Slowly
moving forward now, finished the VR piece, which I’m actually quite happy with,
alongside plans for upcoming exhibitions and work that I’m thinking about
doing. A few exhibitions were visited, ticking off every show on the Condo
trail, which did bring me to galleries I had surprisingly not visited before.
So
I ‘completed’ (what a weird term of phrase to use in this context, or maybe
not, cos videogames) my piece using VR, which I think turned out quite well. I
had previously bought a very long, around 5m, cable for charging the iPhone
within the headset. I was slightly worried about how I would integrate this in
the work, whether to make a thing out of the cabling, or to hide it in some
way. I chose the former, as I am a slight hypocrite and sometimes enjoy the
fetishisation of wires. Having two points of the
work that connect to the wall is also interesting, the fake rocks alongside the
real electricity. I enjoy the idea of how the fake rocks, even though they’re
fake, are more ‘real’ in some way than the electricity powering the phone. Real
to the viewer, real to the participant, although electricity is now seen as
wiring, or a power plant humming with energy (electricity). I called the piece
simply A Mountain Walk. Simple. I had
thought about calling it A Simulated Walk
or Blissful Fabrications, but this
felt a little obvious and kind of tired, going back to my old wanky titles
which were evocative but basic.
So
yeah, that work is done now, with the actual VR within the headset lasting for
about 48 minutes, ending with a loop back to the beginning, fading the end part
of the walk with the beginning part, so the viewer never gets to finish their
endless walk up and down a mountain. It’s subtle fading, but not subtle enough
that you wouldn’t notice if you were watching during the minute long fading
sequence. The walking is relaxing, with the grassy headphones taking you away
from the real world into the not-so-real. I do really like how it’s turned out.
You can experience it for yourself here, although it’s better with VR. https://vimeo.com/200697724
I
still haven’t got around to photographing the aluminium print with dash button,
which I need to do. I think it would work as a series of three or four, so I’ll
just make some more Photoshop images to add to the final image which will
present the works. The VR piece and these images would work together in a show,
being vaguely related to the same ideas surrounding utopias and the future,
simulated societies that we will inhabit at some point soon. So maybe at some
point they will be presented together? Who Knows. Next 7 days = photograph the piece.
I
also want to think about whether the book will become a reality, but it
probably won’t, due to money and thinking it’s a little obvious. Maybe I’ll
come back to it. An idea of a book does really interest me…
Another
piece that I created this week actually used GTA5 again; maybe I’m obsessed… Translating
the virtual into the real. I took an advertisement on a billboard from the game
world for a television show called Rehab
Island, where contestants are stranded on a small island in an attempt to
break their addictions to illegal substances. I took this billboard and re-created
it on Photoshop, making it a higher resolution alongside the idea of a copy of
a copy, as the tv show is based on the real world tv show Survivor. So when I was done I had a copy of a virtual show which
was copying a real show, translating the real to the virtual to the real again.
After recreating the billboard I’ve then got it printed onto my own physical
billboard, around 3 metres in length, stepping further into the simulated idea.
Once again coming back to this mythical island, which feels like a false place
but in fact has real life references, being advertised in a video game, yet
again a simulated space, which was then used to advertise the actual video game
in real life commercials. This layering is really interesting to me, with my
work simply a continuation of this false, utopian space where famous people go
to get off drugs whilst being filmed for a tv show.
Hopefully
the print arrives soon. At the moment I’m wondering how I want to show it,
attached to the wall with the rope and nails, or create a serious set of
scaffolding to attach the piece too, continuing to create this very real
replica of the video games space. What would have been really cool, and am just
thinking about this now, would have been to rent billboard space, and to have
this piece displayed on a billboard for a week, or even a day… Now that would
have been exciting, continuing further this copying of the real/virtual. Hmmm…
I’ve
also been thinking about a new video, coming back to the idea of emoji’s, how
they’re used in society and on the internet. I’ve been particularly fascinated
by the live video feeds on Facebook, particularly of the Trump inauguration,
and how the emoji’s flowing across the screen gives this easy-to-understand
live feedback. I was also interested in how, whilst this inauguration was going
on, there would be multiple different news sites showing the same thing happening.
