David Blandy, Deep Web and We Live in Public

I’ve been slowly progressing with different strands of my work this week, considering the canvas prints as well as the data that I’m slowly gathering on my hard drive. On top of this I went to a really interesting artist talk/informal evening of video screenings and played the final chapter of Life is Strange, which was incredibly thought provoking.

In terms of work, I’ve been creating a range of images made up of screengrabs taken from my own computer and have even ordered one image to be printed onto a canvas that was 100cm x 50cm, which is exceedingly alien to me. The piece will be delivered tomorrow and, if successful, I will be ordering more in order to create a collection of canvas works. The use of canvas has now changed from simply wanting to create a material thing and mocking painting in general to becoming a metaphor for the content of each image. The references within the pictures are all very ‘of the moment’ and in order to understand what’s occurring within them one has to be viewing them when they were created. This built in obsolescence is interesting to me, and is a theme that comes up within my USB work as well, and in this case it’s considering the famous quote by Paul Delaroche in 1839 ‘from today, painting is dead’. Both the images and the canvas are marked as obsolete as soon as I click the ‘order’ button on ‘my-picture.co.uk’. The transformation of the image from the new to the old is also intriguing to me and is something that has been occurring for many years now. The advent of screens will soon wipe that out however, if one were to side with most 1980s sci-fi.

The term ‘screenshotism’ (a phrase coined by the artist ‘Øs Crunc’) encompasses the canvas works beautifully, the many ‘windows’ making up one whole image. The JPEGs that I’ve been fabricating have slowly transformed from being a simple screenshot of Google to an eclectic range of images, where each ‘window’ discusses a new idea that contributes to the overwhelming theme of surveillance and the death of a ‘pure’ internet. This is the image that’s been printed onto canvas:

As you can see, there are a few things occurring within this (to quote Hito Steyerl) ‘poor’ JPEG. The first thing to note is that the background image is ‘Bliss’ which was taken in 1996 and is the default Windows XP wallpaper. Although the hill was a beautiful utopian space back in the 90s it is now home to grapevines, a metaphor for how the internet has been slowly corrupted and distorted since 2001, the year that the operating system was released as well as when the 9/11 attacks occurred in the United States, which acted as a kick-start to the overwhelming surveillance that occurs in today’s society. Every aspect of the image has been carefully considered, from the multiple tabs to the use of Wikipedia.

This is the second image that I created, which started to become a little more complicated, with an abundance of windows being open. Again, each window opens up a new train of thought contributing to the overarching theme. With both images I’ll draw your attention to the date, which is a variation on the 2050 date. According to Dr Pearson people will be able to connect their brains directly to computers by this point, theoretically becoming immortal, which is obviously an intriguing thought, one that is brought up in video games and films a lot. One in particular – Deus Ex – springs to mind, where one plays as a nanotech-augmented operative, tasked with overthrowing an illuminati government in 2052. I really like how these pieces are progressing and the multiple meanings that are embedded within them. I hope that the canvas print is a success so that I can create more.

In other news, I’ve been carefully considering how I’m going to display the data that I’ve been amassing, with help from Google Sketchup. I began the process by considering what I actually wanted from the sculpture that I was going to immerse the stick within and started to research USB towers, which then led me to data towers and cell towers. The aesthetics of these structures and what they actually enable people to do was the main inspiration for my initial designs, where the laptops that connected to the USBs would create a cell tower-esque look.

As I continued to experiment though, I slowly began to change direction and returned to my love for the Monolith from 2001, which is eternally intriguing to me and conforms to the simple aesthetic that I had been pursuing with my earlier designs. I also began to be interested by the relationship that the (now multiple) USBs would be having with each other, and how the different screens of the laptops would be having a dialogue with one another if each USB was being connected to at once. The material for these ‘micro monoliths’ (three in total further referencing the three Monoliths in 2001) is something else that I’ve been considering. At first I envisioned them to be pure concrete, as I love the concrete plinth, but I slowly moved away from that, as it was revealed to me that I could use blocks that – at first – look like usual cement blocks but in reality are flammable and used in fires. The potential for a thing to happen really interested me, and I feel that that is reflected in the data that I’m collecting. Some of it may be harmful to others, in terms of embarrassing pictures or ‘confidential’ documents, but it’s not overtly being displayed, one has to dig deep into the files to discover these things. This duplicity really interests me and I hope to experiment in the real world during the coming week with the actual blocks, rather than simply through the virtual program. The use of brick also made me consider the famous relational artist Rirkrit Tiravanija and his brick making factory that was occurring in the 2015 Venice Biennale. Obviously the use of a construction material has certain connotations that (I feel) work well with the idea of amassing data within the virtual structure of the USB stick that’s been embedded within a brick.

