Tutorials and feedback
20th October, 2022
Group tutorial
We were asked to outline our projects so far and how to write a proposal which I am to upload on 8th October and present it present to the group on 10th October.
the guidance given was to answer the questions What we hope to achieve, How we hope to do that giving the learning steps involved; Why we are doing it - referencing previous practice and mapping a field; Visual material and methodology / feel of knowledge covered.
Advice for me:
Shelve the idea of prison work & look up North Star Study Group with reference to the Refugee Council.
North Star Study group: https://northstarstudygroup.org.uk/
"North Star Study Group is a creative learning project for adults based in Plymouth (UK), investigating the historical and present-day contexts and impacts of colonialism & colonial activity." the site gives 3 definitions of colonialism.
"People who want to get involved with North Star Study Group aren’t “experts” or history scholars – they are curious people, who each bring their own lived experiences and expertise to the project. Each of us can help each other to learn more – by sharing information, talking through ideas and developing new (and creative) ways to explore together."
I tried to sign up but got a 404 error page.
Devon & Cornwall Refugee Support
"DCRS has a dedicated team of coordinators and caseworkers, over 33 volunteers, and a Board of Trustees, who ensure that asylum seekers can seek sanctuary in Plymouth whilst the UK government decides on their claim."
I will look into this after I have received Laura's notes.
Relevance of place with reference to the seaweed & Plymouth.
Look up Hospital Rooms project
Our Story
Artist Tim A Shaw and curator Niamh White founded Hospital Rooms after a close friend was sectioned and admitted to a mental health hospital. On visiting her, they were shocked to find that the hospital environment was cold and clinical at a time when she was so vulnerable. Having worked in the arts for 10 years each, they felt they had the skills and community to be able to transform these spaces with high quality artworks. In 2016, Dr Emma Whicher (now one of Hospital Rooms’ trustees) gave them the opportunity to run their first project at the Phoenix Unit, a rehabilitation unit for people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. They commissioned Nick Knight, Gavin Turk, Assemble among other world class artists to work with patients and staff to create site specific artwork for the ward. The project received national press attention and Hospital Rooms has been inundated with requests for projects ever since.
My feelings: I am not a renowned artist and my work is not world class.& that's what they go for. It's going to be difficult to do it all via zoom because of all the materials and process that are necessary.
Abigail Reynolds https://abigailreynolds.com/Flux
Artist from west Cornwall. Used kelp ash mixed with sand to form glass. Really interesting work.
Laure Prouvost https://www.laureprouvost.com/
A strange monologue to the video camera about how she will always look after the video camera & love & look after it. A rather bizarre piece to camera.
Reply to Hannah correcting the perception that I want a space in Plymouth for my art work.
23rd November, 2022
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Feedback from the proposal presentation
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I found this feedback encouraging and empowering. I had said at the Abigail Reynolds elliptical reading session that I want to play with this set of topics but I don't know how. Being told that play takes on different forms gives me a way into the concept without restricting it to child's play which, I think, is how I was seeing it.
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Dear Anna,
I just went through your blog and it was very enjoyable to read about your experiences and your reflections.
I think you can continue with the prison work and the seaweed but I don’t see the need to worry about a metaphorical connection. It’s fine to have two strands of work.
I do think play can be an important part of an artists practice but it comes to people in different ways. I found your proposal presentation very playful. I enjoyed the waving silks and the idea that you could make an analogue immersive dome. You are also a good story teller and can hold a room (all that teaching) so that may come into your practice at some point.
Sometimes it feels like things don’t have meaning or are not going anywhere – don’t rush to assign meaning keep going with the process and let the project find itself.
Can you read French? I think you can so here is a book you might find interesting?
Anya
26th January 2023
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Tutorial 3
I presented work I had done since our last tutorial which consisted of the cork oak bark mono prints, the photo manipulation of an element of the mono print, the 3D prints from the lithophane, the music composed & derived from the 3D print, the mono prints of the dried seaweed, the photo manipulation of 1 of the prints, the film of the decomposing seaweed 'snow storm' and the written music derived from it.
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I had tried mono prints in the Christmas break but the prints I did with the print department's rollers showed me that the rollers I had been using in the holidays were too hard for what I wanted so I ordered my own roller. How can you get excited about a printing roller?? But I did!
Same cork oak, same soft roller creating the same floral and insect wing motifs as my initial mono prints.
