Visual References 1

Featured Image: close up of Colour Explosion by Leigh

I don’t think I’d really considered visual references for this exhibition until I did that Brand Visioning class with Caribbean Fashion & Arts Feature Festival’s Kevon Foderingham last year. Then the topic came up again while developing my PhD application. At first I came to sudden halt with alarm. Visual references?! But then instantly, I remembered all the images I’d collected on Pinterest and Google Collections to guide my vision and I knew… Stacey, you got this! This post brings those collections together in one place with detailed captions about the reference and annotations of how each reference has influenced or inspired me.

Click each image to visit the source and learn more about it.

Holi in Trinidad & Tobago
Hindu Festival, 2019
Medium – Powder, people, music and celebration
Size – Thousands of people in various communities
Photo – Phagwa Festival Facebook Group
Blog Post – Holi – a Springtime festival of Colour

Audience takes part in a ritualistic making of art, starting in all white clothes as a blank canvas and, as a community, creating a living abstract. Ritual based in an age old cultural tradition.

“River”
by Peter Minshall, 1983
Medium – Mas
Place – Trinidad Carnival
Size – Thousands of masqueraders
Photo – Noel Norton
Text – @masmanminshall

Audience takes part in a ritualistic making of art, starting in all white as a blank canvas and, as a community, creating a living abstract. Learn more here too!

“Aquatic Colours”
by Takahiro Matsuo, 2009
Place – La Triennale di Milano
Exhibition – Milano Salone 2009
Client – CANON INC.

Audience responsive light and projection art installation.

Branded Enclosed Video Booth
by Green Screen UK, 2019
Service & Equipment for Hire
Tailored to Client requirements

Potential feedback, data collection, continuing the compassion narrative, audience engagement and interaction opportunity.

“The Niceties”
Scenic Design by Cameron Anderson, 2018
Place – The Huntington Theater Company
Show – The Niceties

Shaping the space to fit each compassion narrative so the story is told and experienced in multiple ways.

“Rainbow Cave”
by Basia Goszczynska, 2019
presented at Arcadia Earth
an Augmented reality exhibition
Medium – Installation
Dimensions – Variable
Place – Roving but currently showing at 718 Broadway, NY, NY 10003, USA

Sensory soft appeal feels like a visualisation of emotion that can motivate action. Also Arcadia Earth inspires its audience to climate compassion and action, so parallel to my vision of inspiring compassionate action towards each other. Lots to learn from their successes and mistakes.

“Put Your Head Into Gallery”
by Tezi Gabunia, 2016
Medium – Falsification
Dimensions – Variable
Place – MUA – Multiverse Architecture, Georgia

The audience members help to make the art and in doing so, become part of the art.

Elisa’s Apartment in “The Shape of Water”, 2017
Medium – Scenic Design for Film
Production Designer – Paul D. Austerberry
Director – Guillermo del Toro

The audience takes a trip into someone else’s experience physically. Walking through someone’s space without them adds a naughty freedom to explore and ‘learn’ a person as they wouldn’t otherwise. This image comes from an article that explains how specific themes were deliberately infused into every aspect of this set.

“Daphne’s 80th”
by Stacey Leigh Ross, 2017
Medium – Mixed Media
Dimensions – 297mm x 420mm (11.7″ x 16.5″)
Place – Commissioned. Private Collection, London, UK

Life Story Art cultivates confidence and joy, one person at a time. Each artwork acts as a reflective journal/mirror, giving the subject a daily shot of confidence and self-love whenever they see this representation of their best self on the wall. The work itself is my act/art of compassion but also a way to remind the subject who they really are. Daphne’s 80^th was commissioned by her grandchildren to celebrate Daphne’s rise from poverty in Jamaica to retired professional nurse and home owner in the UK.

Identifying Flow & Dwell Areas
by Nick Cristea, AllofUs, 2016
Featured in Medium article
“Designing Visitor Experiences”
Medium – User Experience Design

What if we used this technique to map both movement through the space, as well as the intended mood in each room as visitors participate in the experience?

