FOLLOWERS (2012)
Followers is the work I'll be showing for end of year assessment.
After I played around with the blog pages and had a few conversations like the one I've written about below, I knew that I needed to pick these ideas apart more. I felt like it was too readable, too straightforward, too loaded, too..many things.
With an overload of information I simply tried to pair it down to the essence of the work and what it is constructed of. At first I was thinking of the bloggers' 'About Me' sections, their pictures or avatars. I cut a few of them out just to have a look at them alone and I wasn't convinced. (Find these cut outs in my research box)
I thought about the Blogger sign.
I thought about it's signification and the connotations of a social media sign such as this, perhaps rearranged in a different circumstance. Where could I put it? What could I do with it that would flip it on its head?
To narrow it down, to find a paticular part of these blogs and their respective bloggers, I listened to the people who encountered the work and what they found most interesting, They found the blog names to be peculiar and at most times hilarious. They also pointed out the number of followers the blogs had and how reflective that was of the blogs content and/or the blogger.
It made me think about the way in which we relate to each other now - thanks to social media - and the idea of "followers". It's true that when the Followers number on your home page elevates, so does, perhaps, your sense of self worth or your ego. Yet, maybe we don't even know these people who follow our blog because they like what we say or do, or who we are and what we stand for. Some people follow others for the sake of following or "following back"; a kind gesture.
I took these two elements and combined them simply into an audio track. My voice is like that of an audio book, but perhaps more monotonous.
I did not want my voice to take a position on the blog names and follower numbers I was reading. If one blog had 24 followers and the other 406, I did not want my inflection to insinuate that 406 was more impressive or more important then 24, that is for the listeners to think for themselves.
The audio below is only a practice run so there are a ton of mistakes.
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MALALA YOUSAFZAI:BLOGGERS
Feedback
Above is a new work I did today, made up of A4 print outs of blogs, all of whom wrote posts on Malala Yousafzai. Overall, the discussion that came out of this work was awesome and right on mark. People encountered the work, and began speaking about their own personal narratives to do with social media, especially Facebook. There were some things I noticed, and others noticed as time went on. I knew, when I assembled the work, that this wasn't really the assembly I wanted, but thought i'd give it a go as a starting point. Here are some thoughts that came out of today:
-Islamaphobia
- Such a "talked about issue" (Islam) right now
- Making this work kind of victimises the victim all over again by speaking for them. It perhaps "objectifies" the subject (Malala).
- When work combats an issue that is as heavy as this, the audience wants to know who the artist is and what their background is. I am white, middle class female, living in New Zealand.I don't know anything about living in Pakistan for example, with the fear of the Taliban shooting me because I speak out. It's hard to handle a situation that I don't personally know. In saying that, if I kind of ignore some of the critical thinking here and focus on the something that does bring us (Myself and Malala, for example) together. Empathy. There's a link that is made with empathy that connects all of these posts (there's not one I could find that was really negative!), all of these people. In turn, not just the story of Malala Yousafzai, but the way in which people are relating to and retelling this story via their social media forum, is relatable for the wider audience - those engaging with this work.
Once I heard someone say to a fellow student, "Banksy knows nothing about the fighting in the Middle East, so he can't really say anything about it." This person went on to say that therefore, he shouldn't make art about the topic. My postition is, why not? Can Banksy not empathise? Is he not allowed to see human pain and feel like he can feel it too? Say something about it? It's human nature to see something sad, and feel sad, unless you're kind of sick. That's just another side - although I get that these things can't be ignored. It's like, how many straight artists have done work about queer politics? mmm. So I've been thinking about a topic change... I think i'll get more opinion on this though.
- It could potentially come across as kind of arrogant or condescending perhaps?
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IS A POST, A WORK?
Read HERE
Some Responses:
Blog Post - Malala Yousafzai (2012)
- "... the idea of revolving communication and a 3 dimensional life we have outside out own physical being."
- "Blog has become so much more than a tool to communicate to your friends"
- "Amazing how one can share so much and provide knowledge to others outside a book"
- About Malala - "...great way to show the political conflict and power of speech but (i'm) more interested in thee idea of havig two lives: one physical and one cyber life."
- "Just need to tie them all together"
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POLICE BROADCASTS
(Above is only a picture, sorry!)
