For this project, I decided to hold a camera to my head, right at eye level, and film myself going about my daily business. The idea was to invert the traditional self portrait dynamic of looking into a person from the outside. I figured that this method would actually provide a far more accurate view into the experience of being myself than an artistic construct.
The results are attached. It shows me coming out of the SciLi, walking back to my room in home sweet Keeney and then eating some berries and reading Vanity Fair. I would have liked to do it in a continuous shot but the silly memory card would only do a few minutes of video at a time, hence the jumpiness. It's excruciatingly boring. I had meant for it to be longer, but after reviewing the footage I realised I didn't want to inflict any more of this on you.
However, the video does reveal something interesting about self-portraiture. This video is a 100% accurate depiction of myself, I didn't edit it, add music or stage anything. It shows exactly what I see, the angle of my head and the rhythm of my steps. However, it totally fails to communicate anything about who I am.
This goes back to the question of "what is art?" Some people say art represents life. I learned from this project that art which absolutely imitates life is not art at all. Paradoxically, the unrealistic construct of an oil painting portrays the reality of a person far more effectively than a straight-up duplication of their life.
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