Initial Research: Yoko Ono

 In my project, I will start by looking at Yoko Ono.  I am looking at Ono because I am interested in exploring her Fluxus performance artwork as I will be creating a piece of performance art. In this post I will be analysing Yoko Ono's 'Cut Piece' (1964)

Yoko Ono, Cut Piece (1964)

Yoko Ono sat on a stage in 1964 and her performance was to invite the audience to take a pair of scissors and cut her clothes off her body. 'This work challenged traditional norms of audience participation, gender roles, and the dynamics of power and vulnerability' (Fiveable, 2025).  The reason I chose this work is because when I was at university this is one of the first works I recreated as a photographic piece.  I like the challenge to create this in images as it does challenge the audience and in the performance itself takes power away from the men doing the cutting and the power balance goes to Ono as she sits dead eyed looking out while her clothes are removed. Ono stated of performing the piece; 'When I do the Cut Piece, I get into a trance, and so I don't feel too frightened. There's several layers of meanings. So of course I was saying, hey, you're doing this to women, you know? We're all in it. But also, at the time, it's much better to just go with it. And that thought of letting women know that, you know, we're all going through this, but don't fight, let it happen. By not fighting, we show them that there's a whole world, which could exist by being peaceful.' (MoMA, 2015) The idea that this represented the power of men and her response interestingly is to not fight, let it happen and be peaceful is perhaps, now, a too passive response.  As I will make a film of my response to the Trump inauguration, one of the key things that is devasting is how women will suffer from the chain of events that led to this. One of the most important is the overturning of Roe vs Wade (1973) which gave women the right to legal abortion.  Now that this has been overturned and states can decide whether women have this right it has already resulted in women not receiving healthcare, maternal deaths and women being denigrated for trying to a obtain and abortion. FIGO (International Federation of Gynaecology and Obstetrics) states; 'Lack of access to safe abortion care is one of the leading causes of preventable maternal death and disability. Each year 47,000 women in the world die as a result of unsafe abortion and an estimated five million are hospitalised for the treatment of serious complications such as bleeding or infection. We urge governments around the world to take steps to mitigate the harms of unsafe abortion.' (Randals, 2021) 

Moving from the women's rights issue, I would also like to discuss the making of this piece.  Ono was part of the Fluxus movement which began in the 1960s and was prominent through the 1960s and 70s, 'George Maciunas, the primary founder and organizer of the movement, described Fluxus as, "a fusion of Spike Jones, gags, games, Vaudeville, Cage and Duchamp".' (The Art Story, 2012).  The idea, at its heart, was to break down barriers to art and creativity.  For women performance art offered an ideal method for creating art as they did not need materials or equipment, often they used their own or others' bodies and they could cheaply use community space, public spaces and their own domestic spaces to perform.  This performance was on stage and cheaply recorded on film so it it freeing for both the artists and for the creative process.  The audience also has an interactive and immersive experience. 

I will be creating a video more because now in a way is less physically interactive, more interactive online.  I don't necessarily think that this is a good thing... however to connect to an audience I can post this video, it will still be cheap and easy to make and I will need very little equipment as I plan to use my domestic environment, outdoors in locations close by, stock footage and free simple editing software. Looking at Ono's film I do like the stillness and the black and white so I will be thinking carefully as I am keen on stillness.

The message of Ono's work whether it is an active stance on the power balance of men and women or a too passive message, as I suggested earlier, is still up for debate as; 'Ono has remained ambiguous about the work’s meaning, allowing the viewer to form their own judgement. This has polarized art historians who fail to agree on the message behind the various violent and passive aspects of the performance.' (The Art Story, 2012).  It is a feminist work and is still a powerful and seminal piece that has influenced other artists and their work. This work has meant much to me when I started to make work and still remains important and relevant today. 

As a beginning to my work, I have put together a very short storyboard of the first few cuts from the performance I will make.  I used a Canva storyboard template and then I uploaded the images which are representations of the shots I will make - I edited these on Photoshop.

My next step will just be a test shoot and short edit to see if this idea will work...

References

Art-Sôlido (2017). Yoko Ono: The Cut Piece that changed forever the relationship between artist and audience. [online] Art-Sôlido. Available at: https://artsolido.com/2017/02/18/yoko-ono-the-cut-piece-that-changed-forever-the-relationship-between-artist-and-audience/ [Accessed 23 Jan. 2025].

