Thoughts on: A child's everyday.

I am becoming aware that within a lot of things I am reading, the idea of childhood, or things from a child's perspective is a regular consideration about the change in how we see/observe our (everyday?) lives. It keeps cropping up, but I am finding myself quite interested in all these different things, which is unusual, because, I don't really like children...

Unsure if these are yet to relate to anything...

- TACITA DEAN- ON COLOUR (PREVIOUS POST) 'Learning that colour is a fiction of light is one of the primary shocks of growing up...that nothing can keep its colour... are monstrous things for even my ADULT MIND

-RACHEL WHITEREAD- ON COLOUR ' When I was seven I was allowed to choose the colours for my bedroom, free will, 'lilac and orange' was my chosen colour scheme. When I was fourteen I changed the colour scheme to dark blue and white. Ever since then I have lived and worked in white rooms.'

-WALTER BENJAMIN- A CHILDS VIEW OF COLOUR. 'The child's view of colour represents the highest artistic development of the sense of sight; it is sight at its purest, because it is isolated...Children are not ashamed, since they do not reflect, they only see.'

-ROLAND BARTHES- PARIS NOT FLOODED- 'Paradoxically, the flood has created a more accessible world, manipulable with the kind of pleasure the child takes in wielding his toys, exploring and enjoying them. The houses are no more than cubes, the rails isolated lines, the herds shifted masses, and it is the little boat, the superlative toy if the childhood universe, which has become the possessive mode of the arranged outspread and no longer routed space.'

-LEVI STRAUSS- 'BRICOLAGE' Combining and re-combining a closed set of materials to come up with new ideas. Children play with whats at hand, looking at what's available, moving it around, thinking about it...

-SHERRY TURKLE- TRANSITIONAL OBJECTS- 'Concerned with the first possession and with the intermediate area between the subjectivity and that which is objectively percieved.' There is a trauma of realising there are things that are not us, and as we grow mature we realise a connection to external reality. Children use things (play) as a pivot for thoughts.


Quite a few points from WE ARE JUST PLAYING, Stuart Lesser, Shopping Hour Magazine...

-'Adult utopian desires see children as holders of the promise of a better future...

-The strangeness of children requires action to turn them into becoming the same...

-Acts of playing as moments of non-sense, are ways of bringing the mundane everyday events to a different form of scruting and expression in which the everyday becomes anything but everyday...

-Another way of seeing things differently representing the world through the inversion of the apparently natural state of things, conjuring up a picture of marvellous possibilities  by a simple irrational connection. The 'montage' offers and unusual combination of events that surprise, make one look again and disturb habitual ways of seeing things. '

Again, this is just plastic food for thought.

Quite a few thoughts about Colour...

I have been thinking a little about colour. And this has led in to a number of (related) thoughts.

I thought a bit about colour with the last project in terms of trying to 'map' my location/orientation, using colours around me, extracted from the film photography.

So I have been reading this book, COLOUR (Documents of Contemporary Art- a favourite series of mine) and a few of the writings were quite useful, and un-useful and are quite conflicting with each, and have made me quite confused...

NUMBER 1. Le Corbusier.

Argues that colour is subordinate to form.

'Painting is a question of architecture, and therefore volume is its means. In the expression of volume, colour is a perilous agent; often it destroys or disorganises volume because the intrinsic properties of colour are very different.'

FORM should come first, and no colour is needed (well, in architecture, but no-doubt this applies to much of his life-ideas). In THE LAW OF RIPOLIN he goes on to suggest that all our houses/spaces should be doused with a coat of WHITEWASH.

'When you are surrounded with shadows and dark corners you are at home only as far as the hazy edges of darkness your eyes cannot penetrate. You are not a master in your own house.'

I felt a little sad reading this, as I am partial to a white space or two, but to suggest to rid the house of dark corners and such, seems a little strange, and makes me think about THE POETICS OF SPACE, where Gaston Bachelard seems to think the nooks and crannies, nests, hidden spaces in our wardrobes and chests are beautifully necessary; its all about the possibility of what is hidden in these spaces, and it's crucial, and, we enjoy these spaces.

NUMBER 2.- Colour is LIGHT

Roland Barthes- Camera Lucida: I found this particularly interesting...  

