Hey Vincent - I saw you putting this together on the plane home... hope you're enjoying some good home cooking (though maybe Stoller's work has put you off any sweet treats!). Well done on pushing through to this stage - lots of heavy-lifting done and dusted. I guess my big impression is that perhaps there's a stage further to go conceptually with this project that a) essentialises your understanding of Stoller's themes and b) gives you a more specific focus in terms of your next stage; concept art-ing the 'view' that is going to give you your digital set, but also 'capture' Stoller-ness in a single snapshot.
What struck me as I read your sensual, sensorial travelogue was the idea of manufacture - 1) the manufacturing of all the sweet stuff you're describing and 2) the manufacturing of the 'male gaze'. If you look at the 'mass production' of 'treats' (which are design to make us feel special), you often encounter something a bit unsettling or dystopian - and certainly less appetising!
And if you think about the 'consumption' of sexual imagery (via porn etc) you get another sense of a sort of 'conveyor-belt' image - factory-farming of desire.
I guess my real point is your city is sort of underpinned by the manufacture of 'pleasure' - everything is an 'object of desire', but those objects are mass-produced - and I wonder if one area of your city might be able to speak to the Stoller's themes better than simply 'showing' some of her motifs - if that makes sense? It's a bit like looking behind the curtain of your city? Thinking in this way might help you move past the idea of just 'scaling up' some of Stoller's recurrent ideas and making a cityscape out of them? Stoller is asking us to feel a bit sick about what we're being shown - a sort of sex and sugar crash. I'd suggest your challenge is to find a way of getting that 'reality check' on screen somehow or risk making a landscape that we think is harmless, sugary fun.
OGR 01/11/2018
ReplyDeleteHey Vincent - I saw you putting this together on the plane home... hope you're enjoying some good home cooking (though maybe Stoller's work has put you off any sweet treats!). Well done on pushing through to this stage - lots of heavy-lifting done and dusted. I guess my big impression is that perhaps there's a stage further to go conceptually with this project that a) essentialises your understanding of Stoller's themes and b) gives you a more specific focus in terms of your next stage; concept art-ing the 'view' that is going to give you your digital set, but also 'capture' Stoller-ness in a single snapshot.
What struck me as I read your sensual, sensorial travelogue was the idea of manufacture - 1) the manufacturing of all the sweet stuff you're describing and 2) the manufacturing of the 'male gaze'. If you look at the 'mass production' of 'treats' (which are design to make us feel special), you often encounter something a bit unsettling or dystopian - and certainly less appetising!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHHBLSSctoc
https://youtu.be/2kttVyakHN4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtTixs6iPt8
And if you think about the 'consumption' of sexual imagery (via porn etc) you get another sense of a sort of 'conveyor-belt' image - factory-farming of desire.
I guess my real point is your city is sort of underpinned by the manufacture of 'pleasure' - everything is an 'object of desire', but those objects are mass-produced - and I wonder if one area of your city might be able to speak to the Stoller's themes better than simply 'showing' some of her motifs - if that makes sense? It's a bit like looking behind the curtain of your city? Thinking in this way might help you move past the idea of just 'scaling up' some of Stoller's recurrent ideas and making a cityscape out of them? Stoller is asking us to feel a bit sick about what we're being shown - a sort of sex and sugar crash. I'd suggest your challenge is to find a way of getting that 'reality check' on screen somehow or risk making a landscape that we think is harmless, sugary fun.