Fiveable (2025). Yoko Ono’s ‘Cut Piece’ - (Intro to Humanities) - Vocab, Definition, Explanations | Fiveable. [online] Fiveable.me. Available at: https://library.fiveable.me/key-terms/introduction-humanities/yoko-onos-cut-piece [Accessed 23 Jan. 2025].

MoMA (2015). Yoko Ono. Cut Piece. 1964 | MoMA. [online] The Museum of Modern Art. Available at: https://www.moma.org/audio/playlist/15/373 [Accessed 25 Jan. 2025].

Randals, R. (2021). Post-Roe v Wade: Call to mitigate the harms of unsafe abortion | Figo. [online] Figo. Available at: https://www.figo.org/post-roe-v-wade-call-mitigate-harms-unsafe-abortion [Accessed 25 Jan. 2025].

SMART Objective: Silent Scream Photgraphic/Film Project

 

Vienna Actionist/Vienna Artweek (2020)

In my performance art film/photographic project for Digital Arts I will be creating a film of no more than 5 minutes. This may contain still and/or moving images. The concept is my response to the Trump inauguration.  I will be using a Olympus DSLR camera to film the footage/take still images and I will use Clipchamp to edit the film.  The project will then be aded to my website as final portfolio by the beginning of March. 

Milanote: Intended Research

 This is my intended research which I have added to Milanote.

Milanote: Silent Scream

Creative Media: Studio Portrait Practice

 In class, we looked at various portrait photographers including, Annie Leibovitz, David Bailey (as below), Terry O'Neill and some images from Life Magazine. Today we completed our studio shoot, this included a high-key set-up with a white backdrop and that was a four-light set-up.  We also did a low-key set-up with a black backdrop and two lights.  We used Billie H as the model and she completed a series of poses for us to shoot in both set-ups. 

Mick Jagger by David Bailey (1965)

For the high key set-up, we set our cameras to 200 ISO, a wide aperture of F4.0/5.6 and this was 0 exposure compensation.  For the low-key, we began with 400 ISO, a wide aperture of F4/5.6 and I began with -1.5 exposure compensation which I dropped down to -2 to compensate for low light.

I will begin by showing a couple of shots from the high-key set-up we did a few seated portrait shots and then we used a sitting on the floor pose a little like this one by Terry O'Neill.

The shot I chose from these shots was the one below.  I liked this shot as it is high key, so nice and bright which works well with the model's pose and colourful hair against the pale dress,  The pose works well and the landscape gives a full-length pose and breathing room so the framing makes for a good composition.  The settings of F5 and ISO 200 are good however the shot is not as sharp as I would like as the shutter speed was just 1/40, I should have probably either adjusted the ISO to 100 or overexposed slightly using exposure compensation. 

I chose this shot from the same pose I like this one as I felt it was sharper despite the lower shutter speed so I must have had a much steadier hand in this shot.  The skin colour the look into the distance and the hand gently resting do make this shot work quite well.

The next shots are all low-key and so are more challenging to as we are working in lower light.

Phillipe Volgenzang

Above is the reference pose we used for the next shots - as can be seen here the light is even and bright and the background is slightly grey.  We used a black background and the shots were as below.  I thought the pose here is very good and matched the reference pose almost exactly.  This was on a really slow shutter of 1/13 so not as sharp as it could be and if I had been doing this alone I probably would have set up a tripod for some of the low-key shots.  However, this has an almost dreamy quality and light is working well within the image, a good rule of thirds.

The next image we used as a reference was this David Bailey image below

David Bailey 

This shot I did not think the pose worked as well the idea is there but I think the positioning of the hands and body is not quite correct.  The light is good and the image is fairly sharp even though the shutter speed still quite slow.  Overall this is not my favourite shot but we had a go at this and I just think other shots worked much better.

The next shot was based on the Annie Leibovitz image here, this works well with the model all in black, the rule of thirds and the very white skin against a black background make this a high-contrast image that has a good impact.

Annie Leibovitz

In this image, it is not the exact pose but very much reminded me of images of Jerry Hall, with the hair over the shoulder and leaning into the side.  This image worked quite well in the studio the dark and light contrast is good and again good rule of thirds, The image is fairly sharp but again I would have improved the sharpness with more time and longer session here. 

