--m(^0^)m--

Kit Williams

Last night I discovered Kit Williams. Though Im not too keen on his paintings (they have an uncomfortable sexual potency) his more sculptural works are ingenious and his most famous work 'masquerade' (a childrens book which was also a coded message telling the whereabouts of the hidden gold hare in the photograph) is particularly exciting. I dont know how long it will last but there should be a link to a programme about him under the photo.

Anish Kapoor on Alan Yentob's 'Imagine'

The Air Loom

This is a really good site for finding out about the Air Loom, as well as seeing photographs of one that was actually built. I wish I had built it.

Roman Signer

Roman Signer has been a great influence because of the humour, sense of spectacle and event basis of his works.

Phil Collins

Phil Collins did a piece at Tramway earlier this year. The two things that were particularly interesting to me was the video (with headphones) of people in laugh therapy sessions. A group of people all made themselves laugh and the combination of the fakeness in the laughs and the baring of so many teeth made it a very confrontational work. Made me think of Pavel Buchlers 'canned laughter'. The other aspect I liked was the huge structure that was made to house some videos. On the way in you were immersed in total darkness and you would feel lost until a guide with a torch who guided you into what seemed like a new reality where only the video works existed. It seemed like a better approach to creating a context outside of reality than the white cube.

Pavel Buchler

I thought I had already mentioned Pavel Buchler but apparently not. He made a piece in which it played a constant loop of canned laughter (I found him while researching laughing gas). Apparently this had the effect of going from being funny to being a bit sinister. He also made a series of 'small sculptures' which were at streetlevel photoworks. They were a combination of beautifully simple and humourously elegant.

Memories of the exhibition at GFC

Since before the exhibition Ive had doubts about how 'fully realised' this work is if it can be placed in any gallery space. That seems to be ignoring the contextual issues of any given space, whether it is the nuances of the gallery space, the town in which it is or the culture of the country it is shown in. So I feel this has been a lazy effort. In order to address this I started playing with the title. I liked the idea of giving the object a destination using the title (I talked about this before). However the first title I tried was simply a specific location and a specific future time and date. i discovered that this caused confusion in relation to the object so I tried to find a title that would sugest a destination more candidly without being too overt and clunky. In the end I decided on 'Intended for Fremantle', which I am still pretty happy with for the purposes that I was considering. However this is cheating slightly as the work was not based on anything to do with Fremantle and so this is not its intended destination. In a way the title is a trial go at when I do make objects from particular cultural backgrounds so it is a seperate work in itself.
The exhibition seemed to go well. At first the canister nozzle didnt seem to work and it was embarrassing having to fix it in the middle of the opening (though I had no idea how long it would take for the balloon to burst so I couldnt risk testing it. In retrospect I should have tested the canister without a balloon attatched and that was probably my biggest failing of the exhibition). However after I had fixed it it worked perfectly. While the other balloon I had made would go down quickly in between doses of gas this one took much longer. It took quite a while of people looking at it and moving on ( I saw some younger children being shown the piece and I suddenly realised that I had made an assumption that the person who burst it would be an adult and would not be quite so upset by the guilt of breaking something) before someone decided to follow the advice on the sign. He seemed a little surprised at how quickly it inflated and backed off. After a little while he tried it again, this time much more in control of the situation. I thought he might be the one to burst it out of curiosity but he stopped after two tries. I was very happy that the balloon had inflated so much more than I expected and hadnt yet burst but now I had a new worry: would somebody burst it before the gas canister ran out?
Around this time I was taking lots of photographs and videos of the interaction with the piece and I started getting very aware of how I might be changing the piece by doing so. In future I think the ideal would be to have some sort of film camera film the proceedings but this would raise other issues of consent.
I left the space and as I was returning there was an incredibly large bang, followed by a small silence in which I couldnt help loudly laughing. The bang was heard all over the ground floor and even outside. Shortly after everything went back to normal and I felt relieved that I no longer had to hover around my piece to document it. Some people would still try the canister after the balloon had burst and I felt bad that my work was not for these people too, but it didnt change that the work had worked better than expected and I had already accounted for there being lots of people who the work 'wasnt for'. It was already my intention that the full work would have only 1 audience member, the person who burst it, and so I was particularly happy when that person appeared towards the end of the night to apologise for bursting the balloon. That seemed like a pretty good sign that I had succeeded in my intentions. I have since asked him some questions about the event.