Laila and I have also been in discussion this week and have laid out a kind of plan for the work that we’re going to create together, so that we can actually start making things rather than simply discussing what we want to create. At the moment it all sounds really exciting, I just need to actually start creating on my computer, which I hope to start doing during the week ahead. I also helped Laila set up her own website this week: http://www.lailamajid.com/. It’s still a work-in-progress however, so bare that in mind.

Oh and I continue to document the lighter ‘jacking’.

I had my third Utopia seminar on Monday, which began with a short clip from Star Trek: The Next Generation, one of the few ‘positive’ utopias that is portrayed in the media. Nearly every other film/book envisions that the world turns into a dusty wasteland when capitalism dies, an incredibly overt form of propaganda. We were then taken through the differences between a Utopia and a Dystopia with multiple literary and film references, finishing up with an episode from the beloved Twilight Zone which looked at a dystopia where people who had no use anymore were deemed ‘obsolete’ and put to death. Unfortunately that was my last Utopia seminar, as tomorrow morning there is a talk being hosted at Chelsea being given by Dan Ward and Francis Brady (the two people who ran my workshops last week) titled ‘What is post-digital art?’ The unfortunate thing is that the two events clash, and I’m a lot more inclined to go to a talk discussing digital art than a seminar on Utopia. Both are great but only one can prevail.

I didn’t have my other seminar this week that focuses on politics and art, as it was postponed and relocated to the end of this coming week, so that on Friday I will have two seminars back to back. This will be an extremely absorbing day I’m sure.

The offsite shows were also discussed further this week, with many exciting spaces being brought up as well as what links our work together in our exhibition group, a general underlying theme. I’m looking forward to how it develops into something more in the coming weeks.

I’ve also been travelling on a lot of night buses recently and have been thinking about how one gets to know a space and how your views of a location traverse and distort the more you understand its intricacies. The wonder that I once had for London and have mentioned before in this blog is slowly dying. To revert back to a time when my brother and I would play on an Etch A Sketch whilst being in awe of the lights coming from the mass of buildings as our car slowly glided into London would be a compelling intervention to how I see things now. Getting back into that head space would be bliss for a time…

During the week I went to a really enticing evening at Toynbee Studios that was being hosted by the artists Larry Achiampong and David Blandy. They showed a number of artist films that influenced and inspired them which culminated in Finding Fanon 2, a collaborative film created by the two of them that uses the Grand Theft Auto 5 in-game video editor. I love the film and enjoyed the discussion that occurred afterwards which was centred on the connotations of using the video game as a medium to create work, something that I have considered in past work and continue to think about.

I only went to one exhibition this week, which was at Vilma Gold. Julia Wachtel had some work being shown, which I’d kind of already seen at the Saatchi, large scale paintings with juxtaposing images. I’m not entirely opposed to these. Genoveva Filipovic also had work on show, full of little details that would seem unconscious if it weren’t in a gallery space. I really liked her work and all the different connotations that were being brought up.

The really annoying thing that happened this week was the revelation that both myself and Laila had gotten into San Francisco for Erasmus, but the university there was in fact not even taking anyone from Chelsea this year. So I was left with my ‘backup’ choice which was a university in Holland near Amsterdam. I declined however, as I would prefer to stay in London.

I also got to go around the Palace of Westminster on a sort-of tour. It was a mixture of dullness and interestingness rolled into one. An intriguing point was brought up that focused on the amount of ‘experts’ (200 (ish) in total) on hand for the various Lords to call upon if they needed information on one thing or another. Such a large amount of knowledge just a phone call away, on in the case of the internet, a simple click.

