Matt Siber's 'Floating Logos'
Matt Siber is an American artist whose work addresses problems with the media and communication. Some of his work relates to his concerns of persuasion and influences among large numbers of people. Siber's work also challenges the brain, and what is actually visually important in life. Often he deconstructs certain parts of something he has captured to make it easier for audiences to understand.
This is a piece from Siber's 'Floating Logos' project. Within the frame, he has capture two dominant, high-standing BP signs. However he has removed the structures that support them and replaced them with the background of clouds and skies. Doing this removes the normality of what people actually see and we actually see something that is impossible. As their support is removed, they stand superior to the people surrounding it therefore these big businesses assert their power on life. This is something Siber hoped to communicate within this project and said in an interview for BOMB magazine, "disconnecting them from the ground gives them a power higher than us." This ultimately implies that he's trying to show the audience how text and image has a massive impact on the world we live in today. We can see BP uses it's name and logo on their signs because of their massive reputation which they hope people will be persuaded by to make more money.
To try and replicate Siber's work, I new it would be a difficult task to remove the support and replace it with something that makes the image look as real as possible. With this first attempt at some Siber-esque work, I was quite disappointed with the outcome. Through Photoshop I used tools such as the sport healing brush and patch tool however the tool that came out with the best outcome was the content aware tool. This replaces a part of an image that suits what is happening in the rest of the photo. Therefore I highlighted the support of the BP sign and the content aware replaced it with clouds. However it's ended up looking quite poor and the edges of where the support originally was is there for everyone to see.
After being disappointed with the first attempt, I thought for a while how I could make the task simpler. Therefore I took the sign and moved it across the photo into a place it's actually not but it still looks as thought it's actually there as part of the store is visible in the background. Therefore the floating sign appears to be physically and psychologically powerful to people looking at it.
From using Siber as inspiration, I considered ways in which I could add my own twist to communicate similar meanings around business persuasion and influence. Therefore with the BP signs, I deleted the colour inside the text and image and replaced it with the clouds and sky. I believe this communicates to people that if these big businesses weren't here, there would be nothing behind it for people to be persuaded by. However we are now involved in a world that is loaded and compact with text and image with some sort of purpose. In terms of the quality of the edit, I believe the replacement of colour of the 'sunburst' is quite effective as the patterns and energetic colour within it have disappeared. The one thing I don't believe is as effective is the text of 'bp'. The outline of the letters is still clear therefore it's still visible for people to see.
These are a couple of edits I did using the Siber technique and my twist on it. The first, that has had both support posts removed from it, is more visually pleasing rather than communicative I believe. The posts have been replaced well by the fresh grass, the path and the bushes. Therefore it looks as though the posts were never actually there. In terms of meaning, unlike the BP edits, the road signs aren't as physically dominant as they're lower down which probably represents the purpose behind them. They're there to inform people where to go and therefore don't need to be in the heavens to persuade people to do something.
With this edit using my twist on Siber's work, I quite like the effect it has. I have removed the text such as place names and therefore it creates quite an anonymous feel. The text ultimately provides the purpose of road signs and by removing text, it takes away the importance behind them.
