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A Useless Guide Book of Must-See Images

#finalyear #performancedesign #photgraphy

Inspired by Antonioni’s film Blow Up, the production ‘ A Useless Guidebook of Must-See Images’ attempts to use the five basic images that will appear in everyone’s daily life as an entry point to explore the boundaries between authenticity and falsehood, subjective and objective. Due to those images’ outstanding functionality and social attributes, the objectivity of these images has been emphasized to become a kind of symbol of authenticity. They belonged to the ranks of the images but became independent as ‘objects’ due to this emphasis. Photography is a pure use of the principle of optics, and it is neutral and innocent just like text. Just as the same text can constitute different styles, photography also has different types of photography genre. There is no such thing as documentary, only documentary-style. So in this context, looking at those reliable images of everyday life, who is placing the boundary between reality and fiction or forgery? Who is defining reality? And how should we put our eyes in it?

Material for google street view map’s transition

Transform the screenshots from Google Earth into film stills

Material for crime scene investigation photograph transition

It is the content itself or the form of instant photo makes them reliable and authentic?

Recreate how to take standard crime scene investigation photographs on stage

Material for Reference screen

Showing the working principle of panoramic camera in real context

Recreate how to take standard crime scene investigation photographs on stage

Concept poster

Material about transition video for crime scene investigation photographs

Comparison between CSI photographs as an evidence and artistic photographs

Material about transition video for crime scene investigation photographs

Comparison between CSI photographs as an evidence and artistic photographs

Illustration for set design

This form will be presented in a highly uniform manner in chapters and face different content while the materials are going to use on stage for each part are exactly the same. So the only thing changes over time is the standard of different types of images which shows the images in our life referred to be reliable are just manipulated by different kinds of authority which is hiding after the camera. The stage space will be set as a green screen studio, which is a recognized symbol representing not real, but there is some level of reality that is happening inside.

Translate a real guidebook’s structure into the framework of the performance

Concept illustration for cctv part

Demo for panoramic part on stage

Demo for cctv part on stage

Demo for Crime Scene Investigation photos on stage

Material about transition video for cctv part

Remade a cctv footage about a man had stuck in an elevator for 43 hours into a live recording of an performance piece

Story board for reference screen

Crime Scene Investigation

Recreated a crime scene and took investigation photographs by Polaroid camera

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