This week,I started to look over some of the found objects that i had found and how i could display and put them together.I also looked at how some of the found objects relayed with others and how they could be combined.
The lightbulb was half filled with water that never seemed to come out.I felt like finding this object was a breakthrough moment (even if it was later on in the term as it gave the project the dystophian feel I had been hoping for but for some reason I had found myself lost without realising it using materials that only suggested a medevil era such as steel,rusted objects and natural objects.This has been a complete learning curb for me and has taught me to consider the use or materials in regaurds to the narrative of the story/project more in the future.I liked the way in which the objects fitted togetherCurious unknown artifactsI wanted to attach this object so that it would stand but due to the rust i wouldn’t be able to weld in,I tried superglue and the rust just peeled off.I realised I have a bit of an obsession not only with this auburn colour which may be why I am so obssesed with anything rusty.Twine became the only option for attaching the two items together
The Blood robots
After finding the lightbulb I felt that this helped draw in the dystophian influence and it also made me think of an Angler fish ,I decided what would happen if I mixed this with a robot? The edwards sciccor hands syle blades are hollow and draw the blood from people which in turn fuels the light bulb and also fuels the light within the town.
The mouth was also inspired by the Angler fish.
The blades were inspired by Edward Scissorhands.
Giant bomb inspired the tank in the stomach that fills with blood.
The making of the flag pole
To the right are two samples of the twist and a diagram showing me when i would need to twist.I twisted the wrong way at one point.OOPS! But we made it equal by twisting it the same way at both ends.Eyelets for the flagpole were forged and then welded on at both sides.Flag eyelets were a nightmare to keep in the material.But aslong as it attached I didn’t mind too muchMeasurements were very important to makesure the handle was at arm height and the eyelets attached to the flagpole were the right distance for the flag.The flag measured 302cm in total so quite a distance!The handle was brushed with a gold brush a technique I have used throughout.I liked the uredescent glow the handle had.
Something I should of done prior to making the flagpole was measure inside my car as the flagpole proved to be too long for it,so I had to take it back to the workshop and remove a good 20cm.The technician suggested making an extension so that it could still resume to it’s original height.I did this by welding a bigger squarer pieces of metal to a smaller piece enabling the flagpole to just slip inside of it.Altho this was a great idea at the time it just seemed to make the flag pole to ‘top heavy’ and removing the extension from the bottom of the flag pole made it less so.It was also really difficult to get the right kind of soil for it to stand in.The soil was either to hard or too soft.It managed alot better with the harder soil altho it took a while to pitch it into the ground.
Flagpole extension.Bottom Half slides onto the rest of the flag pole and acts as an extension (it also meant the flagpole could fit into the car)
A slow motion edit of the flag up Law hill.The wind was super strong that day and the flag pole had to be held up towards the end and the flag started to tear out of the eyehole it was that strong so I had to hold the flag pole and the flag after a while.
This shot I felt was particulary powerful due to the way it caught the sun right in the middle of the eye symbol.I choose Balgay park to film this part in as I had allready scouted out this particular area last time I was there and noticed that the lighting was amazing at that time of day and how it made the leaves look red and how eerie the trees looked.I only edited the warmth slightly in this shot along witht he contrast as the sun was doing most of it for me.Sadly tho due to how loose the earth was and the fact it was on a hill I wasn’t able to get the flagpole to free stand.
Different edit where by I enhanced the blue of the sky and the warmth of the flag more so.I felt like doing this gave the sky much more of a dystophian/outer worldly feel.
I decided to overlay the Red lady with the movement of the flag as I was interested in how the material of the flag would move with the cloth of the hood.I also wanted the symbol on the flag to tie in with her torment and torture.I have just kept the orginal sound in for this video as there seems to be a scream in the background without it even being purposeful.Altho I have wanted the video’s to be soundless I may experiment with some with sound too.
This edit uses a slightly warmer tone and did’t turn out quite as condensed as the first one (I’m still trying to work out what I did differently it may be due to how I exported it).All in all I’m really pleased with how both of these have turned out and I think is amongst my most sucessful piece so far.
Just lately I have been watching the Andy Warhol diaries on Netflix.What I found particulary interesting from this doccumentary is that few people really knew Warhol as his personality was part of an act and a persona and most of all part of his art.I liked the fact that this doccumentry wasn’t another run of the mill doccumentry about his work but rather a deeper and darker look into Warhol himself via his diary entries.It made me think about ‘The Red Lady’ and how much of a cross over there is between my personality and hers.I think we certainly share the same strength of character.
This week I edited some images from photo’s I had taken at Roslyn country park a few weeks ago.I felt inspired by a scene in Pan’s laberynth where Ofelia climbs inside the dark looking tree where a toad lives with a key in it’s mouth.Mixed with ‘The tree of the dead’ in Sleepy Hollow which of the grave of the ‘Headless horseman’ and contains the bodies of all his victims.I felt that the image of this tree would help piece together some of the story telling in regards to the main character.Prehaps this is where she was tortured and once a year the tree bleeds reminding everyone of her final resting place.The white filter on the tree was my favourite as there is a better contrast with the blood.I also altered the colour of garlic grass surrounding the tree to a black looking mould to add to the feeling of decay.
‘The tree of the dead’ containing the victims of the Headless horseman.
A haunting
I decided to use a couple of filters on some pre-exsisting images taken at Roslyn Country park.I felt that it was quite symbolic the removal of the face as by being silenced she had lost her identity,it also connected with the hole in the tree.This image of the woods at Balgay had red lighting without even a filter being used which I felt was perfect.
