Reading Week

November 8th-14th
This week I was working on my photography presentation on Tim Walker a fashion photographer
I love. These are some images I was thinking about putting in my presentation and talking about the fictions with in each photo and picking out individual syntigms creating a fictional paradigm...

After completing my presentation I did more Illuminate Bath work. I loved help make the lanterns.

At the end of the weekend I went to a concert by my favourite pianist Angela Hewitt and I had a fairly good seat so I thought I would do a blind drawing of her playing.

After all the Bonfire making times I found an abandoned plank of wood in a park, looked at it carefully and realised that someone was about to burn an old organ piece...was shocked. I wanted to keep it but lots of people were around and looked at me odd as I was staring at it.

Week 5

November 1st-7th
On monday I went up to Sion Hill and developed some more b&w photos. I found this a little more challenging when there was no teacher around but luckily there were a few other from my course there to help me out a bit.Through out last week I was just testing out my SLR with color film in it and got some developed at Jessops. Below is a photo of the university with 'sun damage' however I quite like the effect!
Later on in the day I was volunteering for the new festival Illuminate Bath. I had a long shift from 3.30 till 8.30 where I started to help by setting up installations in and around the Green Park Brasserie and then from 6 I was on the door for the opening party and guiding people through and around the site. Pictures from the event can be seen here. While waiting one of the works near by was a participating piece. I created a little face projected on the main entrance hall.

I finally started to put ideas into my sketchbook, relating music and colours and following on from the idea of systems art.

This is just a starting point, for ideas. I will then progress this idea for a double page on each and think of objects (natural and human made) which have something which has a discrete similarity either colour or shape of instrument etc.

On wednesday I had another shift at Illuminate Bath this time working on a very successful project called Eye Tracking. I really liked working on this light installation the artist Bob told me a lot about the piece and interesting facts like we cant stare at one thing for more than 10 seconds without loosing focus  and the human eye can see 100 frames in just 1 second. He collaborated with Bristol University experimental psychology department and got them to track peoples eyes staring at the Roman Baths building (next to Pump Room)for 30 seconds. The multicoloured spots indicate this. He then collected from the 10 of them a quick sketch of the building. It was very interesting as if you carefully observed one colour spot and the image they drew you can notice what they missed out on the pictures is also what they didn't see, generally.

After we had setup I had a nice surprise seeing my tutor there as it was her husbands work and was nice having company as the other volunteer had not turned up yet! All I did after this was talk to the public about the work and show them the sketches, hand out programs and click, the number of people I saw go by. Then the South West ITV weather team showed up and were filming us and the art project as it was raining and the coloured spots looked like rain and wanted to advertise Illuminate Bath!

In photography we had a lecture on how to do powerpoint for our presentations in 2 weeks. I then watched an interesting video were the photographer Rankin recreated the Seven Photographs That Changed Fashion. As Shaun, Anna and myself were walking out Sion Hill there was a big installation of art with a run way, a screen projecting us on it from a camera and A LOT of quite cooky clothes but high designer labels from charity shops on rails. There was then a survey we had to fill in asking what we chose wear and if we would wear it as an everyday item. Here are some pictures of us 'participating in art'!!

Week 4

October 25th- 31st

LAST painting week! I started to look and appreciate Process/Systems Art. 

So I spent much time researching artists such as Charles Ray, Ed Rusha, Chris Smith and Annie Spinster, Neil Feguson, John Baldessari, Sol Lewitt, Richard Long, Hans Haacke, Morris Luois, Clifford Still, Lucy Skaer and Luc Tuymans.

In my performance lectures I had I decided to do blind drawings of performances I had watched and got people sat next to me to do some aswell, to show everyones different perceptions of what we are all seeing.

My blind drawing of duet Bring Him Home from Les Mis, I rotated my page four times

Ella's interpretations of the duet

Heathers blind drawing of the duet

On wednesday I also went to the volunteers meeting for Illuminate Bath, an arts festival in the city, am excited for it and learnt what we will have to be doing like talking about pieces of art and standing by the artists.

In photography this week we learnt more complex techniques the equivelent of photoshop but all in the dark room such as dabbling (which adds and takes away light) in the photo, I made this by getting a piece of cardboard on a stick and you move it quickly above the bit you want lighter.

Dappling on the building

I also used a technique of using 2 negatives on top each other. I got a a cool texture of the abbey by using the wall next to the abbey (negative) on top of it.

