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...