Reading ‘Some Rules for Students and Teachers’ by John Cage, and ‘Sentences on Conceptual Art’ by Sol Lewitt has been eye opening and insightful into how I should view my working practice. Of course these are only the opinions of two people, yet the clarity that I feel when reading through them is refreshing in comparison to a lot of texts out there in regards to an artist’s working practice. I like the straightforward, simple syntax used.
They address a lot of questions that I have both for myself and those working around me, and are reassuring in that their ideals allow for experimentation, failure, the unknown. It also proves to me that there is no right and wrong answer when it comes to making work, providing that you are in a process that contributes to the making of art, both physically and mentally through theorising and ideas generation.
0 Comments
The incubation period; the ideas are in the process of gestation, they are being prepared but are not ready; it is not the right time. The emphasis for now is to continue with the processes of gathering and manipulating data until the time arrives where I have a direction to take the work.
Suggested strategies for progression: Explore uncharted areas Collection of disorientating-angled images Intervention Set up a structure to work within Reconfigure data Space // Site // Place An idea whereby photography is used to enquire into a site; the site becomes a proposition. In this way we can use photography to ask questions. By engaging with a site we become open to being affected by it. We tend to think of ourselves as an independent body that moves into a neutral space, but it is fact an exchange between body and place; the space is created by people and it changes through interaction. A place is not a frozen moment, it constantly changes. Geography // Materials // History // Culture // Memories We went on a walk in order to determine sites of interest, but I engaged with the walk itself, and documented it in a similar way to my previous walk by photographing the journey using regular shots of the area in front of me. I didn’t look through the viewfinder or at the photographs, just took the shots to look at later. But I did make the conscious decision to have my lens zoomed in as far as possible, so that I could potentially capture more abstracted frames of the environment in front of me. At times we stopped to look at objects or places of interest, but as much as I enjoyed capturing these things, I wanted to focus more on the documentation of the walk itself, and to find interest in the potentially ‘boring’ shots that I take. The next step is to work with the images, perhaps creating another joiner similar to my first, or perhaps focussing on specific photographs and developing them as single images.
It has been refreshing to have my boyfriend visit for a few days from Manchester. I felt guilty for his 11 hour journey all the way down here, but I thought that all would not be lost on the way back, I could utilise the journey.
Detachment from the journey allows for a participant to gather data on instruction of the artist. The participant can influence the data collected because of their own preferences. The data collected is unique to the individual, and unique to the specific journey. The giving of instructions allows for the participant to work along guidelines, and also has the potential to be standardised across a number of experimental journey works, using different participants and journey routes. I gave him a list of instructions to gather data using his camera phone of his journey back to Manchester, and to then send me the images, but only a small number at a time. I have also given him freedom to alter the order, orientation and effects of the images before sending them to me. I hope that this will kick-start a piece of work that requires me to respond to the images within the same day that they are sent. |
AuthorThird Year BA Hons Fine Art student studying at Falmouth University Archives
April 2017
|