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.
Snapchat:
bob.bk
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