I’ve watched a variety of films this week, focusing more on the documentary side of things in relation to the internet and all that it has to offer. The first on the list was Deep Web, exploring the depths of the internet and highlighting that only a small amount of the deep web is the dark web. We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks was another exciting one, and the fourth or fifth film that I’ve watched that’s focused on Julian Assange, which makes it even more evident how important he is in the grand scheme of things. Atari: Game Over was also enticing, deconstructing the legend of the buried E.T. video game and exploring Atari as a company. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline continues to come up a lot in the documentaries about video games that I’ve been watching. It’s a book that I read a few years ago, which focuses on the residents of a world that live out their existence in a virtual universe called the OASIS. I feel that it’s becoming increasingly relevant to the themes that I’m looking at within my own work, virtual realities and the like. The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin was another exciting one that was definitely worth watching, alongside We Live in Public which was incredibly disturbing at times, well, a lot of the time. It definitely reminded me of The Circle and how distressing that was to read towards the end, as well as The Prisoner with its overt surveillance and confinement. The idea that ‘big brother’ is the collective conscience rather than a sole person is one that was brought up a lot. 2010 is another film that I watched, which really didn’t live up to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Outland was an enjoyable experience; you can’t really go wrong with Sean Connery and his beautiful voice. The Birds, a film that I am embarrassed to say I hadn’t seen until this week, was incredible. The playground scene in particular was quite awesome and a definite favourite of mine. I also watched Rock the Kasbah, which was just weird, part of it was terribly racist and another part was very sincere. As the credits roll it’s revealed that the film is dedicated to a real person and that the film is based on a true story. Just too weird. Détective was another weird one that was hard to understand and that I find hard to talk about. The final film was Blade Runner at the IMAX, which was incredible as usual.

On top of watching these films, I also played episode 5 of Life is Strange, which is something I’ve been looking forward to for a while now. It was quite a beautiful end to the series but failed to fully take into account all of the decisions that you made in the first four episodes, which is a problem that many story driven games encounter, like Mass Effect 3 or any of Telltale’s games. The lack of gameplay was another disappointing aspect to the episode, with the first 30 minutes or so basically being an extended cut scene. Playing it also brought me back into the mind-set that I was in when I played it last, during the summer holidays last year, a transitional time for me in terms of moving away from home, etc. It was an interesting reflective moment which made the finale even more poignant than it already was. The long bus journey back to my room at 4:30 in the morning gave me a chance to further reflect on the events that had just taken place in front of my eyes, eventually coming to the conclusion that the game epitomises what I love about video games and the potential that the medium has. The last thing to note is the hilarious scene in an art gallery, where you can walk past groups of people discussing the ‘art’ on the walls. The whole game had such a Twin Peaks ‘vibe’ too which is never a bad thing.

I’m also slowly making my way through Jason Rohrer’s various video game worlds that he’s created, all of which are inspiring and thought provoking in their own subtle ways.

Oh and I also found out this week that someone had written about my work in their blog here: http://www.gamescenes.org/2016/01/game-art-bob-bicknell-knights-endless-confinement-2015.html which was an exciting revelation.

Plus, I finished Love, which had a slightly stressful ending and then proceeded to watch the first two episodes of Better Call Saul from season 2, which were very good.

In the next week I want to continue to create the canvas images, analysing the print that’s arriving tomorrow to see whether or not I need to order from a different website, etc. I also want to start experimenting in real life with the layout of the data blocks as well as gaining more and more data from different individuals. On top of this I intend to start actual work on the collaboration with Laila, so that we have something to show for the thoughts that we’ve been thinking about.

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Neoliberal Lulz, Love and Breathless

This week’s been full of really interesting workshops, enticing films and unfortunately not a lot of progression within my actual practice, which I’m surprisingly okay with because of how good the week of workshops was.

The first workshop that I encountered was very much centred on Hito Steyerl (which is never a bad thing), watching a few of her films and discussing what they were about and the positives and negatives of her career. A few of us also showed some of our work for a type of crit, gaining some more feedback on my most recent video piece along with seeing other people’s work who I may not have previously seen from the course, which is always fun. There was also a lot of discussion surrounding Chelsea as a university going on and it was intriguing to hear someone’s thoughts on the course who has actually been on the course, as opposed to a tutor or someone in second or third year.