   

Jerry Hall (2005) Getty Images                       Jerry Hall (Image site unavailable)

The last image I will be sharing is based on this pose by Annie Leibovitz, I really liked this with the black dress leaning backwards and I do think this was one of the most successful poses of the session.

Annie Leibovitz

In this image, the light is bright and even and the black dress works very well against the black background the light does glint off the slightly shiny dress and the model pose works well.  considering the slowness of the shutter speed, without a tripod this is quite successful.

Reflection

Overall a good shoot, it is difficult as a whole class as we have limited time with each shot.  On the low-key shots I would have set up a tridop and spend more time adjusting the lights for each shot if I was doing this as a photo-shoot of my own.  However, in the time given and as a practice there are some decent shots that work well and certainly ideas that could be developed for a more in-depth photo-shoot. 

Major Project: Initial Ideas

 For Digital Arts we are going to create a major project in our subject area.  My subject area is Photography/Film, so I will begin on this post to explore some of the ideas I have been thinking about. 

Trump Inauguration 20th January 2025

I have been thinking about the Trump Inauguration as this greatly upset me, we are now in Trump World which is against all my liberal values and so I wanted to make a response to this using Performance art.  I would like to do something to express my feeling of disgust and despair so I was think of Yoko Ono's Performance Art and Music. Below is a video of Screaming with John Lennon - I like the idea of screaming and it being a performance of some kind - perhaps in different locations.

Yoko screaming in Get Back (n.d)

I also thought again about experiencing Pippi Lotti Rist in a gallery lying on the floor, the film was celebration of the feminine and it was experiential.  Here is another example of Rist which I think is more about performance and sound 

Pippi Lotti Rist, Wicked Game (1995)

In this song it starts off quite calm and then descends into screaming, I like the visuals and the audio with Rist singing the song until it is incomprehensible screams.  In my own piece, I like the idea of the visual being quite strange so different locations are good but also perhaps different me's, or maybe many repeated me's.  This is multiplicity photography and I have done this before but with more locations and a strong theme I think this could be done well in this project. Here are some examples...

Multiple Boys Example (n.d.)

Multiple Girl Examples (2017)

I need to explore more of these ideas in much more depth however as first thoughts I quite like some of the ideas here. I will be looking at some intended research for my project in my next post and this will help me to develop my final idea for my project. 

Creative Media: Initial Ideas Photography Project

 For this Photography Project as my portrait shots tend to be self-portraits simply for ease of model! I have been re-reading Susan Bright's Auto Focus.  This book is all about the self portrait in Photography and I thought I would share artists that interested me and have sparked some ideas.

I will begin with Ken O'Hara who in the 1970s became known through his portraits of people which were 'tightly cropped headshots, printed in full bleed, with no explanatory text.' (Bright, 2010:28) the repetition of the shots made this an interesting art piece.  He then did the same with himself through the day for many days, the book was like a concertina and his day unfolded through these shots.

Ken O'Hara (circa 1970s) Daily Portraits

The top images are called extreme portraits, I could not find many references to O'Hara on the internet so these were some of the few images I could find there are more in the book).  I liked the idea here of just photographing every part of the day however this is quite a project to undertake in the short time we have.  Also this would be my real day and I do like to stage my photographs so I looked at further artists.

The next artist I looked at was Sunil Gupta who is an Indian-born, Canadian artist who, in his series 'From Here to Eternity' (1995) began when he was diagnosed with HIV.  The shots he created in this series were a self-portrait shot paired with a London Gay Club.  These images I was really taken with as I like the juxtaposition of  his portraits of himself at medical appointments, at home and then showing places that looked closed down, this is a very personal journey but in the images, there are 'links between religion, salvation, colonization and control' (Bright: 2010:42)

Sunil Gupta (1995) From Here to Eternity - Babe/Fist

This idea of the personal links between place and portraits I thought could work well for me as my links to places and myself maybe personal or maybe with a message but it could work the same with just title and the two images.  As I have suffered from the effect of a stroke and my day somewhat works on rituals of medication I think I might like to explore this idea.

The last artist I wanted to share here was Florence Paradeis, this French artist also makes films and her photographs; 'seem like exquisitely edited moments from her films' (Bright, 2010:200).  I liked these images as these 'moments' do not necessarily have any wider meaning they just are images that she states ate 'frames from a film that I didn't get round to making' (Bright, 2010:200) and this makes sense as I can always see image that I have never made and this would be an interesting exercise in quite strange scenes in a frame.

