Out of Focus
By Fleurine Brijker
In Out of Focus Fleurine Brijker introduces the audience to her online persona – the dreamer. Showing a collection of her latest obsessions – extracted from viewing-habit data – Fleurine narrates her dreamer's mind which tends to get lost between fiction and reality. The dreamer’s mind opens an undefined space where both reality and fiction play along in the same story. While intrigued by this space that is created, she must beware the influence of fiction and the set expectations that come along with it.
Research
In what intensity did movies shape my expectations for real life? How far do I let my dreams crawl into my ‘sober’ mind? Is my dreamer’s mind a part of myself I can enjoy, or is it an unhealthy coping mechanism to escape reality? By diving into my own online use, I am investigating the common ground between my dreamer’s, my online and my sober persona.
Sources
[1] Wyatt Moss-Wellington (2019) Nescus: The emotional politics of limerence in romantic comedy films. https://necsus-ejms.org/about-necsus/
[2] Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic (2015) The Guardian: How different are your online and offline personalities? https://www.theguardian.com/media-network/2015/sep/24/online-offline-personality-digital-identity
[3] Liam Bullingham and Ana C. Vasconcelos (2013) ResearchGate: “The Presentation of Self in the Online World”: Goffman and the Study of Online Identities. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258152668_The_Presentation_of_Self_in_the_Online_World_Goffman_and_the_Study_of_Online_Identities
[4] TV Tropes: All Just A Dream / Live-Action Films. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/AllJustADream/LiveActionFilms
Data
For this project I worked with my image waste data from Youtube. I collected this by requesting my data history via Google > Youtube, here I got a good insight of my use in the past years.
Prototypes & Experiments
The project started off in the green-screen studio, where I was experimenting with an extra layer for the video. The plan was to have the "persona" in the video interacting with the footage, however in the end I scrapped this from the video, since the idea felt irrelevant and the footage with narration on its own was working.
Outcomes
In Out of Focus you will be viewing some of my favourite movies, the ones that stuck.