When we were asked to make a video sculpture based around an existing work, we were particularly struck by this piece by Frida Kahlo.
We were all struck by her paintings, but this photo is ultimately what we chose to build our piece around. As a piece of physical form, we were interested in making a piece that asked viewers to lie down.
As a bit of homework, we all watched the excellent (yet flawed) Salma Hayek/Julie Taymor film “Frida”. We came away from the film wondering about how different people can view the same piece of art, and how an artist can sometimes lose control of their own creations. Kahlo, as depicted in the movie, lived her artistic life largely in the shadow of her prolific husband. Yet history has remembered Kahlo more fondly than it remembers Diego Rivera. We thought it would be an interesting concept to have one participant laying down and interacting with the piece, without being able to see how the rest of the world views their creations.
So we came up with this. A single participant would be directed to lie down on the bed, and would interact with an outline above them. They would be given different colors to draw with, and those colors would be separated through chroma-keying. Spectators around the user would see colors in a way that the laying down user wouldn’t themselves be able to see. The art changes depending upon who is looking at it. We used Isadora for this part of the project, because that was what I was more comfortable with.
We wanted to prompt the user to sketch at first, then a few minutes in, they would be prompted to recite a Frida Kahlo quote.
The act of reciting that quote would make the full image fade in for all to see. Once the art is complete, society as a whole has a greater context for its appreciation.