Guest Critic Response

Having guest critic Yoonjai Choi come on Friday to review my work was a great experience. She immediately addressed how the work provides a different experience for the viewer when they first see it from a distance and then get up close to it. Like a real painting, the image begins to break apart when the viewer is close to it and reveals the individual images I used to create it. Yoonjai said the most interesting part of the image is when you are close to it. She said the way the left and right dissolve away was cool but that it was almost like I am "revealing my trick." For a process book, I am making for the project, I am going to have many cropped images of details of the piece which is similar to the ideas Yoonjai was conveying to me. I also explained that the main reasons to have the images break apart, besides the fact that it looks cool, was to show how the skin tones are being optically mixed, like in with real bush strokes or pixels. We also addressed the issue of how each image I used comes charged with it's own little narrative. Due to time constraints, and other factors, making a portrait comprised of pictures, each with a specific meaning would have been near impossible. This was definitely an issue I had thought about while making the piece. However, the piece is about controlling external imagery that surrounds us, so the randomness of the images I think supports that idea of the project. Also, the technology aspect of the project is supported by this randomness because it is all based on what Google Images provided for me in my searches. Overall, Yoonjai said it was a great project and thought I must be a very patient person.