Jean Tinguely

Jean Tinguely makes remarkable machines that, among other things, self-destruct. I think its a fantastic way for artworks to combine playfulness, spectacle and also threat.

Sandy Stoddart

Its also worth mentioning Sandy Stoddart. Im really impressed with the huge level of skill involved in these modelled works, though I would prefer to do something else with this practice. I still think there is a great amount of admiration from any audience for things either of beauty or of obvious high skill.

Kenny Hunter

While making my calf I spent a lot of time looking at books of Kenny Hunters work. I particularly appreciate the contemporary use of historical practices like clay modelling. Its worth noting though that Kenny Hunter casts into fibreglass before casting into bronzes in order to create a smooth, slightly outside the real, look.

Mary Todd Lincoln

John Wilkes Booth

Bogomir Ecker

Of particular interest on this site is the tropfsteinmaschine, a work that will take 500 years to be completed. It follows on from what Ive been thinking about a work having a destination which is its optimum context. This work points out that time is a large factor of any places context.

Christine Borland

I was looking for information on 'To be set and sewn in the garden' by Christine Borland, found in the grounds of Glasgow University. I found both the site that you can get to through the picture and also this link.

Krampus and object destination

In light of a recent lecture about the ethics of interacting with other cultures I started to rethink my research methods. I think it would create much richer work if I was to create a dialogue with a person who is involved in some way with the person or culture that created the original research topic. This got me thinking about a piece I did in first year which I sent to Nanavut as I thought that that was where it belonged, having been derived mostly from a tradition of that area. I like the idea that each object has a destination where it is meant to be and how that could change the object depending on whether it is/isnt there. Im curious to know if an object can make its way to its intended destination by its interaction with people. With this in mind and also still with a mind that tends towards narrative and monsters I remembered the Krampus. As far as I know he is a monster from the folklore of the Alps. He is an accomplice of sorts to saint nick. If youve been a bad girl or boy at christmas then rather than get presents from saint nick you get taken away by the terrifying Krampus. He reminds me of the scare tactics of Strewelpieter who Im quite interested in too, perhaps because they are designed to manipulate behaviour. In more recent times the Krampus has started being celebrated on the 5th of December, when peoploe dress as the Krampus, threaten children and whip young ladies with branches. The use of a folklore animal disguise as a means of spanking young girls is also reminiscent of Tanooki and Selkies. However, I can only know so much from where I am so the next thing to do is to find a correspondant who can give me a better idea of who the Krampus is and what they do. Perhaps then I could create a piece that is intended to live in the Alps.

Miina Akkijyrkka

Archibald McIndoe

Archie McIndoe was a surgeon in WWII who pioneered facial reconstructive surgery. I happened on a documentary about him and his patients which seemed awfully familiar. Thats because McIndoe performed surgery on my great uncle, Ben Coutts who was a fairly extraordinary man himself. Click the picture for info on McIndoe, this link for a documentary on his patients: http://bbc.co.uk/i/74q2f/ and this link for information on my great uncle Ben: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1450792/Ben-Coutts.html

Colin Guillemet

Andy Kaufman

Underneath Andy's face is his Great Gatsby performance. Absolute genius.

Determinism

Following from my reading of Hume for an essay I did earlier in the year I have been strengthening my beliefs in determinism. The idea that an original stimulus produces a set outcome in an organism seems to make a lot of sense to me although I would concede that its not always that simple. However I believe that these stimulus responses evolve with the aid of memory so that the first bite of chocolate would give an initial response that it is tasty. Next time the memory of the tastiness of chocolate would prompt someone to try it again. This could continue until someone sees a gain in their weight and another set of stimuli suggest a connection between eating chocolate and gaining weight (perhaps a magazine article) and then yet another memory informs you that gaining weight reduces your survival chances. These memories are all in themselves stimuli, so that the more a stimulus is experienced, the more it is informed by historic stimuli until it becomes an extremely complicated mixture of all the stimuli involved in every experience of the chocolate all at once, which is processed and simplified into an action (eat it or dont eat it). In this way it seems to follow with Humes idea that every thought is a result of stimuli recieved from the world. So that there will be billions of differences between the brains of even identical twins. This would make it hard to influence every single human as they have all led very different lives in which different collections of stimuli have led them to have different beliefs about any one thing (as well as their current conditions when they next come across something; I could be hungry next time I see chocolate). However perhaps a repetition of a new set of symbols or objects could help to strengthen a new set of beliefs, in effect brainwashing through repeated art forms.

