Ten days to go before submission to the call mentioned in https://spaces.oca.ac.uk/wallet6/2023/07/23/a-possible-paper/.
This would be my first paper submission (in FA, I know my way around science submissions) and I’d like it to be at least in the correct format for Fine Arts genre.
DRAFT
The Wrong Box and the Wallet
David Wright, Open College of the Arts
David530855@oca.ac.uk
(A bit of the Intro)
A quick glance at the contents of a battered box in my attic was disappointing. I was expecting some articles my mother had saved from my childhood; ancient rugby boots, a slide rule, photos, a travel chess set and school reports, but they weren’t to be seen. I had opened the wrong box. On a closer look I spotted a tattered, smelly, old wallet and picked it up, meaning to throw it out, but decide to look inside. The first surprise was that this skinny wallet, that looked so empty, contained so many items. The first piece of paper I looked at I didn’t recognise initially, then I saw the words ”Security pass” and “Glenridge Campus”. This initiated a Proustian connection, it evoked a whole slice of my life in the mid-nineteen-seventies, when a much younger me was studying for a MSc in Physics at Brock University in Canada. Each further artefact taken from the wallet contributed to my memories of that time period.
Some of these artefacts have suffered with passing time, and I wonder if my perceptions, experiences and memories have also changed and keep changing with time. “Memories had a long half-life.”( McEwan, 2022). The final images represent a reflection on the memories at different stage in my life.
Methodology: Observation of the Mundane; Scanning and Photography; Digital Composites.
Perec (Ref,) advocates the close observance of the mundane and everyday, also repeated observing of the same place as they are the mainstay of our lives and should receive more attention. In this paper I have observed the artefacts from my wallet and the box I found it in which relate to a slice of time in my life and the reflections, experiences and memories of that time. Every time we look at such artefacts and/or reflect on them, our original memories have diminished, we have made new life experiences and our memories undergo transformation. The artefacts have been scanned or photographed, and then placed on separate layers in Photoshop. The digital composite of these ordinary artefacts, and selection of parts of each, the use of different blending modes represents a jumble of memories. By using the same layers, but changing these blending modes and selections, a variation of the original composite is achieved and this represents the transformation of our memories with time.
Pertaining:
Touchstone:
References: Proust, Perec, McEwan.
McEwan, I. (2022) Lessons. London: Vintage Digital.
