Jim Dine, Andrew Dodds and Under the Skin

If each individual week of my life had a title, this week would probably be called ‘Technical Difficulties’. The majority of my time was spent working out how to get a huge, old television to work, which was ultimately unsuccessful and the story ended with me purchasing a new one and wasting a lot of money. The closer it gets to Christmas, the sleepier I get. I just keep thinking that I’ll be home in less than two weeks, in a big bed with nothing to do.

Monday started like every Monday has started for the past four weeks, with a Science Fiction seminar. Systems within systems within systems. Even when you’re in a space where there’s so many possibilities, there’s still a very rigid schedule, in this case the schedule is just slightly more interesting than having a schedule of doing nothing. The final seminar was really good, and ran over for at least an hour, which was definitely a positive thing. We were looking at the era that began with the release of Star Wars and is yet to end, still continuing onwards in 2015. The rise of ‘Cyberpunk’ was talked about at length, Blade Runner being cited as the first film to come under that genre. So many interesting books and authors were discussed, that I’m not going to name any of them, but I’m definitely going to read a selection of them in the future, possibly a few of them over Christmas.

For the rest of the day I was working on my own stuff, which mainly consisted of taking photographs of work that I’d previously made, so I could put the images on my website, alongside coming up with the idea of putting a pillow next to the television where my work will be playing. This would serve as an invitation for the viewer to lie down, showing them that they’re supposed to get onto the ground and look up into the screen, rather than bending down and not fully immersing themselves within the work. I’m yet to actually try this out in real life, but I plan to tomorrow, when I’m setting up for the exhibition, and will decide whether it’s appropriate or not then. It may just over-complicate things.

Later in the day I had a lecture on the essays that we (the students) have to write over the holidays. It was slightly dull and only a little informative, which is a shame. I think you have three different essay titles to choose from, and it has to be only 1500 words long.

In the evening I watched a film called ‘The Signal’. An indie sci-fi that looked at three friends who get seemingly abducted and taken to an underground bunker in a mysterious place. It was slightly disjointed, and the ending was incredibly annoying but it was enjoyable overall. Although when comparing it to similar indie films like Primer, it wasn’t too great.

Tuesday was an incredibly slow day, where the majority was spent attempting to make the huge TV work, just throwing money at the problem in a desperate hope that it would help in one way or another. There was also the artist talk, which was something to look forward to. Andrew Dodds was the speaker, who talked a lot about his work within communities, and how ordinary people influence his practice and inspire him to create the work that he creates. Although I enjoyed some of his pieces, to me it was very similar to hearing about the work that my father creates with his artwork, working with communities, etc. So I was ultimately tired of the conversation, even though the work was thought provoking and stimulating in its own way.

 Wednesday arrived with a group crit of sorts, where we all talked about and showed each other the work that we were planning to display on the following Tuesday. The feedback that I received for my work consisted of a discussion surrounding the music within the long video. The main problem being that it might be too ‘nice’ and how it felt ‘godly’ which made the work feel like a cliché. I hadn’t been aware of this, but once it was mentioned it became incredibly apparent. I had some ideas about how I could work with the music, using it to make a mockery of the idea of a God, allowing us to go about our dreary daily lives without any sense of an all-powerful figure being present. I quickly walked away from this idea, and decided to experiment with the music further, refining what I actually wanted from the music, and not over-complicating the work with new ideas.

For the rest of the day I attempted to think about what this new music would be, playing with the stretching program, always working from the same, monotonous beat that continually makes you think that something is going to happen, that the music will effectively ‘drop’. I eventually created a piece of music that was similar to a very high pitched whistle being blown, where only young people are able to hear it. This division between the young and the old is interesting, as well as the idea that the longer you view the work, lying down on your back looking up at the screen, the more used to the sound you will be. This slight distortion of reality is what I really want to achieve. The music will be played aloud, without headphones, so the sound will permeate the entire space around it, infecting everyone’s ears, making them painfully aware of what’s going on. The video, alongside its music, can be viewed on my main website. The alternative to this is having no music at all, whilst I’m setting it up tomorrow I’m going to decide on which one I think is more appropriate.

In the evening I went to (maybe) the worst artist talk/in conversation that I’ve been to in my entire life. The artist was Jim Dine in conversation with Paul Coldwell. Whenever Dine was asked a question about his work, he would either simply answer with a ‘yes’ or deny the fact (or in this case allegation) that the work had any meaning at all. I started to wonder who the people in the room were, listening to these two people, talking about work that had no meaning. Where was I? And what was I doing there? These are questions that I’m still trying to answer myself.

Thursday was yet another day that was centred on attempting to make a TV work. By this point I was beginning to get incredibly distressed about the whole thing.

I was also thinking a lot about how I wanted to show the work, the positioning of the Kindle in relation to the television as well as the locations of the sculptures. On top of this I was considering whether to make a ‘thing’ out of the amount of wires or not, to make it messy or clean. At that point in time I opted for clean, but with the new TV I have less wiring, so clean is the only real option anyway. I think clean works best, as I haven’t spent a lot of time considering why the wires would be all over the place, and I don’t want to decide to do something simply because it looks aesthetically pleasing.

During the day I also thought about the nails that I’m going to use to display the Kindle on, and whether or not I should paint them a certain colour. This was brought on from thinking about ‘The Woman On The Wire’ exhibition that I recently went to at Pi Artworks, where everything was gold, including the nails. The obvious choice for me would be blue, but I feel that that would be incredibly tacky and take away from the film that people are supposed to be watching, so I’m either going to keep them as they come (probably silver) or paint them white, allowing them to sink into the wall, out of sight.

