Life and Death

Tutorial with Vicki to discuss ideas for the degree show. I have been reading The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Walter Benjamin and this has made me question the consequences of reproducing art and what this means in relation to authenticity and the presence or loss of an object’s or subject’s aura.

I liked the idea of posing questions for the viewer, and also inviting the viewer to participate somehow in the artwork, so that to some degree they can choose how much or how little they become involved.

Vicki suggested I look at the artist Nam June Paik whose piece in the Tate involves Richard Nixon making a speech. Paik has placed magnets on the televisions so this distorts the image giving a sense that something is not quite right, a tangible parallel with the lies that Nixon is purported to have told whilst in office.

Another artist Hiroshi Sugimoto, goes into cinemas and uses long exposure to create one photographic image of what is an entire film. He talks about how film brings past images to life, a kind of resurrection and what he wanted to do was stop and restore them to their rightful inertness.

By using the vintage projector and camera, it feels like a way to recreate or resurrect a specific time in history. The sounds and images are iconic of a particular era, before the immediacy of digital images.

Watching the found footage without sound, seems to make the images more colourful and crisp, whilst the sound of the projector clicking through each of the images, creates a nostalgia (for those of us of a certain age!) of a different time.

I liked the idea of making some more random film clips, playing on the viewers expectation and presenting them through different media with the use of sound. I also met with sound artist Simon Keep who suggested instead of using speakers, I use different devices to project sound so that sound is emitted from more than one location in the installation space.

I found some Super 8 film footage, a Prinz projector and Cine camera in my garage. Neither the camera or projector were working so I set out to try and find how I could get them functional again. With the help of a tutor and another student I was able to get them both working and use the projector to view the Super 8 film footage.

I became fascinated with the images and sound of the film. I also like how the footage jumped around to different subjects so as the viewer, you never know what to expect next.

I wanted to see if I could film using the Cine camera and develop a couple of my own films.

I attended the artist Alex Pearl’s workshop. We were each given the brief that we were robots and given set parameters in which we could make a film.

The length of the film clips were to be no longer than two minutes in total and all the film clips would be put together with a minimum of editing. This was a really interesting exercise and the resulting film defamiliarised everyday objects and played on the viewer’s expectation.

This workshop helped me to focus on what I was looking to explore in my current work. I reflected on a piece of work I had completed in the first year which involved the defamiliarisation of the everyday.

I took an everyday domestic appliance, the washing machine, and reproduced it through a combination of sound, film and image into a life size immersive experience for the viewer.

Link to film Washing Machine:https://vimeo.com/211391738

Another piece of work which played on the viewer’s expectation was Exploding Golf Ball. I slowly cut a golf ball in half to a certain point. In the centre, a rubber ball is tightly wound with rubber bands.

As the ball is cut, some of the rubber bands are also cut and start to slowly come apart and unwind. The inside of the ball slowly expands until the pressure inside the ball is too great for the outer casing to hold it anymore and the insides explode out of the outer shell.

The golf ball is an example of constraint and containment versus growth and potential.
It is a piece that plays on the viewer’s expectation, the anticipation of not quite knowing what is going to happen next or when.

It reminded me of the film by Francis Alys where a battered Volkswagen is trying to make its way up a hill. Each time the viewer is led into thinking that this time it is going to make it, but each time it gets to the top, it loses momentum and rolls back down to the bottom of the hill.

Link to film of Exploding Golf Ball: https://vimeo.com/209739838

My preference of using a lens based medium came out of these projects, making me want to explore the defamiliarisation of image and sound and the relationship between the two. I am interested in the importance of timing and tension and knowing what is enough to engage the viewer but not give everything away.

In my current work I am looking at found footage and the use of analogue filming versus digital images. This has led me to explore the deeper meanings of time and memory and nostalgia and what relationship image and sound play in this in relation to the viewer’s experience of the work.

I visited the William Kentridge Exhibition Thick Time at the Whitechapel Gallery. I was interested in the process of animation, how individual images are linked together to make what appear to be moving images.

This is an animation where a drawing of Kentridge appears to be drawing a picture of himself but then defaces and destroys it. The Kentridge that is drawing appears to slowly emerge from the paper as the ‘real’ Kentridge and starts to reassemble the torn drawing back to its original state.

Kentridge plays with the audience’s expectation as he transforms the images from animation to the real thing. It is disorientating in that it blurs the boundaries between what is real and what is animated so that the viewer questions what they are looking at.

Mona Hatoum talked about wanting “to create a situation where reality itself becomes a questionable point” (p.24, 2001) and what we see not being what it promises to be and how she wanted to create work which makes the viewer “question the solidity of the ground you walk on” (p.24, 2001).

How do we know what is real and what is not? How do we know that what we create is real or not real?
It made me think about the question of the creator also as the destroyer, the constant cycle of creation and destruction.

This exhibition inspired me to take some inanimate shapes made from paper and see if I could bring them to life. I took several stills and then edited them together to make a moving animation. It was interesting playing around with the amount of time needed to focus on each still to create the illusion of movement, too long and the images didn’t come to life.

It was as if the correct amount of time had the ability to give the inanimate object its own life.

I made three short videos which can be viewed at Vimeo.com:

Rolling Eyes https://vimeo.com/207165916
Gingerbread Man https://vimeo.com/207165833
Drawing https://vimeo.com/207165734

Reflecting on the videos I had made, I thought about how movement could bring inanimate objects to life but it didn’t necessarily mean that something was alive. It also made me think about Freud and his description of the uncanny which can arise from the contrasting readings of the animate and the inanimate and Masahiro Mori’s concept of the Uncanny Valley.

I found creating animations raised more questions about what makes something real. We tend to say something is alive if it has an awareness of itself or is conscious but how can this be measured? If we don’t truly understand what consciousness is, how can we be sure when and where it exists?

The installation How it is (2009) in the Turbine Hall, Tate by Miroslaw Balka’s is an example of how a viewer’s experience of an installation can be influenced by other viewers.

The installation consists of a huge pitch black container to which viewers are invited inside. Similar to Malevich’s ‘Black Square’ but in three dimensions. Unfortunately the blackness inside the container can be interrupted by light from people using their mobile phones.

This made me think about how other viewers can influence and dictate the time a viewer has to experience an installation or piece of work and what role the curator plays in this.

I started to appreciate the importance of curatorial decisions and see how an exhibition curated well can elevate or devalue the success of the work.