'It seems that in Latin 'photograph' would be said 'imago lucis opera expressa'; which is to say: image revealed, 'extracted', 'mounted', 'expressed' by the action of light'.

I have always been unsure and unnerved/confused by the notion, however scientific, that colour is only light, and I also find this quite sad, until I read a small extract by Tacita Dean, who also feels the same about the colour=light situation.

'Learning that colour is a fiction of light is one of the primary shocks of growing up: that this hitherto deeply physical thing is just a reflection and that nothing can keep its colour under the cover of darkness [makes me think to Le Corb.] are monstrous things to understand, even for my adult mind.

Yet there is something about colour's frailty at it's twilight moment of oblivion that also brings out its magnificence...The sky hangs like heavy weave tapestry...Detail is secondary and focus lost...The dullest window glows with evanescent glory and even streetlights dominate with an intensity normally unknown to them...'

This is possibly why I like film photography and the colours from them; everything looks particularly good, and equally different, in different LIGHT conditions and times of day, which in some ways makes things look very strange, temporal and unreal. I think 'the everyday' makes an appearance to my thought processes here i.e the streetlights that are mentioned...Tacita dean definitely put a poetical spin on colour, and made me less confused about my approach to it... as did NUMBER 3.

NUMBER 3.- DONT THINK ABOUT COLOUR (?)

I don't think it would be right if I were to escape thinking about Rachel Whiteread at least once in every project.

'When I was seven, I was allowed to choose the colours for my bedroom. Free will. 'Lilac and orange' was my chosen colour scheme, I loved it. When I was fourteen I changed to dark blue and white. Ever since then I have worked in white rooms.'

She goes on to comment how colour is CONFUSING and how colour is really just a product of a chance choice of materials, and colour naturally moves in through a choice of these mediums and forms she creates, 'Collage-thats good for using other peoples colour decisions. Does that mean I have been let of the hook.'

This made me think about my colour-use and that maybe I shouldn't see It as a way of reflecting place, because it is just there, and a photograph (I have once mentioned) shows one of the many 'limitations of the visual' especially concerning place, so what it really should concern is maybe actions? So I have a colour palette to work with, but it is not and cannot be the sole representation of a place, or what I come to think about. Maybe.

The COLOUR BOOK editor itself, commented how he purposefully neglected to contain ideas about effects of colour in the home or 'harmonious use of colours in such enviroments' because he sees it as less interesting to other elements about colour...

'I love colour but there are too many decisions to make'. RW. Agreed.

Everyday Photos, Final Series.

 

   

I decided to take out my work for a final series of everyday photos that I would put into by books...

The photos came out amazingly well colour and clarity-wise and even had a few distorted over exposures in there too, bonus.

A final little 'montage' showing a (brief)  backwards visual journey of the project...

Detail.

 

Inspire by Georges Perec and Peter Peri, A painstakingly detailed description of when of I was out and about observing 'the everyday' accompanied by a painstakingly detailed drawing of what I was looking at when I was describing what I was looking at, in Stevensen Square, NQ.

Visual display of my ponderous thoughts and narratives. Something I will continue alongside my future projects in notebooks and paper format...

Everybody's Everyday.

We never just look at one thing, we are always looking at the relation betweens things and ourselves.
Our vision is continually active, continually moving, continually holding things in a circle around itself, constituting what is present.
JOHN BERGER

I like the idea of thinking about other people, an interactive element, possibily gaining information about what other people are looking at; what is outside their window?

As I am quite interested in installation art and sculpture, It could be quite nice to think of this project about having looked at which is already installed, what my everyday and other peoples everyday is...


LARA ALMARCEGUI- 
WASTELANDS: A GUIDE TO THE EMPTY SITES OF AMSTERDAM

This artist looks at new ways of envisioning urban space through the contemplating of the unseen and unacknowledged, she created a document that guided people away from the tourist attractions of amsterdam to more downbeat, contingent, empty spaces in the outskirts of the city...

REVEALS NUANCES OF SPACE
POTENTIAL DREAM SPACES

Could be interesting to build on the idea of engaging people and thinking about the more unacknowledged and everyday urban environments that surround us...

