An amazing visit today to the National Modern Galleries of Scotland, exploring NOW and Cut and Paste: 400 Years of Collage, the second of the two in particular gave me a lot of exciting ideas for experimentation and development in the coming weeks.

I thought it would be interesting to respond to a newspaper article in the form of concertinas, booklets or a DIY newspaper dedicated to various articles covering the same story. I don’t often consider collage but today, having seen such a varied range of materials, styles and subjects, I have realised they can respond to emotions, atmospheres, sounds and evoke strong emotion in the viewer in the same ways oil painting can for example.

Though not wholly in-keeping with the brief, John Heartfield’s mask shown above inspired me to produce one out sheets of The Sun newspaper: Blinded By The Sun. This is not to say that The Sun or News International are solely to blame for the misinformation of the public on social issues, but they as a brand have come to embody a biased and unjust media culture.

Back to brief:

In the early morning duality was suggested as a theme to consider, and when returning to the pages of The Courier post-exhibition I considered a response to the jarring contrasts and oppositions to be found between stories occupying the same page. A local (Fife) issue with the cost of a children’s round of golf can be read adjacent to a fatal boating accident off the coast of California. The localities and consequences of these ‘stories’ are so disparate, yet they share thirds of a page (the final third belonging to some discounted appliance).

Ways of developing this idea might include experimenting with news feeds, “up next” lists, and thinking further about how we seek information and how it is presented to us:

Each information item is in a kind of conflict with all those around it – they vie for attention

One headline distracts from another

Second opinion > first opinion

Streams of entertainment to distract you from anxiety – what makes you anxious is important

Streams of virtual experiences to distract you from real experiences

Universal experiences of reality would harm the status quo (change the way the world is)

Duality: real and virtual