Leigh Wasson

Internship: Numero Group

Internship Goals – Numero Group

So far at my internship I’ve completed a wide variety of tasks ranging from recording and editing a podcast, illustrating a t-shirt design, calling the senior purchaser for every major art and historical museum in the country, to breaking down boxes.  The podcast project is an extensive and on going project, completing 10 podcasts before the end of my semester is my main goal at Numero Group. I am also already invested in a two other on going projects. The first is meticulously searching for every track released by Numero on Youtube and emailing copy write infringement complaints to Youtube if any of these tracks are hosted. I’m also compiling a database of all words relevant to Numero releases and plugging them into the website so a search function will be available. As it stands there is no search bar on the website and it is fairly difficult to find a record unless you know the exact title of the release. For example if you know one artist on Eccentric Soul : The Capsoul Label, but don’t know this title it’s impossible to find without looking through every release. This data bass will also greatly increase the links displayed from a Google search, which will inevitably draw more traffic to the Numero website.

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Reflecting back on my initial goals for my internship at the Numero Group I’ve realized that my tasks did shift to a few unexpected places, but mainly remained the same.

·      I completed 5 podcasts, hoping for 10 was a bit over ambitious, however I’m still very happy with the amount of podcasts I finished, but moreover the I’m proud of the quality of each show.

·      I assisted with the ridiculous amount of orders that came through for the Syl Johnson box set release. This box set was their much anticipated release of the year, which meant at times I unboxed and re-boxed like mad.  

·      I scanned and edited many archival photographs, vinyl jackets, and records that were being used for research into upcoming releases.

·      Tape transfers, converting tape audio to digital files. 

Independent Study Project

CrowdNoize Designs

For my ISP I documented the design process of creating work to be used for the start up online business, CrowdNoize.com. CrowdNoize is a web based resource that lists electronic and hiphop events in Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison, and Minneapolis. The design work that I completed is being used on all four city’s websites as well as business cards and promotional material. For my ISP presentation I printed the highlights of this design work and suspended them using carabineers and fishing wire. On a television screen adjacent to the prints I displayed the home pages of the four CrowdNoize branches.

CrowdNoize was started my close friend of mine Domingo Meneses and friend of his Patrick Welby. Both Domingo and Patrick have experience and connections in the Chicago music industry so developing a resource to show case underground music events was a natural development of their interests. I was brought in help design the website and creative a visual identity for CrowdNoize. I wanted my designs for CrowdNoize to have a unique and elegant aesthetic. It was also important the designs were simplistic enough so they could use used effectively in various visual contexts.

            My Engage Chicago is actually closely linked to my ISP project with CrowdNoize because it to was focused on connecting with live music in Chicago. Over the course of the semester I attended a variety of different concerts, shows, or house parties which hosted some form of live music. The videos that I captured from these events were later uploaded to a blog where I wrote a short description and review of my experience.  

            I really enjoyed all of the music that saw, but more importantly the Engage Chicago project encouraged me to experience new venues and music. Exploring Chicago through different music scenes was the best way, in my opinion, to witness the variety of creativity and eccentric beauty of this city. Whether is was a local dubstep DJ playing grimy bass heavy tracks in an underground bar or visiting the cultural center during the world music festival, the dedication and devotion of Chicago to music and art is undeniably unique and thriving.   

Resume

Download Resume 

so says the preacher man

so says the preacher man

Why is this?

Why is what?

Exactly

What?

Never mind, trains’ coming

I feel it before I see it, I’m told rituals have something to do with devotion, I’ve only seen apathy.  Then again maybe I’m not ritualizing right.

I’ve witnessed it before, “The Idea” but never been close enough to see it. I feel it before I see it, but that’s a lie. I mean I’ve seen its reflections, but by the time I see its true magnificence, its fragmented, or worse, constructed

It comes down to space and time, I can grasp that much at least

And regulars, I suppose

I do believe people want to live here

People want to live here. People want to live here.

The crossroads of America,

 Where “Long Live the King” once dyed the walls

Festival of life, music lights free theater magic, strangled by Hollywood Chicago

I catch a lonely/beautiful glimpse of a beautiful/lonely girl

The relieving sway, metal arranged on steel wandering into neighborhoods obscures the light on the south side, Wrigley could be proud.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

This is the stop we need to get off at right, get off at LaSalle right?

No

It was,

but we’ve got too much to talk about. Enough space, shared ownership of space, just not enough time

9:54pm

Got ham city?

Gotham city, get it?

I wonder if they knew what they were doing. Upton gets it. Twisted and Shouting

Who runs zoning uptown, not us, you just do what you’re told, but I guess that’s why you’re a good listener huh?

That was out of blue line, I apologize. I guess I have a tendency to overstate the obvious

I’m tired of lying that I’m not scared to dying

 But I’ve been meaning to ask you my friend, are the rewards really worth the price?

Do you ever feel like the car is on fire, but there’s no one at the wheel? 

The twisted metal in corrupt orange haze?

Massive urban destruction, I mean landmark buildings, irreplaceable stuff, Sully terra cotta shit.

How do you make peace with it all?