Phineas Gage

While reading a book that I plan to post some quotes from soon, I came across Phineas Gage. To me he is as interesting for his neurological/psychological implications as he is for his namesake in greek mythology, who was saved by Jason and the Argonauts. Click the photo for more on Phineas Gage.

Beasts

Ive been enjoying the combination of mythological descriptions and stunning (as well as varied) artwork in Beasts book 2. Ive also discovered that Beasts has a blog which Ive hidden behind this picture.

Ben Woodeson's Health and Safety Violations

Stanley Milgrams Experiments

Click the diagram to learn more.

Leaving space in interpretations

Not quite sure what I make of this article yet besides the fact that its awfully sure of itself but it has at least bothered me so it must be of some importance.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2008/jul/15/explanationsarethetraitoro

Health and Safety

I had a chat with George Robertson about how I could logistically get over a few obvious health and safety problems with building the trap. He was very helpful and encouraging and saw no reason why I couldnt make it so long as I made a proper risk assessment and consent form. However an evening of trying to consider all possible risk did seem a little stressful and I have been left with a slight ponder about how necessary Health and Safety is. Right on cue came an episode of Panorama on exactly this subject. It can be watched here.

Back to Trapping

Ive turned my attention back to trapping and Id like to make a large version of the self-setting mouse trap pictured here. My problem is with the legality of trapping people which I am currently trying to find out more about. So far all I can find is wikipedia information which discusses american law and can be seen here.

Sixth Sense

Perhaps the future?

pattie_maes_demos_the_sixth_sense

Cumbernauld Hit and the Underpass

This term has been my most successful so far in terms of professional development. As well as the experience of organising a work for the mezzanine exhibition I also got some experience of helping Neville Rae, a GSA graduate with two projects. The first was helping with an exhibition in Cumbernauld Town Centre in the vacant shops and the second was a mural painting on an underpass in Greenfaulds. From both I got an idea of how it feels to recieve comments and talk with the public about an art project. I realised that people are much more accepting of art projects than I imagined. From the mural painting I had some particularly impressive experiences. The first was from the act of physically changing a familiar landscape and the realisation that a built environment is not a prescribed certainty, but a changeable and malleable place. My interest in creating work within a specific town has been developed and strengthened by this. The second impression was from watching the way the mural painting was made in conjunction with school children. This was done to reduce the likelihood of the mural being defaced and, though I doubt that intention will succeed, I think the idea of using art to create a pride in a landscape for a community is very important. In particular teaching children that they have the potential to change their home town to be the place that they want it to be.

What Now

I have some idea of how I want to continue. I know I still want to make traps and I now have an interest in 'decoys' and how they work too. I think there are a lot of pre-existing traps that people could be made aware of through sculpture and I think there is a great breadth of space for consideration in the moment that you realise you have been trapped or tricked. It has a way of making you assess your own actions and reconsider how to live in order to keep from being tricked again. I think thats a really interesting head space to be explored: The concession that you still need to adapt.

The Sculpture Diaries

I was recently watching a programme on channel 4OD which discussed the history of sculpture in relation to women. It was really very informative and led me to find out more about the venus of willendorf. Click on the picture for more details. Theres an article about the tv programme here.

Mike Nelson

Following advice from my tutor Ive been looking at Mike Nelson in terms of creating a submersive installation that develops as the viewer interacts or moves around it. Theres a good website if you click on the photo and also a good article about Mike Nelson here.

Mezzanine Exhibition

Following the exhibition at school I was invited to participate in a flat exhibition. This was a great opportunity and very useful for my experience. As well as getting a chance to show my work to more people I learned something about how to create a work in a short space of time (1 week) and as a result of that I learned the strength of having thorough investigation in a work to fall back on.

As the installation was created to be specific to its space I couldnt recreate it for the exhibition. Instead I took some elements and tried to apply the ideology behind the installation to the new exhibition.

I took the cow as the main focus again but this time the context would be to encourage people to feel closer to him. This time the context would be hinted at but not made so clear.