Throughout the week I’ve also been having problems being able to loop my short video on my Kindle. It seems to be impossible, so instead I just created 500 duplicates of the film, and put them into a playlist on my kindle, allowing the film to be looped for over 500 minutes, which I’m sure will be well over the amount of time needed. So that problem was solved after spending a lot of time googling and downloading new video apps, etc.

After uni ended, I travelled to ‘Cell Project Space’ for the private view of Anne de Vries’ ‘Submission’. It involved many huge white heads made from fibre glass resin, with live video being shown on projectors and laptops, embedded within the sculptures. The videos were showing a mixture of densely populated areas and incredibly empty ones, which to me was thinking about the internet in general, and how we’re all beginning to interact with everything through the screen, but in this case the images were being displayed within the heads of people, so maybe it was making a comment on how we’re all becoming a screen, or already are one?

I then went to a group exhibition (Fasciae Flux) featuring a friend of mine, Laila Majid, alongside a few others at the Doomed Gallery. There was some interesting work being shown, but without any text being given, I had no knowledge of what any of it was about. It was cool to see work that I’d seen being produced in an actual space though, and makes me want to display some of my own work in a gallery setting. Maybe over Christmas I can pursue this in some way.

Friday was, yet again, all about the television, and getting it to work. It still wasn’t happening.

In the afternoon we had a – sort of – lecture where we all got into exhibition groups centred on one of five themes, I chose Science Fiction and Information. Within the groups we all discussed our work, and what kind of space we all wanted. The group was small, so it was easy and went relatively smoothly. As a whole year group we also talked about whether or not we wanted to bring drinks ourselves or buy them as a unit for the private view on Thursday. Unfortunately it was decided that we should all bring our own. To me, this is an incredibly silly decision, who doesn’t have alcohol being served at a private view? We also decided on the name of the exhibition, ‘Synonyms for Exploration’ which seemed like an incredibly pretentious name. You can look at the event on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1019865964739289/

When that was over I went to the CSM 3D/XD Open Studio event, which was serving alcohol. There was a variety of interesting work being shown, from a video talking about what an ‘Open Studio’ actually is and telling you to fuck off multiple times, to a performance piece where a man gave a lecture, whilst standing outside, so the audience was unable to hear him. This went on for over 15 minutes. Another performance included a guy blending up a load of expired food from Waitrose (that was just across the street, in view of the work) and eating the whole thing. This was more than off putting.

On Saturday I went into the studio to attempt to make the TV work, one more time, but was unsuccessful. So gave up and bought one for myself. The fact that the television was purchased during the ‘Black Friday’ period fits perfectly within the work, the - seeming - epitome of consumer culture. I also started to compile all of my computer work into legitimate folders, so that they can be viewed and marked easily. I also put all of the research that I’ve written about on my blog into its own word document, highlighting the artist names and gallery titles.

In the evening I watched three films. I began with Under the Skin, which was incredible. The real life scenes interspersed with the acted ones was truly creepy, alongside the slow humanization of the creature as the film continued along its chosen path. I then saw Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, which was deeply depressing, pushing me to the verge of tears multiple times. I was looking for a comedy and found a drama instead. After that I was looking for a ‘trashy’ comedy, so went with Spy. The scenes that featured Jason Statham were excellent, making fun of the way he acts in films like The Transporter and Crank was hilarious to see.

Today I’ve been attempting to write this, whilst listening to a three hour compilation of Philip Glass’ music playing in the background. I also started a new series, Star Trek (the original series) after finishing The Man in the High Castle (not as good as the book) and catching up with season 2 of Fargo, which has been great so far.

The week ahead looks to be incredibly busy, with the setting up of the exhibition, group crits, the private view and going to see The Book of Mormon. I do look forward to how it’s all going to turn out. Positively I hope.

Oh and this is the final design of how I’m planning to display the work, hopefully at this time tomorrow, it will be up and looking similar to how this is:

Daily Snapchat:

bob.bk

Peter Shelton, Open Studios and Tangerine

One more week has passed, I can’t tell whether the weeks are speeding up or slowing down, they will soon turn into months and then into years, blending into one another, until there is no more education to be had. Lots of progression within my work has occurred this week, as well going to a few galleries, performances and talks.

On Monday I had my third Science-Fiction seminar, which looked at the apparent ‘new wave’ of sci-fi, which spanned between the 60s and the 80s. It began with the usual format of starting with context and ending with a discussion. At about that time Kennedy’s famous “We choose to go to the moon” speech occurred, which launched inspiration for many writers at the time, imagining new worlds rather than a distorted version of the old one. So much was discussed, and so many interesting writers, like J. G. Ballard, William Burroughs (completely crazy but fascinating), Philip K. Dick, Ursula K. Le Guin and many more were brought up. Eventually we got onto the short story which we’d all read titled ‘When It Changed’ by Joanna Russ, which looked at how women are treated by men in the society that we live in, just on another planet.

Whilst on the subject of science fiction, throughout this week I’ve also been watching the new Amazon series (originally a book by Dick), The Man in the High Castle. I haven’t quite watched all the episodes yet, but at the moment it’s an overall enjoyable experience, although very loosely adapted from the book, which is a shame, as I’m a big fan of the book. It reminds me of the show ‘Danger 5’ but only in terms of costumes, rather than content.

