Lucy Beech, PHOTOPLAY #2 and Networked Cultures

This was arguably the ‘last week of term’, with assessments occurring and cleaning everything out of the studios, it’s a weird feeling that first year has nearly finished. When I think back to this time last year, I was a very different person, with different artwork being created and different wants/needs to be fulfilled. I’ve only got a few feedback tutorials/crits to go and then I’m free from uni work, enabling me to concentrate on the continuous video game creating with John alongside my own work for the show in a few weeks’ time.

In terms of my own work’s progression, the only serious thing that I managed to do was successfully collate together a series of tweets that had gotten various people fired, 12 in total; representing the 12 members of a jury. This focuses on how social media platforms, and the internet in general, has become a space for judging one’s peers, making the collective body of the internet ‘judge, jury and executioner’. I successfully printed all these various tweets onto caps, which I plan to show next month for the show at Safehouse 1; working onto my previous piece looking at Justine Sacco. The current idea is to have them placed all over the space, hanging on hooks, encouraging the viewer to wear them and take pictures with them, sharing the images on any and all social media platforms. I would then collate these photographs and create a piece of work from them, with Hito Steyerl’s Red Alert 2 being a direct reference. In this work she gathered all of the images that people had taken of the original piece Red Alert and created a new film responding to people’s reactions of the work. This new piece that may or may not be generated by people taking photographs with the work would probably end up manifesting as huge blown up images of their photographs on the various social media platforms, directly referencing Richard Prince and his New Portraits series and Cory Arcangel’s blown up images currently being shown at the Lisson. The caps are currently being printed and should be with me by the end of this week.

To go alongside this, I’ve been considering displaying a few ‘selfie sticks’ on gun racks, yet again considering the power of the image which is usually posted to social media when one uses a selfie stick. The sticks would be allowed to be used in the exhibition space, for photographing people wearing the hats or just for pictures in general. It would be interesting to make up a contract for the users of the sticks to sign, maybe making it so that each image that was taken using the stick belonged to me, considering the idea of ‘terms and conditions’ that are prevalent when you sign up to various websites. This could be an interesting aspect, or may just be too much. The selfie stick idea may work better if all the caps were in one space, with the selfie sticks accompanying them, making it more obvious that the caps ‘should’ be photographed using the sticks; but maybe that’s controlling the work too much. I think I need to think about it some more and mock up some installation ideas.

I’m hoping to display another work too, a video piece or an interactive video experience, something that’s not just sitting there like the caps. I’m at a bit of a loss currently as to what to create, rather than simply displaying a previous piece that’s yet to be exhibited like Consumerist Dissonance or Rules of Engagement. As I was saying last week, I really want to make something out of my Facebook data, but I’m just finding it very hard to actually think of anything that isn’t simply displaying the data. Having the messages engraved onto a grave would be really great, but that costs a little too much, although engraved plaques are around £20-£30 each, but that doesn’t have the same connotations as a grave; slowly being forgotten over time. At this point I’m thinking about getting all this stuff to the venue, as well as taking it all back to Suffolk in less than a months’ time. It’s a hard decision. I just need to think about what I want to show, something new and interesting, whatever that may be. I’ll just wait and see what happens

Other ideas for work not for the exhibition are occurring, with a side project looking at how a Kindle tracks your reading speeds, continually informing you of how long it’s going to take you to read your book. In this work I’m planning to have a Kindle displayed beside a classic ‘reading chair’ positioned in a carpeted space, possibly the banqueting hall at Chelsea; simulating a space synonymous with advertising culture. On the Kindle a copy of Infinite Jest would be set up, a book infamous for its high word count and obsession with addictions associated with advertising cultures. In an exhibition setting the book would be readable, with the timer continuously increasing or decreasing, depending on however many people decide to flick through the pages of the virtual book. This work would consider the surveillance and digitalisation of book reading, arguably one of the few things yet to be taken over by technology. It may or may not become a thing. I’ll see if I have time.

Another idea this week came from my continued reading of Delete, considering memory and the loss of it. Within the book, ‘lost’ memory is talked about a lot, that memories aren’t actually forgotten, they just no longer link to one another, so the ones without any links are lost in the ether of our brains, still taking up ‘space’ but not actually being used. This made me think of all the websites out there that are unlinked to other websites and that can’t be found via search engines, one’s that still run and use up memory in data farms but are inaccessible without the URL. In this case, in contrast to Constant Dullaart’s piece The Death of the URL, the websites URL is incredibly important. Taking a leaf out of Eva and Franco Mattes’ book, I want to look into creating a website on the dark web, only accessible through the TOR browser with a specific link. What’s contained on that website I’m unsure of at this moment, it could link well with the old Facebook messages, with each new web address having a new virtual conversation, forgotten about over the years, but as of now I’m unsure.

