So when it came to the themes of reflections I looked at the ideas of memories in digital spaces, in recent times the idea of virtual reality has really taken off, but it's not quite prolific enough nor publicly available to make full works in a 360 degree virtual space. However panoramic camera technologies are something that interested me because it allows some of that wonder of a virtual space by almost looking through a movable window, it's not full immersion but it allows some of the ability to look around a fixed point in space. This does however mean I could focus on making explorable pictures as opposed to fully fledged 3d spaces, thus when looking around I found a piece of consumer technology that I could export panoramic pictures from and photoshop them to create these odd spaces; that being the Playstation Vita.
The Playstation vita has a mode that allows basic panoramic photographs to be taken at 1280x960 pixels, by taking several photographs from a program in the vita it automatically creates the panoramic space and uses gyro-meters to allow the person to track around with these, and thus I simply thought "How do I use this in unconventional ways to confuse it into making more obscure photographs?" Originally I simply used DSLRs and experimented with photoshop to create odd and obscure landscapes and mazes to represent how memory can be obscured and almost maze-like.
I will quickly say that in a 3d space this looks rather different, but what I did find was that in the first photograph people became confused and lost in the space due to the odd sunset landscapes. The second picture based on the idea of monotony interested people while the third picture just confused (arguably as intended but to a point of incomprehension". However in the idea of a reflection I had hidden a cuddly toy from my youth in the 3rd picture, and the initial confusion was stopped by the satisfaction of seeing something a little bit hidden. Combining the idea of an easily explorable but obscure space with an extra point one needs to look around for became my new objective:
This first picture was created by using the standard panoramic software of my room before I moved out, by obscuring and blurring it i attempted to create the idea of a memory being slowly lost. The Computer screen asks "Is it how you remember?", the hidden secret in this one.
I always wondered whether people would remember what I looked like as much without my hat that I usually wear, so I took it to the extreme and followed the camera on it's panoramic cycle holding my hat in front of it thus confusing the software making a 3d sphere out of hats, the hidden part of this is a picture of my face wearing the hat with the face scratched out.
This one was created by confusing the camera further, this time I induced an error in the panoramic cycle forcing it to re-calibrate it's position, while it was calibrating I ran to a different room and set up a shot, this happened 37 times meaning that this landscape is an obscured version of every part of my old house to represent memory blurring together. all screens and technology contains text on it so as the person looks around they see that the piece is every part of the house on a certain date.
This one was based on my internet history and that classic idea that someone is always watching you, the irony being that it's the computer, not a person, thus I took all my most used sites for a week and displaced them inside an eye with a smaller eye within the pupil. once started the small picture people see is the small eye looking at you, often unaware that the whole picture is in fact a larger eye forcing people to "see the bigger picture".
Finally I modified my previous shot on monotony, in the panoramic mode the person must look up and will see a message saying "it loops and it loops and it loops and....". Using this still conveys the idea of monotony but allows that extra satisfaction of finding the secret within.
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