In the afternoon on Monday there was a lecture on Feminism titled ‘Subjecting Conceptualism: Feminist Approaches to Art’ which was kind of thought provoking. For me it was re-hashing a lot of artists and ideas that I was already aware of, like Judy Chicago, Mary Kelly and Barbara Kruger, and the idea of essentialism vs non-essentialism. I did enjoy hearing about the background of the work, rather than just scrolling through the ether of the internet though, and it was definitely worthwhile going and listening to someone talk about these artists’ and their practices.

During the day I continued to work on my video piece, undertaking the laborious process of photo-shopping each individual still image and adding colour to the grey worlds. During this time I was still using primary colours that messed with your eyes when you looked at them for too long, but after thinking about it I decided that each frame would include the colour blue, as well as another colour. This would hint at the illusion of free expression within our society, when in actuality everything is controlled and thoroughly thought out in advance, referencing capitalism once again.

I was also thinking more about my other video piece where I was opening up the images on Photoshop and screen recording that, and was thinking about how the Photoshop piece and the original video were now two separate works, slightly linked, but still separate. I started to distort the screen recorded work slightly, taking away the aspect of recognition which used to occur.

On Tuesday I had a tutorial in the morning with Andrew, who’s my main tutor. I showed him my video, along with the game space that I’ve been making, alongside other things. We also talked about my ideas for showing the work and it slowly became clear that it would be incredibly difficult to chop into the wall, to display the video, and that a fake wall could be fabricated. Unfortunately I don’t think that really works, as the meaning is then partly lost, as it would be a fake wall rather than a real one, with all of its innards being shown. It was also suggested that I look at Patrick Caulfield and the work that he used to create, real worlds within fabricated ones, which I promptly did following the tutorial.

After the tutorial I began to think of other ways to show the work, whether to create a space for the T.V to be placed inside, so that you either had to poke your head into something or crawl into a confined space. I also considered creating an object out of objects that centred on capitalism, like piling up copies of the book ‘The Epic of America’ (one of the first books to create the idea of the ‘American Dream’) and have the television leaning up against it, consumerism being propped up by capitalism. Another idea was to fabricate a square box, painted blue, and have the monitor leaning up against that. I’m still having general thoughts about this, and how much of the work I actually want to display, be it multiple videos alongside sculptural work, or only one video by itself, stacked against the wall. I do not know. I also had a few other ideas, which changed the work from being an installation to being an object within its own right, these are all shown here:

The visiting artist for the ‘Tuesday talk’ was Helen Cammock, who showed a range of video works, all relating to her relationship with her father in one way or another. A few points of interest for me were when she talked about how work is different, depending on where it’s being displayed, as well as that idea of spontaneity and how it’s sometimes the thing that’s needed to make a piece of work amazing, rather than the hours of thought that had gone into it beforehand.

On Wednesday I spent a lot of time experimenting in real life how to display my films, which Andrew had suggested doing the previous day. This involved borrowing a screen and placing it in different positions around the room, making people distort their bodies, becoming uncomfortable, so that they could view the video. Allowing me to see how it would actually work, as opposed to through Sketchup, was enormously helpful, and inspired many new ideas. I eventually settled on the concept of having the screen in the corner, placed in such a way so that the light would reflect onto the wall, and then the viewer when they’re watching the movie, encompassing that idea that every one of us is living this monotonous life that the film is showing, and that the screen is like a mirror into your mind.

In the evening I took some time to think about the use of text within the long, simple video, and whether I should or shouldn’t implement it into the work. My plan was to inject certain phrases or words like ‘Monotony’ or ‘Life is Pointless’ into key time points within the film. For example, when the film gets to 18 years old, or reaches the ‘half way’ point in life when a mid-life crisis would usually occur, a short piece of writing would start flashing up on the screen for however long this sense occurred for within your life, the sense that everything is shit, etc.

I experimented with multiple ways of showing this, from having the text flashing up in random areas of the screen, to enabling the message to roll onto the screen, like something you’d see on a power point in the early 2000s. By the end of the day I decided that the text wasn’t needed to understand the meaning, and that it was simply hammering a point home which was already obvious. It would have been cool if it would have worked, but ultimately it was unnecessary. These are the pieces that I began to put together:

I also watched a few films on Wednesday, one was called Tangerine, which looked at a day in the life of two transgender prostitutes; it was both hilariously funny and terribly depressing at the same time. I thoroughly enjoyed it. As well as Tangerine I watched another film titled We Are Your Friends. Whilst the first film was enthralling and weird, the second one was dull and tedious. You win some, you lose some I guess.

Thursday was a really good day, where I created a whole new film, centred on the images that I’ve been creating being opened up in Photoshop, and kind of blossoming from there. There’s a slight narrative to it, with multiple voices speaking throughout the movie, having a sort of dialogue, as well as the three different ‘stages’ slowly developing and changing. It’s meant to be a companion piece to the incredibly long film, with the same kind of ideas embedded within it, but conveyed in a different form. I created the music by stretching and manipulating words like ‘monotonous’ and ‘repetition’ until they were no longer words anymore, and overlapped a range of moving images to create the sense of moving/not moving forwards in time. I really like how it turned out.