My second workshop was also really exciting, considering lots of digital work and the idea of the game and play. I especially liked the idea of statistical storytelling and bringing an idea down to a human sized thing, rather than the whole picture; consuming an idea or concept in small increments. This made me think back to how artists are a bit like individuals at a ‘salad bar’, picking and choosing very particular things that are especially inviting to them and eating/learning this very specific subject, simply knowing a lot about a very niche thing.

This workshop also brought me back into thinking about the idea of the computer file and how to visualise the data that’s been collated over time on someone’s device. For part of the workshop we were tasked to create a relational piece of art work, a work that the viewer can actually be a part of and create with the artist, (in a sense) collaborating with the artist to create the ‘finished’ piece. For this I had the idea to bring a memory stick to the workshop and ask people to give me some of their files from their computer. This was considering some of the ideas from my last project (governments stealing your data, etc) but subverting it slightly, asking rather than taking, thinking about the idea of the ‘small-print’ being not so small and converting the taking of data into a real life event rather than a virtual one. It also stemmed from the famous quote by Isaac Newton ‘If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants’ which made me think a lot about the idea of appropriation and the mixture of artists that do so.

After doing this for the workshop however, I started to consider it further and expand on the initial idea. As the week continued I started to plug my external hard drive into other people’s computers to effectively steal their data without them knowing, bypassing the asking part of the original idea. I envision the finished product as a USB stick with all of the data within simply embedded into a very weighty object, thus representing the weight of the data, with it being accessed/added to by anyone who wanted to be a part of the work and share whatever they had on their electronic device.

On top of this I was considering fantasy exhibition ideas, where a given room would only have USB sticks embedded within the wall (reminiscent of ‘dead drops’) with the images/videos on the sticks being accessible only if you had a laptop with you, or if a laptop was provided to you by the gallery, etc. Just as an idea, this is incredibly inviting, and is something I want to pursue further in the future. I realise that to work with a USB stick, or any type of technology in general, immediately makes the work about (or at least in part) the obsoleteness of the medium in five or even a few years’ time. I think that this is something that I accept within my work though, and embrace the fact that people may not be able to access the files in however many years’ time. It just adds to the seclusion that occurs when people don’t have a laptop on them to read the files as of right now.

This week I’ve also been continuing my work surrounding search engines, which is slowly turning into something that I’m very excited about. The concept thus far is to create a series of images that appear to be screengrabs of my computer screen. A multitude of things will be occurring within the image, bringing up several concepts surrounding the search engine in relation to location/internet security as well as the ‘multitasking’ society that we all live in. I plan to have these images printed onto canvas through the internet, which will pose many questions surrounding whether or not using the internet for everything is the correct way to live one’s life as I suspect that the canvas will be of a low quality. This will also be considered by showing open web pages centred on how to achieve the best composition or aspects of image creation like the rule of thirds. Making the image into a painting of sorts also accomplishes my want to create a real thing, rather than simply a screen based work. I see the images below as a starting point, a means to an end, or the beginnings of an enticing idea. I’ve also thought about the use of a lightbox within the piece, similar to Timur Si-Qin’s work that I saw at the White Cube last week.

I’ve also continued to take photographs of the ‘jacked’ lighters, which will be an ongoing project that will finish once I feel that a sufficient number of images have been created. I’m sure there will be a relevance to the number of pictures, as well as the fact that they’re all portrait shots that were taken using an IPhone.

At the beginning of the week there was a mini symposium which was focused on how artists gain their ideas, primarily discussing how ‘getting lost’ is a very important part of the process. It was more interesting than inspiring to me.

There was also an artist talk by Zachary Fabri which was fairly enjoyable. I was a big fan of one of his works titled Target Customer Relations which focused on Fabri wandering around a Target whilst wearing the employee clothing in order to have conversations with customers surrounding the death of ‘mom and pop’ stores. I enjoyed it.

