Color of Reality: Painting and Movement Artistry | Alexa Meade + Jon Boogz | TEDxHollywood
[Music] [Applause] there's a story in this picture it's actually alive and I'm not just talking about the vibrant blue color or the breast Strokes it's literally a live human being I covered and paint in a way that would make him look like a two-dimensional painting everything in this scene is covered the walls the floor the shoes I can take any space and create an immersive 360 painted environment that you can walk into you could photograph it from any angle and the illusion still holds up now I didn't come up with this idea at Art School I studied political science I was actually a huge political nerd I grew up in DC I'd interned on the hill I'd worked for political campaigns but then during my senior year of college while I was studying polyi I had this idea I wanted to know what would it look like if I put black paint down on Shadows I just thought Shadows were cool and I wanted to see if I could make my own and then I thought all right that was kind of an interesting experiment what would happen now if I brought that to the human body what if I take my friend Bernie and paint not just the Shadows on him but also the highlights and create a mapping of light directly onto his body start painting and I look up and all of a sudden I turned my friend into a painting I had no idea that was going to happen it totally caught me off guard I was one week away from graduation my plan was to go back to Washington DC work on the hill I'd had that all very carefully laid out and then this changed everything I decided that instead of getting a job in politics sitting behind a desk I would make my job hanging out in my parents basement learning how to paint but I didn't want to paint on canvas I didn't want to copy the Old Masters I was really interested in light Shadow space and just how to capture the essence of things and even if that meant the essence of a grapefruit and literally the essence of the grapefruit the acid that ate through my breast Strokes breaststroke by breaststroke so I had to just like pile paint on it as fast as possible and take a picture in order to maintain it a lot of my friends they were still doing the politics thing and they kept on trying to convince me to get a real job they didn't understand that putting paint on grapefruits was a real job and all these naysayers it was really hard to find models like no one really understood why they needed to have paint in their ears as part of a life experience so I ended up doing a lot of my practicing early honing of my skills by painting directly on top of myself I've learned that I can paint in practically any style and it'll still hold up the illusion of a two-dimensional painting there's no Photoshop I just love creating these J positions between 2D and 3D spaces that really make you have to look again and especially in the case of on the DC Metro you're going to want to look again this picture it's just one frame and yet it has a story in it you feel something and when I have my canvases as a human body story is inevitable and I want to introduce you to guys today to a collaborator of mine John BS and he uses his body as a canvas as well John all right he's goingon to tell you about our collaboration give it up for Alexa so a little over a week ago Alexa and I we released a short film entitled color of reality now my whole inspiration behind directing and writing this film was to Simply heighten awareness around some of the critical issues that we have going on in our society so in the beginning beginning beginning stages of me writing the treatment and writing the story line I took notice to some of the tragedies that were happening around the world and in the United States from the massacre that happened in Orlando to the shootings in Dallas to what happened in Baton Rouge and I came up with this conclusion that if we don't start coming together as a human race and stop judging each other off skin color or sexual orientation that these senseless acts of violence are going to continue to happen uh I decided to combine my movement Artistry with the amazing 2D style of painting that Alexa does to create a compelling narrative that would hopefully inspire people to take action against these acts of violence uh to me movement Artistry Is Not Just Dance it's a tool it's a universal language it's a tool to empower people it's a tool to cleanse the spirit it's a tool that can help break down social economic Geographic boundaries uh art has a way to speak to us in a way that words cannot and I really hope that this film speaks to you from drink to um to blood again this is graphic video you know Sterling was armed and red before the meeting trying to sway the decision maker involved in his [Music] murder you look at the video showing a deadly officer involved shooting in Louisiana traffic body Cam and dash cam video of an officer involved shooting where an unarmed black teenager was killed by police [Music] [Music] [Music] what exactly proceeded for you to deadly for [Music] VI [Music] oh [Music] [Music] hard you wrap your head around this Congressman King the worst mass shooting now in American history we are learning more though about who did it what more have you've been able to learn [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] n a [Music] [Applause] [Music]