Carolyn+Becker+Hair

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For this first project of the semester, I decided to base my video off of imagery and concepts in a series of paintings that I created last year; the subject matter in these said paintings include self portraiture and hair. In these works, I was trying to communicate my anxiety induced habit of pulling at/out my hair. This small nervous habit takes up a good chunk of my life and I wanted to run even further with that subject matter in this commencing project.

My video piece was created through stop action animation; the final product is a composition of over two thousand pictures that play one after another to create a video. The subject matter of this piece is simply hair. Before taking pictures, I collected hair that I have pulled out that has collected on my bed, on my clothing, on my desk, and elsewhere. Having collected a substantial amount, I took pictures of me playing with this hair on a white/cream backdrop (a piece of paper). I did not intend to create a narrative, however, when I played with my hair I formed some recognizable imagery such as a person, a circle, and and the letter 'X'.' The other forms consisted of lines, dots, unusual chunks, and etc. The goal of this play and procedure was to take the useless remnants of my anxiety, and interact with the material. Usually the pieces of hair are thrown away on the ground, but this time, I wanted to make use of my habit. The procedure actually made me more anxious because I was physically interacting with something that I cannot stand.

Paired with my video played horrid, high frequency sound waves. I juxtaposed this cringe inducing sound with my playful scene not only because I love absurdity, but also because I want my viewers to become extremely anxious while watching my piece. I want my viewers to feel some of the anxiety that I feel, or at least close.

Source Paintings:



//Hair// Spring 2011 Carolyn Becker Arts 235

Hair is a composition that is not only playful but relatively disturbing ; pieces of real hair move and dance the around the screen accompanied by irritating sound waves to that allow the view via stop action animation; this should allow the viewer to become anxious yet oddly curious.