I’m baaaaaack!And damn it feels good,after a turbulent nearly a year of being homeless,working in Orkney untill I found my feet again I have deffinately come back very reformed and very ready/eager for this semester to begin.

Because I had spent so long ‘out of the game’ it was hard to know where to start.So what better place to start then my blog itself.Looking back on my most previous post I occured and onimous hooded character who never had a chance for the character or costume to develop (certainly not technically anyway so I decided to start there.

I got so excited to start using the workshops that I imediately drew up a plan to make the bone mask into a metal mask and started off by looking at the shapes within the mask and making it more abstract so that it would work more effectively in metal,I also love the process cycle (i think that’s what it’s called) and how and object can change when made using different materials.

I talked over what the process would be with the welding technician,I wanted to individually weld together individual sheets of metal to make the headband to be in keeping with the asthetics of the original piece but we soon realised it would be much easier to just bend a piece of thin metal to the size of my head.(A very big measurement due to my alien sized head)

I decided that i prefered to use the shape that had fallen out of the sheet of metal rather then the shape that was left in it.Instead,I decided to use this spare sheet of metal to practice using the spot welder on(a piece of machinery which i find genius).I ended up really liking this little demo piece and wishing I could use it for something!I think i will deffinately use a similar technique for a future process.

Once I was confident and happy using the spot welding machine I attempted to attach the copper welding rods to the metal.Via trial and era I realsied that it would be too difficult to use the original one rod that i was intent on using as i wouldn’t be able to successfuly sandwhich the metal plate on top as it wouldn’t balance properly so i instead decided to use three to help the plate on top balance out better.However,once I added the three copper roads altho i intitally thought it looked better once I put it together i felt like it looked worse and that i should of just left it how it was.

Overall i think it was a good first attempt and alot of problem solving helped develop the process and the finished piece in ways I hadn’t expected.

I started working on a short film for this character and also wondered how i could attempt to use her in my crit on Tuesday.I decided that it would be interesting to see how this character could effect other people.I once did a performance workshop where one of the participants simply sat infront of the audience and just stared at each individually individually.I actuall found it really intimadating and felt that this would work well with the darkness of this chracter who is meant to be a mysterious myth and ledgend.

The idea I have for the film would be a black and white silent stop motion style film.The only noise would be the zzzaaaaapp of the teleporting shamans stick/wand that would transport her to different places in the woods.

This week I also decided to visit a couple of local exhibitions to help inspire me again and get the ball rolling a couple of these included the Bauhaus exhibition at the Cooper Gallery.I was super hungry during my visit to this exhibtion so I didn’t spend as much time there as I wished so will re-visit again prehaps later next week altho I’m rather embaressed after mistaking one of the booklets that belonged to the exhibition as a freebie and having to do the walk of shame today in order to give it back.The part of the exhibition that really caught my attention was the black and white video at the end which was a recording of art students talking about the huge ‘gap’ between what was being taught in schools and what was being taught at unversity.This still seems very relevant today,why has nothing changed?!?

I also visted the DCA’S Ray Yen Song and Tako Taal exhibition,my particular favourite being Ray Yen Songs as I loved the mix of media which intertwinned,as it was based on family mythology it made me think about ideas of how i could intertwinne different media’s for my current project aswell as the mythical element.

I loved the textural element of the gown and how it displayed the mysthical creatures faces on it and that the faces of the monster were on everything even the shoes!

I finished off this week by looking at medievil torture devices for the head as mentioned to me in my tutorial the headpiece was quite reminiscent of one of them.Which as i have allways been facinated by the darker side of history but i also love high fashion so why not mix the two together!I also thought that prehaps the headpiece could be part of the characters tale was she tortured and then in turn haunted the land?

Was she pacing the land forever looking to get revenge against thoose who scorned her?The silent movie could be reflective of her now having her voice taken away by the contraption due to tales of her gossiping etc.

I also felt that the head piece had a shamanic feel to it with the one that was made from bone and the one after that so looked at a couple of shamanic headpiece,I feel like it would be interesting to see how the style of some of them would look if created with metal.