In the evening I went to the Zabludowicz Collection for a performance evening event of sorts, the Rafman exhibition was also open, so I spent some more time within the space. I think I’ve been to this exhibition more times than any other temporary show that I’ve ever been to, which is a weird thought. The evening featured a range of performances, one of my favourites consisted of an artist duo called ‘Sisters From Another Mister’ who undertook a performance that involved carrying around large flat screen televisions and having them interacting with one another, whilst they themselves were constantly chewing gum. I really liked how the relationship between the two screens developed as the performance continued, and the chewing gum motif was excellent.

Friday began with a trip to the ICA in the morning for an artist talk featuring Peter Shelton. He spoke about how a lot of his early work was heavily influenced by his severely disabled father, and how even now you can see that within his current work. The idea that something like that can influence a large part of your life intrigues me, and makes me wonder about what thing will influence my practice in years to come. It was interesting to hear about his general career, and how you may come back to things, ten years down the line, that you had previously forgotten about. The aspects of work that you don’t think about was also brought up, how the work may change somewhat in a gallery setting, this was in reference to one of his pieces titled ‘pipegut’ where you pulled yourself through a tunnel of sorts on a trolley. The sound that was created whilst you pulled yourself through was apparently un-thought of, but it was a somewhat happy coincidence. This is something that I’m beginning to be interested by, things occurring within your work that you weren’t aware of before but become a major feature of them.

During the day I returned to thinking about my world building within Unity, considering what it all means and attempting to fix a few bugs that I had found within the tiny world. Whilst thinking about the creation of the thing, I came to the conclusion that I didn’t want to add in the timer, or the ‘game over’ sign that appeared when you eventually killed yourself. I now envision that, in a gallery setting, the world will already be loaded up, ready for the viewer to explore, with the abyss still able to jump into, but once someone jumps into that abyss, you can no longer play the game on that particular day, so for the rest of the day the screen will simply show a blank, grey space, which will be the player falling for eternity. People within the gallery would be encouraged to not let others jump off the edge, persuading them not to so they could have a go at exploring this world. I think this would be really interesting to see, and obviously thinks a lot about the ideas of community and suicide, as well as the ‘is there an afterlife?’ question that is continually asked and never answered.

This week I intend to film people playing the game, but I’m yet to decide on how to display it. My first thought was to have it shown on a sofa, with the monitor facing upwards, making the player peer into it whilst being sat next to it, like looking over the edge of a huge expanse, as well as thinking about how people neglect their real world friends whilst playing video games, so it would force the player to turn towards the other side of the sofa, as if they’re facing another human being. Another idea would be to place the monitor up high, so you were staring up at the screen, this would simulate a departure board type monitor, continuing that idea of travelling to another world/universe when we all eventually die. I’ll see how I feel in the next few days when I eventually finish creating the thing and have it ready to be installed in a space.

That evening I went to the 2D/4D open studio event at CSM. It featured work from both 2^nd and 3^rd year students, and was very well done, with a few interesting pieces of work being shown. One that was particularly exciting was an installation that involved a mock-up of a young child’s room, full of emoji’s and abrasive colours, where you were invited to lie down on a blow up mattress and listen to a recording of thoughts that people have when they’re in bed, awaiting sleep. It was an enjoyable evening, and just makes me think how exciting it would be if Chelsea stayed open until ten o’clock and had its own functioning student bar.

I also watched the film ‘Logan’s Run’ which hasn’t aged that well, but was still enjoyable, although it does have a terrible ending. It’s definitely one of those films that you need to see though, so I’m happy that I did. I’m sure many people already know the basic plot, so I won’t outline it here.

On Saturday morning I finally got around to updating my main website, with some new work as well as refreshing the general aesthetic of the thing, as it didn’t really represent who I was as an artist anymore. The new work includes the new film from this week, my Snapchat video (that is an ongoing project anyway) and a work that I made last week which is very simple, but I thought I would upload it anyway, as I thought it was mildly thought provoking. You can look at my updated website via the link to my main website at the top of the page.

In the afternoon I visited a few galleries, I first went to the Flowers gallery, which had some paintings by Bernard Cohen being shown. They were vaguely interesting, but incredibly repetitive and I became bored of them after staring at a range of them for over ten minutes. The quote from him within the press release also annoyed me “I will not begin the painting until something I have never seen or considered before comes into my mind’s eye, and then I will focus on it and the means I shall use to bring it to life on the canvas.”

After that I went to the Seventeen Gallery, which had some work by Hannah Perry being displayed. This featured a range of video works, as well as corrupted and torn metal pieces from various cars. I was a definite fan ‘from the get go’, and the use of latex (I think) was really enticingly abstract. It conjured up ideas of loss and things going on in the background, being slightly out of sight but not out of mind.

Walking from there I then went to the Limencello gallery, which had a group show going on, with some simple minimalist sculptures, alongside a range of paintings, as well as a few bronze casts of a tortoise. I’m unaware whether it started off as a real animal or not, which is slightly beguiling.

Next up was the Canal Projects gallery, which had a range of paintings that displayed the final clip of a series of films. These were all quite funny and enjoyable, but nothing more than that really, with no actual depth to the work, just paintings of ‘the end’ over and over again, with different backdrops.

Then I travelled the long and tiresome journey to the Lisson Gallery to see the Susan Hiller exhibition, which was the definite highlight of the day. It contained a range of her works, from the sculptural to some installation film work. One piece was a compilation of clips from films which featured children with supernatural abilities, which sought to make the point that our world is boring and dull, and that nothing interesting ever happens, so we have to watch films in order to keep ourselves interested.

