University Campus Suffolk

So I have booked the white installation for this week and next week – and spent the majority of today sat on the floor, in a corner of the space surroundedby paper bars.

Sitting in the space waiting for Amanda to bring me a cuppa tea surrounded by these paper bars I started to feel a little bit lonely. I had been in the space from about 10am this morning and had spent at least an hour and a half building the caged environment. Whilst creating I hadnt really felt anything because I was concentrating on building and excited about what the structure was going to look like once complete. But once it had all been built and I was sat in the space for half an hour waiting and wondering how long Amanda would be … I began to feel other emotions. I felt trapped, scared, and a great sense of vulnerability. I felt trapped like an animal (which is good as this was the main point to the whole experiment … and because i was waiting for Amandait was as almost I became an animals in a zoo. As John Berger says in his book Why Look At Animals? that animals in zoos become almost dependent on their keepers, I almost became dependent on Amanda getting there so I could leave. The amount of people that are walking past the door is amazing but made me feel quite vulnerable because only a handful of people (as in 4) who knew what I was doing and it got me thinking about how silly I was going to look if someone came in.

After about half an hour of just sitting on the floor … waiting … Amanda turned up and I crawled out of my cage. I think I should of sat there longer .. . but I think I definitely need something to do whilst in the space as it gets quite lonely and boring.

I would currently love to show you some images of the space yesterday and what I have done today as well as some stills from the films I took … but my computer doesnt seem to want to pick up the sd card.

For now though, I’ll put up some images I captured using my mobile from inside my cage. (The wonders of masking tape and parcel tape – lets hope it stays up).

A short post, (actually a quote) – from John Berger’s Why Look At Animals?

Ive been trying to write a post on this part of Berger’s book for a while – but felt that I wasn’t making myself too clear – so thought I’d post a quote from the book – hoping that this will start to explain some of my current thinking ….

“The décor, accepting these elements as tokens, sometimes reproduces them to create pure illusion – as in the case of painted prairies or painted rock pools at the back of the boxes for small animals. Sometimes it merely adds further tokens to suggest something of the animal’s original landscape – the dead branches of a tree for monkeys, artificial rocks for bears, pebbles and shallow water for crocodiles. These added tokens serve two distinct purposes: for the spectator they are like theatre props: for the animal they constitute the bare minimum of an environment in which they can physically exist.

The animals, isolated from each other and without interaction between species, have become utterly dependent upon their keepers.”

(More description of this and work to come)

Berger. J (2009) Why Look at Animals? Penguin: London
(pp.34-35)

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

POST UPDATE [17/05/2013]

The parts of this quote highlighted in bold are what I feel are the important parts which relate to my work (drawings). The last bold sentence “The animals, isolated from each other and without interaction between species” is very important to my work (past and present).

I want to recreate a zoo enclosure scenario (where animals aren’t allowed to mix – predator and prey animals are kept seperate – for good reasons the predator will eat the prey animal) and where the animal becomes dependable on their keepers for food etc. These factors among others create an artificial setting for the animal to live within and so makes nearly everything they do artificial as well.

(On a personal note – don’t get me wrong I love zoos – who doesn’t – a chance to get up close to living predators who would probably try and kill you if they got the chance to (as well as the conservation part that zoos do) but doing this project seems to have made me think twice about them, which is a good thing because I feel like I can appreciate zoos possibly more than I did before.

Picture Reference

PD Smith (2009) Why Look at Animals? By John Berger [Online] Available: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/sep/19/why-look-animals-john-berger Accessed: 19/05/2013

Second blog of the day … Further development of a zoo/human installation design.

After a recent tutorial, I realised that I was trying to recreate a homely feeling in my space – for example take the previous post where I was thinking of recreating a living room design, I was thinking of using pieces of furniture and recreating a room in my studio space with chairs, tables, bookcases etc.

Whilst discussing the designs (both in previous post) with my tutors it got me thinking about zoo enclosures more and more, and how although for the animals (and also the visitors to the exhibits), the environments are all recreated with the materials the keepers have to hand, be it tyres for monkeys to swing about on, large rocks for lions to sit on, or even the painted backgrounds of the outdoor and indoor enclosures that the animals inhabit, the space they occupy is not their natural habitat like in the wild, but a very clever recreated space for the animals to inhabit. This idea is what I have been searching for, for the past few months …

A visit to a zoo seems to be needed soon …

Another two posts for today, and then onto rereading John Berger’s book Why Look at Animals?

This first post will concentrate on another two design ideas I had for my installation work.

This first design idea comes in two parts, and outside design idea and also an inside design idea.

With this design I wanted to initially create a sense of security and calmness within the viewer. By first confronting them with a bricked walled face of a house, with windows a door and other house necessities.

The viewer would enter the space through the “front” door and walk into a small cramped living area with some necessities in the area, such as a chair or a table and maybe a bed too.

These are a few ideas that I have been concerned with at the moment, I want my viewer to have some sort of experience in the space, I want them to e confronted by their own “homely” place, BUT I was a bit stuck on how to make it more zoo like (hopefully the next post will start to unravel more of my thoughts and feelings and add some direction to where I’m thinking of going next)

Recently I’ve been working on some ideas for my degree show. This post is going to concentrate on a few designs that I’ve been working on for a while. They all have evolved from some of my ideas and art works from last year where I started to create boxed environments for canvased animals to inhabit. This year, I have been working on taking this idea further and have started to think and create environments for humans within a zoo environment – through the use of installation.

This image is a design I took to my tutors right at the start of this Uni year. It depicts both an indoor environment with a bed and an entertainment area and also an outdoor environment for a human to live in. With this design I wanted the viewer to be confronted with a small environment with minimal living appliances and gain a sense of entrapment and wonder.

Whilst undertaking my dissertation, I read Why Look at Animals? by John Berger, where he describes through 8 short chapters about the usage of animals in historical and presnt society, from the days of cave paintings through to modern day zoos. For my dissertation there was a couple of points that Berger made that related to some of the artists I was looking at, but also related to the work I am creating now. Over the next few days I will put up a whole post on John Berger, with specific examination on the section apart zoos and the tokens they use – and how these will relate to my upcoming works.