I also went to a few exhibitions, including Neoliberal Lulz at Carrol Fletcher which was simply awesome, featuring DullTech™ and Jennifer Lyn Morone™ Inc. It’s hard to express how much I enjoyed the exhibition, so I’m not even going to try. I thoroughly recommend that you go and see for yourself with your own eyes. Another great exhibition (Feeling In The Eyes) at Tenderpixel was focussed on the idea of materiality in relation to the internet among other things. The use of a motion sensor attached to a light was particularly impressive, as well as all the video pieces with the second screen experiences.

The less interesting exhibitions included Performing for the Camera at the Tate, which was full of really cool images that we’ve all seen before, Yves Klein’s Anthropometries and Erwin Wurm’s One Minute Sculptures, etc. Pi Artworks was distressingly dull and filled with drawings, Blain Southern had some fancy bronze work which was unexciting and going to Sprüth Magers was like going back in time to the 80s, which is usually a good idea, but in this case it was not. Maddox Arts was kind of okay, with lots of paper folding and sewing pieces but compared to Carrol Fletcher the whole experience paled in comparison. The final two galleries of the week were the two Gagosian galleries, which had terrible paintings on display, which is never exciting. I can appreciate when paintings are actually aesthetically pleasing, but these weren’t even that, they were just shit and dull.

Also, I managed to watch about three hours of #ELEVATE on Friday, and I’m still wondering whether it was a waste of my time or not.

In other news, I finished watching Girls, which was surprisingly enjoyable as I was slowly sucked into their ‘complicated’ lives. I really liked how the whole program was filmed, how the camera would observe the women in their underwear was incredibly unique, in a very non-judgemental/un-perverted way. I then began to watch Love which, for a Judd Apatow creation, is actually pretty great. I really like how, in both of these programs, the conversations are very realistic in their manner, with the dialogue being a definite high point.

I’ve also been watching a number of films, including Breathless (which was quite beautiful in a disjointed way), Manglehorn (worth watching simply for one scene featuring a cat and watermelons), The Andromeda Strain (the decontamination process was incredible alongside some really interesting camera techniques), We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists (reaffirming what I basically already knew about Anonymous), GTFO: Get the F&#% Out (looking at the hardships that women go up against in the world of video games, something that I’m already aware of but still incredibly distressing to see), Zoolander 2 (disappointing and boring, doubly disappointing as I love the first one so much), Boogie Nights (amazing to see it in the cinema rather than on my laptop screen, such a beautiful classic), Deadpool (some funny moments, all worth it for the after credits scene), Castle in the Sky (more awesomeness from Miyazaki) and The Survivalist (quite an impressive first feature film by Stephen Fingleton).

I’ve been listening to quite an enticing podcast for the last couple of weeks called Farstuff: The Internet of Things which has been riveting, discussions surrounding what it means to be human and drone usage turning countries into a police state are some of my favourite topics so far.

During this week ahead I plan to continue to collect people’s data and begin to think about what material/object I want to sink the USB stick into. On top of this I also want to finish and send off one of the desktop images to be printed, as it will take at least a week to actually arrive after I order it. I’m also going to see Blade Runner at the IMAX on Friday which should be an exhilarating experience and one that I’m very much looking forward to.

Oh and Laila and I still haven’t progressed any further with our collaboration, which is very disappointing.

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Timur Si-Qin, Search Engines and The Thing

After the crits earlier in the week I began to relax, as I was happy with the work that I had created over the month or so since returning to London. I then realised that I needed to consider what I wanted to create next, in what form to work in and how to amalgamate my new ideas into something enticing and interesting to look at.

Although I intend to continue with my creation of a Zook slowly being enveloped by a block, I feel that I’ve basically finished with this project (which I’m yet to decide on a title for) and want to move away from these very basic ideas and create something a lot more layered and a lot less obvious for the viewer, or maybe even more obvious, but making that into a thing within itself. This is the link to the video surrounding 5 Eyes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4ChDVN2rCE

and the link to the main video piece:

https://vimeo.com/155159307

I’m considering a variety of ideas at the moment, and have decided that I want to create something real, as opposed to something purely screen based and virtual. Obviously the work will still be surrounding the idea of the digital and the network, but through a medium other than film, or maybe a film immersed in an installation, but with more emphasis on the installation than the film. I’ve been looking at a lot of Timur Si-Qin’s work and his ‘Visit Mirrorscape’ pieces, where he creates these utopian virtual spaces and displays them in front of huge light boxes. I’ve also been continually returning and considering all the work at the Whitechapel, with serious considerations of Jon Rafman’s sculptures (I’m rarely not thinking about Rafman) and Evan Roth’s visualisation of the internet.