I then went to a few more exhibitions, including the Christine Park Gallery, which had some work by Dan Hays being shown. He had taken a range of landscape images and distorted them, so that they looked like incredibly fuzzy jpg images, after reading a range of texts by Hito Steyerl I could definitely see the references.

The Josh Lilley gallery was close by, which consistently fascinates me. The curators there obviously know what they’re doing, as they show interesting work in the window, which encourages people to come inside, but on the bottom floor – where the majority of the work is shown – they always have really bad landscape and figurative work. It’s incredibly weird and off putting, so I don’t know whether I want to go there ever again or not.

Pilar Corrias was the last space, which had some paintings of people in fields on the walls. I think we all know where I stand on work like that.

Today I’ve been exporting the long video of the spaces and the flashing lights, which is over ten hours in length with a soundscape to accompany it, which will soon be posted to my main website. This is kind of exciting for me.

Over past few days and over the course of today I’ve been considering new work, as this current project seems to be slowly winding down, in relation to the ending of the term as well as in my own head. Who knows why, but it just seems to be going like that. So I have been eagerly scrambling around in my head, wading through my thoughts in search of a new idea. A few that I intend to look into centre around sanding down cans and piling them up, imitating how youths today might pile up the drink that they intend to pour into their bodies, not really caring about what the product actually is. I intend to do this over the course of the week. Whilst typing this, it make me think of that scene in Layer Cake, when Daniel Craig is walking through a pharmacy, and all of the products no longer have any advertising on any of the boxes. Layer Cake is an awesome film.

Another idea would be to continue the thought from last week about FPS games’ characters having no legs The other night I started to take images of people wearing suits and chopping their legs off, considering who is usually associated with playing these games, escaping their lives ‘in the office’ to simply inhabit another one. This then turned into the thought of gathering together a bunch of FPS games and then making a compilation film where you might attempt to play the various games whilst staring down at your feet (or lack thereof). I do intend to think about this over the holidays, as it seems like an interesting starting point for something.

These are simply ideas which will turn into something, hopefully, at some point. This week I also want to print off the list of jokes that don’t work when they’re written down, in order to photograph it and post it to my website. This will be a light hearted and humorous piece of work, which I’m yet to fully think about. I probably should consider the meaning further before I actually add it to my portfolio of works.

I’ve also been attempting to write this today, but have been incredibly cold and slightly ill, so I’ve been having some slight issues with writing the usual amount, which is a shame. I think as it comes closer and closer towards deadlines and the Christmas break, I’m going to feel less inclined to spend a large amount of my time writing this thing. Hopefully next week it will be different and I will feel slightly better

I look forward to the coming week, the final science fiction seminar (which will be slightly distressing, as it’s been very enjoyable), submitting a plan for the exhibition type thing next week and the usual artist talks, gallery openings and exhibition visits that occur within any given week.

Oh and I think I’m going to continue to post my Snapchats, as , even though I have a finished piece of work now, it is an ongoing process which will only end when I stop using this piece of technology which will soon become obsolete in this ever-changing society.

Daily Snapchat:

bob.bk

Franko B, Wearing White and 17 galleries in a day

Another week has just finished, a week of enrichment and enjoyment in a place that’s slowly becoming more of a home to me rather than a space that I’m simply inhabiting for a short period of my life. This may turn out to be a negative thing, the exciting becoming mundane and known, but who can say when there’s so much to do. This in itself is inconsequential though, as who really cares about how one small person functions in this life. I think it’s something that we all think about at one time or another, and it’s kind of an obvious thought really, which is a weird thought within itself.

Monday started with the second Science Fiction seminar, where we began to look at the ‘golden age’ of science fiction (mid 20s – late 50s-ish). As usual we were given some context as to what was going on at the time. In American, consumerism was on the rise and the idea of space travel was being fetishized as the fascination with new technology increased. This is a stark contrast to how it was in Europe at the time with extensive rationing schemes. During this time we also saw the rise – and fall – of the pulp magazine; the medium that made science fiction what it is today.

After discussing a range of writers who contributed to this we started to talk about the short story, ‘There Will Come Soft Rains’ by Ray Bradbury. In it we are presented with a house that slowly dies during the course of a day, a house that is automated to fulfil your every need but sorely lacking a human to cater to. It was an interesting story that was surrounded by the idea of technology going too far, and the increasingly worrying thought that a bomb could be dropped on your head at any point (following the dropping of the atomic bomb in the mid-40s).

After the seminar I continued to experiment with the video work that I’m currently creating. I began to think more about the colours, and how I could relate them to the meaning and overall concept, rather than just choosing colours that clash or make you feel sick after looking at them for too long. After reading Gamer Theory (McKenzie Wark) and The Society of the Spectacle (Guy Debord) I started to think more about my work and how the books related to what I was attempting to communicate through the repetitive nature of the films; how ‘we’ live mundane lives that are exactly the same every day until we eventually die. Through the books it became apparent to me that this state of being has been constructed by capitalists, using techniques like consumerism to keep ‘the people’ at bay. So after ‘discovering’ this I started to use colours that are usually associated with capitalism within the work. I feel that this first experiment went slightly overboard, and needs to be re-worked.

I also put a few videos into one long clip, and decided that the mixing of the aspects didn’t really work, and there needs to be some sort of continuality between the different videos. As this just looks messy and un-thought out.