Some of these sites would sway to the left side of politics, others to the
middle and others to the right. Each video would be showing the same footage
but with different emoji’s crawling across the screen, representing their
different viewer’s interests/ideas. This comes back to the whole idea of
Facebook fake news, or you as a user being lost in your own friend group, cut
off from the ‘real’ society of the right or the left. I started to think about
how I could work with this, and began by simply thinking of displaying two exact
same videos of the inauguration, with a different set of emoji’s occurring, so
instead of angry faces, there would be happy ones, and vice versa on the two
different screens, displaying the left and the right views. I slowly went away
from this idea though, as it felt a little gimmicky, making work about specifically
Trump feels obvious. I’m currently thinking about what type of footage I could
insert the emoji crawl over, maybe simply a news segment, or an old film, if we
were to take it down a completely different route, away from the idea of
Facebook controlling your news perceptions. I need to have a think about this
further, but I’m excited to get started.
I’ve
also been thinking, perhaps prematurely, about installation. Right now the
video would be either displayed on an iPhone or my Kindle, most probably iPhone
as most people view live footage on Facebook on their phone. This would be
immersed in one of my previously used emoji pillows, or a different Poo one.
Making it clear that this is a shit system to get news from. This would then be
stood up on a metal structure, with the viewer interacting with it as if it
were a help desk, or maybe one of those ‘feedback kiosks’ that you encounter at
airports, outside toilets or in shops, asking you to click an emoji that
represented your experience the most. Anyway, need to start developing the
video, thinking more about installation, etc.
I
think that’s all my own art I thought about, a shame really as I got fairly
excited about this new video work. Next week will be the beginning I hope,
unless more admin comes flooding in, like this week.
The
exhibition with Jonny that I talked about last week is coming to fruition. It’s
going to be held at the Square Gallery again, with some of the previous artists
alongside some new ones, it’s called The Sacred 419, a mashup of Jonny’s
previous show and The Sacred Screen, in conjunction with Condo. It’s exciting.
I think my VR piece is going to be shown in the gallery, which is exciting, a
chance to see if it works or not, etc. That’s happening on the 7th
of February till the 14th, so come through to Battersea if you can
handle the journey: https://www.facebook.com/events/215239435606235/
The
other show with my video piece Colleen and Joshua is also happening soon. Here’s
the event: https://www.facebook.com/events/737414969745264/
I’ve
also been talking to a few other people about possible things in the future,
online biennales and physical exhibitions in Leeds. This is all exciting, but
not quite there yet in terms of proper planned things. I’m also going to be
part of The Wrong: New Digital Art Biennale as one of their curators, so maybe
that could be forced in with isthisit?
somehow. Lots of time to think about that though, as it’s happening in
November! More to come soon…
In
isthisit? news, Jonny curated the exhibition
this week, which was an interesting one. It begins with inputting various
details, your bank account, etc. Obviously you don’t actually need to do real
details. Submitting this takes you to the next page, which then links to a fake
online magazine which has multiple fake articles within that. It’s very weird,
and quite stand-offish, but definitely something new for the website. A little ‘risk-ay’,
if that’s even still a thing. Check it out if you haven’t already, as it’s
fairly weird and new.
I
think Matthew Britton is up next with an email chain mail show, but I’m not
100% sure. Maybe I’ll get a chance to curate again if he drops out? I’ve missed
it slightly.
The
magazine is slowly gaining submissions, and I’ve been contacting a few people
about writing essays to go into it, which is fun. A vague theme of the internet
is being established, although I think it’s best to keep it as broad as
possible for the open call. I also decided to have a few artist interviews too,
catered to the specific artist, rather than doing a blanket interview as such,
as that is always a bit dull… I just need to think of some good questions for
chosen artists. So yeah, the magazine is going to be made up of basic artist
features, name, photograph of work and artist statement alongside some more
elaborate ones, interview, more artworks, then a few essays. I think it’ll
actually be quite good... Now to think how many pages/how much to sell it for…
I
chose the first resident for isthisit?
too this week, an artist that goes by the name of Ventral is Golden (Joel
Galvin). He’ll be starting on the 1st of February (Wednesday) and
finishing on the 25th, giving me enough time to talk through the
residency with the new resident for March. He’s going to be making a range of
collages/texts based on the I Ching. It’s connected to technology and the
internet in various interesting ways, and I’m really excited for him to get
started. It’s a shame as there were so many good applications, but there will
always be March, or later months! It’s also The project is called Echoes From The Internet. a little weird handing over control
of the website to someone else I’ve never actually met, but I guess trust is a
thing? Internet trust?