The cow could not be fixed into the floor like last time so making a plinth was necessary. I tried to make a plinth with a space at the front so that it was an invitation for the viewer to join him on the plinth but instead it made the sculpture look more dynamic as if it were moving or about to move. To remedy this I added footprints to the front as a further prompt. Standing with the cow was a strange thing as he is much shorter than most people and the distance that was forced by the size of the plinth didnt make you feel so much close to as too close to the sculpture. It was now invading your private space.

To create an outer context I wanted to use the existing means of manipulation in galleries (the alcohol) to manipulate people to feel closer to the cow. To do this I made up beer bottle labels which each showed the cow holding signs that had emotionally blackmailing messages:

'he beats me'
'take me with you'
'i heard nothing'
'leave now! its not safe!'

Its still too soon to know exactly how well this piece worked but there are details that I was quite pleased with, for example the fact that the cows fingers covered some of the lettering on the signs made the signs look like they were really being held by the cow. This helped to make the signs appear to be the cows messages and not messages by me being held by the cow.

Crits and Exhibitions

I finished the installation project with an installation that I was mostly happy with. There was a crit of the work followed by an exhibition. From the crit it seemed apparent that a lot of the considerations of the work were evident in the final piece though it fell down in believability. People said that they didnt feel they were under the influence of laughing gas because of the size of the room and lack of sealing of the air in the space. An aspect that I hadnt realised was that people considered it an attempt to make the innanimate cow sculpture happy, despite his frown being painted on. So inevitably the understanding that people could be under an influential force like a gas was pretty quickly dismissed by the audience. What did work well though was the use of object, sound, light and space to lead you and to reveal aspects of the work in parts.
So from this I was left with two aims: 1: to create a more convincingly manipulative context and 2: to continue exploring how to make people fall in love with the cow. After all, it proved quite popular even without the later conviction that you maybe only liked it because you had taken in some laughing gas. I was even told that some people were having photographs taken with it.

Carsten Holler

Carsten Holler has also made installations which use drugs as a way to change a persons perceptions, though in his work 'PeaLove room' its simply an offer that is unlikely to be taken up in a gallery space. He worked with the hormone PEA which is the hormone released when a person feels 'in love'. His work creating slides is also to do with the choice to relinquish your control.

Chris Burden II

Theres another work by Chris Burden that I think are relevant to what Im working on just now. It relates to the play between intention and chances of success. In what Im doing I think it works with the fact that its unlikely that anyone will be greatly influenced by the Laughing Gas as they probably wont breathe much in but its still there to be breathed in so it could have an effect. Burdens 'Samson' that I put up a post about previously works this way because of its gearbox. Burdens work '747' does this very succinctly. He shoots at a 747 with a pistol from the ground. What works nicely is the clear intention of shooting at the plain played off against the chances of actually hitting the plane.

Joseph Priestley

I feel that Joseph Priestleys work is worth pointing out as he discovered nitrous oxide in the first place. Theres more details of his experiments in seperating air into elements if you click the picture.

Jeff Koons

I cant pretend that what Im currently working on doesnt takes a lot from Jeff Koons work, particularly the Bear and Policeman. Though through appropriation I want to be able to change the objects context. Theres some writing on Koons artworks if you click on the picture.

The Secret Life of Electronic Objects

Ive recently been reading this book. Its got some fascinating research on how 'placebo objects' can affect people. My favourite is the radiation draught excluder which led to someone feeling exposed when their head wasnt protected by it but the rest of their body is. I think theres a lot more to look into here about how the designation of an object by its name will dictate its use and how the viewer feels about it but Im not sure exactly whether this would translate into a white cube scenario. For more info click on the pic.

Critnics and Tutorials

Ive been engaged for the last couple of weeks with trying to build this cow. I recently had a critnic and even more recently a group tuorial where I found out what other people thought of my ideas. In the critnic it was pointed out that if he has orange pyjamas then he may have connotations of guantanamo bay. I was a little worried by how much of a current affair this subject is but as the reference is far from explicit I dont think its too much of a worry. In both the critnic and the tutorial the confusion about why a happy object had connotations of bad things was brought up but I was happy with the idea that happiness is never a simple thing and can go hand in hand with atrocities and painful issues. Besides I think the hunger strike/ guantanamo bay references go along with the holocaust references of releasing gas in a space. And why not try to remake a sad or abominable thing as a happy thing? Making light of bad situations is just a form of grief.