Later in the day there was a lecture on medium titled ‘Black Arts Medium’. It’s primary purpose being to make us think about why we use the mediums that we use to communicate the ideas that we’re thinking about. A number of artists were talked about who might work outside of their chosen medium or within the boundaries, but slightly distorting them. Eva Rothschild and her minimalist ‘sculptures’ were talked about, alongside Glenn Brown’s appropriation paintings, Ian Davenport’s ‘drip’ paintings that are created using huge syringes and Robert Smithson’s video work that essentially spawned the idea of ‘land art’. It was a thought-provoking talk that made me think about why I use the mediums that I use, as well as making me consider branching out into other’s to better represent my ideas.

Tuesday was labelled as ‘blog day’ which consisted of everyone in the group printing off two of their blog posts and displaying them on the wall. Everyone then went around as small groups of three, labelling the different blogs with a variety of buzz words that best suited what their practice was about. This was essentially the start of sorting out who is going to be displaying their work next to each other in the show during week 9, which was kind of worrying. After discussing our posts, I was placed in the ‘Constructed Realities’ group, which I was happy about, as the title encapsulates my art vaguely well and the I liked the work by the people within the group. We then had to discuss how our work linked to one another’s, as well as coming up with a few things within popular culture that looks at the ideas that we are thinking about. We thought about films like ‘Fight Club’ and ‘The Truman Show’ as well as books like ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep’ and ‘Solaris’.

There was also an artist talk during the day from Lucy Gunning, which was pretty great. She began by showing us a very thought provoking piece of work titled ‘Climbing Around My Room’ which showed a woman navigating around the outside of a room without touching the ground. We were also shown a film called ‘The Horse Impressionists’ which involved a variety of women doing impressions of horses, it was hilarious. A bunch of other pieces were shown, as well as the idea of not being able to see the ‘whole thing’ which seems to come up a lot within artwork, and something that I’m beginning to become interested in too within my video work and how I intend to display it.

During the day I also started to think about a new idea, how in video games when you look down (in an FPS (First Person Shooter)) you rarely, if ever, see your legs/feet. In reality you obviously do, but in video games this isn’t the case. So I began to create these legless people. I don’t know where this will go, but for now it’s an idea to come back to later in the year.

I was also thinking more about my main project and the relationship between the visible and hidden space, in terms of displaying the video work. Alongside this was thoughts about my sculptural work, and what I wanted to do with the actual things that I’ve created in real life, and how to fit that into the new avenues that I’m taking with the work. I thought about how the sculptures could be sinking into the idea of capitalism, being absorbed by it as a whole. The sculpture would be glitching into the wall which would be partly painted in the colour of capitalism. This would signify the enveloping nature of the thing, but the fact that the whole wall isn’t painted would come into how the government allows people to slightly rebel against the system, making them think that they’re making a difference when in actuality they are not, and confined within the over-arching system. This idea is a work in progress, as I also like how the sculptures are moving into the wall at the moment, white on white. I just need to think about it a little more.

On top of these thoughts I made a short video looking at change and the idea of an invisible ruler who manipulates what you think and say, through technology and just in general. I don’t know whether it will be something or nothing.

Wednesday started with editing and ended with editing. The process is long and painful, doubly so when you end up only creating part of a thing after spending many hours working on it. It’s weird to think how, in a very short amount of time, video work has become quite important to my practice. It’s definitely made me think about how I value video work, even though the work I’m creating has no real narrative at the moment, so you wouldn’t have to sit through the whole thing to ‘get’ it, which is usually infuriating to me.

During the day someone said something about how the worlds that I’m creating are a lot more real than a photograph. How a lot more effort has been involved in making the world, rather than simply duplicating the one that surrounds us. It got me thinking about the idea of something becoming something else. At what point does nothing become something? Or a chair become a broken chair? When it cannot function as a chair anymore, is it now a broken chair? It just made me think about what I could do to change the spaces that I’m creating from fiction into non-fiction, and whether that is important. Is that in itself important?

In the evening I went to see The Lobster, which was great. The idea that you can only be with someone if you have at least one thing in common (however trivial) is absurd and darkly comical. This obviously makes you think about your own relationships with your friends and loved ones, questioning the idea of what a friend actually is. Within the film, even the ‘rebels’ rebel against the system by creating their own system! So embedded within the idea of having systems that they make their own to contain themselves within it. I really liked the film, and how it made me think about how I function within this world. It also related to my project quite well too, which was a bonus and not entirely unplanned.

I didn’t go into uni on Thursday as I decided to go to see the Jon Rafman show (for the fourth and final time). I’m glad that I did, as I was able to experience the closed off spaces within the cabinets as well as the water bed installation, which was amazing. As you got into the bed, it moved with you, but once you lay down and fixed your eyes on the screen above your head it calmed, mimicking the wave pool’s movements that you’re being shown via the monitor above your head. The beads pressing down on your chest contributed to the sense of discomfort that you would feel if you were a part of that wave, and the cold water adds to the experience on a whole other level. It was great to go back. Whilst there I also saw work by Kate Lyddon, which were some really weird paintings that considered narrative and obscure animal creatures.

I then went to the Wellcome Collection to see Ann Veronica Janssens’ installation titled ‘yellowbluepink’. You walk into a room full of coloured mist that completely disorientates you, deliberately changing how you manoeuvre within the space and disrupting your flow of consciousness. I really enjoyed the experience, and spent some time within the space, exploring and thinking about the idea of time and change.