Florence Paradeis, DYKT Woman, 1994, Ilfochrome print laminated on dibond and plasticized, 100 x 148 cm, Courtesy In Situ – fabienne leclerc

Florence Paradeis (1994) Stop

In these particular images it is the performance aspect that attracts me to them I believe we all perform to an extent in the photograph.  

I am now torn between an idea similar to Gupta as this would mean five photos of myself matched with five places - this is certainly very simple to do with the right places and the right idea of the message. This would work within the timeframe and https://artfacts.net/artwork/stop/48230I am almost tempted to create colour images to do this.   The Paradeis images are also an attractive idea as I could create images that are just in my mind and these would be a strange compilation of images however these are more complex precisely because they have remained in my mind! I think overall I will attempt a project like Sunil Gupta - it comes from a different place, a different experience and that is why is could make for a really interesting series. 

References

Bright S. (2010) Auto-Focus: The Self Portrait in Contemporary Photography, Thames & Hudson, London. 

Hales Gallery. (2025). Sunil Gupta - Overview. [online] Available at: https://halesgallery.com/artists/91-sunil-gupta/overview/ [Accessed 19 Jan. 2025].

Advertising: Plutus Bank Final Process & Advert

 This is the final process for my Plutus Bank advert.  I will do this on Photoshop (however students you should use Pixlr as practiced) I will begin by finding an image for my advert as I will use a whole page image as my research showed this is what the other banking adverts did. I searched on Un Splash and Pexels for copyright-free images and I found these images that I thought might work with the subjects around the right aga that I was targeting.

 

        Arielsergey (Unsplash)                      Kampus (Pexels)                          mikhail-nilov (Pexels)

 

      macnalodao (Pexels)                                            Olly (Pexels)

          n-voitkevich (Pexels)                 ron-lach (Pexels)                         vladimir-konoplev (Pexels)

I chose these for the space in the image for text, tagline and logo.

I then opened Photoshop.  Clicked on 'New' in the top menu and in the dialog box clicked on Print in the top menu the A3 then chose 300dpi, a white background and landscape and clicked 'Create'

As most of the images I chose were portrait, I opened my favourite three in Photoshop and I decided on the portrait image therefore I then went to image and image rotation and I rotated 90 degrees to create a portrait canvas. I then clicked on the chosen image tab, clicked on 'Select' in the top menu and then 'Select all'.  I then went to 'Edit' in the top menu and then 'Copy'.  I clicked back to my canvas and then clicked on 'Edit' and then 'Paste'.  I chose this image as the subjects were older and I thought this would have impact immediately if, for instance, it was seen on a bus shelter or similar.

I then wanted to add a text layer so I clicked on 'T' in the left-hand tool menu and then clicked on the canvas, I went to the text tools in the top menu and changed to the font I wanted to use. I chose Elephant at 52pts for the tagline at the top of the image.  The subline at the bottom with the bank name and further tagline was 48pts in capital for the name and 36pts in italics for the tagline.  

I just now needed a logo so I went to adobe express to create one. I created this logo as the banks I looked at all just had typography and no icon so I thought this suited the conventions.

I also created one with a transparent background.  I then went back to Photoshop. went to 'File' and 'Open' and opened my transparent log I then cropped using the crop tool on the left-hand tool menu.  I then Selected the logo as before I clicked on 'Edit' and 'Copy' and then went back to my canvas and clicked on 'Edit and 'Paste'.  I then used the move tool and transform controls to change size and positioning.

Lastly, I saved this both as a psd file and a jpeg and stored on my desktop and my drive. 

This is my final advert for Plutus Bank 

Reflection

I am quite pleased with the outcome here I think it aims at the right target market of Gen X and The image has a good impact and the message is clear throughout.  I could have added this was a Swiss Bank and I could have added a QR code to scan as these are both additions that might bring more traffic to the sign-up to the bank but as an awareness of the bank and finding it would work as the start of a campaign. I really like the logo I think this is great for banking, the other typography could have been better and perhaps I could have worked more on this aspect as I was not quite satisfied with the type.  Overall a good advert though and I was fairly pleased with the result.