Subjective Maps

For my work of art I have done a collage. Whilst I walked through the Olympic Sculpture Park I took pictures of the works of art I saw. After I finished I downloaded them onto my computer and altered them to the proper sizes for my vision. The modified photos were then placed in the order in which I experienced the works.

I made a collage of the pictures that forms a map of the park as I experienced it. In the collage the pictures are placed in the order in which I saw the work depicted. The size of the picture represents how long I spent observing it. The pictures are connected to each other by black lines; the thickness of the black lines varies from work to work. The thickness of the lines is a subjective reference of how far the distance between the two works felt. The pictures are placed on a green background, and a grey frame. The green background represents the lush greenery of the park. While the grey border represents the city of Seattle which surrounds the park.

The work which I have titled “Map” represents subjective time. Its represents time by using the sizes of the pictures and the thickness of the lines to convey the amount of time passed subjectively. It is subjective because I didn’t measure the passage of time nor the distances traveled so it is entirely based on how it felt to me.

This method of representing subjective time is not directly like any other work I have previously seen. However it is comparable to the work of the artist Richard Long. In that Richard Long’s works are photographs of things he experienced serving as subjective maps of his trips. Though it is arguable that it is not representing time but rather embodying subjective time because it was depicting how long it felt rather than representing a specific point in time.

Richard Long, A Line and Tracks in Boliva, 1981. This is a photograph Long took of a trail he left in the dirt when he dragged his feet for several paces. It give the observer a sense of time's passage from his perspective due to the drudgery it conveys.