Other than these generated ideas, it was actually a very slow week, setting up for the assessment on Monday, printing off all the relevant information alongside making sure all my work since Christmas was either displayed or available on USB sticks. All very boring. Then returning on Friday to take everything back to my place was incredibly painful, carrying huge bags full of crap on the tube is never fun.

I did manage to document my work surrounding PC culture and public shaming, which was a positive. The images are okay, but not brilliant, I think I may need to re-photograph them at some point in the future. For now, they are fine and you get a sense of what they actually are at least. You can see all the images on my main website here:

http://www.bobbicknell-knight.com/#/so-youve-been-publicly-shamed/

Other than this I’ve been working with John on the video games some more, with a few of them officially completed, with final touches being added over the next week. This week I built a level revolving around an old woman’s dream, where she gets run over in the street and makes rice for six identical looking children. The levels are very weird to all of these games, but it does make sense as they’re all inspired by people’s ‘crazy’ dreams.

Another meeting for the group exhibition next month was held, catching up with what people are making as well as ideas for names among other things. I’m enjoying the continuous meetings, actual time that’s been put aside to discuss and talk about what’s occurring in our practice and hearing about peoples work that I don’t usually get to hear about. A few of the different works seems to be individual objects, for example my caps, so one of the many curatorial ideas that was brought up was to have these various objects displayed around the house, finding a relationship between one another, rather than just having set spaces between ourselves. A possible name for the exhibition also came up; xXx, obviously this has underlying sexual interpretations, which some of the work within the show will focus upon. It also has a sense of ambiguity to it, or ‘riskay-ness’. It’s also a lot more interesting than coming up with a ‘wanky’ name that’s taken from an influential book. Who knows what the actual name will be, only time will tell. I look forward to this week’s meeting as well as the actual event in question.

Other things of merit this week include hearing back from a few open calls, one based in Sheffield and one based here in London. I was accepted to be a part of God’s Own County in Sheffield, where two of my video works (Utopian Realism and Endless Confinement) will be shown on huge projection screens being projected onto the side of Weston Park Museum. Here’s a short video clip of how big the projection will actually be, I’m kind of excited for when it happens next month: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2x4grgvC7Sc

I was also accepted into PHOTOPLAY #2 at the Brewdog Clerkenwell, a pub in London, where another video work of mine will be shown on Tuesday this week, here’s the Facebook event if anyone is interested: https://www.facebook.com/events/1721272604814346/

I continue to sign up for things every week, which is definitely a good thing. Doing everything and anything at this stage is the best thing to do I feel, especially as I have a vague amount of work that I’m proud of.

Aside from working, I went to a few things this week, not as many as I’d hoped to go to unfortunately, as most of my time is being devoted towards John’s project at this point. One was going to the Zabludowicz for an exciting panel discussion titled Private Lives and Networked Culture. The majority of it was good, with lots of back tracking to pre-existing ideas and thoughts, but it was still really interesting to hear from insightful people on the different subjects in a ‘real life’ setting. David Raymond Conroy, the only artist on the panel, was especially impressive, with thoughtful and insightful ideas about the network and how we use social media to our advantage. I look forward to seeing more of him and his work in the future.

I also went to Show One at CSM. It was definitely an interesting experience, looking to the future and thinking about John and I’s work for the Chelsea show as well as my own in a few years from now. One of my favourites was a video piece from Max Hollands, showing him calling up various people and asking them what they think he should make for his degree show. It was delightfully humorous and one of those things you immediately understand but wanted to stay for longer; something that I strive to do in a lot of my own time based video works. To be honest I was slightly disappointed by the exhibition overall, as there was no real work that I would have truly wanted to make myself. I’m sure that when I get to that point in my own ‘career’ I’ll understand it all, but as of now I wasn’t fully invested.

\There was also the end of year second year show at Chelsea, which was even more disappointing. I didn’t really like any of the work, which was incredibly surprising. I wanted more, whatever ‘more’ means. I don’t know whether to be excited for when I’m in that same position next year, or whether I should be anxious about the quality of second years’ work, and maybe my work is of even a lower quality than that. Basically it was an annoying exhibition; lots of painting that I wasn’t invested in.

