Final Piece Plan:
For my A level final piece, my objective was to demonstrate the impacts and effects of air pollution through art. By experimenting with different styles, structures and sources of inspiration, i deduced that the most effective way for presenting the impacts of air pollution holistically, was to create a mixed media collage that incorporated my primary source photographs of ink, people in masks and my London Photos. The significance of each of these set of photos, is that the ink represents air pollution, the people in masks represents humanity and the London photos represent all places. Therefore by having these three aspects, through effective layering, i can connote how air pollution impacts both people and places.
To the left, is the plan for the structure of my final piece, which will be a mixed media collage that will be 60 cm by 120cm. How i was able to create this final piece can be seen above, where i drew multiple sketches and experimented with different layouts and photos to form the digital collage. In each of the layouts, they all have similar photos, since as stated in my previous annotation, i want to emphasise how air pollution affects both people and places. In my final piece plan, i also gave a list of materials that will be used to form the mixed media collage. These were all materials that i experimented with throughout the investigation and the materials that i determined were the best for presenting my ideas.
To create the collage on the left, i was informed by my numerous previous experiments that were inspired by Alex Williamson. I decided to create the structure of the final piece digitally since it enabled me to enhance colours and highlights, to determine what is the best aesthetic for the final piece. However, once i made the structure digitally, i wanted to make the final piece physically, since through previous experiments i discovered that the textures of a collage help enhance its appearance.
Below shows every step that i took to create this digital collage. It was made on Pixlr and created in the same way that my previous digital collages were created. As shown, the collage uses numerous primary source photos from each of my series.
7,000,000
91% OF
PEOPLE
EXPOSED
7,000,000
7,000,000 A
YEAR DIE BY
POLLUTED AIR
SEVERE
Adding Data
To emphasise the impacts of air pollution, i also wanted to incorporate statistics and data into my collage as i had seen Alex Williamson effectively do this with several of his collages. Alex Williamson layers both images and text to reflect his ideas on particular topics. For my final piece i am also going to incorporate data so that the viewer can not just see how air pollution affects both people and places, but also read and learn legitimate data. I learnt through my previous experiments that to print text on physical paper, the best method of doing so is by using lino prints. Therefore, to the left shows the text and the layout of the different statements i will make, but in the actual final piece, i will create these statistics by using lino prints that i created in advance. I also experimented with different colours that the text could be, however i found that a light red was the most striking, as it fit the aesthetic but stood out against the darker shades of red and black.
I collated this data from the WHO (World Health Organisation) website, which posts current information on the impacts and effects of air pollution. I thought that the most impactful statistics were that 91% of the population are exposed to air pollution and that 7,000,000 people a year die by this polluted air. Moreover i printed the number 7,000,000 a couple times to emphasise how this is a significant proportion of people dying. I also printed the word 'SEVERE' onto the piece, since if air pollution was to be summarised with one word, that would be it.