CONCEPT & EXPLANATION
From the corner of an eye, a figure comes into view, a few colors shift
across the field of vision, information is rapidly compared, sorted,
and processed.
Is this story talking about eyes or about cameras?
As we navigate our society, faces and identity are scanned and processed
hundreds of times a day. Does it make a difference whether it's done by humans or by machines?
This piece is about the relationship between organic-life and machines.
Fairly quickly I had some kind of base idea down, I wanted to photograph my friends and use their eyes to cover the sweater.
I made pictures with my digital camera and turned them into negatives, so they could be used for cyanotype.
When I made a digital mockup for myself I realized I wanted to leave some open space to create a gigantic tag on the sweater.
Most of the times shirtlabels are small and hidden on the inside of garments. I wanted to completly switch it up and make a gigantic tag on the outside.
While I was working on this project late at night I could hear a hard snapping sound from outside of my room.
For some context; I live in the middle of nowhere in a wooded area with lots of wildlife, It has its pro's but on of the cons is mice. These forest mice always infiltrate our house in search of warmth and food.
The snap I heard was a fallen mice soldier caught in one of the micetrap's we have on our attic.
As I went to check on him I realized that this was also a unique and weird relation between machine and organic life.
I turned the pictures into a two tone for screenprinting usage to use in later projects if I ever see so fit.
I also started working on turning it into a tag I could sew into the sweater, I used the two tone I made for the screenprinting and enhanced the ‘machine’ part of this story by including all the file-branches on my computer. Decorating the rest of the tag are all my folders named out in connection to eachoter.
After I made the first version, I quickly decided to drop the white background, I knew my cyanotype eyes would all come out darkblue-black on the red fabric of the sweater so I decided to make te label black and red aswell.
The text, sizing/resolution and lighting was also redone to fit better with the sweater.
I started burning the eyes onto the sweater, using a UV-Lamp made for reptiles and snakes I turned a cardboard box into a makeshift UV-box.
Each eye had to be lit individually for 25/35 minutes to be burnt in sharply.
I’d say about 60% of the eyes turned out pretty sharp, ofcourse with a count this high (49 to be exact) theres bound to be some less good ones.
The studs were introduced into the project to give the piece more weight. Both physically as visually these studs are heavy. Being 160mm long they’re far longer than your standard punkstuds.
11 of them were added. Seven in the front of the sweater, one on each two shoulders and the final two were placed on the back
I also sewed in a ISDB-eye tag on the conventional label spot.
More ISDB-eye tags can be found on the outside bottom of the sweater decorating the bottom.
The cuffs were slightly distressed by hand using dentist-tools. making sure the inside layer of the sweater stayed intact while damaging the outside. It adds to the overall vibe of the garment and is some nice little detailing not seen on first glance.
