We had a lot of fun working together on our last audio project, but this time, we wanted to create something that was more meaningful while at the same time learn more about each other throughout the process. As we began discussing project ideas, we talked about our childhoods and that is when ideas started pouring out. We were both inspired by those “dress-up board games” that we often used as kids, where we had an outline of a person and could stick on different tops, bottoms, and shoes to make them wear unique outfits.
Our art project concept will be heavily influenced by our childhoods in this aspect. As an example, we intend to pick out different scenes/scenarios from our adolescence and allow the user to interact with them by moving elements from the scene around, changing background music, etc. One concept of a scene we already have in mind is our bedrooms as tweens. We intend to use a mixture of hand-drawn images along with ones found online to recreate furniture, posters, and other elements of our room. The user will be able to use elements from our own childhood and make it their own in a sense.
This also goes back to the idea that internet art, and art in general, is a creation of the artist. It is an impression of themselves, expressed through whatever medium they choose to use! Our project just takes this impression to the next level.
One artist that we both agree gives us some inspiration and has significance in our project is Ben Lewis Giles. He is known for making very interesting collages, which is what we wanted to do in our project! In some way, we want to gather different images (real or hand drawn) and have the user make their own collage in a space. Another more specific inspiration would have to be the games that inspired this project in the first place. The Melissa and Doug Dress Up Board Game is what started it all!
The project will mainly be utilizing collage. We will try to implement a click and drag element so the user can create their own piece using images we have given them. There are more details as well as changes we have to make, but we wanted the user to have an involvement with the work. The reason why we wanted this kind of level of involvement is to simulate the aforementioned games that we had growing up, in hopes that people who come across our art are able to use it and make it their own.
Some suggestions given to us during class feedback were to possibly have an option to allow the user to save their final creation as an image, but we will have to discuss about that. Once we solidify the intention of the project, then we can decide whether or not we want to implement this kind of idea. Before that, we will just keep planning to go forward with this idea, as well as making adjustments based on the time we have as well as the limit of our ability to make the outcome exactly as imagined. Another suggestion would be to have a pop up that appears when the user chooses an item to put in the setting, that explains the significance of that object to us in our childhood. This makes it more personal, but also gives some insight/ reasoning into why we included that particular object in the project.
I hope it goes well! 😀