Lucy Beech was the artist on Tuesday, speaking about her incredible practice. I’m really impressed by the quality of artists this term compared to last term; it’s kind of a shame really that it’s not always this good; but I guess that’s the way it goes. Her films come from excessive research into various ideas, such as internet communities or funeral award ceremonies. She manages to use this research to then talk about her own interests, rather than simply focusing on the original idea. I thoroughly recommend going and looking at her previous work, especially Cannibals, a video piece showing a group of women who slowly break down to tearing their own flesh from their bones.

Oh and week 5 on isthisit? is up, with a video piece from collaborative duo Bea Vorster and Zachary Dietrich titled Cyclopian Trilogy Part II Confrontation alongside a work from Emile Burgoyne Northern State. You can find it here:

http://isthis.wix.com/isthisit

Although I didn’t go to many exhibitions, I did see a few films. The first being Angry Birds, which, for being inspired by a terrible video game, was actually quite funny and heart-warming at times.

Futureworld, the successor to Westworld, was also surprisingly good. I imagined it to be a simple copy of the first film in the series, but fortunately it had a vaguely interesting new storyline, centralised around the idea of a group of robots taking over the world, rather than a sole robot gone ‘haywire’. It was classic 70s sci-fi which we all love.

The Secret World of Arrietty was quite beautiful, not Studio Ghibli’s best, but it still contained incredible animations accompanied by a thoughtful storyline. After my mass watching of all of the Miyazaki films earlier in the year, I think I’m ready to return to the world of Studio Ghibli, and may attempt to watch all of them at some point soon.

Timer, a film built around the concept of a timer on your wrist counting down until you meet your ‘one true love’, was less interesting than I thought it was going to be. With no real sci-fi elements to speak of, it was kind of dull, with the general concept of time counting down having been executed a lot better in Andrew Niccol’s In Time. I wanted more from it, less rom com and more seriousness.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. was another one that I wasn’t completely convinced by. Even though it was a fair film, it didn’t really feel like it knew what it was, seeming to sway from action comedy to pure action. A lot of the movie seemed to be a big joke, making me never worried for the main characters’ livelihoods or the plot altogether. A shame.

Hardcore Henry was the last film on the list. The concept of filming a whole film on various GoPro’s is interesting, but ultimately it made the movie feel incredibly low budget and less real than ‘normal’ filming does, whatever that means. Lots of incredible action with a plot that didn’t really make sense.

Apart from film watching, I did watch the first episode of a new tv series titled Preacher. Originally a comic book, the pilot episode is full of brutal violence and solid character development. I look forward to seeing more and would highly recommend the first episode.

I think that might be everything, unless I’ve missed some key detail that has otherwise escaped my thoughts. I think it’s just a waiting game now, waiting for the term to be over, waiting to go home and relax for a bit, waiting for time to stand still again. I think I’ll be at a bit of a loss next week with no studio to go to, feeling a lot less like uni and a lot more like real life.

Over the course of the week I’m going to be thinking about a new video, whatever that might be, alongside finalising the video games with John and painting his space, ‘making it good’. I’ll continue to apply to exhibitions, hopefully getting more replies soon enough and also going to a few myself finally. I just need to plan a day again like I used to, now that I have more time with the deadlines being nearly over. I think the next three weeks are just going to be quite free, enjoying London for what it is before I return to Suffolk.

Enjoi.

Instagram:

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Delete, Facebook Meta Data and Katrina Palmer

I’m writing this on a train coming back from Leeds. It’s a weird place, full of students wandering aimlessly around, where time slows down to a standstill. It makes me think of Suffolk and the down time that occurs whenever I return there. The short pocket of time that I’ve been here for, away from London, has been intriguing, having time to think, time to reflect, time to consider, pre-emptively, the first year of uni that’s nearly over.

I keep coming back to the idea of time in these posts, repeatedly considering how it affects me and what I’m doing. This week I’ve begun to connect that to my work in some way for a vague piece in the future. I’ve been scouring all of my meta data from Facebook, mainly exploring the millions of messages that I’ve sent to people over the years; reflecting on who I used to be alongside the time that I’ve spent on the platform, wasting my time. For the past few days I’ve been thinking about how to use this data, what work to make out of it, paying respect to my past self, whilst slightly mocking the person who I used to be. The first option that I considered was to simply display all of my past messages, in tower like structures, piled up pieces of A4 paper, allowing the viewer to take however many pages they want; playing off of the idea of the government reading through all of our data all the time anyway.

