So this post has actually been in my drafts pile for a while. I think partly because it’s a very vague concept that I’m not sure how good I’ll actually be at articulating - but I’m going to give it a go and you’ll have to let me know how well I do!
Things implying other things
What I’m specifically referring to in this case is what I termed in the Unreality iceberg as hints of existence - mostly because I just haven’t found a better name for it (although I’m sure there is one out there). It’s pretty far down the iceberg too because it’s one of my absolute favs.
I touched on it last week when talking about constructed environments in video games - the stuff that implies life taking place either side of the present moment. For example, like how the in-game beds in last week’s post incorporate these ‘fingerprints’ of use, a real bed or bedroom does the same. You can look at a person’s room without them in it and tell something about that person - who they are, how they use the space, etc.
This interest for me is the reason I have always fiercely defended Tracey Emin’s My Bed - no, it’s not ‘just putting an unmade bed in a gallery and calling it art’. It’s (in my opinion) an intensely powerful, vulnerable and confessional piece of work that says a lot about the artist - and also about the relationship between public and private space, the relationship between artist and viewer, mental health, voyeurism…I could go on. Can you tell I’ve had this argument a lot?
Implication as a trigger for imagination
So this is where this kind of implication gets super fun. It doesn’t have to imply reality, it can imply whatever you want. Harking back to video games again, the specific placement of an object can tell an entire story. You can communicate a lot with just a little. Tiny bits of implication can trigger a viewer’s imagination to write all kinds of stories that may never have been.
Do you ever walk through the supermarket and notice something in the wrong place? Something abandoned, presumably because someone picked it up then changed their mind. Without fail I find myself imagining the thought process that led to that placement. Who left that item, and why? What made them change their mind? What's the relationship between the left item and the location - did one thing replace the other?
When looking up to find an image to accompany this point, I discovered that I’m certainly not alone in this. (Hint: search for “decisions were made here meme”)
This idea of implications is something I’ve long wanted to realise within my artwork but haven’t yet done heavily. A good 4-or-so years ago I had a plan to make a photobook documenting the life of a specific non-existent individual by photographing the (staged) spaces they inhabit. Perhaps one day I’ll revisit this project - I love the idea but generally suck at photography which is why it never happened.
Can you think of other good examples of this phenomenon? Please do send them my way or drop them in aliens vibing in space in the #unreality channel. There’s always amazing things going on in there - I appreciate everyone’s constantly brilliant contributions and cool links.
See you next week (back on schedule!)
Edie x
Implications
I have always been intrigued by these clues one comes across which lead one to speculate on (or imagine) the full scenario. It ties in, for me, with my lifetime fascination with the knowledge that other people are just as sentient as I am, but they are not "me", and lead such diverse lives. As a child I used to walk down the street wondering what it would be like to be living a different life behind one of those doors. Interestingly, today I passed a man walking with a toddler, and at every house the child shouted out, "Who lives there? Who lives there? Who lives there?" The father just replied, "Well that is someone's house." How I wished he had said: Henry VIII or a wicked fairy or a family of ferrets....!