Bill Viola, as mentioned in that early video presentation post I made – certainly a big influence where the water screen is concerned. Please see that video if you want to see how.
I have purchased nearly all of the parts to make said screen and tested the water pump. I cannot work too big, for practical reasons – but I don’t think that matters. I have other tricks up my sleeve.
I would like to re-use the screen in the future, and hence am making it to be ‘mobile’. I will project onto a wider area than the screen, using it as the central part of a projected film. I believe that I can make the area around the screen as important as the screen is.
I feel that it will be an installation that I shall make. I also feel that I want the visitor to be perturbed. After all – this is death we’re talking about.
I have also been thinking about burning, smashing-up, drowning, and ageing things. It’s a nice life.
TateShots: Venice Biennale 2007: Ocean Without A Shore, by Bill Viola
All this talk of death might make you wonder why. Well – if you’ve read my blog or watched my video post near the beginning, then you’ll perhaps understand.
I am keen to portray death as ‘perhaps not the end’ – as a sublime moment, perhaps – or a terrifying one – or a simple nothingness; or maybe all of those things.
Without life, we cannot have death – but as I seek to portray the lives of 4 people and two ‘entities’, I will only do so by illustrating their death. Just a few seconds at the end of their lives – and what might just happen.
I’ve hinted before that all that I will make might be cast aside in favour of blackness. It might be the journey I need to make to arrive at nothing. However, I am focussed on the people I am seeking to depict, and so blackness probably won’t cut it. Fear might. Anxiety might. Shock certainly would. Calm might too.
What will happen is still evolving, and at this juncture, where my blog is taken, printed and marked – it seemed like a good moment to think on it all. All is well with 6ix Souls. The making is in the making.
I said a few posts ago that I would reflect upon my influences a little. So here goes.
I think, for the sake of keeping this concise, I’ll not go into any great detail here, as I my blog is (from my point of view) meant to be about how my Degree Project is progressing. I do have some a lot of interest in the work of the following artists – all of whom have undoubtedly influenced me in some way over the course of time.
Some have said that artists are meant to plagiarise; that such activities are good for the advancement of creativity. Whether we do so consciously or subconsciously is down to the individual; I would say that I have for a long time done so subconsciously.
For his project, 6ix Souls, the main people/things that have thus far had an impact on it will be illustrated in my following visual posts.
Way back when you do, I did.
This vid from last year has much to do with the foundations of my Degree Show 6ix Souls concept.
We come from the earth, ascend to the heavens & beyond. After death, many would hope to solve the mysteries of life. Ascending to the heavens, we are faced with a huge ball of twine …
Life as a lift.
Yesterday, I had a conversation with my partner about how I communicate. I’ve been thinking about that a great deal lately, since uni life requires much communication – as does running an art gallery (so I’ve found!).
I have always been inherently shy and will tend to be a laboured, almost ponderous thinker. I know the answers to things, but take longer than many to recall them. That’s why I prefer to write things down. The trouble is (so I’ve discovered again recently) whenever I write, I open a stream of consciousness that I enjoy exploring. In blog form, that could be problematic – but I need to do it, as you all will never, ever know what I’m truly working about otherwise.
I have never found it easy to vocalise my concepts, as I have too much going on in my head all the time to find that level of focus in a conversation/presentation/whatever. The noisy thoughts of ‘what if I make a fool of myself’, or the ‘who do I think I am?, or the ‘they’re laughing at you’ one that has haunted me since childhood.
Writing it is then.
As I might have mentioned before – keeping a diary regularly is something I just can’t do. I never have been able to, so never have. Likewise, I have tried to keep blogs before, and they’ve always petered-out after a few entries. My writing normally takes the form of notebooks and scraps of paper containing private notes and sketches for ideas.
It’s nearly 3am again, and I will post more tomorrow – probably some films I have made in the past to help you see how I might approach the waterscreen video idea.
Oh yes – and tonight I watched the atmospheric, scary film ‘Insidious’, which I found had many references to the kind of childhood night terrors that have impacted on my life and (as a result) my art. It has thus reminded me of an installation and film I made in level 5 – entitled ‘Nyctophobia’. I think I have homed in on some ideas for the screen. More on that later …
