Tour of Art of Change: New Directions From China. This is the show which I remember seeing the most in london compared to any art show that I have ever been to. The piece which I mentioned from the last post, was a performance piece from an artist called Yin gmei Duan. To get to the performance you had to crawl through a small gap in the bottom of the wall, proberbly abour half my size. Then you could stand up again in this small room. Once in this room it felt like you where somewhere completely different. This was achieved with the trees that were placed in this small room, along with the darkness. It felt like you were in a different reality, like being in a fairytale. There was a chineese woman singling a chineese lullaby while writing notes, this was strange to see as I did not really know what was happening.
Then all of a sudden she stood up and slowly started walking towards me, in the room at the time there was only me and one other person, with this chineese lady walking towards us. It was intense and left chills down my spine, it almost felt like I was in a horror film, like the ring or something very similar. Then she came very close to my face and gave me a note, saying something about staring into my parents eyes, I’m still not sure what she meant by it though. This experiance was made worse by knowing that the only way out was to crawl through a gap which was low, this made me feel like I couldn’t escape.
I loved this feeling that the audience would have, the fear of not knowing what was happening. This is something I would love to have in my dark room, however I dont think I will be able to achieve this unless I have specific sounds or even have a performance happening at the same time. I just hope I can achieve something which is even half as good as this.
Bruce Nauman , an American artist who’s work often involves the use of light. I dislike a lot of his work however there is one video created by him which I do enjoy watching as a piece of art. This is called ‘Clown Torture’ and was first seen in 1987. I like this video because it creeps me out a little and I would have loved to have been able to see it in person, it reminds me of a person I saw in the Haywood gallery who did a performance piece which left me with chills down my spine afterwards. If only clown torture was in a gallery nowadays, I would have loved to see it in person!
Thought I would share one of the artists that I was looking at for my dissertation, Francisco Goya. His works have fascinated me with the content and how it had not been seen in his lifetime, due to how shocking it would have been so an audience. How nowadays we see it but think not much of it, but back then his work had even led to him being called a traitor by his own country.
I have attached pictures from my favourite series of his, the disasters of war etchings. I like the etchings the most, mainly due to it being based around the peninsular war, showing the documentation of the war and all the horrible events which occurred throughout. It is not bias to either side that was fighting in the war, and it showed the truth about what was really happening, the mutilation of men and the deaths of so many innocent people.
I have been interested also in the third image, which is titled folly of fear. This is because he has actually drawn a figure representing death in his works. It has shown him as what we now associated with the typical ‘deathly figure’, a.k.a the Grimm Reaper.
The Praxinoscope has been added to today, making it start to have the shape of the praximoscope which I am planning on making. Shown in the pictures, are the outside frame and the inner frame which will hold the mirrors. From what I understand, I am going to have to put a bright light on the outter side of the the circle holding the images. This will project light through the space in the perspex which will hold each image. From here it will then reflect an image through the mirror into a lens. In turn this lens will magnify the image upside down onto a wall. From the Praxinoscopes I had shown on the last post, there is also a separate box to the side, one which is just a light, an image and a lens. This one will make the background which will stay as a constant, it will not change unlike the animation spinning around.
I aim to have the mirrors and animation in my praxinoscope, however I am unsure at the moment if I want there to be a background box, if I have time I will proberbly add it as it can only enhance what I have made before, giving more possibilities for what I can show, and the images can change backgrounds or foregrounds, depending on what is going to be shown.
The lenses and the seperate background box are placed on a seperate pedastool, one where you will then be able to move the lens closer and further away in order to focus the image untill it is correct. I have experimented with this using a mobile phone, a lens and a shoebox, something which I will post about in due time.
The image I want animated I am still unclear about, I am toying with the idea of making a stop animation using one of the angels which Iam currently making. I could add wire to connect the limbs and move it to make it look like it is committing a certain deed, harming a person. The only problem is that I need the start to link up with the end, otherwise it will just jump to the start again and not remain a smooth animation.
Attached are images of the two frames which I have added so far onto the metal frame previously created. I will add the photos of the frame onto this blog soon and talk about why there is a newer frame and a better frame than talked about before.
The projector idea.
I have been looking at ways which I can project an animation on the wall. I have come across something called a ‘Praxinoscope’ this is what I will try and make tomorrow and try to make the base ready for the images to fit right in. Here is a video and some images of what I am trying to make, i hope they make some sense as they have made me alot clearer on what i am going to do, just making angles with mirrors which is going to be tricky.
