Self directed- workshop

Exploration and mind mapping

Glitter bullet

It could be a resin bullet and just a collection of them, maybe in a bullet container. Or I could make a video shooting the bullets either in the frame as an ad or just showing how cool they are and describing the military advantages of glitter. Could be a glimpse into modern warfare, covered in dust and glitter. I could bedazzle a gun and then pretend to shoot glitter out of it.

I think what all I can think about is that the combination of war and glitter is a really weird, great juxtaposition.

Gambling in Australia

this is a topic I would like to focus on, and I am not seeing much art on it. And in Australia, it is a huge problem as opposed to other countries; we have some of the worst gambling, pokies and sports betting in the whole world. And my conversations with young men often include talking about their winnings from the weekly sporting matches (as young as 15) Because, in general, AFL and other sports are for families to watch; when you go to games, the crowds are composed of families or smaller groups of people that have bought their friends. It is illegal to advertise gambling to young people in Australia, but because these shows are televised later at night is considered appropriate even if it is family-friendly watching.

I also want to consider the people gambling and the culture around it; they are almost synonymous. If you are someone who can “understand” all the statistics, that seems impressive and cool. When people only talk about winning (because losing is embarrassing), they think it is a closer option than statistically. People tend to have the sense that “but I am different, I am inherently more special, and I have a better chance than other people”, which is nothing wrong with that. That is part of being human. I am not sure that any art piece could convince someone that that is not true, and I don’t think that I would want to.

So here lies the problem of how to draw attention to the Australian problem, whilst knowing that thousands of people and organisations are trying to do this. But how would an art piece become culturally significant or even just relevant? with this widespread and dangerous issue? Affecting youth and old people (pokies)

• I could make some pokies pants (inbuilt odour-reducing nappies)
• I could make a huge pile of unsuccessful scratchies or unsuccessful lottery tickets.
• make a collection of Facebook groups or fliers for a youth sports-bet club
• I could be boring and make a documentary of youth gambling (interview kids)
• I could display some of these as ads in local newspaper (Gisborne Gazette)

Kpop x Woodside

I wanted for my cover project to make a parody video of the K-pop girl group NewJeans.

why I choose to cover this particular group is because I find its whole existence unsettling.

• all members are minors (as young as 13)
• they are forced to not live with their families
• they have to drop out of high school
• forced to get plastic surgery
• are not paid until they pay off their debts from training (which is often multiple years)
• regularly work 15 hour days, and when they get home their dorm is monitored with cameras
• if they don’t agree or want to do something their company is asking of them, their jobs are threatened. i.e “if you don’t get this plastic surgery you wont be a part of the group”
• And they are incredibly popular amongst young people and children

and this is the part that I want to specifically reference. Because of this mass appeal and especially to children. certain companies that are not allowed to advertise to children are flocking to this kpop group and sponsering them. this includes McDonalds, Apple, Coca Cola. with NewJeans even making a song directly for Coke zero. I find this all incredibly insidious especially when all this information is available to the public yet there has been no major backlash, people are okay with abusing these minors because the music and music videos they are a part of are trendy and exciting. I also wanted to make art on how overt these ‘sell outs’ are and make the most obvious and insidious sell out sponsorship of the Australian petroleum mining company Woodside !

I chose specifically this company and specifically mining companies because they are often sponsors of large high brow cultural establishments such as Opera and Ballet. as a way of showing how civilised ther companies are but also to gain access to certain sponsorship events.

So I wanted to combine these two concepts to create and insidious and uncanny creation, specifically a kpop photo album. Which is basically sold alongside a CD of the album to bolster sales as they often sell for $50. like the one I have included below

This one us a collaboration with the Power Puff girls. so I want to recreate this object with, using AI to make a fake Girl group and try and make it really overt that this is wrong in every way.

I plan on printing these AI photos into a small book, as well as having the ‘photocards’ and stickers that are essential part of these Albums.

For the final piece I think I will make an Unboxing video, which are super popular on youtube. i want to do this so I can contextualise the object more as not many people in Australia are well versed with this cultural phenomenon. I have left an example of one down below (you absolutely do not need to watch it, maybe just zoom through it to understand the format).

Beginning of trials

I have been using midjourney as I find having the two subtle variation buttons for subtle and intense variation are really helpful. it means I can refine it to something I actually wanted.

I plan on using AI and specifically midjourney

Because of the nature of AI I can never get the same face twice from the same prompt. I want the final album to look really clean and believable so having faces that constantly change wont work. I found that if I use prompts such as ‘in the style of a character page, or photo series, fashion editorial’ . i would get many faces that look like the same person.

these are the options it gave me. Number 2 (top right) was the most successful as it actually looks like a photo and the head is turned different angles. I then made 100’s more trying to refine the angles, lighting, expressions and faces.