Listen here
If you are using a police scanner, then it is important to learn the 10-codes. The codes may vary from one police department to another however most of the codes are standard. Below is a list of some of the most common codes used on the police scanners:
- 10-0: Caution
- 10-4: Message received, understood
- 10-7: Officer is out of service
- 10-8: Officer is in service and available for assignment
- 10-15: Prisoner is in custody
- 10-19: Returning to the station
- 10-32: Drowning
- 10-33: Alarm sounding: audible
- 10-37: Identify operator
- 10-43: Call a doctor
- 10-50: Subject is under the influence of narcotics
- 10-51: Subject is drunk
- 10-54: Possible dead body
- 10-56: Suicide
- 10-61: Miscellaneous public service
- 10-66: Suspicious person reported
- 10-67: Somebody is calling for help
- 10-72: Knifing
- 10-79: Bomb threat
- 10-91: Barking dog
- 10-91L: Animal, leash law violation
- 10-97: Arrived at the scene
For a small crit we had on Tuesday I showed a simple audio track, I played it from the computers as it was just a test and I wanted to see what it was like with the sound floating over the walls in my space, as though the sound were coming from nowhere.
I wanted to test what the response was to listening to a live police broadcast from America. I used a broadcast from Rochester, Minnesota, a personal reference to myself. I was interested in the presuppositions of listening to this particular audio. "Is it legal?", "Is it live?", "What's going on?". There was an active listening that was happening in the space. Everyone was very quiet, and continued to listen until I had to turn it off.
I then showed the the original kind of, inspiration I had for the work, coming from a site called YouAreListeningTo, where you can listen to live police broadcasts, paired with atmospheric music. The response to this was that the music made it "super sci-fi" and had more of an impact. My thoughts and concerns were that the conversations surrounding music such as this, not to mention paired with such heavy audio, was loaded with theatrical or film elements.
Some Responses:
Police Broadcasting Audio and Green Wool Installation
- Reminds them of coding or messaging.
- Every piece of string is like a message being sent through.
- Put the sound underneath the pile of wool.
- Look at Richard Lewer and Simon Ingram
- Look at Richard Lewer and Simon Ingram
- The work is suspenseful, the audio especially.
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THE END IS LOOMING
a little note to self:
Seems a long while since I've felt the 'end of year stress'. Spose that's what a year off will do to you.
Never the less I feel as though I can conquer it somewhat. I feel the pressure of not being able to do as much as I wanted this year, I'm just hoping that my research and experimentation reflects positively.
I now look towards my Contextual Statement and the synthesis between my knowledge of theories and contemporary dialogue, and my physical work. With such a research based practice this year I'm struggling to find the place in which my practice asserts itself; though I understand this is fluid. I have painted images of forest landscapes, a exploration of distopia, of colour, of narrative. I have printed images of underground bunkers, playing again with narrative and distopia, with science fiction and the process of print. I have started an exploration of performance, exploring voice and it's influence. Moving away from recognisable imagery, playing with drawings that have no resemblance to anything, but mechanical in nature with an aim to evoke individual thinking and activation. I have stepped away from my instinctive, illustrative ways, into materials and installation; using wood, wool and iron - to name a few- to carry the narratives I am so interested in.
It's been hard at times, now I just hope to find a place for myself.
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MATERIALS
After inheriting some wool from my lovely studio neighbour Debbie, I decided to have a play.
Using materials as a stand in for imagery has been the basis for this play-time. I am narrative driven, and instead of painting or drawing I'm allowing for a possible narrative to be realised through the use of this material and surrounding found materials, e.g. Iron, wood and fabric scraps.
I've also tried to slip the painting(s) that I've recently started, in there somehow. The beauty of play is that it doesn't necessarily need to work, but you can try a thousand different things and that's the point.
I'm leading somewhat of a double life.
In studio I'm playing with these materials, discovering new conversations.
Online, I am searching for a digital art realm that I think I'm teetering on finding, in terms of practice.
After inheriting some wool from my lovely studio neighbour Debbie, I decided to have a play.
Using materials as a stand in for imagery has been the basis for this play-time. I am narrative driven, and instead of painting or drawing I'm allowing for a possible narrative to be realised through the use of this material and surrounding found materials, e.g. Iron, wood and fabric scraps.
I've also tried to slip the painting(s) that I've recently started, in there somehow. The beauty of play is that it doesn't necessarily need to work, but you can try a thousand different things and that's the point.
I'm leading somewhat of a double life.
In studio I'm playing with these materials, discovering new conversations.
Online, I am searching for a digital art realm that I think I'm teetering on finding, in terms of practice.
Disclosure: Do not use these images without permission.
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EVOLUTION
You can see below, I've just been playing with the objects and fabrics I've been collecting in my space, along with the two unfinished paintings I've been doing too. These last 4 photos show the work edited- simply; the objects in front of the paintings, holding them up. What I enjoy about this experiment/evolution is the colours and how they relate to each other. I'm still thinking sci-fi but trying to play in more 'object' or 'installation' rather then just image and the illustration of that image through painting.
This is just an evolution of play, but I've simply, just enjoyed the experience of playing and creating these new works. Stepping away more and more away from my safety of illustration.
