Many
things have happened this week; starting a collaboration, watching a few
movies, finishing the bulk of my film, starting to watch Making a Murderer,
reading Utopia, going to many talks, exhibitions and a panel. It was a good
week.
My
works been progressing slowly, I managed to finish the editing of the music and
video during the week, the majority of it anyway. I still have to film zooming
out of a screen and then zooming out of that screen, which will hopefully be
accomplished next week.
I did, however, start to write my script for the film,
whilst researching many artists who create video works with narration or voice
overs, like Camille Henrot or Jon Rafman. For the moment I’ve just been writing
random spools of thought, which don’t really make sense. I’m unsure whether I
want very little text, interjecting here and there, or a lot of text, overlaying
the whole thing. I need to think about it further. These are a few examples of
the preliminary texts:
Delving
into the depths of the mind, exploring the potency of life, the hunger for an
event that never occurs on the precipice of the future. Controlling a pointless
world where everyone is a prototype and life is a coffin that is slowly levered
into the ground.
Distractions
being produced through pedagogical relationships over an eternity long escapade
to the moon, tumultuous rains pouring down, obeying the laws of physics,
wasting misery on the miserable.
Sinking
into a slow ball of depression, becoming defeated and weightless, looking
forwards in the ‘would you like to play again’ utopian culture that we have all
love and cherish. Fuelling ourselves with attractive chains and living in
carbon copies of each other’s lives.
Overwhelmed
by the characters in an invisible war against the data banks of our minds, one
conforms to the illegitimate rulers of the commonplace court of
irresponsibility and depression to seek a life of luxury and inexplicable
pleasure.
I
also started to look into creating a sculpture of the Zook immersed in a block.
The more I thought about it, the more interested I became of the possibility of
making the Zook using a 3-D printer. I’m currently attempting to do this, it
involves creating the model so that it’s completely water tight on a new
program and sending the file to a printer somewhere in London. I’m going to pursue
this further, as I think the aesthetics would be really interesting, a
sculpture created on a computer melting into a material that’s been used for
many many many many years.
In
other news, this week me and a fellow student (Laila Majid) started to
collaborate on a new project, centred on the internet (or ‘the network’ to
quote James Bridle) and the overwhelming nature of the thing itself. It stemmed
from discussions surrounding the idea of creating a virtual exhibition, which
slowly turned into thinking about interactive space and wanting to make new
work, rather than simply displaying the work that we’re doing right now online.
In the end we decided to create a range of spaces, environments, within Google
Sketchup and to fill them with objects from the depths of the Sketchup Warehouse.
Alongside this, video and sounds from YouTube will be used, as well as
screengrabs from our own computers, which will find themselves within this
video piece/interactive landscape. For the moment I haven’t got anything ‘proper’
to show, but hopefully by next week we will have made some progress.
On
top of this I’ve submitted my application to go on Erasmus next year, which should
be exciting if I actually get through the many hoops. I only applied to one
school, the San Francisco Art Institute, to go on their Art and Technology
course. It looks like a really exciting course, with some really amazing
tutors, Jenny Odell being one of them, who works a lot with Google Street View (similar
to Rafman’s 9-eyes project) and makes work surrounding the internet as well as
social media, etc. It was quite exciting to find a tutor on the course who had
work that was truly inspiring to me.
During
the week I went to a number of talks, the first one being the weekly Chelsea
one, which was kind of interesting. Cecilie Gravesen was the artist, who makes
documentary type films that stems from a research based practice, mainly
looking at the ideas surrounding Colonialism. Similar – in a conceptual way –
to David Blandy’s most recent video work titled ‘Finding Fanon Part Two’.
Another talk I went to was centred on James Bridle and ‘Systems Literacy’. This
was hosted at the Whitechapel Gallery in conjunction with Electronic
Superhighway, which I went to today (it was amazing). The talk was incredible,
with so many ideas flying around (not dissimilar to the velocity of the drones
which feature a lot in Bridle’s work) that it was hard to keep up. There was so
much said that I’m still processing it all, and will continue to read through
my notes in the coming days.
The
highlight of the week was going to a panel on Culture Hacking, centred on Simon
Denny’s exhibition at the Serpentine, but with many more awesome people present
(like Heba Amin and Brett Scott) discussing the work that they do in their
chosen fields and their positions on surveillance, hacking and power. It was an
incredible experience and was hard to keep up with everything that was going
on. Many interesting things were discussed and said, I particularly enjoyed
Scott’s comparing of artists to hackers as well as the idea of aesthetic
research. Yet again, my notes will be ingested and considered as the days
continue.
I
read the book Utopia by Thomas More and have been reading extracts from The
Faber Book of Utopias (edited by John Carey) in response to my seminar on
Utopias which will begin tomorrow. In More’s Utopia, a lot of the aspects of
the mythical space make it seem more like a Communist society as opposed to a ‘no
place’ or ‘ideal place’. The idea that everyone’s house is exactly the same,
and that the clothes never change is incredibly creepy to me. The idea that
gold is used to imprison their slaves is an interesting one, and the ideas
surrounding pain and pleasure were really thought inducing. I’ve also started
to read Brave New World, which I’ve previously read before, but I thought that
I would ‘refresh’ for the seminar. I’m also taking another seminar on Immunity
and Autoimmunity, and in the lead up to that I’m reading On Immunity by Eula
Bliss, which has been interesting.
