Week 1 (13th - 17th Sept)
This week was a very good week for me, I started the year in a good head space, probably due to the fact that I was enthused about getting hands on and making work in the new space. Especially after having spent most of the previous week literally constructing and painting the spaces. I was already set in creative mode.
It comes as no surprise that, like everyone else, my brain has been burning over the thesis, but with some luck and dedication I will stay true to the plan I have set upon myself and avoid any neglect to my studio work. But instead try to develop a co-habiting practice where both the thesis and studio and consistently in collaboration. For the year to be a success for me as an artist, one must directly and indirectly have a relevant impact on the other.
Proposed Thesis Topic: 'The relevance of community art to youths in a disadvantaged area.'
It soon becomes apparent that it would be almost impossible to create a consistent studio practice based solely on youths or minors in a disadvantaged area due to issues of ethics. Instead I refer to a more non literal connection. The skills taken from one and applied to the other. The interactive, participatory elements learned from my community work applied to my studio. To provoke reaction and involvement in my work with the public. Obviously its still in the beta stage, small scale experiments to come in the near future...
Week 2 (20th - 24th Sept)
Week 2 (20th - 24th Sept)
It soon becomes apparent that it would be almost impossible to create a consistent studio practice based solely on youths in a disadvantaged area, due to ethics issues with minors, but instead I want to keep the interactive element of working with a community, even a large community of people. Through my work I want to provoke reaction, but i am not yet sure to what scale. Something relational and current. I will still keep a connection with my thesis topic through my work with south-end f.r.c. For now I want to keep it light hearted, and plan for something more significant in the future, just experiment on a small scale for now and become a voyeur of the reaction. More long term... I'm thinking something Navan LaHart -esque.
"I have no passion... It's something I'm passionate about."
So for now, and until Christmas, my immediate plan for studio - is site specific work, via sculpture and installation. Through this I want deal with old and new aspects of pop culture, obsessions of the public, both past and present, dealing with iconic images such as space invaders and pacman, and using their generational appeal to speak about current issues, merging both old and new to create a successful interactive, participatory piece of work. Also an issue I have been contemplating over is the obviousness of the images and references in the work, they will have to hold a certain amount of obviousness to them, especially when directly dealing with the public. But also I must make sure that I do not sacrifice the integrity of the work trying to make it too obvious.
For the immediate future after taking inspiration from the French graffiti artist 'Invader', I will try to exploit the different avenues this image and idea can be applied to. I'm still not 100% as to how I will successfully do this, a variety of small scale experiments are in the pipeline now and I'm working under the idea of 'The personal space invader' to see where it will take me.
Wikipedia Article:
"Invader (born 1969) is a French urban artist who pastes up characters from and inspired by the Space Invaders game, made up of small coloured square tiles that form a mosaic. He does this in cities across the world, then documents this as an "Invasion", with books and maps of where to find each invader.
Invader started this project in 1998 with the invasion of Paris - the city where he lives and the most invaded city to date - and then spread the invasion to 31 other cities in France (such as Montpellier, Marseille, Avignon, Rennes, Bordeaux, Lille, or Bastia...). London, Cologne, Geneva, Newcastle, Rome , Berlin, Lausanne, Barcelona, Bonn, Ljubljana, Vienna, Amsterdam, Bilbao, Manchester, Darlington are among the 22 other European cities which have been invaded. In the world, Los Angeles, New York City, San Diego, Bangkok, Tokyo, Katmandu, Varanasi, Melbourne, Perth and even Mombasa are now invaded with his colourful characters in mosaic tiles.
The mosaics depict characters from Space Invaders and other video games from the late 1970s. The images in these games were made with fairly low-resolution graphics, and are therefore suitable for reproduction as mosaics, with tiles representing the pixels. The tiles are difficult to damage and weather-resistant.
Invader installed his first mosaic in the mid 1990s in Paris. According to the artist, it was a scout, or sentinel, because it remained the only one for several years. The programme of installations began in earnest in 1998.The locations for the mosaics are not random, but are chosen according to diverse criteria, which may be aesthetic, strategic or conceptual. Invader favours locations that are frequented by many people, but also likes some more hidden locations. In Montpellier, the locations of mosaics were chosen so that, when placed on a map, they form an image of a giant space invader character.
