Final Positives and Prints

With two weeks to go till the deadline for this brief I have had to tie things up rather quickly in order to allow myself adequate time to produce my final prints. I have found this whole project extremely challenging with such a long and drawn out time span, but I have come up with concepts for three prints that I believe relate effectively to the work of Oliver Sacks, and help to explain the symptoms and sufferings of three different neurological disorders.

Post Encephalitis

I first learnt about the condition 'Post Encephalitis Lethargica' when watching the film Awakenings, based on the trials and tribulations of Oliver Sacks trying to bring back a group of paralysed,dependant neurology patients back to life.

My print is based on one of the characters, Lucy, who had been trapped in this frozen state for fifty years since the age of 22. Now aged 70, she is struggling to digest all of the changes that have happened in the world, all of the time that she has missed out on, and how her appearance has changed beyond recognition. I have illustrated a silhouetted statue of her concealed within a clock to demonstrate all of the years that she was trapped in a state of paralysis. The sun and the moon represent her awakening, arising back and re-discovering everything in her surrounding environment. As this was my first print, I experimented with colour schemes that I could use in the prints that would follow. The green and pink gradient 

sky of dawn also relates to the complexity within the mind and the self when one is enclosed and isolated with such condition with the contrast of the confusions and judgements of the surrounding environment.

Prosopagnosia 

Prosopagnosia is a neurological condition where part of the brain is damaged and a person has trouble recognising their own face, or other peoples faces; it comes from the Greek: "prosopon" = "face", "agnosia" = "not knowing". I read about a condition similar to this (but much more severe) in The man who mistook his wife for a hat where patient, 'Doctor p' was a musical genius, yet had great difficulty becoming confused between people and objects, hence the title of the book.

I chose to make a print on prosopagnosia for my curiosity and interest in this strange condition but also because Oliver Sacks suffered from this himself. In a video I saw on YouTube, Sacks was being interviewed about his struggles and went on to explain how he would have trouble recognising his closest friends and family members, which must have been extremely frustrating and heart breaking for him at the same time. The interviewer then showed Sacks pictures of famously well known faces (e.g. Queen Elizabeth II, Barack Obama, Michael Jackson etc.) and he had to identify who they were, and it was clear to see that he struggled so much to name these people correctly. Sacks' said in a light hearted manor that he would request his friends and family to wear name tags at gatherings to help his condition and avoid confusion and embarrassment, and this is where the idea for my second print came from. 

I have illustrated a pair of hands holding a pile of name badges reading things such as 'hello, my name is MUM', which would seem quite bizarre from an outsiders point of view but that is partly why I have arranged it in such a way, to try and communicate to the viewers how difficult it is to live with this condition, and the methods that sufferers use to cope in every day life.

Tourette's Syndrome

Tourette's syndrome is a condition affecting the nervous system, which is characterised by a series of repetitive, impulsive movements and sounds called tics. In the book An anthropologist on Mars, Sacks comes across a gentleman with a very severe case of Tourette's, both involving the physical and vocal symptoms, but the most surprising aspect to this person is that he was in fact a surgeon. It is almost impossible to imagine someone with such an unpredictable and nervous condition to be able to carry out such a precise and risk worthy career, but as soon as Doctor Bennett was in the operating theatre, the Tourette's practically disappeared completely. I found this extremely interesting, and wondered how many sufferers can be rid of their tics whilst concentrating on a particular activity.

For my print, I wanted the viewer to understand how impulsive and unpredictable experiencing tics is. I first thought of the idea of an arrow being shot out from the head through the mouth, but I guessed that concept wasn't all that clear. I then thought of objects that make you jump, or suddenly make a noise or movement, and the idea of a 'jack-in-a-box' came to mind. I drew out the box with the same texture as a brain to represent the flaw in the brain chemistry to cause these tics, and a set of false teeth boldly springing out into the open and emitting a number of noises and vibrations. This was to show how difficult it is for Tourette's to be controlled and the difficulty and frustration it can cause for the sufferer.

Process

I made my mock positives more pristine and crisp in Illustrator so that they were at a high enough standard to print at. I had a few difficulties with patches of darker blacks within the circle that showed up when I printed them out, and it was really tricky to try and find the patches and delete them, as I had flattened the layers.

Screen printing and I have a bit of a love-hate relationship. 9 times out of 10 my work will bleed because I haven't pressed hard enough on the squeegee or I've flooded the screen too much, or not enough, so there were a LOT of practice prints and I feel extremely guilty for all of the trees that died for my terrible blotchy prints! As well, I had to be really careful and precise to try and get my gradient equal in all three prints, which again took a lot of practice, but luckily I was able to come out with three prints that I was really happy with.

Evaluation

I'm so pleased with the outcome of my prints as this project has been the most challenging brief I have responded to. All of the going round in circles has been beneficial to me finding an interest and strive to create these prints in the way that I have, which has been so difficult over such a long period of time. As well as having to relate my images predominantly to Oliver Sacks, I wanted to set myself a personal goal to try and inform my audience about the symptoms and struggles that people that suffer from these conditions  experience on a daily basis, which I think I have achieved to a good extent. I want to continue working in this way in the future as I am very interested in combining illustration with health care, and finding visual solutions to physical problems.

In terms of the prints themselves, I honestly look at them and don't believe it is the best work that I have produced. Maybe this is because there were a number of limitations, for example the two colour palette, and the stress of importance of relating the content to three months worth of study, and informing the viewer about the chosen author. I tried to avoid the obvious and create work with an important concept that is clear to read and understand, but when I view my work I can't help but think that they look rather simple and minimalist, which doesn't reflect my energy and interest in the subject at all. On the other hand, this may be so due to having spent such a long time working on them that I am probably sick of looking at everything to do with Oliver Sacks! But most importantly, I have answered the brief and achieved a goal; the work I have produced is informative to the viewer both about the patients Sacks worked with, and portrays the experience of living with Post-Encephalitis, Prosopagnosia and Tourette's Syndrome, so I believe I have done my best and am pleased with myself for what I have produced.