Mono prints of the dried seaweed proved that the insect wing and star effects are a function of the roller softness and the paper weight.
I also discovered that the amount of ink on the roller determined the amount of 'noise' on the mono print: the more ink on the roller, the more 'noise' or extraneous ink on the print:
Decreasing quantities of ink on the roller produce clearer, uncluttered prints with less 'noise'.
Different papers also affect the outcome: (from left: shoji, baking parchment, shoe wrapping tissue paper and pink flower arrangement tissue paper:
I manipulated one of the mono prints by mirroring the image horizontally to make a frieze:
One of my other experiments is to record the decomposition of seaweed in water over time. As I was setting up the camera after 3 weeks of photographing, I accidentally knocked the vase and white particles started falling from the film that had formed just under the meniscus, so I videoed it:
The organic growth formed under the meniscus and the 'flecks' that broke away from it when I knocked the vase.
The 'snow storm 'formed the basis of the music composition. I processed the video in iMovie, took every 9th frame as that was the frame that was the most different from the first, printed the 5 resulting frames, and put them under the tracing paper staves and 'composed' the decomposition suite!
Anya's questions were, as always, illuminating:
1. How do the mono prints relate to the tree? and to my project?
2. What am I taking forward? What am I refining?
3. If I don't like making 'pretty pictures', why don't I make ugly pictures and see what happens?
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Anya thought that the work comes under the label of 'generative art' or 'generative music'. Although I associate generative art with computer software or AI art, I will have to research it to see to what extent I am right or wrong.
2nd February, 2023
Extended writing tutorial with Laura Hopes
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I had sent my extended Et is ...? writing to Laura 2 days beforehand so that she would be better prepared for the session.
1. Laura asked how I would present the work. I am not sure as, having read the story to my husband and then given it to him to read, he said he understood it better when he read it. SO, does it come across better as a written-to-be-read piece or written-to-be-heard? With only one example, it's difficult to tell.
2. Laura suggested that I annotate the story making references to my influencing writers thus lifting the lid on my links.
3. She suggested that I upload the full story with images to the DLE and ask the others to read it. Then I would just shed a light on my links in the seminar.
4. For the presentation, fill out the characters bringing in a theoretical background to them.
5. Laura suggested reading a novel by David Mitchell = Cloud Atlas
6. Read Underland by Robert McFarlane.
March Crits
18th February 2023
Anya suggested the following pointers to help with the crits:
Crit Guidelines
You may want to set up your work early the 101 space. When you present your crit feel free to give context for your work but try not to make interpretive statements about what your work is achieving. It is useful to think about if you have any particular questions for the group and to write them down beforehand. At the crit once you have given a short intro to your work try and sit back and listen to what the group sees/ understands about your work without interrupting. You may want to take notes, have someone else take notes or record the session. After people have feedback you may want to respond to some of the ideas and questions from the group.
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I am not sure what I am presenting: my current practical work or my extended writing?
If it's my extended writing, the specific questions I would invite are those concerning aspects of the story that they feel should not be there.
2nd March 2023
Presentation of practical work to the FA cohort
Peer feedback
Unbounded and released energy since beginning the course - sans frontieres!
Research in every direction - learnt lots of skills in lots of directions and honed skills in all these terrains - to experience freedom
Playing around with everything
Is what she’s doing relevant to questions?
Are we aware of the needs of other worlds around us
Are we prepared to open ourselves up
What happens if we don’t?
Espresso cup organic!
Eight different outcomes
Photography: sand, Seaweed, Decomposed seaweed - bacteria
Cyanotype: - hessian - silk & diverse papers
Timelapse - decomposition. My first & need to redo it without all the mistakes of this one.
Seaweed prints: screenprint. The outcomes are a function of the softness of the roller and the weight of the paper
3D prints: holdfasts - not symbiotic/parasitic - seeds land together and they grow together - plastic and plant-based resin
Linocut
Video - falling bacteria - density - oxygen needed?
Music - film on iMovie - inverted colours to make the dots more visible - tracing paper - stave of music - seaweed sonatina - crescendo - didn’t quite fit the footage so removed the bass clef
Could the bass clef come from the rolled piece of seaweed
Still to come:
Electron microscope imaging - roots, trunk, blade, decomposing, sand, dry seaweed
Poetry from music
360 and underwater imaging
Seaweed paper lace
Silk - nuance of the stipes (parts which hold the blades up)
Seaweed ooze algenate - seaweed for the green - sand for the orange
Microlens photography
Pretty (too?) purple wet seaweed print = my response to Anya's idea of making something ugly.