The mosaics are half built in advance. When Invader arrives in a city he obtains a map and spends at least a week to install them. They are catalogued, pictured and Invader use a map indicating their locations within the city. Typically, mosaics are located 10 to fifteen feet above the ground, and often on street corners in areas of high visibility.
One of the more prominent places where the mosaics have been installed is on the Hollywood Sign. The first was placed on the letter D on December 31, 1999. During further trips to Los Angeles, Invader has placed mosaics on the 8 other letters of the sign.
Invader also works on another project that he titles "Rubikcubism", which consists making artworks made of Rubik's Cubes. Invader has had solo exhibitions at art galleries in Paris, Osaka, Melbourne, Los Angeles, New York City, and London.
Most recently, Invader placed two of his iconic tile works on the World Of Wonder Storefront Gallery, located at 6650 Hollywood Blvd., in Hollywood, CA. for the 4th annual I Am 8 Bit group show.
In 2010, he was one of the featured artists in the film Exit Through the Gift Shop in which it states he is a cousin of Thierry Guetta (Mr. Brainwash)."
Invader's work
Week 3 (27th Sept. - 1st Oct.)
For the duration of this week I have been exploring what I can do with such a pop culture image. Taking Invader's idea (whilst also being aware of the risk of imitation) and somewhat manipulating it to what I want it to say, has actually been quite fun. Although I understand that what I'm working on at the moment has little depth, I am enjoying getting back to work. It might lead nowhere, but it has got me thinking about "space", specifically personal space. This all may sound a bit too literal, but maybe it is what I needed. Some over literal terminology to help show me a possible route forward. And remove me from this boring "empty space" where I have been for quite a while. For now I am attempting to over familiarize myself with the image, recreating it in different ways, memorizing it's shape. Hopefully leading to possibilities of site specific work.
Ideas about new ways of "invading" personal space have been an annoyance of mine for a lengthy period now. And with new media ways of invading our privacy I feel that such an avenue could be a valid and interesting direction to take. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are just some examples of how our relationships and private lives are being redefined in a networking obsessed culture.
Experiments: My Wall... and floor!
Week 4 (4th - 8th Oct.)
This week was a slow one. Sick for a few days, so the experiments happened in the latter half of the
week. Over the weekend, I had been thinking about how to do something that could directly have an
impact on peoples privacy. Invading personal space, literally. Recently I have also been mulling over the idea of surveillance. Especially when thinking about social networks. How our day to day lives, relationships, conversations and even our most mundane actions are being watched. And to avoid any accusations that I'm trying to revive more ideas of an age old conspiracy, I am not trying to say that the illuminati or the new world order are watching us like guinea pigs. Instead, I'm beginning to delve into a world where everyone has become too comfortable giving out personal information. Sharing personal experiences and occasions with their 800 Facebook "friends". I might be fuming a bit here, or slightly over exaggerating the phenomenon, but it has excited me. Looking into ways of artistically representing something like this will be a challenge. I will keep you posted.
My experiment for this week was to directly invade peoples personal space in a place where some people may feel more self conscious or self aware. Using the broadly recognized image, I placed small squares on the wall next to the urinals, (continuing even when they were being used - in an attempt to heighten that uncomfortable feeling) eventually creating the invader. On each square I had printed a C.C.T.V camera to try and provoke some type of reaction from those using the bathroom. Placing myself as someone washing their hands, I watched as the experiment worked. People looked around the room for cameras, sometimes even leaving before using the bathroom. That reaction is something I loved. Somewhat of a participation in the work itself. A direction I will be heading towards.
Experiments: The Bathroom Invader
Another week of experiments and literal embodiments. I am honestly beginning to become fearful that what I am doing will end up as something much too obvious. For now, at least I will continue in hope that this place I'm at is just a stepping stone towards something much more interesting. Ideas about how to merge these literal representations with my ideas about online social networking are not coming easily. Struggling with greatness I will call it. Not too much to report, slightly annoyed but I found a very interesting artist, Caroline McCarthy, information below.
Caroline McCarthy
Info taken from the artist's website:
"Crisps, toilet-paper, plastic bags, supermarket packaging, rubbish and furniture are some of the raw materials used by Caroline McCarthy in considering notions of value and taste inherent in the surface of everyday objects, images and modes of display.