The next image is a happy mistake, its a square in Bath. I moved the image ever so slightly under the exposure (within the 6 seconds) but it didn't come out blurry it just looks replicated in 2 different places.I think it actually gives more 'movement' to the image.

I like this picture. Simplistic and many people have taken as similar shot, but it was the first photo which came out right for me and it was an amazing feeling when you see it come out of the machine and you know you did all of that.

Week 3

October 18th- 24th
I went to my second experimental music ensemble, coming back being very inspired. We were playing a random instrument and we were reading music not from a score but an image of a Japanese screen door titled Stone, Brick, Glass, Wood, Wire-Tokyo by Fred Frith, the improvising guitarist and founder member of Henry Cow, made a series of graphic scores by adapting photographs and specifying ways to read them as notation.

I loved it. The shading represents the dynamics, the black bars are load noises and the condensation on the screen was a soloist. I couldn't find the original anywhere, but it looked similar to this. I also discovered other Performance related Fluxus artists such as George Brecht, George Maciunas and Fred Frith.

 This week in painting class I was purely experimenting on the boards I had primed on since last week as they were now dry. I started off trying to paint the result image of the blurred lights at night(in last post). I adjusted from acrylics to inks which I had on me and also putting a bit of tracing paper on it in right corner to increase texture. I was happy with the result of techniques I used and had discovered. 

In this class I also discovered a 'musical' artist called Tim Lee. Taking a page from piano legend Glenn Gould's book (literally as well as figuratively), he makes every performance new, to reinterpret historical artworks, and to compose new works out of existing material.

Lee revisits Bach's music through processes of skillful reproduction (precisely timed video edits, and impossible photographic illusions requiring mirrors, engineering and photoshop) to scope out the deceptive but connotative feel of modern media images and sounds. He also   re-contextualizes familiar identities within contemporary art practices, exploring new notions of cultural literacy and cultural drift.

 In photography class this week we got objects and photographed them and printed them out all in the dark room, experimenting with the length of exposure. Also developed all my contact sheet and a few photos.

Silly bands bracelet (flamingo) and a lollipop

Week 2

October 11th -16th
In painting this week we primed pieces of wood and discussed and looked through books of artists such as Lucy Skaer and Luc Tuymans who I found particularly interesting as he reuses images and photocopies them to reduce them to an image's bare essentials. I then used this approach by taking a photo and manipulating it by crumpling it up, putting it through a b&w photocopier, taking a photo of it on my phone (which weakens the quality) and then put cling film over it with bits of paper, mark it with cookie cutters on it and then re-photocopying it. 

I then took another photo, I had taken in Canada this summer with lots of hay bails on a big open field and kept taking photos of it on my phone and printing it out, watched how it changed colors. I then placed a British pound coin (similarly looking like a hay bail) on as a representation of me being there, although half canadian am seen as the english one, adapted  to a postmodern culture than a rural canadian living. The fading and changing colors represent the generations my family has been in Canada.

 

The highlight of my week was then spent at the Frieze Art Show in London on the 14th of October. There was so much to see, I was there all day and I dont think I saw it all, however it was all very inspiring to see. My favorite piece of work there was Study for Architectural Device for Four Sides by Peter Welz (www.peterwelz.com). He created the metal framework which makes his movements make sense. It gives an essence of him still being in one position for longer as you can see it in the metal framework even though he is still moving. Here is a video I took while I was there. 

In the sculpture park I noticed a piece of 'rubbish' art by Gavin Turk and as I was walking back from it I noticed a 'normal' bin which people had identically filled to the brim just like Turk had identically copied the public. Its true then the public gets what the public wants!

Week 1

4th - 10th October

On my first painting class we were asked to blind drawings (looking directly at an object and not the paper your drawing on) on graph paper. I found a tissue in my bag and did that I also turned my paper around a few times and changed the angle/shape of the tissue 10 times and each time I did that I changed the color, this was at first challenging as I had never done this before however I was pleased with the end result. As I was doing this I felt a lot more freedom within my drawing skills, like I was 5 again! 

We then had to paint what we had drawn. I blocked out the colors and put them in their strong shapes, some colors mixed, some not. 

I also had my first induction in photography on how to use a SLR camera, I was so excited after wards that I had to go out and buy one from the Camera Exchange shop in Bath. really worth it. After that I instantly put the b&w film in started taking lots of pictures around Bath, fitting in perfectly with the tourists. I experimented with the apertures, exposure and timing of taking the photos. As you can see from a contact sheet, not all of the photos was I able to develop as they were too bright, but the majority worked.

Bath Abbey 8.10.10