New Arrival Magazine: The Blanc Issue
Esther Kim
MPE – Minus Plus Equals is a systematic process that examines subtraction of information produced by speed and digital manipulation. This process exists to interpret contemporary society’s unavoidable obsession and movement at high speeds – whether yearning for self perfection or working towards a goal, becoming addicted to quickness/progression in technology, physically or mentally moving anywhere from point A to point B – an obvious reality that communicates how future desires conduct present decisions and new discoveries. Pause. If future can conduct our present, what about the moments we do not see or think about? The moments that we are simply unaware about because we are thinking future? These moments of disappearance can be described because of speed, which is understood as space mapped against time. When we are interrupted and controlled so quickly by future thoughts (moments that have not even occurred yet), present time slows down. It is removed. And if present time is reality, reality is removed. Through combinations of motionless media and movement, MPE’s concept visualizes unperceived moments and interrupted time. Using filters of removal I have designed, editing becomes the communication tool for graphic language. The editing occurs as I digitally manipulate and subtract out information from found print media, with loosely controlled or precisely controlled actions. The manipulations show absence/removal as a powerful technique for communication. New Arrival Magazine – The Blanc Issue, represents the documentation of this thesis. The Blanc Issue studies high-fashion advertisements from already-existing fashion/trend publications to comment on self-perception. Ads contain highly digitalized photography to persuade people in multiple ways, in which I am focusing on how ads create a ‘removed reality’ as well. By glancing at an image of a model in a garment, viewers can easily start to desire becoming an owner of a presented garment or like the model who is wearing the garment. Again, these viewers are not thinking in present time, but of what they could own/be like in future time. By editing selected high-fashion ads with my designed filters, the transformed images urge viewers to discover absence.