Positioned in response to a culture of mass production, where every kind of experience, fantasy or sense of one’s place in the world is pre-determined through some form of packaging, the work employs humour and other strategies of intervention to investigate the space between ideological facade and the concrete materiality of things."
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| Caroline McCarthy - TetraCam (2000) |
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| Caroline McCarthy - TetraCam (2000) |
Experiments: C.C.T.V Cameras
Week 9 (8th - 12th Nov.)
Missed a few weeks due to utter frustration, trying to come to terms with the subject matter has been much more tedious than I had anticipated. An avoidance of rushing into creating something lacking in substance has had a detrimental effect on my practice, resulting in me creating almost nothing. I have been trying not to jump the gun and totally commit myself to something that might fall flat on its face. Instead it has made me anti productive.
Expecting something to generate from no stimulation was extremely naive on my behalf. Trial and error is what was needed. Through the process of failure, I may have learned some important lessons on where to take my project. And with the date for our open studio/ class exhibition around the corner, I must refresh myself. Next week has to be productive.
Week 10 (15th - 19th Nov.)
A breakthrough! Well maybe that's an exaggeration, but I have been re-inspired. Over the last week I have been narrowing my focus. The previous brief of trying to incorporate all aspects of the three social networks, (Facebook, Twitter and YouTube) has been my downfall. Each has its own way of working, of interacting with users and each has different level of privacy intrusion. Facebook, in my opinion, being the most guilty culprit. So I have been thinking about what I want to do with this alteration in direction.
What I want to do now is try to create physical representations of what Facebook is, and what it has done to our social interactive behaviour. With intentions to highlight how we behave on the site, I will attempt to physically recreate some of the Facebook's features, morphing something from virtual reality into physical reality. The reason being to see how we would react to such features in real world scenarios, with intent of highlighting how impersonal it has made what was once personal.
I'm thinking of creating, or even recreating, the Facebook "comfort zone" that the populace has taken a shine to. That "safe" space which promises social interaction without any cost. My objective is to recreate that zone, while manipulating some features in an attempt to highlight the consequences of becoming a virtual socialite. I want to work with Facebook's tagging feature, that idea of identifying yourself or others in digital photos hosted on the site. Tagging people in places, at specific times doing specific things is an idea that was once the cause of paranoia among many. But now, it seems, people have become comfortable with the possibility of strangers know where you were, when, who with and why. Who needs CCTV any more? In essence we have become the new and improved CCTV. We record everything and anything, we upload everything and anything, we 'TAG' everything and anything. So then, what happens to those personal moments. Moments captured with the past intent of only sharing them with close family and friends. Moments once treasured and highly personal have become impersonal via upload. The idea of opening up and dusting off that family album for that nostalgic tug on your heart, will soon be completely replaced with a hundred photos, all tagged, from a hundred angles with a hundred comments, all hosted online. This may all sound like ramblings, but I'm finding some avenues to follow among the ramblings. I have done some trials on some old family photos to see how they made me feel when tagged. I might include them in the final piece.
Experiments: "Tag this photo"
Open Studio Poster
This week was the week of our open studio. A demonstration of our studio ability and research put to practice. Overall it went very well. Good crowds and interesting varieties of work. After last weeks realization I have re-established the direction of my work. For the piece itself I recreated a physical comfort zone inclusive of certain facebook features. Transforming my space into an almost obsessively perfect room. Something with no "apparent" flaws. Painting the room blue, I aimed to create that sense of immediate realization of the subject matter, of Facebook. I also created another cardboard CCTV camera. This time a life size version. Using cardboard purposefully to heighten that sense of the false. Something not appearing quite as it should. The watcher... appearing as something else. Facebook in disguise.
I also chose to include a family album for the audience to view, a family album with a sinister twist. While sitting on a comfy chair, in a "safe" room, the audience could flick through what initially looked like an old family album.
But upon opening the book, a realization would occur. Instead of a family album, it would be a log of life. A documentation or photographic biography on an individuals life. Each photo tagged of me, from an infant until now. By doing this I aimed to take a tagged photo out of context and use it in place of our most cherished ones. Almost aiming to attack something that facebook has quietly all but eliminated.
Open Studio
