University of Hertfordshire

I had my 24th birthday today (well, technically yesterday now) – birthdays always make me think back to what I was doing this time a year ago, and two years ago, etc etc. Not just birthdays really, but any fixed, annual event that sort of pins the various bits of your life together. I think I'm stretching this one out as long as possible; I went for lunch with my parents and my friend Zoe, then had a few other friends come round during the course of this afteroon/evening, something else happening tomorrow, then the plan is to do something with my friends from uni on tuesday evening. I was given a cactus as a birthday present today, by a friend who it turned out didn't know I'm using cacti in the installation – it's very appropriate, anyway!

Started clearing out my studio space at uni towards the end of last week, which i found quite sad. But got a chance to speak to my tutor, which made me feel a lot happier about what I'm planning for the show.

I've been looking into how much the balloons are going to cost, and lets just say, it's pretty steep. I need to keep looking I think!

I'm very glad I did try out the installation, because it turned out completely different to how I imagined it, and it also gave me a much clearer idea of what, logistically, is going to be involved in doing it for the show. The biggest – and most exhausting – part of the process was getting the room in a suitable state for it to happen in; I'd naievely envisaged getting it up and running after a morning of preparation, but in fact the room took about 2 full days to clean, paint, and remove the staples that were in the walls and floor. I borrowed some flat-pack plinths from the university. Collecting them from upstairs and getting them downstairs to the space was not easy, and they also needed painting. So I was slightly annoyed with myself when it turned out not to work as I had imagined, and the plinths became obsolete. I imagined the cacti would be dotted around the room on plinths, and the balloons would get intermittently blown around by the fan, which would come on and off on a timer. Several things soon became clear:

1) The fan I had brought in was not very strong at all.

2) The balloons were simply not reaching the cacti, as the fan could not blow them upwards, hence the plinths had to go.

3) The timer was not going to create tension in the piece as I had planned; the tension came from having the (weak) fan on all the time, and seeing the balloons move about subtly as a result, and the fact that you didn't know when they might collide with cacti.

So it ended up with the cacti grouped together in a corner of the room, with the fan on, in oscillating mode, and me blowing up balloons (using a hand pump, as my lungs are not of much use!) and placing them in front of the fan, which would blow them across the floor to the group of cacti. The other thing I discovered was that, this being the arrangement, I'll need a much smaller space for it in future.

The bangs, when they happened, were far louder than anticipated, and I remembered how much I dislike the sound. I think, in a way, that's part of my reason for doing this piece in the first place; maybe if you find something disproportionately unnerving, it's a good place to start questioning. In any case, I didn't like being in the room with it, and by the second day I was feeling my nerves really starting to fray, and it was suggested to me, by Adam from 2nd year, that I might feel better if I borrowed ear defenders from the workshop. He was right. I will have to get some of my own before the show!