3 “Newish” designs for my work.
1. In this design I wanted to bring in the painterly side of me into the installation work – and was trying to figure out how this could be achived. With this particular design all aspects on the walls is to be painted, with shelves later attached to the bookcase to provide space to create a 3 dimensional feel so that I can also add objects that I have been collecting over the past few months.
(Looking back to my John Berger post earlier in the blog) – Tokens are used in enclosures for animals to make us (the viewers) feel a little bit better that these animals are in their “natural” habitat within the confines of the zoo. With this design in particular I wanted to replicate this – to give the performer/viewer tokens of their life through recreating a living room/bedroombut solely through painting and then providing them with minimal objects – so a chair and a few objects on shelves to interact with.
2. In this design I wanted my viewer to be able to wander through the piece and almost become the animal. Going from bottom to top of this design … the viewer would enter through the doors (marked in red) and would enter a smallish, cramped cell like structure with a bed, a table and chair and, in this design, a TV is providedbut in others I have drawn board games, puzzles, books. The viewer (now participant) would be able to interact with the pieces of furniture and play at being the animal in the enclosure … in later designs cameras have been be placed within the enclosures and linked to screens outside the space so that viewers can view the “animal” as if at the zoo.
The participant then exits the enclosure into their outdoor area – with real grass, an area for relaxing (a paddling pool is designed here – but a slide could be included) so that like animals in zoos they have both an inside area and outside.
3. Two designs of enclosures that I have been thinking about – do I use a cage and ask my viewers to either interact with the cage (or possibly include a performance piece) or do I create solid walls so that the viewer has to peep into the work and see participants/performance in the space – recreating a zoo…
Most recent question of thought is … What do I want to do ? Do I want my viewer/participant to feel ? …
Thought that before next week – once easter break has finished. I would spend this week working through more ideas, re visit John Berger and do a little bit more reading, finish off empty pages in my sketchbooks and then scan some images for here and finally write a post explaining what I’m wanting to get out of in the final month and a bit and also clarrify my actual project …
To do list wrote – lets start doing …
Rough design for degree show … excerts from sketchbook
More recent designs and Ideas….
A few new designs that I have currently been making for my piece – I am slowly starting to get the many ideas I have out of my head and onto paper (at the moment) so I can talk about them – and also talk through them instead of saying “I think it could look like this” when discussing.
With my designs I have started to take particular ideas from certain drawings and coming up with new ones by placing them together. For instance in the top picture of this post – the wooden effect has been playing a lot on my mind … whether I use it on the floor of the space or on the walls.
The second images on this post is of a version of an earlier design – this time adding coulour to make it a bit more vibrant and readable as I have noticed that my pencil sketches are losing aspects of their designs by simply being in either pencil or fine liner – especially when i start to use text to explain part of the designs – then they are definitely lost.
The ideas behind this design is that the viewer will be confronted by a door – maybe not red – and a plain wall – it is not until they enter the space that they will become part of the installation – performers in their own right to the piece – making the piece complete by them being there. Like in a zoo – when viewers to the animals are wandering around the zoo – they stop – stare and maybe wait a minute or two for an animal to appear – if no animal appears they wander onto the next enclosure – the enclosure is “un-complete” without the animal so the viewer loses interest.
Again … as usual … sooo much has happened in the past couple of weeks and I havent been blogging – but seeing as I now know where my Degree Show piece will be going – and after the Easter 4 day break I’m going to be in clearing out my studio space of all unrelated rubish (mainly paints and bits of paper and drawings) I’m going to get measuring and drawing precise sketches of my ideas and get ordering wood for false walls YAY!
But as always with my blog – I have a backlo of images and I’m going to get up-to-date, before Tuesday then the count-down to the degree show really begins!
(Next couple of posts will be filled withimages and blog text will be added over the next couple of days)