Over
the week I went to a number of exhibitions, the first of which was Line at the Lisson
Gallery which featured many favourites, from one of Sol Lewitt’s ‘Wall Drawing’s
to Florian Pumhรถsl’s beautiful ‘Tract’ animation. The
other Lisson Gallery exhibition was featuring John Akomfrah and a range of his video
works which were all incredibly well filmed and produced. Seventeen Gallery was
another space that I visited, with an incredible light installation by Marianna
Simnett which visualised the act of breathing in a subtle yet all-encompassing way
that really dragged you into the work. Hales Gallery was okay, with a
collection of things by Jeff Keen, which felt more like a museum exhibit than
an art exhibition. The Ryder gallery on the other hand had some amazing work by
Mark Davey, the precision involved within the sculptural works was an awe to
observe, especially in ‘Us’, where two fluorescent tubes are in constant movement,
being thrown around by motorised steel robot arms.
The
Space Gallery was interesting, having not been there before I didn’t know what
to expect, but I was pleasantly surprised by Jeremy Hutchison’s 3-D body-scan
and the neon lettering that accompanied it. The Limoncello had abstract and
dull paintings by Cornelia Baltes being shown, which I was uninterested by and the
Chisenhale gallery (another first) had a range of assemblages featuring medical
equipment as well as three huge blocks of polyurethane foam. The space was huge
and amazing but not well used, in my opinion.
The
final exhibition of the week was Electronic Superhighway at the Whitechapel,
which I’ve been looking forward to for a number of weeks. I’d seen a lot of the
work before, obviously, but nevertheless it was still a truly enjoyable
experience. Seeing Eva and Franco Mattes’ ‘My Generation’ in situ was quite
amazing, as well as Corey Arcangel’s ‘Snowbunny / Lakes’. Some people who were
new to me included Jonas Lund with his ‘VIP’ (Viewer Improved Painting) which
had an interesting concept and Jayson Musson with a compilation of YouTube
clips (called Art Thoughtz) taken from his persona’s (Hennessy Youngman)
channel. They are hilarious and I highly recommend watching them. I hope to
return at some point, spending more hours immersed in the technology. I was
disappointed that Hito Steyerl’s ‘How Not to be Seen. A Fucking Didactic
Educational .MOV File’ wasn’t on display, or any of Jon Rafman’s video works,
but nevertheless it was quite an inspiring exhibition.
Throughout
the week I’ve also been watching a number of films, one of my favourites being ‘The
End of the Tour’ which dramatizes the interview of David Foster Wallace (or ‘Dave
Wallace’) by David Lipsky. Having read Infinite Jest over the summer it was
incredibly interesting to listen to these two actors discussing the pitfalls of
modern society over a five day period. It made me want to read more of Wallace’s
collection of books. Another great film from this week was Richard Linklater’s ‘Waking
Life’ which was basically an hour and a half of animated actors philosophising
on the nature of reality, the meaning of life and existentialism. A really
amazing piece of film making. ‘Prisoners’ was also incredible, with Jack Gyllenhaall
and Paul Dano performing with clarity.
Grandma
was a fun way to spend 80 minutes of my evening, and Creed got me to be vaguely
interested in boxing. Kingsman: The Secret Service on the other hand was quite
dull, with a terrible ending which poisoned the rest of the film for me in my
opinion. Freeheld is the last film on the list, an outstanding performance by
Julianne Moore (as always) accompanying a slightly dull film. The plot was an
exciting one that was directed badly, making my concern for the characters wellbeing
close to non-existent. Still Alice was a far better story, if we’re looking at
films where we see Moore slowly decaying as the film progresses forwards.
I
also started to watch Making a Murderer, which feels a little like Serial but
it’s visual counterpart. I’m only four episodes in though, so who knows what
will happen. On top of this I find myself repeatedly dipping into episodes of
The Twilight Zone, which is always a delight.
Oh
and this week’s lecture was focused on Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. We
were looking at Laura Mulvey’s essay of the same name, in conjunction with the
films of Alfred Hitchcock and artists like Hannah Wilke and Cindy Sherman. It was
fairly okay and I learned a few things.
Along with this I’ve
been playing Braid, a video game that’s central mechanic is that you can time
travel. You do this to solve complex puzzles within the game world and is
interwoven with an enticing storyline. Definitely worth playing. To
end the week I returned to Vice City, enjoying the pleasures of 80s music mixed
with the pinks and hues of Miami. Sometimes it’s good to indulge in one thing
or another.
During
the week I intend to continue with my work concerning the collaboration and finalising
my personal film, as well as considering ways to display the piece. I also want
to get my files sent to a 3-D Printer, so that I’ll get the physical thing back
as soon as possible. I look forward to the seminars, even though they’re going
to be incredibly tough and hard to keep up with.
Snapchat:
bob.bk
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