Techniques - successful
Isolated and repeated/reflected the image - 3d print - music of the oak tree - music cylinder
Music from falling bacteria
World-building - sound textures - formatted from found objects
Betty asking about world’s language
https://missom.wordpress.com/2016/05/24/tree-alphabets-from-alpine-larch-to-zelkova-serrata/
Seaweed farms for ice cream - algenate
Foam made from electrolysing seaweed algenate - moulds
Habitat - so rich in life
Getting to know subject through a dialogue in exploration from every angle - so thorough - one thing will come and the seaweed will try to tell you - playful exploratory process
Tania Kovats - seabed Exeter Phoenix - coral reef
Christina Iglesias
Falling planets or stars - worlds - cosmos - finding a way through another world
Broader than the formal qualities of the seaweed - tended to it
Decoding the language
Is the piano the right instrument?
Environmental sounds
Treble clef is a western way of organising sound - opposite to a non-human way of making music - closer to a translation or decoding
Music contains a bit of tension - doesn’t feel like an expression of the seaweed - but a way of applying a lens - how would a seaweed express itself? Chemical - light shape, music? Experience of time - clash of ways of organising sensation cool - does it examine how we look at things as humans
Wider ways of making music -
Electrical impulses into seaweed make sound
Connections between academic terrains
Recognising patterns
Software too tinny - Briony Gillard, Kitty Hillier - Penzance and Newlyn exhibitions at the moment
Laura Denning
Pitch rather than rhythm - seaweed is moved rather than moving - fluid - moon tide weather
Eduardo Miranda or Robert Taub
Seaweed bowl
Cosmic - microscope lens
23rd March 2023
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Tutorial on the extended writing assignment, due in in April, with Laura Hopes
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I spoke to Laura about the session I had at home with 6 friends who had come over to read my play aloud and she wondered why we as students can do this but we as artists don't.
Uppermost in my report back was how serendipitous was the fact that one of my friends did not feel comfortable reading the preface herself so she asked if it was ok to get some software, ClaroRead, to read it and, in particular, to have an Australian female voice. I had no problem with that option. It includes the facility to save the speech output to file. There are free options available such as the “read aloud” feature in MS Word and MacOS has text to speech built in (accessibility option) in the system settings.
When I heard it, however, I realised how stupendously apt it was for my cyborg play, and to have it introduce the play was, for me, mind-blowing! I could have screamed for joy! This will most certainly feature in any representation of my play.
What I realised when I edited the readings was that the machine made no mistakes in the reading but I felt it had no interpretation /soul. The human readings, however, had expression but were riddled with mistakes. Which would I go for?? Except for the preface, I would go for humans every time, on the whole. At one point in the recording, I accidentally clicked the play button on the machine recording & it was so in keeping with the theme that everyone thought I should keep the machine intrusion in the final edit - I didn't.
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Laura too felt that the machine reading was apt. She also said I should give space to the different elements in my work because it will affect how it all comes together eventually.
Laura said that at the moment, the elements feel like a 'choral presentation' which thrills me immensely - there are so many parts in my body of work which all work together - perhaps not well enough yet. I really like that choral analogy - there is an implied harmony in that which is an implied ideal in my work.
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I also said that I had scrapped the music element of my practice and will replace it with a strong sound element. To Laura this could evoke environmental sounds of place. I totally agree.
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Earlier in the morning I had been to the library to try to engage with Endnote more effectively than I have been and saw the book "The Book as Art" by Krystyna Wasserman in which I found several examples of book forms that might suit my play.
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The first is one that I have long been wanting to create: the flag book that Holly first showed us at our Bridge meeting:
How is this book form relevant?
Flags are a way of getting a message across.
It will help in delivering the manipulated Google maps images in a playful way - inviting reader intervention. Displaying the text will be tricky.
Another book type which is less playful but perhaps more arty is this - not sure what it's called:​
What I like about it is that it has an inside and an outside on both intersecting sheets of paper plus it has sewn in story sheets which allow for multi-disciplinary expressions. It could thus reference the world within a world concept of the work.
I thought this would be a great book cover covering seaweed with gold paper. It might be too difficult for paper - vacuum suction might be a better solution?
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