Stephanie Scott ART 333: Photo Book Remix Response March 20, 2013
For James’ response, he chose to remix his original layout created with the lyrics from the Sweeney Todd musical. In the original layout, he had the text (red on black) on the left page, while a black and white image of a reptile’s claws sat on the other.
In the first remix, James cut the original image into seven different parts, arranging them out or order and even upside down. The entire image now spans across the height and width of the spread. The text that had originally placed on the left page has now travelled across the spread as well, the placement of each word staggered. In his second remix, James left the original photograph intact, but cropped the image so that the claws are framed within the confines of the pages’ edges. The text remains in a similar position to the original, only now the word ‘RUBIES’ is placed on the right page, instead of all the text being restricted to the left. By rearranging his spread in these two different ways, James emphasized both the text and the image. In the first remix spread, the alteration of the image makes it difficult to determine at first what the image is. However, this makes the viewer look more closely at the
image and the text. In the second, the close-up of the reptile’s claws draws attention to not only them, but the ‘blood-red’ text before them. When James’ remixed the spread he had chosen from my Seeing Sound project, he removed the entire page that had once contained lyrics. He instead enlarged the images, keeping them in the same basic format as the original. The uppermost image now lies horizontally across the spread while the two smaller images rest beneath it. The only original text that appears is the title of the song “Awake and Alive,” retaining their original color and placed around the figure in the topmost image. By altering my spread in this manner, James has placed a greater focus on the images themselves, instead of the images acting as emphasis for the lyrics. The images were larger across the span of the spread, drawing more attention to the actions within the photographs while the text acts as an emphasis for the movement.