From there I walked to the Richard Saltoun gallery, which had work looking at performance art in relation to gender and the body. The work was interesting to read about, but it wasn’t really my type of work, in terms of aesthetics.

After that I went to the TJ Boulting gallery that had an installation being shown called ‘Running Naked’. It’s a completely crazy exhibition full of colour and kitsch, with plastic tablecloths taped to the floor and synthetic hair forms attached to the walls. A favourite of mine was ‘#NUDES’ which showed two butterfly catchers placed behind a piece of perspex. The first layer of the work was humorous to me in itself, let alone the multiple meanings below the surface.

I then wandered across the street to the Josh Lilley gallery that had an uninteresting exhibition titled ‘Homeful of Hands’ going on. The majority of the work was paintings (Ann Toebbe) that showed a bird’s eye view of flattened interiors. I remember seeing her work at the Saatchi gallery a few years ago, and it just reminds me of something very child-like and dull, interesting but overall not so interesting, after just having seen an artist called ‘Shoplifter’ working with large amounts of hair at the previous gallery it all felt rather quaint.

I journeyed on to the Bartha Contemporary. I’d already seen the current exhibition, but I was near and wouldn’t miss a chance to see the amazing work once again. So minimal and beautiful. A few doors down there was another gallery called ‘Ibid’ that I went into, which had some Alexander Calder-esque work being shown by the artist ‘Rodrigo Matheus’. Made up of found objects though, rather than thinly sliced metal. I liked the assemblages and enjoyed the thought processes going on behind the seemingly random connections between the objects, as well as the form and structure of the metal holders which enabled the work to be.

Tiwani Contemporary was next on the list, who had work being shown by Francisco Vidal. It was okay, but slightly overwhelming, which was obviously the point, as Vidal believes that ‘the artist is a machine and the studio is a workshop’ but this ideology isn’t really for me. I think I saw his work in the Angolan Pavilion this year in Venice, and I didn’t really find the work that interesting then either. It’s a little too much in my opinion.

I walked over to the Ronchini Gallery, which had some beautifully minimal work by Rebecca Ward being shown. The canvas work is exciting, but I preferred the marble pieces, as well as the wooden structure. This comes back to the idea of form, and how one idea can be translated into many different mediums. Wards work captures this notion incredibly well.

I went next door to the Jerome Zodo gallery which only had half of the exhibition (Painting after Painting) up, which was quite humorous within itself; maybe making a statement as to how painting as a form is slowly dying out? Walking around a blank room full of white walls and metal plates the guy working in the gallery remarked ‘maybe this is the art’ which was obviously a joke, but it perfectly encapsulated what I was thinking in terms of painting and so on.

I then went next door again (have I mentioned how great it is to be able to go to one gallery after another like this after being in a place for so long with no galleries to speak of?) to the Vigo gallery where work by Leonardo Drew was being displayed. It’s very cool work, in an aesthetic way, and I do enjoy how it’s coming out of the wall, as if to attack you. Burned wood within art always makes me think of Roger Ackling and the very precise work that he made concerning wood. I remember seeing work of his at the Chelsea Space many years ago, it’s very weird to think about time once again, and seeing that space now on a daily basis. To quote Wheezy from Toy Story 2, ‘What’s the point in prolonging the inevitable? We’re all just one stitch from here, to there.’

I then went to the MOT International that had some work by Beatriz Olabarrieta on show. The incorporation of technology within the installation was very intriguing, with video work I feel that artists’ have a choice, whether to work with the wires and create a feature out of them, or to completely hide them all under tape. In this work Olabarrieta collaborated with them in a delightful way, distorting where the work starts and finishes. The ‘hidden’ projectors were also tantalising, being embedded within the work, making a 2D object into a 3D one by utilising the projectors. This ‘working with’ aspect really interests me.

Timothy Taylor Art Gallery was next, with some work by Josephine Meckseper shown. The pieces that were windows within the wall captured my attention, as well as the random rat that was near one of the corners, skulking around the outside of the room. Which was very weird. I liked the work overall, but didn’t like the occasionally smudges of paint that was used throughout the pieces.

As I was on my way to the tube I stopped off at a couple more, Philips being one of them. I’d previously walked past this building, and deemed it too fancy to be an art gallery, but low and behold it was. So I entered and was greeted by Juergen Teller and his series in collaboration with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West. At first I thought he was mocking them, but later on I realised that it was an actual thing. So I’m not completely sure that I like it anymore. I’m slightly conflicted. I recommend googling ‘Kanye, Juergen & Kim’ to find out more.

The mini Gagosian on Davies St was next, featuring some photographs by Cy Twombly. These were nice, but it kind of felt like some ‘suit people’ were attempting to squeeze all the money out of Twombly that they can (even though I really like his work). It was just a little weird, being greeted by a suited man addressing me as ‘sir’ and handing me the press release. I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong. Who’s to say?

Maddox Arts was my next gallery on the way to the tube, which had some really quiet multi-disciplinary work by Nicolas K Feldmeyer being displayed. His slight manipulations within photographs and paint are really interesting. I particularly liked when I approached what I thought to be an abstract painting, but in actuality the bottom half was a projection, that allusion and mixing of mediums was an engaging thing that occurred, and actually worked for me.

The last gallery was the Grimpel Fils gallery, which had some paintings of female figures, which were incredibly dull and don’t need to be talked of anymore.