Although this idea intrigued me, it feels a little too simple, simply displaying data. There are many artists in the past who have done this, Laura Poitras with the Edward Snowden documents, Steve McQueen with his piece End Credits and Simon Denny throughout his career. When Liam Scully used his Facebook meta data for his exhibition at the Union Gallery, A Digital Suicide, he chose to display the messages with simple, childlike drawings drawn on top of the original messages. Although I enjoyed this, I feel like it’s a little close to simply displaying data like the aforementioned artists. I think that you have to find a middle place, making the viewer aware that they’re your old Facebook messages/information whilst aestheticizing them in some way.

A very early idea of mine is to obtain various LED tube lighting, printing off multiple pages of messages and placing them within the tubes and then pouring numerous liquids usually confiscated at airports into the tube. The tube referencing the ‘classic’ office space, more precisely the office spaces of the NSA and GCHQ headquarters and the liquids discussing the heightened security measures that came into effect post 9/11. This is a very early idea however, one that may be made for the exhibition in June.

A couple of other things have occurred this week, the documenting of my Call of Duty piece being one thing, as well as photographing of my video game landscape balanced on a blow up chair. Both pieces can be seen on my main website here: http://www.bobbicknell-knight.com/ I think both of these projects were successful, with the Rubik cubes elevating the screen similar to Chris Ofili and his ‘dung paintings’ and the blow up chairs referencing the gamer space that I keep coming back to, similar to how Jon Rafman, Eva and Franco Mattes and Sidsel Meineche Hansen’s Second Sex War all do this in some way.

Alongside this documentation, I’ve been slowly compiling all of my things together for my assessment tomorrow, printing out many pages of A4 paper whilst searching through this blog for instances of reflection among other things. The video game with John continues to progress, the more we learn the more complicated the game gets, which is a good thing, although as this year is coming to an end I’m beginning to feel less and less motivated, and more and more tired.

We had our first official group meeting for the exhibition next month, which went well. We talked about what kind of work we were all thinking of making, and what kind of spaces we would want. We also decided to meet weekly up to the day of the exhibition, having casual crits of the work that we’re all making, allowing everyone to get a sense of what’s being made and strengthening the group in some way. I’m really looking forward to it, especially as a way point, the end of my first year at uni. There are ten of us in total, which will be enough to fill the space and hopefully allow us to curate the space well, even if it’s general aesthetic is incredibly dominating already. This is just a quick Sketchup model of the space that we have.

I’m still thinking about what I want to show, considering the constraints of time and the fact that we have to take down everything after the private view, so nothing huge that requires a van can be created. A simple idea would be to get a series of caps printed with tweets that have got people fired printed onto the front; a continuation of my current project focusing on the tweet from Justine Sacco. I think this would look really good, around 20 caps hanging from hooks on the wall, a different tweet per hat, with the number of hats conforming to however many office cubicles are in a cluster, or something along those lines. I’m currently considering either that or the work with the Facebook data. I like the idea of using the data, considering time linking to the end of the year experience. I just need to pin down what I want to make.

I’ve been reading Delete; The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age which talks a lot about how your digital footprint is never scrubbed clean and all of your data is constantly being compiled in a government facility somewhere, which is incredibly relevant to what I’m currently thinking about.

I also had a tutorial with Andrew this week which brought up a lot of ideas, reflecting on the year and thinking about where I can go from here. I was asked an interesting question, a deceptively simple one, as to whether my work had an agenda or not. At the time I couldn’t really answer the question, and I’m still trying to find the answer now. I think there definitely is an agenda, but that can be as simple as ‘to look aesthetically pleasing’. I’d say most of my current work is created in response to wanting people to understand one thing or another, the USB blocks making people more aware of how easy it is to steal one’s data for example, or with my video game work attempting to make people feel like a player, feeling trapped in a space that’s familiar to your younger, middle class self.  I think I need to consider this more with future works, obviously not to the extent that some artists do, having an agenda so much that it clouds the work and makes it more about the mere act of making the work, rather than the finished product, but enough to know what I’m trying to say.

A few other noteworthy things happened this week, with the lecture on Monday being one of them. Centred on ‘the sublime’, the lecture consisted of an array of works that evoke various overwhelming feelings, the majority being paintings of huge mountain ranges or the night sky. Invoking the sublime seems to be an incredibly difficult thing to achieve, with people’s ideas of what a sublime experience is varying massively. Being able to trigger the sublime on a whim may be verging on a Philip K Dick science fiction novel however, considering a future where ‘sublime’ is injected in exchange for money. Or maybe we already have something like that?