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EXPERIMENTS
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EXPERIMENTS
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EXPERIMENTS
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SEARCH
New Idea
I've been working on my blog since July, when we were asked to start them as part of our Research Documents for the end of the year. My blog and my surrounding research, I feel, has become a work in and of itself.
Click here for the blog post I made on this particular subject.
I have yet to untangle the ins and outs of this work, but it's coming along.
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EXPERIMENTS
Feeling really uninspired during the holidays, after annihilating myself and dislocating my knee, I tried to get back into some work.
Unfinished.
...
May never be finished.
Images influenced by Science Fiction topics and novels I've been reading lately.
Often I'll create imagery that is inspired from these particular topics.
I just finished the novel 1984, but George Orwell and have started Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley.
The themes in these two novels are based around Utopia/Distopia. A topic that I have been involved in from the very beginning of this year, with my newspaper paintings. My thinking has evolved far past just relational imagery, a method I assume I was really stuck in. These paintings, for example, are more a use of colour, 'structures' in terms of images, or sort of, unrecognisable things - a development I've been working on since Talk Week, and my drawings involved in my performance.
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FABRIC FRIEND #2
This piece in particular has - like Fabric Friend #1-been hanging around my studio for a while.
I enjoy the color and the pattern. They're like hypersensitive colors, really bright and sharp and reminds me of colors I'd use in my paintings. I've always been interested in colors that are reminiscent of radioactivity or an atomic explosion. Like the cinematic feature of inverting the colours when an atom bomb is dropped, or a chemical is released.
However instead of painting with these colours, I've tried to relate to these things in a different way - sculpture or installation. Purely getting out of routine and playing with, for example, objects and space, is helping me to also break out of my tendency to relate all my ideas back to image.
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FABRIC FRIEND #1
This guy has been hanging around for the last couple months.
Made up of fabric I collected from the offcuts of the garment making machine, up the road.
I enjoy his presence in my studio. Putting him in different situations, lingering while I paint or research.
He even lived on my desk for a while.
He's been an on-going work/thing, living in my space perhaps.
I have yet to do much else with him, unless, that could be the point.
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Click here for an article relating to these works, where all is explained.
EXPERIMENT
EXPERIMENTS
A potential collaboration with Madison Atherfold
Click here for an article relating to these works, where all is explained.
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FOYER PROJECT & MID YEAR ASSESSMENT
With Ben Lock
Above are pictures of my Foyer Project with Ben Lock. His water circles were made up of colours found in my painting which created a straight forward conversation between the two. I chose to show this piece on the floor after showing it on the wall for a critique. The line work in this particular painting is at times androgynous and so at different viewing angles the reading changes. I enjoyed showing it this way as it took the painting out of it's hold on the wall and into a completely different setting and conversation. It was interesting just to explore and to view the work differently.
For mid year assessment I also submitted this work on the floor.
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canvas, acrylic, charcoal
Mid year assessment painting, close up shots.
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TALK WEEK 2012 AUT UNIVERSITY
'Sam, Kurt, Annie and all of us', 2012, performance
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TALK WEEK 2012 AUT UNIVERSITY
'Sam, Kurt, Annie and all of us', 2012, performance
'Sam, Kurt, Annie and all of us' (2012), performance, 13:54
Video Still
'Sam, Kurt, Annie and all of us' was a performance piece I did for Talk Week 2012. It was composed of 3 excerpt readings from Samuel Beckett's play End Game and Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse 5, and an excerpt of a song by Annie Clark of St. Vincent. Lasting almost 14 minutes the performance moved from reading to rolling up of drawings on vertically long brown paper, pinned to the wall. The drawings themselves were not visually recognisable nor relational in and of themselves, but technical in their approach. The performance ends with nothing to read and nothing to see except the remains of the performance itself.
'Sam, Kurt, Annie and all of us' was a performance piece I did for Talk Week 2012. It was composed of 3 excerpt readings from Samuel Beckett's play End Game and Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse 5, and an excerpt of a song by Annie Clark of St. Vincent. Lasting almost 14 minutes the performance moved from reading to rolling up of drawings on vertically long brown paper, pinned to the wall. The drawings themselves were not visually recognisable nor relational in and of themselves, but technical in their approach. The performance ends with nothing to read and nothing to see except the remains of the performance itself.
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EXPERIMENTS
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EXPERIMENTS
UNDERGROUND BUNKER
Prints
Here are some prints that I did towards the beginning of the year. The imagery is that of an 1940's-50's underground bunker concept in case of nuclear war. My interests lie in a lot of these political/scientific areas as well as the cultural side. I presented these many ways but when all together, the critique came back that it was about 'process' not the image. So that was something to think about in terms of when identical/similar work is presented together, how it reads. I enjoyed these prints so much, I did many prints in this time, of the same image and parts of.
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MARCH 2012
First work of the year
newspaper, acrylic
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