So too the video portrays his birth and emergence, his entrance into the man’s mind, and the human’s struggle to keep the devious Cairo at bay. The video’s final segment uses women to represent the insects, as they are the lusty appeal of a prolonged mental depression, of it’s disquieted comfort and solitaire familiarity.

The enclosed space situates the viewer within the video’s aftermath, in a room destroyed by the ravages of the man’s fury, by the deceitful whispers of insects. The audio is found, manipulated, and captured, working as a subtle enhancement to the images.

Each frame leads the viewer’s eye through its own pathway, describing a connection between all five of them along the way, while the cipher language is hidden inside the placement and design patterns of each die. The maze-like images include wrong turns that are determined by incorrect equations, possibly leading the viewer back to the first frame. For example, a particular number could be placed in the wrong column, or there may be one too many of a certain color of die.  The frames are arranged based on their level of ease and difficulty. The full piece is presented on a wall, in the format of a portrait, with its shape outline adding a dynamic effect to each numerical pathway.

Beside Myself is an interactive video piece that is projected onto a large flat surface.  A video projector displays a live video feed from a camera facing the viewer, enabling the image to work like a sort of mirror. When a user walks into the view of the camera, they will see themselves in the projection.  After a few short seconds, they will then see a delayed version of the video together with the live version.  They will be seeing two images of themselves: the live and the delayed.  The motivation for adding a delayed image is to give the user(s)  a slightly different perspective of themselves.

Participants will also be able to interact with a digitally super-imposed object that reacts to the movements of the user(s).  When the image of the user touches the object in the projection, the shape or object will move and change direction depending on how and where the object was “touched.”  This kind of interaction may momentarily move the user’s focus away from their own reflection.  After a short time I hope that they begin to notice how they have been moving when they look back at the delayed image.

With this piece, I hope to engage with certain questions about viewership: What does it feel like to be both a spectacle and a member in the audience?  Do we change what we do or how we act once we know how we look doing it?  I hope this piece can give the participants an idea of their own self consciousness.

Eyes of the Beholder

Eyes of the Beholder is series of four digital images printed onto a canvas. I took pictures of different trees using my DSLR camera and choose four images to manipulate using Photoshop. The Images are 20 by 16 and mounted on a wall, side by side.

The decision to print a digital image on canvas illustrates how “art” in today’s world is very unbalanced and skewed. Canvas has long been considered a special part of art regarded by some as almost sacred — even if the image is just some splashes of paint, without any clear demonstration of skill or any sort of clear meaning.

My Eyes of the Beholder series takes a stand against this problem though the choice of material used in the creation of my images. By printing from a digital image onto canvas via an ink jet printer, addresses the effects of mass production on the value of art. If only one copy is ever printed, this makes the digital images very rare and unique.

In terms of content, The images themselves have been designed so that each viewer will see something different then the last viewer. This portrays the simple idea that everyone see’s everything around us differently. Most of what we see we connect with labels that we have been taught as a child; which allows us to understand and know what each other are seeing even if it looks slightly different. These differences don’t mean one persons view is wrong and another is right. It simply means we see differently and if we had been taught as a child that blue is red and red is blue then we wouldn’t understand what each other see and we would be put in complete chaos and confusion.

The Superhero Within is a series of six 16×24″ photographs that explores how we use our clothes as a uniform. Sometimes we dress to show our personality, while other times we dress to blend in and hide who we are; in either case, clothing and fashion are important ways in which individuals construct a social identity for themselves.

Uniforms can be helpful signifiers when it comes to identifying   somebody’s occupation,  as with doctors, police officers, fire fighters, and others who may help. On the other hand, one’s manner of dress can lead others to make assumptions about what particular clothing choices signify about one’s personality, lifestyle, or values, and can in some cases lead to stereotyping.  As much as we probably hate to admit it we are all guilty of judging a book by its cover, except in this case we judge others by the way they dress; furthermore, we all attempt to influence how others see us by our choice in clothes, making connections to certain social stereotypes and roles.

I also wanted to explore how blending in is over rated. Everyone has dreams and fantasies that they do not get to live out. At one time or another, often during our childhood, many people have fantasized about being a superhero, or perhaps a favorite videogame character. Where it is up to you to save the world, or perhaps save a damsel in distress. With all of the video games and Hollywood films that surround us in this culture, it has become possible to extend this fantasy into adulthood. So in this series I asked my models to live out their fantasy, and not to hold back.

Uniforms were made for the purpose of making us look the same, but what if we made our own? What if we decided to show off what makes us unique, and did the opposite such as stand out ? I remember when I was little my parents bought me these hot pink shoes, I loved them an thought they were so cool. But when I wore them to school I was laughed at, and it took years to live it down. I watched the same thing happen again and again to some of my other friends, and it was frustrating to see. I find it paradoxical that in a culture that praises individuality, individuals are often pressured to conform.

Deep down inside I also think everyone wants to be a hero, whether it’s telling someone getting off the bus they dropped their glove, or a doctor saving lives. No one should feel the pressure to conform, we are all individuals and no matter what are fantasies are, or who we strive to be like, we shouldn’t be afraid to be ourselves. We should dress for the occasion, so why not make our own superheroes, and be our own heroes?

Visit the live site

The way that we interact with the Internet is changing – we are spending less time behind computer screens and more time flicking through pages on our mobile devices. This shift in platforms has exposed several issues with many of the websites on the internet – the main issue being usability. These days, mobile devices come in all shapes and sizing, meaning that their viewports do not have consistent dimensions and resolutions. Responsive web design was developed to counter this unpredictability. The goal of responsive design is to create a website that seamlessly adapts to it’s viewing environment. Maintaining an attractive product while still preserving usability is the key to good responsive design. The Meta website is my attempt experiment and, hopefully, create a website that does this across most platforms.

Please, try to contain your excitement… It’s time for some technical jargon. The website is developed using the HTML5, CSS3, jQuery, and PHP languages. Using CSS media queries, the website automatically detects the size of the browser window. The website has three size declarations (media queries) using the most common device sizes. In between these ‘break-points’ the components of the webpage scale to maintain uniformity. All of the back end work is important, but the creative work is what the visitors will (most importantly) see. Being a design portfolio website, aesthetics are what will interest the visitor, therefore it was important for me to spend a good amount of time on the visual aspects. After pulling all of these things together, I hope to have created an appealing and universally accessible website.

    Comics of Patrick C. Schaefer