Mental Installation
I recently created a project open to Arts & Humanities students booking space in the installation rooms for a week of installations.
The setup and green light of the project went smoothly, receiving good feedback from tutor’s. I advertised the project through word of mouth and posters around the Arts & Humanities building.
The project was entitled Mental Installation. Which coined a phrase regarding a description of thought. Or what a single thought might be represented as. The brief was to create a short lived installation. This would be replaced by the next person and so on.
For my part of the installation. I had the idea of a thought as a psychic object. Actions that are resultant are manifestations of those thoughts.
In the end what communicates most is a very simple message. Yoko Ono (In conversation with Rirkrit Tiravanija) 2009.
The manifestations I wanted to represent were distilled ideas of the preoccupations that I have had whilst undertaking my degree.
The hammock form is something I find interesting due to their floating property and the qualities they have for the user. The rose petals were fresh and scented the white space.
On the wall adjacent to the hammock I printed out an excerpt of Swift code that defined a function to breathe and then executed the code in a loop that had an undefined variable.
For the last object in the installation. I used a helium balloon on a wire loop, with a small flag with the hashtag uos_finite handwritten on it. As the helium in the balloon dissipated it raised the flag. Anyone who looked up the #uos_finite on Twitter would have discovered it corresponded to quotes from luminous figures on the topic of world peace. Posted throughout the course of the installation (dissipation of the helium).
I took various long exposure images of the balloon as the helium dissipated. These will be used in an animation piece.
In the second part of this analysis. I would like to review any feedback and reflect on the experience.
I am currently looking to develop a larger scale project. Involving more people. I have a lot to think about before I embark on this. As well as completing the animation piece that is connected to this work.
