In / Between - Final Thesis Project

Today, we find ourselves in a creative industry that is increasingly infinite and fluent. Driven by the drastic development of our media environment in the last decade, today’s creative disciplines merge to a single category.

The work In / Between deals with this boundlessness of creative disciplines and the integration of this idea onto a personal creative practice.

While exploring the subject of boundaries and how they manifest themselves through opposites, the space between certain opposites became an integral part of this project. The concept of the “in-between” was elaborated within this work and used as a method for cultural and artistic productions, which can be assigned to both the space between the two opposites, as well as the area within of the terms itself.

The following socially relevant pairs of opposites were selected and their boundaries and interspaces explored: flat & spatial, facts & fiction, original & appropriation, abstract & concrete.

In / Between includes personal and collaborative works from different creative disciplines using various image and object based mediums.

Final Thesis, 2019
Supervised by Prof. Nina Juric & Prof. Michael Gais

Selected Thesis Projects

Offline Images
(original & appropriation)

Offline Images is a range of photographs of which no digital copies exist. Each individual image of this series has been developed from a single photo negative. The negative was treated with chemicals and modified after a single development in the darkroom, before a new print was made.

The untreated image shows a non-figurative motif, in this specific case a grayish gradient. In the first two steps, the negative was placed into an acidic liquid. Thereby it was possible to observe how the emulsion of the negative partially detached in the first phase and started to dissolve during the second phase. After destroying the image material, black pigments were added onto the negative, which contained the remaining emulsion, using a mixture of acrylic paint and water. After a final treatment with an acidic solution, the emulsion and the pigments completely dissolved from the picture carrier. The finished work shows four original pictures, of which only one print and no longer reproducible copy exists. In addition, a print of the destroyed negative was developed and presented together with the physical negative.

Textilcollagen
(abstract & concrete)

The project Textilcollagen in collaboration with the textile designer Madeleine Sahl, refers to the cut-out practice of the French artist Henri Matisse.

In the first step a lettering of the word “Matisse” was developed and digitally abstracted to create abstract geometric forms. These forms were cut out of fabric and sewn onto three different textiles. In another step, each of these textiles were cut apart into 5 pieces. All pieces were then mixed together and systematically reassembled. Due to the reassembly, the geometric shapes were abstracted further. The final work shows three different textile collages, featuring new geometric shapes.

Frischhaltefolie
(abstract & concrete)

This project deals with the visual quality of everyday objects. For this work, everyday materials were taken out of their usual environment and scanned with a flatbed scanner.

The final pictures show visually abstract and, at the same time, very concrete motifs of plastic wrap, since the images represent nothing else but the material itself on a black background. This work offers a different perspective of an everyday material and focuses on its visual quality, while placing its function temporarily on hold.

Deconstructed Jacket
(original & appropriation)

Deconstructed Jacket is the product of a collaboration with the fashion designer Charlotte Werth.

For this project, an already existing piece of clothing was selected and transformed through several steps, to create something new. During the design process parts of a used trench coat were cut apart and reconstructed in combination with other fabrics. Afterwards, additional graphic elements were added to frame the newly-used fabrics in a visual manner and to create an additional visual layer within this new garment. 

990, 998, 801
(flat & spatial)

The project 990, 998, 801 shows a translation of three-dimensional objects onto a two-dimensional surface.

With the help of a hand-held scanner, the surfaces of selected New Balance sneakers were captured in several scanning processes and joined together digitally. Due to the hardly available depth of field, during scanning, and the movability of the hand-held scanner, it was possible to capture the entire outer surface of the shoes after many scanning processes.

Exposed Table
(flat & spatial)

The work Exposed Table was created in collaboration with the product designer Carsten in der Elst. For this project, found metal pieces were welded together to build a bar table.

The material available became a decisive parameter in the design process and thus had a significant influence on the final shape of the table. While Carsten was welding together the metal pieces, I captured the welding process photo documentarily using a long-term exposure. 

A composition of this image was then transferred onto the object itself. This allowed, the otherwise invisible manufacturing process to be visualized and integrated into the design of the final work.

Fujifilm VS. Photoshop
(abstract & concrete)

The Project Fujifilm VS. Photoshop is a series of images, which explore and question the boundaries between photographs and graphics.

Some images, in this series, were made by photographing an iridescent acrylic film, while the others are completely computer-generated. Visually it is difficult to differentiate the photographs from the graphics or the other way around. Furthermore, both types of images are presented together as a sequence, which suggests that all images are created through the same process.

Only the title of each image reveals the origination process, since they are named by the automatically generated titles of the camera apparatus and the image processing program Photoshop.

1. DSCF2874.RAF
2. DSCF2969.RAF
3. Unbenannt-1.psd
4. Unbenannt-2.psd
5. DSCF2930.RAF

Photo Sculptures
(flat & spatial)

This experiment deals with the spatial aspects of a printed image. Bubble wrap, a three-dimensional material was digitally scanned and printed out afterwards. These photoprints were then folded and staged in a spatial setting. With the help of folding techniques, those images were given spatiality. Simultaneously, the images were shown in a context, which enabled a different view on these pictures. 

Opinions Are Facts
(facts & fiction)

The Statement Posters Opinions Are Facts deal with the relationship between art and design. These two disciplines portray a complex relationship and the discourse about their differences and similarities seem endless. A general opinion is, that art experiences a certain autonomy, whereas design has to have a practical use. This project questions the stated hypothesis by turning it around and offering statements against it. 

Constructed Scans
(facts & fiction)

The work Constructed Scans shows three collages, which were created through a single scanning process and then merged together digitally.

For the images, a composition of acrylic films and flowers were staged onto a flatbed scanner. During the scanning process, individual objects were moved in order to create distorted images. Due to the movement, the scans become constructed, but also represent a physical reality of the respective moment during the scanning process.
In addition to that, the scanning process provides a certain randomness, since you can only guess about the look of the finished picture, due to the placement of the objects, but you cannot control it exactly.

This aspect of a “controllable randomness” was integrated in a second step, where parts of each scan where added to the others, with the help of the “Magic Wand Tool” in Photoshop.
Similar as in the step before, you can control the selected parts of the image only to a certain degree. In this step parts of each image were merged together, to such an extent, that an identification of the original image was not possible anymore. Therefore, in the last step, the collages were further edited, so that the initial color of each image appeared again in a dominant manner.