On Tuesday the artist talk was being given by Katrina Palmer, an artist who predominantly works in sound, installing her pieces in various locations, from quarries to specially designed boxes. I really liked the work and how she managed to translate the written word into an art form within itself. I’ve been interested in creating a sound piece in the past, one that’s connected to a film but that only becomes apparent when you eventually encounter the film within the exhibition space. The viewer would be given the headphones at the beginning of the experience, allowing them to hear what’s happening in the film pre-emptively whilst consuming the other works in a given exhibition. I remember going to an exhibition at the Hales Gallery where they had done this on a smaller scale and it was a really interesting experience. I always love the idea of a ‘revelatory’ moment.

Also this week I ordered another Vaporwave t-shirt that arrived a few days ago, I really like them and enjoy the idea of a ‘range’ of t-shirts, a product line if you will, displayed on a classic clothing rack. Maybe I could even have them ‘in situ’ within a normal clothing shop, accompanied by various other t-shirts. That would be interesting.

My other twitter based items arrived too, all of which look very professional and humorous in a distressing way; commenting on the PC culture and the adverse effects that it’s having on the first world society. I always think of the South Park episode centred around white male college students being incredibly PC; Stunning and Brave. Obviously South Park takes the satirisation of these things to the limit and is an over-emphasised version of what the PC culture has turned into. Hopefully I’ll be able to document these products tomorrow and upload the images to my website, so that it can be a part of my work that’s been submitted for assessment. I’m planning to use at least one plinth to display the mouse mat, business cards and other items that don’t work nailed onto the wall. The other items will be displayed on the wall.

I don’t think I went to any galleries this week, apart from the Cory Arcangel show at the Lisson Gallery which was mainly filled with blown up pixelated photographic prints. I love Arcangel’s work, I just think that this show was a little basic, with no real innovative work being shown unlike his earlier hacked video game works. I also went to the other Lisson, which had work by Stanley Whitney on display. Enjoy big paintings made up of blocks of colour with ambiguous names? Then you’ll love this show. It wasn’t for me. Unfortunately, those were the only two exhibitions that I went to. I do need to consume as much art as possible before I go back to the countryside for the summer holidays. I did however go to a performance at Toynbee Studios that focused on magic and magicians; A Nation's Theatre - Tim Bromage With Joseph Badman: H.O.R.S.E. It was very weird, watching magic occur alongside a monologue of sorts. It was an interesting juxtaposition that I didn’t fully understand. I don’t really know what it was that I witnessed, but I do know that it was good.

Week 4 is live on isthisit? with work by Julia Collington and John Hui. I can definitely see it getting harder as time goes on, but we shall see, hopefully I’ll have amassed enough submissions by then. You can see it here: http://isthis.wix.com/isthisit

I wish I could say that I’ve seen many films this week, but I still haven’t got fully back into the watching one a day spirit that I adopted last term. I have been continuing to watch tv shows though, with That '70s Show becoming a permanent fixture in my life. It manages to hold a good balance between comedy and ‘real life’ moments placed into a funny setting. Although it’s literally just taking every plot line from every family comedy from the 70’s, it’s doing it very well in a knowing, self-aware way that I do enjoy to watch.

I think that’s my week, mostly full of documenting and printing, which is a ‘necessary evil’. This time next week I’ll be out of the studio, fully committed to helping John on the final stretch of the project whilst continuing to consider my work for the exhibition next month. Not knowing is fun, although I have many ‘backup’ pieces that I can show if I don’t quite manage to think of something new to do, although that would be a very rare occurrence.

So the week ahead will consist of rushing around tomorrow, with a week out of the studio to work with John and catch up on the various exhibitions that I’ve been missing out on in the past few weeks. I look forward to it. It’s pretty much bang on a month until I go back to Suffolk for the summer holidays; how depressing, or do I welcome it? Who knows…

Enjoi.

Instagram:

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It Follows, Jason Rohrer and Transparent

So, this week’s been very busy, full of eBay payments and Amazon orders; new work being hastily put together in time for the assessment on the 23^rd. A lot of this week has been centralised around compiling all the things that I’ve done since Christmas, creating new diluted blogs of my blog here as well as creating an incredibly long word document showing all of my 30/30 work. I kind of like this busy feeling, the feeling of worry and anxiety; the trigger that makes one create new things.