Exhibition Floorplans
by Bill Keays, 1999
for MIT Media Laboratory’s
Aesthetics and Computation Group
Medium – Exhibit Design
Place – Boston, Massachusetts

Thinking about how to plan and map the flow of the intervention

Exhibition Layout Ideas
by Marie-Sophie Schramm, 2017
Medium – Drawing
for IB Visual Art

Interested in the mood board style supplement to this exhibition plan showing colour and texture plans. Potential use for planning location of music, installations, ritual-making stations, and more.

Cardboard Sculpting at Jouvay Ayiti, 2017
by Participants of Ayiti’s Mas-making workshop
for J’ouvert morning, Trinidad Carnival
Medium – Mas Making
Place – Barataria, Trinidad

To play J’ouvert with Jouvay Ayiti, participants have to attend the mas camp and make their own costumes. This is in line with early Carnival – people made their own costumes to participate. This ritualistic making of ones own Carnival costume adds to the experience of the participant. It prompts the question: which rituals will this exhibition/intervention create or tap into.

“The Life of Roger Britten”
by Stacey Leigh Ross, 2019
Medium – Mixed Media
Dimensions – 300mm x 610mm (12” x 24”)
Place – Royston Museum, Royston, Hertfordshire, UK

Potential to map a compassion story the same way I map a life story like this one – the story of Royston’s first Black man, Roger Britten, who was taken from Demerara (now Guyana) in the Caribbean at the age of 8 and brought to live in Royston, England.

“Fabric Projections”
by Natalie Garcia, 2012
Medium – Projection Installation

Inspires the possibility of having visitors move through virtual masqueraders as if they are on the streets of Trinidad during Carnival!

“Market Day and The Stable Boy”
by Christine Norton and Jonathan Creese, 2020
Medium – Photography & Digital Art
Exhibition – False Narratives
Place – Art Society, Trinidad

Use of photography and digital art to mix the present with the past, to build on history and tradition but make it come alive to those living now

Tropicália
by Hélio Oiticica, 1967
Medium – Art Installation
Exhibition – Tropicália
Place – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Creating organic, rhizomatic spaces for visitors to explore at will. Placing bodies into a variety of spaces, moods and experiences. I first saw this work at The Barbican’s Tropicália exhibition in 2006.
(image: Tropicália at the Whitney Museum, USA. 2017)

Mas Pieta
by Peter Minshall, 2020
Medium – Mas
Place – Trinidad Carnival
Size – Thousands of masqueraders

Mas about Love – Love of Power and the Power of Love – featuring winged costumes exploring the theme of oneness. Click to see Coronation – a video compilation of Mas Pieta as a commentary on the 2020 US Presidential inauguration. Click to see masqueraders play Mas Pieta on Carnival Tuesday.
(image: Love of Power played by Earl Thompson. Photo by Maria Nunes)

Africa – Her people, Her Glory, Her Tears
by Brian MacFarlane, 2009
Medium – Mas
Place – Trinidad Carnival
Size – Thousands of masqueraders

Mas where masqueraders are given various fabrics, brown vest and shorts, and each masquerader designs their own costume with the materials. Very participatory!
(image: 3 Africa masqueraders in their own designs. Photo by Cheryl Hernandez)

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Reference List

@jouvayayiti (2017) Cardboard Sculpting module for Emancipation Mas CampUs 2017, www.instagram.com. Available at: https://www.instagram.com/p/BWoG10qh2o4/ (Accessed: December 2, 2020).

@masmanminshall (2017) “River, Minshall Mas 1983,” www.instagram.com. @masmanminshall, 13 December. Available at: https://www.instagram.com/p/BcpepdeB7bN/ (Accessed: October 2020).

@masmanminshall (2020) “Coronation,” @masmanminshall. Available at: https://www.instagram.com/p/CHB53Jgn1m0/ (Accessed: March 28, 2021).

Anderson, C. (2018) The Niceties, Cameron Anderson. Available at: https://cameronanderson.net/the-niceties-2 (Accessed: October 2020).

Arcadia Earth (2019) Arcadia Earth, Arcadia Earth. Available at: https://www.arcadiaearth.co/ (Accessed: October 2020).