Grids;Montage

JUST PLAYING

Recently read an article in SHOPPING HOUR, which has made me think more about the meaning and context for my project...

The basis of the article relates to child's play...

'Such moments of nonsense, which occur within and between the mundane, everyday routines of children's lives offer an alternative vision of reality, in which the limits of the real world can be temporarily set to one side.'

Main words of interest here being 'mundane', 'everyday' and ALTERNATIVE VISION OF REALITY.
This connects to my ideas about creating nonsense in the mundane, offereing alternative views or windows of the everyday... Thinking about creating a nonsense book, back to front, images that have been messed or 'played' around with...

'Conjuring up a picture of marvellous possibilities, by a simple irrational connection. The 'montage' offers an unusual combination of events that surprise, make one look again and disturb habitual ways of seeing things. Both short stories here suggest this (montaging and unusual combinations) rather than ordering in an illogical order.'

I have been playing around, making a few test books, just thinking about layout and construction; next stages thinking about the actual content which in the book. Now I am thinking about the idea of 'montaging'; I have already begun to do this, but I was classing my arrangements more as grids, where montaging seems more fitting.

Going to push it further, thinking about sticking arrangements up outside on the streets,walls, taking lots more photos, and maybe even gathering other peoples photos of their everyday...

Blank maps.

Blank maps- no direction

We are never in the map. 

I have made a few blank maps, each slightly different, each colour has been taking from my 'colour mapping' representing the particular point or place that I have been to along my journeys...

'Maps suggest explanations' but these maps could suggest nothing at all, these ideas could begin to translate into ideas of how I am going to put my book together/ art directed piece together; so thinking about blank books of colour, or a huge book/map which is blank in parts...

Series, Sequences.

A few more series and sequences coming out of the film camera, some are of the same places, some are new sequences...

EVA HESSE- THINGS IN SERIES, REPEATS ABSURDITY.

Thinking about using these as images for my artists book, so starting to build up a collection of images and start scanning in sketchbook pages, photos and images I have been working with which explore

my concept, 'my ambiguous journey'...

Objects

Experimenting translating my ideas into objects and making...

Stemming from mapping the colour of 'the everyday' I have made simple, nondescript pouchlike, rectangular fabric objects...

SERIES, REPETITION, RECTANGULAR, AMBIGUOS

Each slightly different...

Thinking about dying them different colours, from those I have mapped out
Installing them in places I have documented
Planting them in locations, to leave, watch them change
Making maps to be placed inside

The main aspect of these objects is the potential to reflect ambiguity, that they will represent, provide a new way of reading and/or looking at places...

Connections...

Thinking about windows as intervals of time...

SEQUENCES

Activities taking place, recording journeys or time

I have been documenting through photography, mark making and drawing...

A series of connections occurred when I was thinking about ways of developing the project...

1. THE ROAD. I found a series of photos quite interesting from my film camera, very boring, mundane. A A few are also in sequence, taken every five seconds, so each image is slightly different.

Currently reading On the Road

Images are of THE ROAD, or taken from it.

Readings from CP lectures...

'THE ROAD- all people intersect at one spatial and temporal point'

'THE ROAD is familiar' 

'Time, as it were, fuses together with space and flows in it (forming the road)'

'The road is a particularly good place for encounters'

- The Dialogue Imagination, Mikhail Bakhtin

2. MAPS maps plot where we are; use this a way of understanding/investigating the every day...

Thinking about mapping, translating and obscuring the everyday,

Maybe working with photos, hiding and unpicking visual aspects...

Mapping colour- drawing colour/ feeling, to gain a sense of place...

GRIDED PAPER (maps) show time and space- maybe abandon grided paper, or use it in an unusual way, create own grids?

Also had a little inspiration from Tony Ratcliffe's exhibition in Special Collections; books of maps, looking at geography and location...

Can I use the road, and make it unfamiliar, UNHEIMLICH? ...Can I capture windows of time and the everyday from the road? Maps show and guide us through roads and spaces, so I need to thinking about combining the two to make some very interesting MAPS.

Map beginnings...

