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Peripheral

Exhibition, Video, Publication

Leeds, England

19-06-2023

Peripheral is a multi-media research project that explores the beauty of what we miss in our day-to-day lives. The work was inspired by psychogeography and the ‘theory of the dérive’ conceptualised by important figures such as Charles Baudelaire, Ivan Chtcheglov, Guy Debord and The Internationale Situationniste. These people, along with the marxist and avant-garde art movements in the 1950s, helped pioneer the idea of the dérive, or more simply the idea of drifting, letting yourself be directed purely by instinct and intrigue, something that we have lost in the age of technology, we can no longer allow ourselves to get lost. In the excersise I conducted I aimed to reconnect myself with my surroundings, with no phone, no map, no music, I listened to the sounds of the city, noticed new elements of buildings I had walked past countless times and and found new passageways between places I vaguely recognised. There is beauty in the things we don’t see and the things that weren’t designed to be seen. Alleyways full of rubbish bins and empty crates, first floor windows revealing unfinished rooms, the sounds of cars from beneath underpasses are all things we miss when we set our destination and allow ourselves to be guided, we can all benefit from releasing some of this control when we aren’t constrained by time.


Video

The body of work consisted of me freely exploring Leeds City Centre and surrounding areas over the space of 2-3 hours, recording the process using a GoPro, allowing me to capture the city as I see it. Once completed, the recording was edited to only allow the viewer to see a small section of what I saw, focussing on the top-left of my peripheral vision and highlighting what occupies the spaces we can’t see. As shown in the video, this displays abstract stills of objects, buildings, people etc. as well as creating unexampled combinations of shape, colour and texture. The sound that accompanies the video also reworks and layers a variety of sounds captured throughout the dérive.


Publication

A 100 image series was taken from the original video and printed as a publication, allowing for more thorough examination of some of these stills. The image layout in the publication takes inspiration from 3D maps, using Ordanance Survey to plot the points in Leeds at which each of the stills are taken. With the publication set landscape, the image position on the Y-Axis is based on the relative altitude at which it was taken in comparison to the rest of the series. The image position on the X-Axis is based on the relative latitude at which it was taken in comparison to the rest of the series. This caused some images to not fit onto the page, due to their relative position being outside of it.


Specifications

Video:

Duration: 02:52
Dimensions: 476 × 394px / 60fps

Publication:

Size: A4 (Double-Sided)
Composition: 100 Pages: 118gsm - Spiral Bound

Conducted: 20th April 2023