At the moment I’m thinking a lot about the parallels between how files are deleted online and how they’re deleted in real life, and where these files go to. Alongside this, an interesting point came up during one of my seminars on Friday, how the internet, and more specifically search engines like Google and Yahoo are similar to a ‘post-internet democracy’ where they show you that people are more likely to search for Karl Pilkington than Karl Marx. Even though this statement is kind of wrong, as search engines are usually personalised to your own computer so are more likely to give you results that you would be more interested in, I still found the point thought provoking. When you log out of your account or enter ‘private’ browsing however, Google becomes un-personalised to you, and manages to show how fucked our society is when you type in the beginnings of a question, like ‘why does’ or ‘how can’. Everyone has done this and has observed how weird and bored the majority of the first world gets whilst navigating through the internet, aimlessly typing in shit that you would have previously gone to a book or asked your parents/friends for the answer. So if I were to make a work looking into this, it wold be easily relatable, is this a good thing or a bad thing?

This is a very obvious thought process, as the majority of young people consider this type of thing at least once in their lives, but maybe that’s okay. For the moment I’ve been considering very basic things for how to visualise this type of thing/idea, whether to take simple screen grabs of these very obvious sentences, or to make literally Google the piece of work, and the writing surrounding it the important thing. Of course, ideas surrounding copyright would come into play at that point, among other things.

(On a side note I went to an interesting exhibition this week at the Jerwood Space surrounding the idea of copyright, featuring work by Antonio Roberts, Owen G. Parry and others. Those two in particular were showing some exciting work, melding screens with digital prints.)

Another ideas would be to bring the top search engines together and ‘look up’ the same things (finding different results), this would be looking at how democracy works on the larger scale (like voting for a prime minister/president relating to Google) or on the smaller scale (putting ‘Gary’ in charge of the community watch program with parallels to using ixQuick) and comparing the results. These are only starting points however, and haven’t even considered how Google (and other search engines) ‘tinker’ and distort the results that one gets for their (Google’s) own agenda, whatever that may be.

I started two ‘mini’ projects this week too, both very simple and able to run in conjunction with my own bigger projects. The first is looking at small interactions with people you may or may not know, a ‘small act of violence’ if you will. This involves ‘jacking’ or ‘genie-ing’ a lighter that someone has left on a table or on the floor, and then putting the lighter back and photographing it. I then don’t see the inevitable moment that occurs when an individual ‘turns on’ the lighter and a huge flame appears as opposed to s minute one. This small disruption within someone’s life interests me and ties into the idea of ‘youth culture’ and the jokes/pranks that have become so prevalent on video sharing websites like YouTube.

The second work is another on-going piece, which involves me noting down when an individual in a film says the name of the film that they’re in in a Meta/fourth wall breaking moment. I assume that this will turn into a compilation of sorts, once I have enough to warrant a whole video. The idea of a compilation video is always interesting to me, from Christian Marclay’s The Clock or Eva and Franco Mattes’ My Generation to Omer Fast’s CNN Concatenated. Through research, the creation of the ‘compilation video’ seems to be a ‘rite of passage’ for a lot of artists, so I thought it would be interesting to create my own. I’m unsure whether the garnering of the movie clips is ‘my type’ of work, or whether I should focus on a different type of compilation, in relevance to video games or the internet, but for now I’ll continue to collect these humorous moments in films. I distinctly remember Family Guy mocking this in one of the episodes, and rightly so. The project, if I continue with it, would focus on my own experiences with films and be personal to me in that way.

In other news, Laila and I continue to think about our collaboration, considering how ‘the internet’ could be seen as an office, where each cubicle or screen within that office is where one’s own personal internet history exists. This ties into the endless-nuss of these work spaces, and how similar spaces are duplicated throughout the world. Samsara and The Crowd came up during our discussions, those ideas of repetition and the impersonal. The video would consists of going into these individual screens and attempting to visualise different peoples viewing habits, etc, moving from the normal into the abnormal. The videos shown below are very simple experiments and I continue to be excited by the discussion and the work that we are yet to create.

