that I had and will hand in that. 

Creating a video

I didn't want my video to be very long, so I decided to use just three people. Three people, three stories, three different heartbeats.

First of all to create a video I needed to download heart rate results from my phone to computer. When i did that. All the results comes up in pdf, so I put that one on Photoshop and saved it as a png, so I would have a clear background and just a line. After that I put the file onto Illustrator, where I converted it into vector and was able to put text that follows that line.

That is where I needed to decide what size text I want. Looking at my test line I thought that I need to make it bigger, however the line didn't look as nice and at the corners the text overlapped, I made bigger gaps between word or letter where I needed, but it still did not look as nice as my test image.

So after all, I came back to idea having smaller text. The video is going to be projected into wall, so I believe that the text will be big enough.

After I created all of the lines, I uploaded them on Premier Pro and starting putting things together. Unfortunately, I had one more problem, I didn't know how to connect different heart rates, so it would go smoothly. I wanted to connect them with the line, maybe the end of one and the beginning of the other one, but the lines that I had at the moment where too short, so on Photoshop I added just a white line at the beginning and end, which also helped to separate heart rates as they were different peoples, different speed and story.

I uploaded them back on Premiere, put the affects and transitions and at the end heart beat soundtrack.

And that is how the video was created.

Mouse track

During holidays I found a program that can track mouse movements. I downloaded it and left it running in the background while I was writing my blog, browsing internet, using Photoshop, Illustrator or other programs. I also was able to choose if I want it to be black and white or colour. That is what I got:

About 3 hours on Photoshop and Illustrator

About 2 hours on Illustartor

About 2 hours on my blog

An hour on my blog

About 3 hours on Illustrator

An hour on Facebook

About 2 hours on the blog

The lines are mouse movements and the dots are mouse stops. I found these images really interesting, coloured ones reminds me a little bit of Martyn Dade Robertson and his website maps. After founding this program and trying it I got very confused if I could rather do something with these images and not with heart rate. Due to the fact that I found it the very last week, it doesn't leave much time for me to think more what I could do with them. However, I did in the past a mistake where I chose the wrong idea to do and to hand-in. I will keep working with my first idea and will se what happens later.

Idea. If My Heart Could Talk

In the very last crit I was suggested to use not only me but other people too. After I did all the research about other artists that used heart rate to create an installations I realised that it actually would be more interesting to include others as well.

I started taking heart rates of other people at certain events and asked them to write down what exactly they were thinking. I got some interesting thoughts and moments. I also came up with the idea that I could create a video. The line, created of the words, would be sliding across the screen with the heart beat sound track, to make it look like heart rate monitors in hospital. I also thought what colours I should use - to make it look like a real monitor or something else. 

I like the black background, however I think I am going to use white text as it is easier to read. 

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is one more artist that used people's heart rate to create an art piece. In this project he used three hundred light bulbs, which were hung on a cable at a hight of three meters. Light bulbs were uniformly distributed over an exhibition room. On the side of the room the interface was placed, which had a sensor and was able to detect participants heart rate. Each bulb was for one person. Each time someone touches the interface a heart pattern is recorded and this is sent to the first bulb in the grid, pushing ahead all the existing recordings. At any given time the installation shows the recordings from the most recent participants. When every bulb has a recording a room is filled with flashing lights to the beat of all participant hearts in the room. I found this project interesting as it uses other people to create an installation. Due to the fact that each persons heart beats at different speed, the bulbs flashes at different times and speed too creating a room which is never completely dark.

Bibliography:

Lozano-Hammer, R. (2015) Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. Available at: http://www.lozano-hemmer.com

My own heart rate. Idea development

After I did my research and looked at other peoples work I got an idea what I could do with my heart rate data that I was collecting. I also remembered earlier group crit, where I mentioned that the thing that I like doing is not talking and there is many situations where I could say something but I keep it to myself. I realised that I could merge these two into one. 

But before I reveal my idea I had to ask myself again: What is a photograph? Concluding my earlier post where I tried to answer this question I think that a photograph is where the event, object or person is captured. 

My idea - to capture the event without the use of camera, just using my heart and the thoughts that I had at that time. I will make something that is not visible to eye visible. 

I though that I could choose 4 or 6 events and create minimalistic image, where the heart rate line would be created of words that I was thinking at that moment. To do that I used Illustrator, I converted my heart rate line into vector and put text that would follow the line. I deleted the lines and I was left just with the words. 

That is what I got:

This is just a test image, I used the text from my blog about What is a photograph? 

This is closer look:

The things that I need to consider are: if the text is not too small to read and do I want it to be readable, should I include when it was taken and why and what else I could do with it.