Bencks, J. (2018) Working the angles: Set design with Cameron Anderson, BrandeisNOW. Brandeis University. Available at: https://www.brandeis.edu/now/2018/november/cameron-anderson.html (Accessed: October 2020).

Cristea, N. (2020) Designing Visitor Experiences, Medium. Available at: https://medium.com/@allofustweet/designing-visitor-experiences-521a009d381c (Accessed: October 2020).

Gabunia, T. (2016) “Tezi Gabunia Creates Surreal Images of Big Heads inside Famous Galleries,” Design Boom, 25 May. Available at: https://www.designboom.com/art/tezi-gabunia-put-head-into-gallery-05-25-2016/ (Accessed: November 2020).

Garcia, N. (2012) “Fabric Projection.wmv,” www.youtube.com. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7btgC1eapI&ab_channel=NatalieGarcia (Accessed: March 30, 2021).

Goszczynska, B. (2019) Rainbow Cave, Basia Goszczynska. Available at: https://www.basiagoszczynska.com/#/rainbow-cave/ (Accessed: October 2020).

Graeber, L. (2019) “At ‘Arcadia Earth,’ Dazzle Illuminates Danger,” The New York Times, 23 October. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/23/arts/design/arcadia-exhibition-climate-change.html (Accessed: October 2020).

Green Screen UK (2019) Video Booth Hire Enclosed, vimeo.com. Available at: https://vimeo.com/377284692 (Accessed: October 2020).

Huggins, N. (2015) “The Work of Peter Minshall,” Nicholas Huggins, 20 October. Available at: https://nicholashuggins.wordpress.com/2015/10/20/the-work-of-peter-minshall/ (Accessed: March 25, 2021).

Kinetic Mas (2020) “Mas Pieta,” Blue Calabash. Kinetic Mas. Available at: https://youtu.be/8ev5gsJHpaQ (Accessed: July 20, 2020).

Matsuo, T. (2009) Aquatic Colors, LUCENT. Available at: http://www.lucent-design.co.jp/en/artworks/aquatic-colors/ (Accessed: October 2020).

Miller, J. (2017) The Delightful Design Details in Guillermo Del Toro’s The Shape of Water, Vanity Fair. Conde Nast. Available at: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/12/the-shape-of-water-production-design (Accessed: November 2020).

MIT Media Laboratory’s Aesthetics and Computation Group (1999) Exhibition Floorplans, acg.media.mit.edu. MIT. Available at: https://acg.media.mit.edu/events/adc/ACGatADC/plans/index.html (Accessed: October 2020).

Norton, C. and Creese, J. (2020) Market Day and The Stable Boy, www.instagram.com. @christinenortonphoto. Available at: https://www.instagram.com/p/CHqEwxRntqi/ (Accessed: January 26, 2021).

Oiticica, H. (1967) Tropicália. Available at: https://victoriaepullen.myblog.arts.ac.uk/2017/11/13/tropicalia-by-helio-oiticica/ (Accessed: October 2020).

Pullen, V. E. (2017) “Tropicália by Hélio Oiticica,” victoriaepullen, 13 November. Available at: https://victoriaepullen.myblog.arts.ac.uk/2017/11/13/tropicalia-by-helio-oiticica/ (Accessed: October 2020).

Rampersad, S. (2019) “Holi – a Springtime Festival of Colour,” Connecting the Dots, 31 March. Available at: https://seemarampersad.com/2019/03/31/holi-a-springtime-festival-of-colour/ (Accessed: March 25, 2021).

Ross, S. L. (2017) Daphne’s 80th. Available at: https://www.byleigh.com/product/daphnes-80th/ (Accessed: 2017).

Ross, S. L. (2019) The Life of Roger Britten. Available at: https://www.byleigh.com/product/the-life-of-roger-britten/ (Accessed: October 30, 2010).

Schramm, M.-S. (2017) Exhibition Layout Ideas, Marie-Sophie Schramm IB Visual Art. Blogspot. Available at: http://marie-sophieib.blogspot.com/2017/09/exhibition-layout-ideas.html (Accessed: October 2020).