All gone but wife children and energy

I knew him, I pretend like I didn’t, but I knew him

It’s not real, clap for the Mayor, it’s not real

I’ve been told it’s a tough son of a bitch packaged in a luxury rail car

Rippin’ every fucking thing you do

Sully didn’t give two fucks about that though

Only the idea was the important thing

JOY/Cut

KOMA

The concept of Koma is that of someone coming in contact with inorganic beings that exist in some sub-conscience, sub-unverisal realm. It is a first hand internal dialogue of someone drifting out of life, consciousness, and human form. There are sporadic instances of intense flashes of light that are characteristic to sever migraines and loss of consciousness, which develop a disorienting feel.   
I drew inspiration from the work of Ben Frost and Tarkovsky, I found this quote from Tarkovsky’s film Stalker particularly interesting and relevant- 

“Here we are at the threshold. This is the most important moment of your lives. You have to know that here your most cherished wish will come true. The most sincere one.
The one reached through suffering.”  -Stalker 

Logo Project

This is my personal logo designed from a photograph taken of me preforming a live drum set which was coordinated to a simultaneous DJ set. I used photoshop and illustrator to digitally recreate the image in a much more simplistic clean form.    

Untitled - Juxtaposition Project

This is a photograph of my interactive juxtaposition project. Willing applicants are able to wear a unique cloak which hides their appearance and replaces it with an alternative. An unlimited number of varieties are possible depending on participant and the alternative body projection. 

Ideas and 6 Photographers

Artist Statement

For this project I continued with the process of layering photos in Photoshop using different blending modes and color adjustments. However with this project I was able to use the subject matter and photo editing technique to convey some underlying themes. This body of work references the anonymity and energy of a music concert atmosphere.

Much of my previous work has incorporated live music shows as the subject matter. I really enjoy shooting in this atmosphere because the environment allows for rare moments when people relinquish their inhibitions and exude spontaneous and energetic movement. Peoples motions are to longer constrained to rational regularity, but instead encouraged to move in random and wild ways. I’m also very interested in the anonymous atmosphere of the crowd as a whole. A crowd will appear to move as one unified entity shifting their form in relation to the changes in music.

In my work I’ve attempted to capture some of the elements of the concert crowd by isolating a single person, but retaining this notion of anonymity. Most of the subjects are suspended in air or somehow in motion. Their faces have been covered with colorful towels and cloth. The layering technique effectively alludes to the idea of progressive time and emphasizes the message of movement and energy.  By isolating the individual these photos explore the energy mixed with the abstract and anonymous nature of the concert crowd. 

I love the soft overlay of color in Christopher Schreck’s photography. The color gradient and the hazy lightness creates a beautiful dreamlike quality. The juxtaposition between warm and cool colors that creates an interesting balance within the photo. I was able to manipulate the colors in my photos in a way to highlight a similar relationship of warm and cool tones. 

I found the physical form of this Ryan Johnson sculpture very interesting. I like his play with the idea of suspension and layering of material. Johnson’s sculptures gave me the idea to layer the clothing of the subjects in my work and inspired an interest in the illusion of spacial suspension.

I really like the ambiguous nature of Liam Henry portrait photographs. His photos focus mainly on the environment of his subjects rather than the subjects themselves. The lighting is really interesting as the foreground as most appears to be artificially backlit, where the background appears to be completely naturally lit by sunlight. This contradiction creates an interesting tension within the photo.   

Oliver Barton captures a sense of raw fleeting emotion and individualized personality with in his portraits. Although I didn’t shoot my project in a style that captured individual personalities, I was very interested in expressing an instantaneous and fleeting emotion in my portraits. 

This Tierney Gearon photo uses the double exposure technique to highlight the underlying theme of change and coming of age. We see two young girls with their backs turns wearing white dresses and holding a large bundle of balloons. The white of the dresses and these colorful balloons could symbolize the innocence and purity of childhood. The photo of the young girls is layered with a photo of two older teenage girls, which could very well the future selves of the younger girls. This might explain why the young girls backs are turned; they are seeing through time to what they will become. It is interesting that the older girls are not looking back at their younger selves, but instead seem either distracted or uninterested. Their positioning along with the bright red dressed, the color of passion, may be relating to a theme of loss of childhood innocence. I think this use of double exposure is very well to develop meaning with in Gearon’s work 

Mark Gerwing layers two similar images through a double exposure technique. I like that he uses the recognizable image of a house, but through this layering process creates a completely new and interesting form. Similarly in my work I am interested in layering similar images over one another to create something new and more abstract.  

Oliver Barton

Oliver Barton is a skateboard photographer who works for Transworld Skateboarding  Magazine. Barton has a very unique style of shooting skateboarding and he pays close attention the natural and staged lighting. The intense and rapid nature of skateboard movement is amplified by every element of his photography from the dramatic lighting, to the dynamic angle, color, shadow, contrast and texture seen in his photos. He has developed a very interesting personal style of capturing skateboarding. 

Barton also works in portraiture, but continues to use skateboarders as his subjects. His portraits are much less dynamic in the way they are shot, but instead he lets the subjects themselves explain the story. While is skateboard photography implies modern and progressive instantaneous moments frozen in time, his portraits seem to reference a sense of nostalgia or memory implied through a greater sense of time. His portraits also portray the personalities and lifestyles very effectively, his work has an almost film like or story telling quality about it. 

Trace Crit-Response

I think that my photos for the Trace Project worked well together as a group. I had flipped two of the photos horizontally, which helped quite a bit to create a balance through the whole photo set. The diagonal direction of the light was mirrored on both sides of the photo group. I really enjoyed experimenting with the layer blending option in photoshop and I’m excited to see where else I can use this technique in the future. I’m wondering what kind of effects I might be able to get by holding the camera and subject completely still and only adjusting the settings of the camera and then layering those slightly altered photos with the blending mode…

There were also some very helpful critiques of my photo project. Although I think my photos did work well as a group, I do understand why some people thought the individual photos were too abstract or muddled to follow. Overall I really enjoyed the process of this project because of the new techniques I started to experiment with. Although the final product of these photos was not my strongest, I think that what I’ve learned through creating them with ultimately help me create stronger work in the future.