Other big issues brought up were the relationship the cow had to its space and the question of audience. In the critnic it was said that it looked like the cow was guarding the space and that that made the vast emptiness of the space the focus. This wasnt an effect I wanted so Ive decided to move him to a small space which acts as a thoroughfare, ensuring that hell be viewed from front and back. The door opens nicely so that the engagement with the sculpture (when youre looking directly into his eyes) happens immediately on opening the door.

The issue of audience was addressed at the tutorial with some helpful advice letting me make a decision finally. The way i saw it I had 3 options:
1) Let the audience know they were under the influence of N20 (this could be false to get a placebo effect)
2) I release N20 into the audience without anyone knowing but me. That would leave me as the only fully aware member of the audience.
3) I do as in 2) but I film it and show the resulting film to a new audience with the full context of the N20 known to them.
In the end we discussed all three options in depth but Im now settled that the 3rd option is the best.

Max's Cow

Im now pretty certain that I want to create a large sculpture of a cow with its mouth sewn shut from a Max Fleisher cartoon. Im largely concerned with what emotions and messages he carries himself and how these can be changed, added to or taken away by his placement within a specific space. Ive started looking into the formal aspects of making him like how big hell be, how people will view him, what materials he should be made from and what colours he should be. As the overall idea behind this project is to make people happy Ive started to look into colour assosciations and colour therapy. Im aware that its a tricky field as different people feel differently about different colours but I was hoping some research would show some general patterns. I found this site about colour theory which gives a brief overview of what psychological effects are assosciated with different colours. Besides that i still need to figure out his shape too. Ive been concerned about the fact that the sculpture, being static, can only interact directly with a viewer when its being viewed directly from the front. From behind his helplessness in being static gives him other connotations. Ive been trying to deal with this by experimenting with things like making his back flat or adding a detail to his back of a long johns flap. This latter of these ideas Im happiest with, as it would continue a narrative as you move around the object, though Im concerned it might call for too much sympathy and not enough comedy.

Mark Leckey

I think Mark Leckey has a very valid set of ideals and understandings of what art should be. I share a lot of his goals I think.

Drop Bears

Relating to my current theme of manipulation I remembered the myth of the Drop Bear that I was told about in Australia. More info by clicking the picture.

Gregory Green

I was directed to Gregory Green because some of his works draw a parallel with what Im planning in terms of subjecting an audience to potential situations.

Horace Wells

Discovered today about Horace Wells who I find particularly fascinating because his pioneering studies into anaesthetic gases and vapours led to a small bout of insanity that led to him taking his own life. Reminds me slightly of James Tilly Matthews.

More Fleisher Cartoons

Max Fleischer is still very relevant to the work that Im making as can be seen by this cartoon:



But his cartoons are still an invaluable source for purely enjoyable imagery that sometimes comes very loaded with meaning. This still from 'Bettys Crazy Inventions' is a good example. Id love to recreate some of the things from these cartoons.

Laughing Gas: Safety

Still investigating the danger of Nitrous Oxide. I plan to find out more by reading some anaesthesia journals soon but in the mean time I found an article which has put me greatly at ease for the time being. Im confident that its not a dangerous gas if its not inhaled in a concentrated way.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/mar/10/comment.science

Chris Burden

Found a fantastic little trap today made by Chris Burden in 1985. The work was called 'Samson'. It was a 100ton jack that pushed the load bearing walls of the building out and way activated by a turnstyle that was turned by every visitor who wanted to visit the installation. The eddect of this was moderated through a gear box which made the movement of the jack imperceptible. This way it was unlikely to ever collapse the building, but the potential was still there.

Laughing Gas Experiments

Plan on finding a way of getting the laughing gas out of the canisters, preferably into a balloon. If I can get some coloured smoke into a ballon and then inflate it till it pops on camera I should get some idea of how the laughing gas would react in the same situation. At the moment this is my best idea for how to distribute the gas. Had a short discussion about the ethics of this idea. Its clearly an issue here but Im quite comfortable with the idea of it.

Cai Guo Qiang

Like the simplicity of the tigers ignorance/defiance of the arows and the pain. Could be stoicism could be a lack of awareness. Very powerful imagery though.

Agnes Denes

Found an interesting article by Agnes Denes on a piece of work she created. I love this mainly because of the sense of scale and the way the pattern is used to make such a large thing seem so attainable to something so small as a human. I hope some day I can create something huge. There is a lot to be found in the creation of something huge and the power that it would give to the creator. Size can equate timelessness. Click the picture for more info.