These are some of the later results

Once I ‘made’ 5 of these ‘people’ I started creating fashionable bodies that i imagine would look good for a kpop concept.

these are what i landed on which i really liked, they looked very fashion forward anreferences ‘tech-wear’ which is very popular in kpop fashion.

the reason i created all the faces prior and the bodies second is so i can try and create angles that match the original faces so i don’t have to distort them. and so they can look consistent throughout the entire piece.

This was my first time ever using photoshop and this was the first result, luckily there are millions of videos on youtube and i plan to get better as that is integral to this piece working.

The ‘Team Woodside”, is because I want this concept to look like a sports team sponsored by Woodside, it will also hopefully highlight the youth element and allude to the fact that they are all underage.

Wil form

This is my second attempt at photoshopping the face, which I am quite pleased with.

Now I will begin creating the final photos.

I began by making a plethora of photos on mid-journey, I then sorted through them and found which photo would match which face best. I found focusing on the angle of the nose was the best key to success.

As Journey makes images at incredibly low res, I upscaled all the photos multiple times. It did do some smoothing but not too noticeable so I didn’t mind.

I then made this set-up to plan how everything was going to go, this photo was from when I had done lots of work and needed to edit it .

I then started editing the photos to get ready for the final magazine. i took some ‘ stickers’ from Pinterest to make it more cutesy and align with the current styles in kpop.

I also wanted to include some physical stickers, for the album unboxing. as this is a staple in all kpop photo albums. but i have no ability to make convincing stickers, and if i were to order them it would take too long to be delivered. so I ordered some stickers online, then took the digital version and ‘”stuck” them all over the album so they would look liked they were made for this album. instead of the other way around.

I photoshopped the images on the same page so i could make them look good together when they are folded flat. for example

This page is a ‘get to know’ page and shows personal information about the members. I took this directly from a group, and I altered some of the information to make it more insidious. the last or second last quote, is about Woodside.
“Jiwon thinks more woodside means happier communities and Jiwon wants people to be happy” . I tried to write it so it looked like a child could say that, but a child would never say that.

so I made 20 more pages, including a front and back cover (this took 6 weeks). I had planned to get the album professionally printed, but with my timing, it wasn’t possible. I also realised since it is only going to be a prop for a video, the quality doesn’t have to be that good. it just has to be legible and clean enough for the camera.

I then tried to format it into a booklet so i could print it at home, but for some reason all the software that meant to be able to wasn’t working. I think my laptop had recently updated and put all the tutorials i had been watching out of date.

so i figured out the formatting myself (it was very stressful) but i succeeded.

Paper for the win!

This is how the formatted pages looked like.

This took me quite a while as I believed the printer could smell my fear and frustration and refused to cooperate.

once everything was finished, I started on the actual making of the physical album.

I covered the front cover with a clear film to make it look more professional and sturdy.

I then made the box that all of it is stored in using an old cereal box

I then printed out these photos of faces from two of the members. these are photocards, which come with kpop albums. they are often traded like sports cards and can sometimes be sold for a lot of money, depending on how rare the issue is and how favourable the idol is. So i made two using more cardboard and clear film.

I then covered the box with printed paper, and after that with more clear film.

I also printed some text of ‘woodside’ and ‘harmonicae’ and put some clear film on them to make pretend stickers. I think they are very convincing. I wish I had thought of that sooner, so I could’ve made lots. I also covered a cd envelope with some paper and a sticker, to cover up the original cover and to make more cute things to add to the goodies.

I then put all the goodies and photo albums in the box and cling wrapped the outside, then used a hair dryer to shrink it to the box. I found a barcode sticker on an old book and stuck it to the back for some realism.

This was also my lighting and filming set-up. I chose to film on my phone camera as that is how lots of YouTube unboxing videos are filmed, and I think the quality will help hide some of the subtle construction mistakes.

I used the pale chopping board as it is a bit cleaner than my water-damaged desk.

I tried to film it all in one go, so there were minimal cuts. I also tried to read every portion that referenced Woodside, so it isn’t too obvious or on the nose. It is still almost believable.

I wrote some music for this video, but only 2 minutes worth. So I used instrumentals of other K-pop groups, which is something that is normal in other unboxing videos.

The little green portion is the music I wrote.

And tada. my final piece. I would like to think you found it on YouTube after listening to some pop music and found yourself transported to another world. (yes, it is meant to look a bit dodgy. The video is meant to look homemade. But the book is professional)