Started pulling the colours from the 'everyday' film camera photos, as colour creates a sense of feeling (when thinking about painters and painting) 

As 'maps suggest explanations', maybe I can pull stories and explanations out of the images and create an ambiguous narrative using colour, or just using the colour to use for text, or to dye fabric if I decided to experiment and make objects, or to dye paper...

Interesting parts from the article METAPHOR: OR MAP?

We organise information on maps in order to see knowledge in a new way, in our eyes we are off the map...

Maybe I can use maps and mapping in an ambiguous way, colour mapping- drawing colour/feeling from everyday places...

Maps...

Very interesting readings from my contextualising practice units, that happen to fit in with my ideas rather well...

METAPHOR: OR, THE MAP
Extract from MAPS OF THE IMAGINATION, 

MAPS SUGGEST EXPLANATIONS

TO ASK FOR A MAP IS TO SAY TELL ME A STORY

THEY RECORD WHERE WE ARE, WHO WE ARE AND WHERE WE MIGHT BE

Maps can be metaphors, and so I am thinking about creating ambiguous/strange/ maps, things that DO NOT resemble a regular map or will be helpful in any way.

The extract also discusses interesting points about artistic creation, commenting how it is 'a voyage into the unknown' and how 'in our eyes we are off the map'... Seen as thought my project is about  journeys, sequences, and t the EVERYDAY, it is becoming to me to be a 'voyage' of some kind, into the unknown, and ambiguous elements of our everyday life.

He had brought a large map

representing the sea

Without the least vestige of land:

And the crew were much pleased

when they found it to be 

A map they could all understand.

Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark.

Leeds; Sarah Lucas

Went on a little trip to Leeds to get a little inspiration and see a few artists, most interesting was ORDINARY THINGS, a collection of sculpture by Sarah Lucas...

She looks at what sculpture can be: an object defined by gravity SPACE, the human body or naturally found forms, works with ORDINARY OBJECTS that shape our SURROUNDINGS and assumptions

USES PROCESSES like cutting moudling displaying and assembly
UTILISES CONVENTIONS that move from the monumental to readymades...


I came away from the exhibition with a lot to think about, especially the exploration about what is ordinary and thinking about surroundings and objects, which Is what I am currently investigating...Also about space and layout, as the layout aspects of the exhibition were also quite interesting...

ordinary in extraordinary ways?...

Choices...

For my workshop I have chosen Art Direction, which involves thinking about layout (documentatition?!) and also using new media: books, video, digital prints...This is a little risky ! As I am not so in the know on the digital/ new media, but I think this could be a whole new step up on the experimenting...

I am still going to be thinking in a textile way; something interesting I read/heard about in my Contextualising Practice lecture on Narrative: Word and Image really came to mind as I have been thinking about sequences and narratives as a way as exploring my concept...

'HOW FAR CAN WE PUSH CONVENTIONAL CODES TO COMMUNICATE WITH EACH OTHER?'

If I think in terms of BOOKS

'TEXTS AND TEXTILES

- CONNECTIONS IN THEIR SPELLINGS

-INTERLACING OF SEVERAL STRANDS

-STRINGING TOGETHER, DEFINING THE CONTINUAL LINEAR OF THE SELF'

If thinking about NEW MEDIA/INSTALLATION

'LOOKING AND READING

-FORMER; OPENNESS OF INTERPRETATION AND FREEDOM OF MENTAL AND SENSUAL MOVEMENT

-LATER CONFINES THE READER TO A PREDETERMINED OUTCOME, A ROUTE CONSTRUCTED FROM A HORIZONTAL ROW OF LETTERS.'

STUDIO SMACK

-Blocked out everything that wasn't graphic, making sense of a city...

BY THE WAY

-photographic zigzag book, documenting a car journey, shot from the window of a car in real time...

I think and hope my lectures are going to give me some new inspiration and assist my practical work very well...

The Everyday...

A few snippets I have read from THE EVERYDAY...

Stephen Shore sees journals as a fascination with how certain kinds of facts and materials from the external world can describe a day or activity, and becomes a commentary about ones place in the world! It doesnt have to be about how you are feeling, 'but how activity defines character'...