On Monday I had my second seminar on Utopia, which looked at a variety of philosophers, from Bloch to Adorno and considered how capitalist societies are a utopia space for some people within this world. The discussion surrounding these ideas was really interesting and really related to the work that I’ve been making.

The lecture in the afternoon was focused on Baudrillard and the copy, which was also really interesting and made me want to read Simulacra and Simulation… So many books so little time… The work by Allan McCollum was mentioned, which is very cool, his Perpetual Photos being a favourite. It was a really enjoyable lecture.

On the Tuesday, crits were happening all day, which went well. I gained some good feedback and felt a weight lift from my shoulders, which is always a positive. This is my work that I displayed:

The artist talk was also good, featuring an artist (Lana Locke) who hates craft shows (who doesn’t) and mocks the establishment. All good things to think about.

Friday’s seminar was enjoyable too. In advance we were told to attempt to read a few pages of the society section in Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory. After the first three pages my mind was already ‘fried’ and I couldn’t take anymore. There was so much talked about that I can’t really relate without literally copy and pasting the entirety of my notes, which I’m not going to do.

I’m learning a lot from these seminars and am really excited about the coming weeks, and the knowledge that will gradually build up over the years.

In terms of galleries, I only went to the Jerwood Space and the White Cube in Bermondsey. The White Cube had a really exciting show called History of Nothing which was highly influenced by Eduardo Paolozzi and JG Ballard, which fully relates to the ideas within my work surrounding mass media and the uncanny. Josephine Meckseper’s installation Sabotage On An Auto Assembly Line was a particular favourite, deconstructing the mechanisms of capitalism through appropriation. I was a big fan.

I intend to go to a lot more exhibitions during the coming week and I’m really excited for the new Carroll/Fletcher show which features Constant Dullart with the title Neoliberal Lulz.

As usual I’ve watched a variety of films, Citizenfour (really interesting), Blue Jasmine (okay-ish), Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (quite awesome), Children of Men (including some really great filmic moments), People Places Things (always lovely to see Jermaine in something), The Revenant (in the cinema this time, which was quite amazing), Bicentennial Man (weird and predictable with a lovely message), The Fly (freaky and weirdly great), Gattaca (a scary concept), Forbidden Planet (really enticing sci-fi), The Thing (simply amazing), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (an impressive ending), Nemesis (terribly clichéd cyberpunk), Porco Rosso and finally Kiki’s Delivery Service (both incredibly beautiful and well-crafted stories).

I also played a few games, the first being Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor. It was mostly played for pure enjoyment, but some of the systems within the game were really interesting to consider, the relationships that you curate with the different captains was a definite high point. A completely different sort of game worth mentioning was Freedom Bridge where you play as a cube, attempting to cross to the other side of a river. It takes around 2 minutes to play and was deeply distressing, I recommend that you go and play it. The final game was called Sunset, where one steps into the role of an individual cleaning someone’s apartment. Obviously there are many intricacies within the game, but what I found really interesting was how you get to know this person, who you never encounter, by simply interacting with his possessions and exploring his home. By doing this you also learn about the character that you’re controlling, via her reactions to certain objects around the house or snippets from her diary. It was a thought provoking piece of work.

This coming week is officially ‘Practice Workshop’ week, where there’s going to be a number of different workshops and activities being put on by and for the first year students at Chelsea. Last week I chose to attend two of the workshops, one called Error Correction being run by Dan Ward and another titled Lucid Techniques for Making Art by Francis Brady. Both sound exciting. On top of this I’ve organised (along with some other people) a few ‘film nights’ where people can get together and discuss the medium and the different video works that influence them, etc. I’m really looking forward to the week of workshops and continuing to consider my ideas.

Oh and in unrelated news, I think my Snapchat project is slowly coming to an end, as I find myself taking videos within the app less and less nowadays… I still continue to do so, but it’s more like once every few days, as opposed to upwards of 7/8 times a day. Over the next few weeks I’m going to examine what’s going on and make a decision about where I want it to go.

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