Creation of Art Out of Film Slides

So this assignment was to create some sort of artwork out of these old slides that the Art Department is getting ride of because they're going digital and they don't want to deal with old school technology.

 

Instead of committing their slides to rot in a landfill somewhere, they decided to have students use them in an art show.  I didn't enter mine because I created it tonight and that was past the deadline for submission. 

When I started this project I had a completely different idea than what I ended up with.  I started to open the little slide-cases, and some of them were kind of moldy and made my nose itch pretty bad, but I preserved because, well, I didn't have a choice.  As I was prying open bits of plastic I noticed that were different styles of encasement, and also that I could not, for the life of me, get the metal cases to open. 

pretty much...

But I continued on and had made a pile of these little empty cases, and I was struck by an observation - I had gutted these poor little things, pried them open and took out their insides.  I guess that was the genesis of my idea.  

But still I continued on with my less-than-satisfactory idea, until finally I looked at the pile of slide-cases and saw that they kind of looked like old TVs.

kind of

And then I scrapped my first idea and went with the one I have now.

This is the final product, yeah it's small, don't hate.  

"Judge me by my size, do you?"

-Yoda

 Exactly.  Yoda's got my back.

Anyways, I'm going to take you back in time and show you a few in-progress photos I took with my lackluster cell phone camera.

This is a blurry close-up of the inside of a slide-case that I used.  The geometric squiggles are a variation I created recently on a spiral doodle that appears in my notes, with origins in senior year of high school (which is the swirly stuff on the right side of the final piece).

I wanted to highlight the difference between what goes on in the "TV" thing - still beautiful but rigid, confined and highly structured) and what shows up outside of it (colorful and organic and free).

 I was inspired by some pictures of art that I find on the Internet like these:

        

Where colorful organic shapes come bursting out of human skulls.  I think these pieces were meant to show the idea of "imagination", but I didn't intend the piece I created to do that.  

I'm not exactly sure what it's supposed to mean - that is, I didn't create it with some sort of message or theme in mind, just these other ideas.  

So, interpret as you will. 

The mediums I used are graphite (aka my pencil) and colored pencils, and the metal piece from the slide case, and two pieces of tape to make sure it stays on the page.  

Now I'm getting sleepy and I don't feel like writing anymore, but I think I've given you enough material to digest in your brains, so my job here is done.

Goodnight, world.