Gabriel Orozco, avoids all post production, because he wants to keep the clumsiness. insecurity and AMBIGUITY of the actual shooting, 'It's really the awareness involved in the shooting itself that is important, not what one can do with the images.' Thought this was interesting in regards to how I look at photos, as especially in my summer work, many have come out odd, or interesting, and not something I want to 'work on' say like digitally, I like them for the chance strangeness...

  

Concept.

After a few tutorials this week, I have been thinking about what kind of work I want to do, and so have begun to realise the themes of my work...

These are a few sketchbook pages, first one themes...

Finding the poetry in things! Such as the everyday, the mundane, but also looking at history, thinking about making connections to another experience. I always document and record everything I am doing; looking at this through sequences, always thinking about composition. Things that are a bit obscured, or making things ambiguous, such as everyday objects in strange situations is what I find quite interesting...

I have thought about having a concrete background idea, possibly windows, (FROM SUMMER WORK) as this could leave many options open to explore ideas such as ambiguity or obscuring the everyday...

WINDOWS- looking at definitions, alternative meanings, what windows do, what they don't do...Just a thought at the moment...

Homage to Susan Hiller....

I noticed that, due to my ineptness at handling a film camera, quite a few of my photos were coming out very overexposed and very colourful, and it reminded me all of Susan Hiller's work, which I am very interested in. SO I put together a SERIES of postcards, all the thumbnails of my films and the ODD pictures...Part of the SERIES summer project.

Windows.

I made a post a while ago about light! Often in spaces, light is natural from WINDOWS, and as mentioned in the post about Suki Chan and other things, light alters our perceptions of SPACES and PLACES. And so, throughout the summer, I seemed to (unknowingly) focused on drawing/photographing windows...

The theme popped out to me whilst looking through my photos from my trip to Krakow, and I noticed I had taken to drawing them as well... Possibly something to revisit in my future projects...

Reading...

Another mini series/sketchbook where I noted down all the things that I had read and the most important 'arty' readings from magazines and art books...

A few favourites:

Exploring Site Specific Art- Lots of interesting artists working with CONTINGENT spaces, and looks at a variety of artists working in unusual sites and spaces.

Installation Art- A compliation of artists, looking at what installation art actually is. A few interesting parts about Marcel Broodthaers and Susan Hiller, and there references to COLLECTIONS and museums...

The Remains of the Day- A novel, narrated by a character with meticulous (obsessive) detail and accuracy about everything he encounters whilst on a trip...

Also lots of reading/ exploring about art/random events/things was compiled into a good little folder! Hopefully, will provide me with lots of inspiration...

Valve.

The end result of my project was a SERIES of sketchbooks and mini-projects that had a relationship to everything and each other. Everything is in a different media, but not exactly pen/pencil/paint etc...

One of these was the VALVE project (my favourite), where I took the object around with me, photographing it in focus and the space around it. I have used a film camera, which has produced excellent photos colour-wise, I also took a lot of other interesting photos, ones slightly distorted by the light, or strangely exposed, which I have worked with in my DRAWING series. As I have just acquired a new film camera for my birthday, this is something I will definitely be exploring...

I wanted to think about how and why I could use an object, and I quite like how there is always something familiar throughout these photos, which without, I think they could appear quite odd. I wanted to focus on parts that are more mundane or the overlooked aspects of where I was, and so hopefully the result is a little unheimlich..

A few artists...

CYPRIEN GAILLARD

I saw a little exhibition at Manchester City Gallery, themes concerning displacement, disenchantment and decay.

His work is about engaging with the modern landscape, 'an archeologist of recent history'.
What I liked best was the video showing changing modernist utopian apartment blocks whilst listening to The Smiths ASLEEP, haunting/depressing and a little bit strange, just what I like...

HAN FENG

Chinese painter and installation artist, creates beautifully simple pieces about everyday life.

'Single, still moments in a constantly moving world'

Like the media used in the paintings, and the hanging installations are also very interesting too! I took a little bit of inspiration from these drawings for my own SERIES.

Tides.

One evening sat at home, Coast is on, with an interesting feature on tide machines! Tide machines can predict tides for any location 'a series of observed  hourly heights are mathematicaly analysed' I liked the systematic/machine/process element to them, and the drawings are beautiful! something to look back to...