I then travelled to Queen Mary University of London to see Franko B as part of a series of ‘Action Lectures’ being held there. The actual lecture took place in complete darkness, where he spoke to the audience through a speaker system, talking about his work and the road he’s taken within it. At the end of the text he turned the lights right up, which were faced towards us, literally destroying our eyes for a few minutes. It was a really great talk, the take away for me being ‘do everything with style.’

In the late evening I went to an event at the ICA called ‘UNPLUCT’. It was an interesting experience, full of people posing in front of art installations, dressed in full white. It was definitely an experience, one which I’m not entirely sure if I liked or not.

Friday was a good day, where I started to put together a few more films, and thought about adding extra aspects to the work in terms of titles and how I want it to be displayed in a few weeks. I think I’m fully set with having the videos be videos inside of Photoshop, as it adds new meanings to the work, but it does take away from the clean aesthetic of the original movies. I’m also slightly deliberating on whether to show both the video work and the sculptural pieces, or just the video installation. As well as whether or not I’ll even have enough space to show both. I’m sure this will be revealed in the next few weeks.

This also became a thing which I've been thinking about:

On top of creating and re-thinking the looping videos I thought more about the Snapchat work, and made another example that worked well. At this point I just need to put them all in one long video and see how I feel about it all.

This is obviously going to be a continuous project that spans until I either get tired of using snapchat or some other, unknown reason. I kind of want there to be some significance with the time and amount of videos involved, but maybe the significance is that it’s an ever-growing thing, similar to exhibitions that are added to during their duration. In Peter Kennard’s exhibition ‘Unofficial War Artist’ this change is currently occurring. It’s more common in interactive art though, when you’re encouraged to write your name on the wall, or add a spot to the ‘board’. It makes me think of the exhibition at the Wellcome Collection that was on last year titled ‘An Idiosyncratic A to Z of the Human Condition’. I dislike this kind of ‘audience participation’ in artwork, and feel that it’s incredibly focused on attracting children to come and ‘play with the art.’

Later in the day I wandered over to Tate Britain and saw the Frank Auerbach exhibition. I preferred the early work, imagining how much money it would have taken to create each painting was fun, as the amount of paint being used was ludicrous, but as the show went on it just fell into the usual painting thing, which I’m not a fan of.

Whilst there I did however go to the free exhibition titled ‘Vanilla and Concrete’ which was really inviting. Lots of marble pieces as well as the insides of concrete backpacks were being shown, and some well hung abstract paintings, which was fun to see. Just being able to cross the street to take ten minutes out of my day to see this work is quite exhilarating and a really cool thing that I’ll miss when I go home in about a month.

On Saturday I just thought more about my work and continued to create the controller videos. I also went back to the idea of adding music to the work, and thinking about what kind of music works well with the clips. I started to consider using a robot voice to say something, and then stretching that voice, finding music within it and just diluting it down to the bare bones of the thing. I went from there to thinking about relating it to video games, thinking about how all the sounds and voices that we hear within them are fabricated from real things. So I considered taking a sound, like the PlayStation start up clip, or the ‘Segaaaaaaa’ from Sega. This thought process looped me back to thinking about what I’m trying to do with the music, that idea of monotony and continually waiting for something, anything, to happen. This is when I created a sound file, that you can access here if you want to listen:

http://www.filedropper.com/untitledsong1

At first you think something is going to happen, but it slowly dawns on you that, in fact, nothing is ever going to change. With every loop there’s a tiny possibility that this time something will be different. It’s kind of like a lot of things within life, when you think they will be good but in the end it’s as you expected. Its pace is a little too slow to actually use for my videos, so I need to experiment further, but I like the initial idea. I also like how the video is fast (as well as the sound maybe), but it’s looking at the idea of a slowed down society where every day is the same. The irony is fun.

After making that initial piece of music, I then stretched it to make something new, which is very intriguing. Unfortunately its over 6 hours long, so it's too big to upload to anywhere.

I thought more about how to display the work too, and started to formulate these using Sketchup. In a perfect world I would love to be able to chop into the wall, but I’m aware this may not be possible, and intend to discuss this during my tutorial this week. 

So instead of changing the wall I created these objects that make you contort your body as if you’re looking over the side of a bridge, down at the continuously moving water. Forcing you to do so if you want to access the work. This links back to the talk by Lucy Gunning earlier in the week, and how she made people climb under a thing to see her video in an exhibition at Matt’s Gallery called ‘Esc’ in 2004. I’m still thinking about how I want it to be displayed, and this will be an ongoing thought process in the next few weeks.

Today I’ve been thinking more about this, and have also been considering my video game thing, that I haven’t really touched this week. I’ve been thinking more about the ideas within it, rather than actually changing it in any way. I’ve been considering having a timer in the corner, so that there are two options to ‘complete’ the game, one is to run out the timer (which will be the average life span of a human being). The second option is more immediate, which is to jump off into the abyss. At the end of either outcome a message will flash up on the screen informing you, the player, that ‘YOU WIN.’ Both endings will show this screen. This is one of my early ideas for the game, but I want to actually make this happen over the course of this week.

On a lighter note, I watched a really enjoyable new Netflix show called 'W/ Bob and David'. A kind of sequel to there earlier TV show together that was titled 'Mr. Show with Bob and David'. It's a hilarious sketch comedy program which focuses on issues that surrounds our every day lives.

I’ve really liked how much I’ve progressed within my work this week, and hope that next week will see a similar ‘jump’ in terms of work created. It’s been a good week.

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