So all in all I think I’ve ‘completed’ a few works this week, with the ultimate culmination occurring in the next few days when everything I’ve ordered from the internet arrives. A major piece is the game world that I’ve been working on, which is basically finished now. After re-thinking it earlier in the week, I started again by creating a mirage/desert like landscape, where pure blue water is prevalent throughout the space. This utopian space is populated by consumerist ‘relics’ from the 21^st century; laptops, iPads, shoes, slot machines, etc. In this scenario the participant is controlling a lone figure that they embody and become, exploring the space whilst the sounds of running water occur throughout the environment, occasionally glitching and disrupting itself, unable to keep up the false visage of the space; similar to the early parts of The Truman Show where the elevator stops between floors and cars screech to a halt when Truman cross’ the street, the fragmenting of this false reality or simulation; “We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning.” (Baudrillard). During an incredibly helpful tutorial earlier in the week it was mentioned that this game space had some environmental concerns surrounding it, the fact that the water seems to be flooding the space and the barren post-apocalyptic landscape is dotted with these objects. I like this extra layer of meaning, but may need to look into this matter more, or maybe the environmental aspect can simply be insinuated by the fact that it is a ‘future utopian’ space, one that will be no place in the future; only slightly confusing. Although I have moved on from the idea of spinning totems to solitary stationary objects, I still feel that the ideas surrounding the amassing of consumerist objects being a futile thing are embedded within the work. It simply manifests itself in a different way; with the game enabling you to get close to these objects, to climb them if you will, but never to fully interact with them. This space between interactivity and non-interactivity as a way in to considering the pointless nature of collecting material things is interesting to me.

To display the work, I moved on from the sofa installation/metaphor and decided to purchase some blow up chairs instead, specifically ‘gaming’ blow up chairs, with the meaning becoming obvious. One chair allows the viewer/player to sit down and experience the world whilst the other chair is used to hold the portrait television screen. This creates a dialogue with the player, making it seem like you’re interacting with a friend rather than a simple television. This comes back to the idea of games being a source of escapism, especially within young people. These chairs are arriving tomorrow (Monday), so hopefully on Tuesday I’ll be able to document the piece alongside the chairs, ready to be presented on the 23^rd as ‘new work’.

Another piece that is basically finished was a work that I never really finished, one that I started a little while ago. It uses footage from one of the more prominent WikiLeaks leaks; Collateral Murder, a video of over a dozen people being gunned down by an Apache helicopter in an Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad. It’s a highly distressing video. I inserted a part of this video within a screen captcha from Call of Duty Modern Warfare, where the player is using an AC130 gunship to kill various unnamed ‘terrorists’. I’m using these two videos to talk about the classified areas of our society, with this linking to WikiLeaks and the fact that the Reuters were unable to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act. I’m also looking at the relationship between real warfare and video game combat, how realistic the video game experience is, as well as looking to abolish the myth that video game violence desensitises you against real life violence. This is of course not true. After creating the piece, I thought a lot about how I wanted it to be installed, considering how to subtly link to Snowden and his various exploits, making it into a work about surveillance, video games and the leaking of information. In my head I was reminded of an interview conducted with Laura Poitras, where she was talking about how Snowden had identified himself as being Snowden when they first met in Hong Kong. He did this by informing her that he would be playing with a Rubik’s cube. This inspired me to use the cube within my piece, linking Julian Assange to Snowden, as well as the idea of something looking simple when in fact it’s extremely complicated; similar to the rules surrounding the Freedom of Information Act and when to engage with a ‘target’ in warfare. I just need to document the work with the cubes propping up the television and the piece will be finished. I think, as a side project, it’s been incredibly successful. I titled the piece Rules of Engagement and it can be seen here: http://www.bobbicknell-knight.com/#/rules-of-engagement/

There’s another micro project that I’ve been thinking about; translating classic ‘computer’ terms into realities, for example, taking the term ‘cookies’ and actually creating a handful of cookies made from hard drives. Another piece would be taking the term ‘to defrag’, which means to clean ones’ hard drive, and actually washing a hard drive with soap among other things. In order to do this, I’ve bought various hard drives to play around with. Although when reflecting on the work now, it’s not as layered and as interesting as I had hoped. It may turn into an obvious project that’s just a bit of fun however. For the moment I have the hard drives, ready to be used whenever. I envisioned it to become a series of works, all responding to these ‘tech terms’. I’ll see how it goes and how I want to manifest these ideas, in video pieces or simply photographs. Maybe photographs would be a thing, I haven’t really ‘done’ photography for a long time…