Flag
if the hole was even slightly too big then the eyelet would fall through,was a bit of struggle to get it to the right size!Hurrah!An eyelet is born!The kit I had bought seemed to be more for leather punching then materialAs advised by the welding technician i measured the distance between the eyelet as this would then be the distance that would need to be measured out on the flag pole as i would make hooks there.I also measured how long I would want the flag pole with a little extra left at the top of the flag for some kind of design (which i’m still slightly undecided on)
Due to illness,the technician had to cancel the forging of the flag pole for this week but I’m going to try and get booked back in for hopefully next week or the week after.The 4th years have the workshop from the 1st April onwards so hopefully I can get booked in before then!
One of the least patriotic flag making video’s I could find.And the technique seemed the easiest.I drew up a similar design and took it to the technician who agreed.
Found objects
I found the metal looking grill on the beach and decided it would be great to use for weavingI found the middle object at the beach and felt that it looked similar to the Red Lady’s symbol.The weaving has a troubled anxious feel to it.The feeling of a tangled web or something that would be done with repitision whilst the person worried.Following on from the binding theme I decided to hang this almost hang man figure to the wall.The split at the bottom of the ropegiving the inanimate object legs and a life of it’s own.
I travelled to Balmerino again on order to beachcomb.The tide was very nearly in but not quite (I keep wrongly judging the tide times online) so I managed to have a quick rumage and somehow pull this light from the beach which must once upon a time of belonged to a ship.Water had entered the lighbulb and it had little growths on the bulb also which made it all the more interesting!I feel that adding the lightbulb as a found object will give more of a ‘dystophian’ theme as i feel that everything else that i have made is more medevil.
What I imagine was once the end of a wall?A burnt almost snakeskin looking effect cast onto stoneI wanted to take this whole stick home but it proved too heavy to carry and kept getting metal splinters in my hand so I just kept the metal triangle.
1 to 1 tutorial and written work.
This week I decided to have a 1 to 1 with the amazing Maria Fusco,her advice really pointed out what my work had been missing,a stronger narrative, Maria posed the question; ‘Are we visting The Red Lady or is she visting us?And that since the Red Lady doesn’t have a voice what about visiting one of the locations I have been to and doing some impromptu writing?So I wrote the following;
Underground.
The damp moist leafs.The smell of dirt rich in my nostrils.The smell of pine needles my only relief.
I scream,the birds fly.
These creatures, they reach unbelievable places,
Don’t.
The box is too tight.
But that’s the point, isn’t it?
Discomfort,pain,agony and torture because I felt too much pleasure. I felt too alive and now they want me dead.
My legs are bound. No such thing as wriggle room.
I had too much wriggle room.
My head is caged so they can hear my screams.
They.
Females,women,girls.
And god forbid the animals should cause such a racket.
My face is hot.
The cage is heavy.
I try to kick the top of the box with my bound legs.
Of course, they made it too high.
The creatures itch, they tear at my skin.
I welcome death now,
I demand death now.
But I also demand
HIS.
The Cage.
The cage.The dreaded cage.The cold hard steel weighs heavy on my limbs.My view is partial.
Too many friends,
Too joyus.
He never had any.
I did.
My hands are blue.
I don’t talk now.
My throat is seared with heat.Dry hoarse heat.
This death is too long.
It’s night now.
Or is it?
My hands are heavy.
Pulling.Something is pulling.
Is he coming back for me?
Please don’t.
My ribs, piercing like sharpened daggers straight into my lungs.
The rope is too tight.
Mock me.That’s okay,it reminds me I’m still alive.
I’m cold
My ribs hurt
My hands are heavy
I don’t forget.
We also talked about how my work would be displayed in an exhibition context and how would the red lady visit?By the touching/moving of these artifacts do we bring her alive?Is she upset by changes in her environment? No matter what decade in which they should occur?Maria also suggested that aswell as having the artificats laid out and the video’s playing what if she enters the room and paints on the wall with the twine/straw.The item is then left aswell as the painting telling part of her story and adding to her own personal narrative and Maria also posed the question how would she of been able to paint herself in the other paintings that i had done.How would she know what she looked like?And that prehaps these paintings were best left as records of what happened by locals adding to the story.
Maria mentioned the playwright Pirandello Web and his play ‘six characters in search of an author’In this play the characters visit the audience in search of an author to make their characters more ‘complete’Prehaps the Red lady will visit the audience in order for the audience to give her her ‘voice’ by understanding her paintings.
Maria had suggested one of her own pieces of work ‘Master rock’ mainly due to all the different elements that came together to create this ‘experimental drama’ it was interesting to think of all the different narratives combined from the poetry to using the narative of a survivor called a ‘tunnel tiger’ who dug through the mountain and was the only person to survive,to an artistical mural and a musician as the voice of the Master Rock. It made me wonder if prehaps I could bring spoken word back in and prehaps use it over the videos.
Another person mentioned was the writer Ursula K. Le Guin and her science fiction based short stories ‘The Buffalo Girls’ which features a dystophian world and a play which is currently on at the Royal Court.
The play features a woman in a windowless cell in an Asylum in 1863,the audience visits her there where she has no memory of whom she is and becomes the accomplice of a medium who requires a new assistant.Altho I like this narrative I think that it’s all too common that we visit the character and what is expected instead of the character visiting us which changes the whole dynamic.
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