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 started the group project,it was something I had been dreading as I don’t often work well in groups and I usually end up clashing with another member or I feel like my ideas aren’t being listened to.But this group project as deffinately changed my outlook on group work/collaberations and instead has shown me the power of working in group projects and how a small group of people with determination and their heads in the right places can work as a total and utter powerhouse that can achieve anything.Next is a day by day account of our actions.
Day 1
Today we met for the first time,I was really anxious and not looking forward to it much.Myself and Katrina were the only people that had Idea’s.I spoke about prehaps doing a performance piece based on something I had done in a performance based workshop in the past where each person is frozen to the spot and there hands/legs etc are moved by another person.Kristina came forward with pretty much a fully written out proposal suggesting that we do a charity walk to raise money for Ukraine walking from Dundee to edinburgh.She had calculated the distances between towns and where we would stop over.Due to having really bad bunions I soemtimes struggle to even walk to college so I said i wouldn’t be able to do the walk as such but could work hard behing the scenes with fundraising/media etc.Kristina had friends who were still over in Ukraine so felt like the war there had really effected her.Alyssia had suggested that as part of the walk she could ask the scrapyard near her if she could paint the ukrainian flag on one of there crushed cars.I was really bemused by this suggestion and had to advise her that this would be highly insensitive and that you need to really think about the art and actions that you do when it comes to such a sensitive subject.I also advised the group that we need to think carefully about who we give money to,as having worked paid for the Red Cross for a few years I am understanding of the fact that they do good work but often the money can be spent in the wrong places because they are such a big corporation who’s CEO’s are making an incredible amount of money for pen pushing whilst there front line workers are often facing a humanitarean crisis themselves by being paid pennies.Kristina said she had been told by friends of the best charity to contact.
Day 2
Decided to allocate myself the position of external communicator.Contacted DUSA in regards to getting a stand for ribbons etc.
Day 3
Emailed Newspapers about the fundraiser.I also asked DUSA if they could advertise via social media and emails what we were doing (no reply which is the typical standard from DUSA).Emailed Victoria Edwards who sent an email out to all the students about the walk and the fundraising stall.Looked at the prices of ribbons on Amazon etc and decided that they would take too long to arrive for the stall as DUSA had agreed we could have the stall for Friday 11-1.I had decided upon these times as we would hopefully be able to catch the most people whilst they went to grab their lunch.Victoria Edwards also posted our email out to all students.
Day 4
Decided I would present them on the inside of my broken sewing box lid and that way if it was windy they wouldn’t blow away!
Benchmark as we had raised £320 before the walk had even taken place and the Dundee Courier had emailed me back in regards to media coverage.I told him Kristina has connections in Ukraine so I arranged a phonecall for 4pm between Kristina and the reporter then arranged for a photographer to come to the uni for 11 for photos.Went to Hobbycraft,collected ribbon and made only 18 ribbons from 3 metres of ribbon!The shop assistance mentioned that alot of people had been in buying ribbon to do the same.
Day 5
Today was the day of the stall in the foyer.Myself and Alyssia turn up early to paint our faces etc.Became a little worried as we hadn’t heard from Kristina and Taylor.Kristina showed up just before 11 but Taylor didn’t.I went down to reception to collect the photographer and the receptionist made a fuss saying i would need ‘a press release’ in order for the photographer to take photo’s of us inside the university and that he wouldn’t be allowed here anyway as no visitors are allowed currently due to lockdown restrictions.I advised her several times that the photo’s were going to be taken outside in the foyer area.Went away to ask Anita Taylor’s permission but she was about to go into a meeting then asking another pen pusher who said we would only be allowed to get photo’s taken outside the building.(Which is what i had told them we would be doing in the first place)The receptionist even commented that she ‘hadn’t seen anyone doing fundraising in a while’ well no wonder when everything is made so difficult!!
Photoshoot took place on the grounds with us posing beside and walking beside Katrina.Holding the poster and ribbons up.
No sooner had I spoken to the receptionist the Vice principal (or someone of some kind of importance) decided to send out a really feeble emailing saying that the uni ‘stood in solidarity with Ukraine’ and that in order to show this the chaplaincy were organising for people to meet up on the ground to show this.Absoloutely no mention of our walk which was actually going to make a difference unlike the universities pathetic all talk no action as per usual.
DAY 5
Today our story made it into the paper and on the online paper also.
Reporter had made up that myself and Alyssia had said things which we hadn’t.(He hadn’t even spoken to Alyssia) Had written that we were all doing the walk (which we weren’t).The online article had more photo’s etc but the link wasn’t very clear at all so it made no difference to our donations because people clearly didn’t know where to click.So we ended up making more money through our stall.I think what I hated about this the most is that we couldn’t be in control of the outcome of how it would be written or look in the paper and that we just had to trust that the reporter would do his best to raise awareness but upon reading the article Kristina stated that she could of written it better herself and English isn’t even her first language!They also mentioned the university in the post alot which I thought the university would make a fuss about but so far so good.
In other news…
I finally finished off the headcage for the red lady.The technician finally agreed to let me tack myself (as i had never done this type of welding before) I actually found it alot easier but my tacks were visable compared to the parts he had done as it was too fidderly to get the hidden the way he managed and as he said ‘it doesn’t matter aslong as you have managed to join the metal’
You can visably see the top two tacks compared to where the tecnhician has neatly hidden his on the bars below.
Very pleased with the outcome altho the cage it’s self weighs a ton and falls alot lower on my body due to the sheer weight of it.
Artifact no6
I had brought in the rusty bolt I had found at my front door in the hope it could be used for this piece but the technician advised that it would need to have a pretty big hole made for it and it would be better just to blow torch a new bolt to make it look old.
