Beyond the boundaries - edited frames

                            Canning Town 

Beyond the boundaries

We can interpret this theme however we want, but to start the whole thing off we went on a visit to Canning town to the lea valley wasteland. Unfortunately we didn't get to explore much of what we intended to explore. Most of it was gated off or had already begun re-development. Never the less, here are the best images that I achieved from the day - 

Hopefully this will form the basis of my publication for the exhibition. This will run along side my other interpretation of the phrase " Beyond the Boundaries". 

Alex Reuben - The sound of silence

We got set a one week film project with Alex, the only restrictions being it had to be silent and be no more than 3 minutes long.  My group concentrated on movement through unseen sources.

My final stamps

Below are images of the work I put up in the exhibition. I wanted the piece to appear factual and concise. Under each photograph is information on the surface, place and time.

Below are the stamps I had made in order for me to stamp myself over London! I wanted to get 6 done but I realised that would cost an extremely hefty amount so i stuck with three.

Stamping my Journey

Once I had the stamps made I stamped a few journeys I did. I am going to make a booklet out my photos documenting certain details of where I pressed my stamps.

My final stamps

Wall brief continued....

So, I have established I want to do my project based around Japanese Haikus. Haikus are 3 line poems traditionally consisting of the pattern 5 - 7 - 5 syllables. They are about capturing a moment within these boundaries. I decided to try and write my own Haiku's not based on moments but based on my own feelings. Using the 5-7-5 rule, I got writing. Believe me this was not an easy task for me, what I ended up with weren't particularly amazing but as long as I felt they projected my personality/random thoughts I didn't really care.

Here is an example of a few I used :

Too many thoughts here,

what i really need right now,

is some cake......And tea.

Clutter in this room,

this is what my brain looks like.

This room is my brain.

Ok so I know they are pretty simple (and slightly random) but in the end they worked in context with my final result.

I needed a way to use these poems on walls. From already researching Japanese poetry and calligraphy I stumbled upon ex-libris. 

Ex-libris are ownership stamps that the Japanese use. Particularly by authors and important figures in society. Each person would have there own design made so that people would know immediately who wrote that book or whatever.

Some examples of what I mean : 

I decided to make my own ex-libris stamps using my Haikus as the content for them. I liked the idea that my poems (which represented me) could be formed into my own signature and anywhere they were stamped it would be like leaving a little piece of me (if that doesn't sound too corny!)

The Wall Brief

The Wall - A 3D narrative

Select or construct six walls in an area of your choice and create a narrative.

Each wall should act like the section of a magazine or a chapter of a book.

Create the content for each section or chapter.

The material made for this project will be the basis for an exhibition in the second week of term.

I found it really difficult to start this brief. It was so broad I could do almost anything. I began by looking at extremely short stories, stories that create some sort of impact in a just a few lines. My mum's partner reads the Sun newspaper everyday meaning I got a little bit hooked on reading them myself picking them up as he put them down. What I found most entertaining sometimes were the utterly ridiculous tiny stories hidden amongst all the bigger ones. I began collecting them for my project hoping to use them at some point. 

Here are some of my favourites : 

Although quite entertaining, I found it hard to put these small stories to good use. My research on small stories lead to Japanese 3 line poems called Haiku's and this formed the basis for my project.

Become an animal....yes this is a very serious project.

Well, it has been a while since I posted anything on my blog so I thought I would reawaken it with the first crazy project I got set from my performance art elective. I may be  already slightly regretting choosing this subject but hey, it is something different and now I can say I have tried it (even if it means I have to do ridiculous things)

So heres goes the first task. Become an animal. Great... We all had to make a one minute film of us becoming an animal and if i remember correctly mark said something about aiming the film to have some sort of meaning?? Ok so I decided to be a magpie. Magpies like shiny things and use them in their nests and because of the amount of stuff I seem to collect and surround myself with, I felt this theme could work well. So I made a nest on my balcony. Here are the results, enjoy!

  

I had to whittle down 16 minutes of nest building footage into a minute which i think let my film down slightly. I wish i had just gone against the brief and made it longer.

I have tried to upload the original film but sadly it didn't work!

more crazy postcards to add to my ever growing collection

Hamster playing a piano....just genious.

More dungeness project.....

   

For my Dungeness project i thought i would put my images together into a film to match my audio and this was the outcome...

                  

My poster entry for our exhibition

We ran a competition with or ear to see who could make the best poster for our exhibition that is coming up. It's ok, i like the photo aspect. It wasn't a winner though.

Dungeness project final presentation

So after much discussion and experimentation the overall idea turned into an installation that we created as a sort of live show that people could walk into and experience themselves.

We set up a small room (next to our studio) which we blacked out so no light could be let in. (the photo's look brighter obviously because of the camera flash)  The audio in our project was crutial in forwarding our responses to the 10 x 10m space so each of us wrote a short story and made individual recordings to accompany a film we put together.

The pieces of audio were placed on 7 ipods and hidden in black boxes with earphones attached. People could walk around listening to what each box was saying while observing the film of all the objects that was projected on the wall. 

We hung torches from the ceiling with fishing wire over the boxes so they were illuminated with just enough light that people understood what to do. 



Overall i felt the installation worked well, people seemed to enjoy listening to the individual boxes and i thought it was the audio that made the piece. After the crit we realised that maybe we didn't need the film projection after all and the sound was powerful enough on it's own.  Or maybe it would of been more effective to have individual films going with each story recording as i think the feeling was that there was confusion between the film and the different stories.

The whole thing was supposed to create an atmosphere that emulated the feelings we got when visiting dungeness but also presenting a sense of mystery that came with the objects and the stories we all created in conjunction with them. We may not of achieved this fully  because of the darkness (and also the stuffiness) of the room which made the whole thing come across quite eery and restricted which wasn't necessarily what dungeness was like! But hey i still think for a short two week project we did well and managed to produce some pieces of interesting audio which was unlike anything i had done before.

The film we made and projected.

The sound of the shipping news

plays in the background.