a senior
thesis process book
Memories a senior thesis process book Alexander Iverson
Š 2015 Alexander Iverson
Gill Sans
Montserrat College of Art
Bold 10/14
Senior Design Seminar, Spring 2015
Regular 10/14
Light 9/11
Contents Proposal Memories of Cigarettes FRKSTEIN
6
Proposal
Through this seminar, I hope to create a body of work focusing on memory and how we retain and recall memories. Focusing on memory, specifically what makes memories real, has always been a point of interest to me. I find that I can replay scenarios in my head or recall a dream so vividly that I’m not entirely sure where the actual memory ends and the scenario begins. By focusing on the real and the now, through photography and recording, I can capture what is real in my life, rather than what is fabricated.
8 Inspiration
The focus on memory for me has always been something I’m fascinated with. I’ve always loved wondering what makes a memory real or important and what memories we choose to hold on to and what memories we choose to forget, if we even have any sort of say in that matter at all. I decided to focus on this as my thesis, deconstructing what makes memories real and important when I saw the book Various Small Fires and Milk by Ed Ruscha. The deadpan photography and the plain and simple way that he recorded what happened as he saw fires really spoke to me on a level where I thought I could work with.
Memories of Cigarettes
With this project I was hoping to explore how much visual information that we take in every day and how much of it we simply discard, whether or not we choose to discard it or not. I chose cigarette butts simply because of the frequency that we pass them in the streets. I was looking to Ed Ruscha and his style of deadpan photography in order to organize and record what I was coming across. In many situations, when finally paying attention, I found that I was passing between 100 and 400 cigarettes within a quarter mile distance. What I chose to do was record, with photography, each cigarette that I passed, exactly in the direction that I came across them, organized them into what order I came across them, and then cropped them into small,1 inch circles, and ordered them into a very strict grid. What I wanted to do was to bring beauty to something that is ordinarily very ugly. In order to title the sections, I created a very simple diagram of the route that I walked, exactly as I walked it.
10 left page from left to right: data point 1, 2, 3 bottom: data point 4 right page from top to bottom: data point 5, 6, 7 right: data point 8
The first book I created had to do with cigarettes, specifically how many cigarettes we pass by on any given day. It tied into my concept of memory because, personally, I don’t believe many people take notice of the cigarettes that they pass. People may see them and make a mental note of how many there were or how there were more than there should be, but at the end of the day, people just dump those memories because they’re deemed unimportant. I wanted to bring that to light by highlighting these cigarettes with the same deadpan style of photography that Ed Rushca used to record his fires. The cigarette butts were recorded exactly as I came across them, with no alterations to the images what so ever. I did actually struggle with this concept. Making all the cigarettes angled the same way was something I had toyed around with. The circles was something that I had anticipated as far as I had the project. They lend a certain cleanliness and organization not usually found in cigarette butts which created a very nice contrast. In order to chapter the books into separate routes, I decided to abstract the routes that I took into single lines, and those served as chapter titles. Compiling all these images into an actual book was the most time consuming part of the entire process. I settled on 1 inch diameter circles because I didn’t want the entire book to be too massive and
18 FRKSTEIN
Through some force of luck, in a completely different class of mine, we were reading Frankenstein. The copy I went out and got had a lot of notes taken in the margins and a little bit of the book was underlined. This got me thinking about how people choose what bits of books are important, and what bits they should commit to memory. If I took out all of the parts of the book that weren’t underlined and left the notes in, would the book still be recognizable as what it originally was? This project connects to my first project about the cigarettes in the fact that it’s about other people’s memories, specifically the memories they most likely lost. I wanted to highlight and focus on what was left behind by people who no longer care about their memories, through discarded objects and concepts. With this project I thought it best to note exactly where each underlined section started in the book. I recorded the page number, the line number, and the character space where it started. I then got the margins of the book as well as the page size and typeset the whole thing exactly as it originally appeared, in this case in Times 9/10.5. Anything written in the margins was turned into a foot note at the bottom of the page that it originally appeared on.
90
Mary Shelley
Chapter 12
As I discussed this book with teachers, it was suggested that I get as many copies as I could to see how each book stacked up against another book. I went to a used book store in a neighboring city and grabbed a dozen books and started recording all of the notes taken in these books. Any books that had a name written in them, I tried to get ahold of the original owner to see if I could get a quote or statement on what they remember about the book, if anything at all, which unfortunately failed. As I was recording these books I was playing around with the concept of one master copy of the book. One book with all 12 of the contributing note takers merged together, to form a sort of Frankenstein book book by itself. This seemed to me to be a good idea but, since all of the books are different sizes and different translations and editions, I decided to go with the median size for the pages and margins. I wanted to do something different with the cover of the book so I sewed together pieces of leather scraps to mimic the creation of the creature in the book. Having this stitched book is certainly nice and I like the play off the whole concept of Frankenstein, but I personally like a more refined edge to my books, so I’ve created a second copy, one with a hard cover binding.
top: chapter page spread bottom: average page spread
92
Mary Shelley
Frankenstein
93
20
This project was also met with confusion, much like the first piece. For a lot of people, the connection between these two projects wasn’t clear enough and I may not have done a good enough job explaining how both of these projects connected to memory and discarding. I’m hoping to take this project to a larger series. I want to have all of the books as separate documents, displayed with their original copies with the notes written in them. I have started modifying these books, hollowing them out and blocking pages off to only show what has been underlined.
102
Mary Shelley
Chapter 14
“The name of the old man was De Lacey.
_________and Agatha had ranked with ladies of the highest distinction.
“The father of Safie had been
6 7
104
Jackie not b/c of crime, religion & wealth sent him to death
Frankenstein
Mary Shelley
105
followers of Muhammad.
“The Turk quickly perceived the impression that his daughter had made on the heart of Felix and endeavored to secure him more entirely in his interests by the promise of her hand in marriage so soon as he should be conveyed to a place of safety.
_________________________She instructed her daughter in the tenets of her religion and taught her to aspire to higher powers or intellect and an independence of spirit forbidden to the female 8 chicken JACKson 9 author jumps in to say... this will be important later on... 10 have freedom you cant have as a muslim
11 hearts all over the world tonight... with you with you with you with you with you
top: chapter page spread with notes bottom: average page spread with notes