Fear from Playing Games: A Junior Conceptual Project by Rachel Michaels (2014)

The concept of my Experimental project is ''fear from playing games''. I took this theme and interpreted it to mean that people only hear what they want to hear. People sometimes say things in order to evoke a certain response, versus their real answer. Therefore forming the assertion that we only hear what we want and are able to block out all the rest. I incorporated this idea into my Experimental by creating a person; But as you can see, this doesn't look like a normal person. The person has an ear in place of their head, reinforcing the idea I mentioned above. Additionally, I have some marionette strings grasping onto the person; This represents the act of being tied up and in a difficult spot, because you may not be hearing the truth, which could lead to problems later on. The background image is of a crowd of people, to again represent the little exchanges we ''plan'' to have with others.

To create my ear person, I first traced an ear in Illustrator. Once I completed that, I traced and filled the body to go with the ear (also in Illustrator). I decided to go with Illustrator because of the pen tool. It made tracing my images so much easier and less time consuming. Next, I traced (by hand) the marionette strings with the help of a lightbox. After it had been traced, I used colored pencils to finish it off. I needed to add in a fine art element of a different medium than something else in my piece, so I thought it would be a simple way to achieve that while still maintaining a certain level of interest in my piece. Then, I used the scanner to scan my creations into the computer and place them in my Illustrator file with my ear person. The color of the collar of my ear person is violet, which signifies fear, again reinforcing my concept statement.