Initially, this project began as a sentimental tribute to my grandfather who has been growing potatoes in his back garden since long before I was born. I had planned to combine old photographs of him as a young adult with images of inherited objects, wrinkled hands, and other nostalgic, quiet symbolic visuals.
But then the potatoes arrived on the scene.
When I converted the images of the potatoes into stereoscopic gifs, they definitely did not have the quiet melancholy feel that I had imagined. Instead, they were restless. Energetic. Ready to explode. I quickly realised that stereoscopy was not the best medium for sentimentality. Therefore, the focus of the project switched from a humble tribute into a comical exploration of one potato’s evolution.
Yet there is something unsettling about the potato sprouting limb-like appendages. It seems to become its own entity, or developing into an alien-like being. As the potato's shoots grow, a faint air of menace develops. As a subtle nod to this, I have included text that describes the toxicity of potatoes. The text is secondary to the images, and written in a faint font to replicate the almost non-existent danger that potatoes pose to humans. Almost non-existent. Just like the potato's menace, the text could be easily missed.
Because of the scale of the subject matter, and the fact that many of the images include straight lines, I found the capturing of the images the most difficult part and had to repeat the process many times. I also discovered that certain elements of an image do not translate well into a wiggle gif. Most notably, background shadows. Initially I had captured many of the images with some graduation in the background. Whilst this helped to add depth and tone to the still shot, I found that it made the animated gif far too distracting and jarring to look at. For this reason, I chose to leave some images motionless, which also adds pauses to the work.
I used 4 still images for each stereoscopic gif and found that experimenting with the distance between shots was a crucial part of the process. Smaller distances resulted in more subtle, natural movements, and slightly larger increments created more dramatic, violent movements. I implemented these subtle changes throughout the series- as the potato develops, the motion becomes larger and more turbulent.
Fun fact: I don't actually like eating potato.