Oh
and I also finally transferred my domain to a Wix site, away from Squarespace.
Fuck Squarespace. It’s the most annoying website, restricting the amount of
pages alongside confining you to specific templates. I’ve kept the layout
pretty much exactly the same, which I may decide to change. I’ve also added in
new work, like my residency from last year alongside my online performance
work. See for yourself at www.bobbicknell-knight.com.
Hmmm,
anything else to do with actual art stuff that I’m doing? I don’t think so?
Uni
the past few weeks has been progressing. This term we have to put on an offsite
exhibition alongside an essay. Groups are forming for that. We’ve also had a
few artist talks; last weeks was fucking terrible. A painter called Simon Callery
talking about his paintings. So dull. This week we had The White Pube come talk
to us. It was fun, but I didn’t actually learn anything more than I did from
simply googling them before I even went to the talk. In saying this, however,
it was fun and they spoke pretty well and with confidence, so a lot better than
previous artist talks. Although ‘artist talk’ is probably the wrong word to
describe it…
I
went to a few art exhibitions this week, finishing off Condo Complex alongside
a few general ones that I’d been meaning to go to for a while. Beginning with
Gavin Turk’s solo show at Newport Street Gallery, which was fine. It was good,
but I just don’t like the atmosphere of the space, kind of puts me off the
whole process. When you walk into one of the rooms labelled Detritus, an invigilator comes up to you
and informs you that there are artworks on the floor, meaning the seemingly
discarded chip boxes and apple cores. Obviously this is art, and I think
emphatically telling people that it’s art goes against Turk’s philosophy. It’s
good, well known work, from the artist plague Cave, standing alone in a huge, high walled room, to a bronze sleeping
bag offhandedly strewn in one of the corridors. It’s all great work, just an off-putting
atmosphere that can’t be helped due to the price of these pieces and how fancy
the space is.
From
there I went to Chewday’s exhibition in conjunction with Condo. It feels like
the space itself was part of the show, squished between a drycleaners and an
off license, the show was titled THE MIDDLE CLASS GOES TO HEAVEN, and featured
a bunch of Egyptian artworks intertwined with contemporary pieces, being brought
into a new light simply through space association. I really like Chewday’s,
their past exhibitions in random spaces is really interesting to me, and
something that I want to duplicate at some point with isthisit? or just generally with friends.
A
space that I’d never been to before, Greengrassi, was visited, as it was part
of Condo. It was actually quite a nice little space, if a little hard to find,
but worth it for a series of sculptures by Tomoaki Suzuki depicting various
human beings shrunk down to tiny proportions. This was fun. Upstairs there was
a group show with a bunch of work that looked at architectures, be it a couple
of pipes made of felt by Johanna Unzueta, attached to the walls going to
nowhere, or a performative video from Naufus Ramirez Figueroa, where the artist
(I assume) is seen to become a skyscraper. Oddly great.
Following
on from that, continuing the Condo trail, was Project Native Informant, one of
the most annoying galleries to get to. Located in a seemingly abandoned office
block near the Holborn Viaduct, you had to get past a receptionist and traverse
up three flights of stairs to get to a tiny room. It was fun, but took up a
fair amount of my time. Once there I was presented by a great show, featuring an
incredible work by Yuri Pattison; three power servers housing various scale
models, a palm tree, a tv tower and a few shipping containers. It was very
cool. The whole show is worth going to, as long as you know where to go. The
view is also pretty great.
I
then went to Rodeo; another space I hadn’t been to previously. It was pretty nice,
with one floor housing a show where a bunch of general crap from the Thames had
been hung up, suspended from the ceiling so that visitors had to manoeuvre
their way across the room. The other was a lot more minimal, a deep red carpet,
a lit candle, a set of evocative collages. In this case less is indeed more.
Carpets are big at the moment… I want to do something with a carpet, either a
show or a work, bringing all the other works together. Tarpaulin is another
idea, a low cost form of carpet.
Another
Condo show was at Union Pacific, which was really good, featuring a giant blow
up skiing snowman by Ken Kagami alongside some high quality paintings by Yoan
Mudry. Really great show actually, highly recommended.