Yet another work that is in the process of being made has been inspired by a book I read last year called So You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson. Within the book he outlines various individuals who have been shamed on the internet for doing stupid things which wouldn’t have been noticed if it weren’t for the internet and it’s far reaching properties. The incidents range from misjudged tweets to falsified experiences in prestigious books. So, the work that I created was in response to a tweet by a woman called Justine Sacco, who tweeted Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white! Just before boarding her flight. During the time it took to travel to Africa her tweet ‘blew up’ on the internet, resulting in her being sacked from her job and basically outcast for many years afterwards, with death rates and many other things occurring. This quote already has all the ideas surrounding the PC (Politically Correct) culture we’re living in embedded within it, alongside various issues of race and the online world. I chose to take the tweet and print it on various office equipment, from mouse pads to yearly calendars, the irony being that after this tweet she was no longer hireable in any sort of situation. The various items are currently on their way to me in the mail, arguably another layer of the work, similar to Eva and Franco Mattes work Image Search Result or Artie Vierkant’s exhibition Brand Innovations For Ubiquitous Authorship. I’m really looking forward to seeing the finished products, which will be arriving sometime next week, as well as thinking about how to display the various items. It would be really awesome to go to an office to install them in, or to buy a classic office cubicle, but that may be a simple pipe dream. I assume the works name will reference Ronson’s book in some way. I hope the work doesn’t feel like I’m reinforcing the hatred towards Sacco and that I’m simply presenting a simple piece of text that has weight behind it to talk about the ‘keyboard warriors’ of our society and how the internet has turned from a beautiful utopian space into this highly monitored machine.

The collaborative project between John and I is going well, the video game levels are slowly being made. I recently managed to create a level consisting of an animated rollercoaster, with the player and a passenger enjoying the experience.

Alongside this I also managed to create an elevator level, with the player moving up through office floors racing a lift adjacent to their own. Unfortunately, your lift is a lot slower as the other lift isn’t stopping at all the different floors. These are fun to make and have been allowing me to continuously learn new parts of the Unity program. I think we’re on track to finish everything by the degree show. Also this week John built a lounge chair type thing to play the game on and we decided on how the work would be shown, on a projector with the video layered on top of the screen in a corner.

A group of us from uni decided this week to put on another exhibition before the term finishes. We booked Safehouse 1, maybe the most ‘studenty’ space ever, for the 15^th of June for a one-night exhibition. The theme is going to be centred around work that’s been made in the month leading up to the exhibition, created from scratch, so from today until then everyone involved (at the moment there’s about 9 of us) has to make a completely new piece of work. I think it’s going to be a really fun experience as long as everyone actually creates something and we manage to transport everything to the space. I’m going to try to display something that is small enough to carry around easily and doesn’t involve the booking of any vans or Ubers.

My online exhibition platform is slowly becoming a thing, I’ve signed it up as an opportunity with CuratorSpace to legitimise it more, and will start to apply to similar websites too. I think as the weeks go by and more work is added it’ll (hopefully) turn into more of a thing. This is week #3 featuring work by Reuben Martindale and Will Pardoe:

http://isthis.wix.com/isthisit

Other than creating this work a few other things have occurred this week, one of which was the weekly lecture that happened on Monday which focused on Guy Debord’s seminal book The Society of the Spectacle. Yet again, it’s a book I’m very familiar with, so I didn’t really learn much from the experience of having Debord’s writing dissected in front of me. It was good however for certain things to be refreshed in my mind as it’s been a while since I read it during the first term of the year.

There was also an artist talk being given by the artist Bobby Baker, which was pretty positive. I enjoyed seeing a range of her humorous interactions and thoughts on modern society. Although I wasn’t a fan of her Diary Drawings (a series of drawings, made once a week, over an 11-year period) I respected how dedicated to the project she was. At this juncture imagining how tiresome it would get to spend over 10 years on the same project is distressing to say the least. I was a lot more interested in her series of videos with the all-encompassing title Kitchen Show, a set of films of herself, enacting mundane tasks in the kitchen. It’s all very funny and I highly recommend that you watch at least one clip to give you a taste.

I also went to a few exhibitions, some of which were fairly good. As of yet this term hasn’t been that successful in terms of gallery visits, which is a shame to say the least. I’m finding myself too busy to either look into the various galleries that have always interested me or to find some time to go out to these galleries. It’s a shame, but I’m still slightly ‘stocked up’ with gallery knowledge from New York, so it’s not too bad.

Sadie Coles HQ was first up, with a terrible show by Richard Prince. The paintings managed to be both dull and overcomplicated, but the real annoyance for me was the transformation of the beautiful, concrete floored, open plan space to a corridor with wooden flooring. For some fucked up reason, I’m assuming the curator, decided to make the gallery space smaller, whilst leaving the outer walls blank. On top of it being a waste of space, it just made the work look incredibly ugly, uglier than it already was.

