Power: Words and Text

Idea: Collage words to create a person standing on top of a pile of debris in a victorious pose

• Compliments/words that are uplifting make up the person

• Put-downs, insults and degrading comments make up the pile of debris

Ways to obtain the words:

• Magazines- probably too difficult and time consuming

• Online (social media)

• Make them up

I decided to use a combination of social media, other places on the internet and the minds of myself and friends in class.

Statistic and Research:

• 939 active hate groups in the US

• Hate speech: direct and serious attacks on any protected category of people

• 3.2 million students are victims of bullying each year.

• Verbal harassment is the most common form of bullying. 

• According to a study conducted in 2005, one out of ten internet users aged between 10 and 17 are victims of bullying.

• 160,000 children skip school each day just to avoid verbal abuse from bullies. 

• Amongst children, verbal assault is mainly based on the facial appearance and behavior of the victim and not religious backgrounds or racial identity.

• Verbal abuse tends to be secretive.

• 83% of bullying incidents receive no intervention and continue to happen

Sources: nobullying.com, www.hiddenhurt.co.uk, simpleacts.org

http://www.silive.com/opinion/letters/index.ssf/2009/04/verbal_bullying_can_be_just_as.html

I found a lot of articles such as this one that talk about verbal abuse which is the main theme of my project. Verbal abuse is a very traumatic thing to experience and I feel like sometimes we overlook it which can cause serious reverberations in the victim's life. It can turn a very happy person into someone who doesn't feel confident in who they are and contemplates taking their life. 

I chose this theme for my project because I believe that verbal abuse is a serious problem in society today. Using the words that are seen in verbal abuse situations make it more of a reality for me and I hope the audience will see it in the same light.

Some people don't realize that just giving simple compliments (pretty, nice, funny, etc.) instead of put downs (ugly, mean, crazy, etc.) can really influence the way a person feels and I tired to emphasize that in my project.

I was originally going to just try to create the person straight from the words but I didn't think that it would work very well because I would have to be precise. So instead I decided to take a silhouette shot and just paste my words over top of it. It will make the project look more realistic.

This is my contact sheet for the silhouette shots. It took me awhile to get the set up right so that her entire body would be in the shot so that her body would be easy to edit and cut out. 

I found an artist named Jamie Poole who uses poetry to create portraits. hee takes the words from the poems and forms people with them. This is kind of like what I want to do and I think that his techniques could help me collage the words effectively.

This is one of his pieces. I think that his motivation behind this piece is to pick a poem that represents the person or has great meaning to them and then actually create the person from that poem. It also connects to the meaning behind my idea because it represents how important words can be to people and how much power just a few words could have on someone's life. I love the intricacy he uses when places the words next to each other to get the wonderful detail that is seen is all of his artwork. I wish I could collage words that intricately but I would definitely need more practice.