Hammering a hole into the Artifact caused the debris from the bottom to come away but I soon sorted this by glueing it back on.The bigger issue became that the top once attached was too heavy for the metal strip and would bend it if you didn’t support the top when picking it up.I think I may consider re-inforcing the rod with a strip of metal somehow attached underneath it altho this may ruin the asthetics.
This week I focused on more character development for whom I have now called ‘The red lady’I focused on a series of angry faces but reflecting back I think I need to add more menacing like what is seen in the short video I have made.
I experimented with a series of different ways of doing the eye make-up.Two eyes?One eye?Drawn with a brush?Drawn with fingers?I found that altho having one eye painted on worked well in the video as it exsagerrated that eye as I flew towards the camera and my hair covered the rest of my face.The primative look of the smeared on black snazeroo had a real viking feel to it and made the cahracter seem alot darker.
Favourite shot as I love how the crinkles in the corner of the eye causes themake-up to flicker up at the corners.
It is known that the vikings only wore make-up on their eyes,this was called Kohl and mainly made from a mix of antimony,burnt almonds,lead,oxidized copper,ochre,ash,malachite and chyrsocolla.
My future plan is to print a couple of these off using the printing suite for some good quality images (as the libary prints that i did were quite poor) and to hire a black and white film camera to take a couple of images with that too.As i think these would do well blown up.I also want to take a couple in the area where the lecture halls are in DJCAD as i feel like it has quite a dystophian feel which goes along quite nicely with my character.
Forging.
This week in the forging class I worked on something called a ‘pineapple twist’.This is achieved by heating the metal untill yellow and the scales are lost then squaring off the sides with a hammer.It was a very time pressured activity tho as I then had to take what looked like a wallpaper scraper and hammer it in the middle of each side untill it caused a groove.I had to hammer it into the same groove each time so if it had moved whilst hit i had to reposition it.I had to work alot on my hammering skills before I could do this tho as my hammering wasn’t as hard as it needed to be but once I got to making the twist my hammering was spot on which was really rewarding.The technician had said he wouldn’t judge me if i wanted to focus more on the metal work side of things but this was the worst thing he could of said because then I had to prove to him (and myself) that i could do it haha.My lines were straight (ish) but not bang on.I then had to twist the metal in the vice one way and then do it all over again then twist it the other.The results were alot better then expected for a first timer and it showed up quite well once i brushed it with the gold brush.I would like to go back and practice it again tho so that i can get the lines straighter.
You can see towards the left hand side where the scraper didn’t reach into the groove well enough.
A better view of the whole handle.Prehaps the is a likable touch to the almost primative quality of the handle not being quite ‘perfect’Last year during lockdown I climbed into the ruins of a fenced off castle on the east coast on a liff ledge (urban exploring is one of my favourite past times) and found what looks like an ancient poker.The technician reckons it has been in the sea at one point due to the sand-like crustaceans living on it.I don’t want to alter this object (mostly because I’m worried it will be worth money) but I would like to use it in some way as a prop.I may experiement with different ways it can be used.
Woven Sculpture
I found this piece of wood whilst filming in the forest which I felt was very vulva like.To start with i imagined it in some kind of choker (but it was a bit to death defying) haha.Then it just made sense to weave it into (what was originally) a bin lid (found in the forest whilst filming too).My future plan is to make the lid into some kind of trap/shield so I may take this apart again as I realise how important it is not to be attached to work so that it can be developed further.I also would quite like to try and make the wood into a headpiece.
Placed this experiment over the photo and realised it would look really interesting as a mask.Considered this piece to cover the mouth following on from the story that she was silenced by her husband but I feel that it looks to Hannibal Lecter!I decided to write out ‘The red lady is watching you’ as if it was written in blood with my fingers.But the piece was too big to fit anywhere.I love the sweeping gestural yet creepy effect of the writing.I may put it up in the corridoor..
I was inspired by Richard Ramirez’s satanic blood symbols that he would write using his victims blood.Apparently due to the oxysidisation of the blood once it is outside of the body it remains bright for a long period of time.
I had initally planned on filming myself walking throught the woods and disapearing at various points the re-appearing.But when filming it my friend who was filming said that you could really see any of the detail of the props/eye make-up when we were doing this. and that it would work better if i was coming towards the camera especially due to the way the light was hitting and nicely bouncing off of the headpiece I felt that i wanted to take advantage of that with some more closer to camera filming.My regret is that i didn’t get my friend to film horizontally for the shot.
I decided that i wanted the film to be grainy as I remember watching the new I.T at the cinema and being terrified of the scene where the scene in the book comes alive and it had a grainy quality to it and this is how i wanted this to seem that it had come straight out of an old horror book/scene.I wanted the image to be silent like a silent movie but I decided that the slow mo sounds were quite creepy within themselves.I do want to try a variation of other edits tho with and without music this week.
There doesn’t seem to be an awful lot of information about female warriors/tribes of the past (prehaps because the history books were mostly written by men)
But I particualry enjoyed reading about the wrath of Tomyris the queen of the Massaegetae and the vengeful way of which she waged war aganst the Persian King Cyrus the Great
‘…she took a skin, and, filling it full of human blood, she dipped the head of Cyrus in the gore, saying, as she thus insulted the corpse, “I live and have conquered you in fight, and yet by you am I ruined, for you took my son with guile; but thus I make good my threat, and give you your fill of blood.”
There are matriachal societies which exsist today such as the Minangkaubau in Indonesia where by the mothers and daughters pass down the family name and claim the inheritance etc.
Zadie Xa
A fellow class mate had told me to look at the work of Zadie Xa as her work corresponds to some of my character work.
I appreicate her mixture of discaplines and there is something to be said about how she used the space around her during her exhibitions.Altho her visual asthetic is more playful then mine.
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