From there I went to the Marion Goodman Gallery, which was showing some beautifully minimal work by Ettore Spalletti. I distinctly remember him from a booth last year at Frieze, where coloured blocks were being subtly pushed out from the wall by a mere pencil. You have to see these works in real life to actually understand the simplicity of the wall sculptures. Some really great work.

After that I went to the Pace gallery, which had a range of works by Keith Coventry being shown, the only impressive one being a huge bronze of the front of a blown up shop window. It was very ‘wow’ but as I reflect upon it now, it didn’t really do anything more for me…

I also went to the Tate Modern to see the Mona Hatoum show, which was a terrible mistake. After seeing the same retrospective at the Pompidou Centre last year, I wasn’t really expecting there to be any difference, but I was unfortunately wrong. The wooden floors of the Tate just destroyed a lot of the sculptural work for me, as well as the tiny rooms making the work feel constrained and unable to breath. The first piece you encounter is the Socle du Monde, a huge cube of steel that’s dominating and affecting. Unfortunately, it’s shoved into a corner, with ugly grey tape on the floor disallowing you from observing the entire thing. Another awesome work, Light Sentence, has been roped off, stopping you from actually entering the cage like structure. Another one of my favourites from Hatoum, + and – was yet again pushed into a corner, with her Twelve Windows also being roped off and becoming an un-interactive set piece. They even had less work within the exhibit, leaving out Map and a number of her seminal hair pieces. As a friend said, “they’ve Tate-ed it up”, summing up the whole experience for me, making the work child friendly and badly curated. Fuck you Tate, fuck you.

In other news I started reading a collection of essays this week on Jason Rohrer and his video games. The book holding all of these writings is called, you guessed it, The Game Worlds of Jason Rohrer. I’m a big fan of his, especially as he’s the first video game designer to have a solo art show featuring his work, a step forwards in legitimising video games as art. His games vary from having an inventive mechanic that makes you think to simply having an emotional, subtle story embedded within a five-minute experience. I thoroughly recommend going and downloading Passage, a free game that’s definitely worth five minutes of your life.

I think that may be everything that I’ve done this week in terms of ‘art related’ things. I have been continuing to apply for things, an aspect of my life I’m slowly becoming used to, which is definitely a positive thing. If you aren’t getting your work out there, how are people going to know you exist? Plus, I need to get used to the rejection that will happen a lot more once I’ve left uni.

I’m very unhappy to say that I’ve only watched two films this week. For some reason I’ve gotten into watching series after series again, rather than film after film. I must rectify this. Happily, the two films I did see were incredible. The first was called Locke and was entirely contained within one man’s car. It’s always impressive if an actor can keep you on the edge of your seat whilst simply talking, primarily on a phone, for an entire 90 minutes. Without spoiling anything, it’s a must watch, which I’m surprised to have not seen until this point.

The other film was called It Follows. A thriller with one brilliant idea that doesn’t get overused. The idea being that ‘death’ is constantly following the protagonist, slowly walking towards them, waiting until their back is turned to slowly walk up behind them and kill them. This conceit makes for a thrilling film, one that puts you in the same position as the main character, constantly looking behind them to make sure that there’s nobody coming towards them in the background. I would, once again, thoroughly recommend.

In terms of tv, I managed to watch the entire series of Transparent, which was a really interesting show where an elderly man comes out as being transgender to his family, having hidden it for many years. This unique plot point makes the more obvious ones, a dysfunctional family for one, seem more exciting and relevant. I look forward to season 3.

I also watched Catastrophe, a surprisingly funny comedy about a man getting a woman pregnant, not the most innovative conceit. It made me laugh, which was, once again, surprising.

On top of this I’ve come back to The Good Wife to watch its final season. This season is better than the last, coming away from politics and focusing back on the actual lawyering, the stuff that people are actually interested in.

I think that sums up my week. For the next seven days, I hope to document the finalised pieces of work so that they can go into my assessment as well as printing everything off so that I’m fully prepared for Monday the 23^rd. More levels for the video game will have to be made, as well as hopefully a few more exhibitions being visited. I also want to get around to starting the creation of the sounds based game, but I’m slowly re-thinking that as a thing, or maybe not. I don’t know. It’s going to be a vaguely hectic week, running around to get everything done, with hopefully some time to talk about the upcoming exhibition with the group of artists that have been chosen to exhibit with as well as some time to just be in London and experience the sun and enjoy relaxing slightly, but I guess I can do that when I’m back in the countryside.

Oh and the t-shirt that I ordered last week with my work on it arrived, I’m incredibly happy with how it came out, but unhappy that it’s slightly too expensive for me to have another one made.

Enjoi.

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