Crane Growth

Ive been wondering for ages how cranes are constructed. Now I know.

Point Break on Stage

self immolation

Today I was thinking about materials detriorating. There used to be cement elephants in Carluke Highstreet when I was growing up and I remember thinking that the way such a strong material fell apart was beautiful, and that it could be used to make something even more beautiful. I was thinking about sculptures within sculptures, with the outer sculpture made of a faster deteriorating material than the inner sculpture. I was also thinking about different things that cause a material to deteriorate like sea, air, fire and people. I did some small drawings of something burning as I think thats probably the quickest way to make a material deteriorate and I was reminded of some research I had done previously into self immolation, the process of commiting suicide from burning yourself to death. Im fascinated by what would drive someone to kill themsleves in this kind of way since suicide is usually seen as a quick and easy way of escaping from life (even though many suicide methods can accidentally last days, I believe theyre usually intended to be fast acting). My search eventually brought to my attention a monk who self immolated in Vietnam, caught on camera in an extremely famous photo by Malcolm Browne. For more information click the photo.

Book

These are sections from the book Im making alonside this projects main outcome. Many thanks to Lorraine for letting me use her images for the cover.

Simon Elvins

Thanks to Jamie for bringing this guy to my attention. He told me about it as the map I was putting together of bins in Cumbernauld reminded him of it.

Using a narrative

With my project coming to an end Ive been getting a little disappointed in what I consider to be a fairly shallow resolution. However, after doing a presentation on my research in which I invented a new narrative to explain everything that Ive done I realised that what I have been creating is quite an open platform for creating other narratives. So maybe if what Ive created isnt a very satisfying piece, it could be a successful start in a process in the future.

Cross species Romance/Rape

Click on the photo to get more details.

When Animals go to War

A Happy Coincidence

While helping Lorraine with her project I took some photos of her inside a large fleesed bag she had created. By a strange turn of events there were two instances in which she resembled an animal. In the first she took the form of some kind of caged ape (no offence Loz) and in the second she accidentally created a beak to look like a crouched bird figure.

A Day of Bin Hunting

Having had a limited amount of success finding animal bins in Glasgow I turned my attention to Cumbernauld, knowing that there are a lot of primary schools there where I may find an animal bin or two. My mother was kind enough to give me a lift around town. We waited till the schools were out before going and started with the schools my Mum knows since she is the school chaplain. They were nice enough there to give me a mildly absurd letter of introduction should any later schools doubt our identities or intentions.


A few of the 15 schools we visited didnt have animal bins, but on the whole it was a very successful. I counted 34 bins in total. Staff at the schools were all very friendly and helpful. There was however still a strange sense of stepping over a line. With the children having gone home these should have just seemed like every other building, but I still felt wary and in need of permission on every site. There was even one school where the cleaning ladies didnt want to give their permission so they fetched a teacher. She apologised that she wasnt sure if it was a good idea. It was her first year in the job and she was worried about any implications it might have if she allowed us to. I dont blame her at all but I couldnt help think its a good example of the overbearing security that is in place in schools these days.

As for the hippo bins, the photos should be available on my flickr site which Ive added a link to from this page. However Ive yet to get over a few problems with uploading images before they will be on.

Ned Sculpture?

While taking photos of a wooded area in Cumbernauld I came across these sculpted objects. Im not sure if they were all made by the same person or if its some strange coincidence, but theyre all very close by.

The Fruit Market

After enquiring in a florists about floral foam (the green foam used to make flower arrangements) I was told to visit the fruit market. I plan to use the foam as the second material for the unfinished animal bin Im making. On my first visit to the market I was too late. All the shops were shut so I had to return another day. It was still an interesting place, with lots of packaging and unsold fruit left out to rot. I left and went to another florists who was good enough to give me some floral foam to experiment on. I discovered that it was very easy to carve and it stuck together well with super glue, even being carveable between seams. Also, when I kneaded the off cuts, the started to look like moss. So perhaps I can make it look as if the bin is made from moss and wood chips.


The next day I returned to the fruit market early where I was able to buy large bricks of floral foam from a very helpful guy at a shop called S.F.P.C.

The plan so far

Im afraid this isnt a good image but its an attempt to show what I intend to make. The table Ive been working at will become a workshop to produce animal bins. Im going to try to suggest through map locations and pictures that these crafted bins will either replace or are already in place at the map locations. I wanted it to look like wood had been chewed then compacted to create a bin, bringing into question whether it had been made by an animal or a human. I talked to Cliff, the wood workshop technician about carving the bottom portion of bin from a single piece of wood. He very nicely told me some bad news.


Not only would this be very expensive but it would take me at least 2 months to carve. So I decided to use another material that I could insert wood into to give the effect that the second material is coating built up wood chips.

x-rays

A while ago I was experimenting with making my own x-rays using 3D carved objects and tracing paper. I like the way it looks but I doubt Ill pursue this much further at the moment.