The
last space for Condo on the list, Southard Reid, was yet another space that I hadn’t
visited before. Downstairs was okay, small paintings with a few weird tree slice
sculpture/paintings. Never seen tree slices used in artwork before, so many new
things! Upstairs, however, were a bunch of weird alien like head ceramics by
Kris Lemsalu, situated inside sleeping bags. Really good, although a shame it’s
being shown in a very dark alleyway, making it very hard and obscure to get to.
A
few others, off the Condo circuit, were Seventeen Gallery, which was
surprisingly good for a painting show. Actually, unsurprising, as Seventeen is
always really good. A solo show from Sachin Kaeley, a guy who uses thick
acrylic paint and gels to create these quite beautiful structural objects in
the form of paintings. They were really nicely presented too, with different ‘sets’
grouped up, displayed on different levels of the gallery wall, making obvious
who’s with who. Yeah, would definitely have one of these in my house. Very ‘aesthetic-y’
and reminiscent of Photoshop.
I
then went to Annka Kultys again, for another show in the series of solos. This
week was Soohyun Choi, with a few video works and ‘steamed up’ mirror pieces.
Weirdly, Choi has submitted to isthisit?
in the past, which is awkward. Maybe I should feature her? One of the videos
was really good, featuring the artists and a group of her friends dancing to a
popular K-Pop song. You see them slowly learning the moves, until they are
fully synchronised and the camera pans out, revealing (I assume) a bunch of
YouTube videos of people doing the same dance, all happening in this gridded structure.
A really solid video…
I
also wandered over to the Barbican to see what was on at the Curve. Mass craziness
it seems. I don’t really know what was going on, live performance and video,
lots of dancing, a few sculptural ‘things’. A little too much, a little too
crowded, and actually a little dull…
Josh
Lilley had a beautiful solo show on by Sarah Pichlkostner. Lots of physical
workings happening, pulling and pushing, straining and stressing. Weirdly
though, every time I visit the gallery, they always seem very annoyed that
someone has come to look at the work, wandering over to the door to open it
with a very annoyed face. It would put me off, but recently their shows have
been surprisingly good, so fuck them.
My
last gallery was Parasol Unit, which was incredibly dull. Paintings and
sculptures from Tschabalala Self, basically all of the female body. It’s not
that that’s a terrible thing, just doing basic paintings of the body is boring
and uninteresting.
So
yeah, only a few things this week. Hopefully I’ll find some to go to next week,
filling the void, etc. I’m not sure how many films I’ve seen this week, not
many I don’t think, which is a major shame. Summer
Wars was really good, a Japanese animation about a student who has to
battle a rogue AI in the film’s equivalent of the internet, to stop it from
being destroyed. Surprisingly great and definitely worth a watch.
Doctor Strange
was fine, Benedict Cumberbatch doing his thing. Lots of running through London,
which is never bad per say. Enjoyably crap I think is the phrase.
Live by Night
on the other hand, was just plain terrible. It had an incredibly dull plot,
with great actors acting like terrible actors. Some of the scenes were so
wooden I felt myself cringing due to how bad everything was. Don’t even bother,
please.
Lion
was brilliant, a young boys journey to find his lost family. Enjoyable and
inspiring.
Hmm,
Silence. It was good, if overly long,
but very carefully filmed and took you to some magnificent locations. IHmm, there were times that you were just willing the prisoners to submit, to disregard their faith. It was quite powerful...
I
also watched the whole of Atlanta, a
tv series created by Donald Glover and starring Donald Glover as a manager of
his cousin, who’s a rapper. It’s a very good show which has a turning point
around the episode 6/7 mark, becoming a lot more political and aware of itself.
This was made incredibly clear as I watched the whole season in one evening, so
it was really weird to see this story arc evolve, becoming more about race and
what’s slowly happening in our society. Definitely watch, simply to see this
progression, alongside being a really good tv show.
Another
show I’ve been watching is the American version of Shameless. Half comedy/half
drama, it follows a ‘family’ built up around a drunk father being managed by
his eldest daughter, whilst simultaneously managing all the other younger kids.
As the show continues you grow to understand these people, feeling for them and
their situation whilst ‘knowing’ them to a certain degree. Not great but good.
And
that, is my week. The week ahead sees me emailing more people about the
magazine, more artwork being made (hopefully the beginnings of an emoji video),
documenting the aluminium print, more isthisit?
stuff, more admin, more exhibitions, more films, more everything.
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