Shooting

Finally trying to shoot some of my ideas.. but it's not going too well. I only have a couple of ideas for scenes, and the one i've tried to see through properly has gone horribly horrily wrong.
I was trying to make a red food colouring river between hills of sugar. Sounds simple enough. Except the food colouring leaked into the sugar rather than creating a river (i *DID* try to use cling film to stop it, but it didn't want to be nice to me).
I then considered using some old shots i took of food colouring dispersing in water.. but they looked wrong bcause they were at the wrong angle (and can't really be taken from the right angle).
I also tried layering splatters of ink on paper over the image, but that also came out looking off, because either the splatters were too big, or you could see edges.

Some Old In With The New....

Some old ideas I haven't put down anywhere yet, since my ideas were going to quickly at the time-

Object Memories
- Having physical objects with each object having a few photographs printed onto them. Objects that came to mind were a glass, a box, a blouse. I wanted the juxtaposition of the objects to create stories, which the object would have been present for. The idea of the print being left on them related to the idea of the imprint of memories being left in our mind.

Story Book
-Having a photograph on each page, with a piece of text facing that described the image. The pages would create a story inspired by both the images, and research on psychology and emotions.

The Idea so far, and what I've been up to...

I've been thinking about the idea of the mind being a setting for a story, and considering how different sections might interact with eachother. I'm looking through this article on Phrenology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki.Phrenology as researh for this.

I am not certain yet quite how I want to display my piece. I have considered the use of characters- as the personification of mental disorders (e.g. 'schizophrenia' or 'depression'), or alternatively as different functions (e.g. 'memory', 'visual awareness'), and how these characters might interact with eachother.

I have also considered these things as landscapes, rather than as characters. I have taken a couple of trips in the past week to try and photograph different landscapes for this purpose- so I have a selection of city and woodland images to work from.

Other Photography Foundation Blogs

These are the blogs of a couple of the other students in my Photography Foundation course:

http://hevlet.blogspot.com/

http://whingeandwhine.tumblr.com/

Poppy Shakespeare

I've just finished watching Poppy Shakespeare, a programme on 4od about someone who is admitted to a mental institute... dispite appearing perfectly sane. The story tells of what it does to her, and explores the idea of a currupt medical system, where the sane are kept in, and the ill thrown out of the hospital- all to make their success rate look good.

I find the journey we see from sanity to madness interesting. The confusion of having to prove you're insane to prove you're sane reminds me of Muchausen's syndrome (which i looked at briefly on 26th April) - the need to do harm to yourself to prove you're ill... when it's thought you're not.

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/poppy-shakespeare/4od#2918423

John Baldessari

I have found the correct spelling of his name! huzzah!

I've been looking through 'Life's balance werk 84-04' by Baldessari.. and unfortunately most of his work in this book is lost on me... although what I do understand of his work, I find humorous. For example, the wallpaper of his Zurich pieces compares the visual appearance of different items- a lightbulb to a potato, a pizza to a clock, an ear to a pretzel...

I find 'No more sin' to be an interesting piece- he gets rid of the sin of lovers by seperating them from eachother using a 'cut and paste' method. It seems a very child-like way of trying to make the world a better place- as if by cutting them from eachother in the image removes their sins.

However, my favourites of his work are found in his purely text pieces. The reason for researching him in the first place was for this piece:

I must not make any more boring art.

The piece is self- contradictory, as it itself may be considered 'boring', as it is merely a repetition of words on a page. However, this joke also makes the piece interesting, and no longer boring- a vicious circle.
In addition, I feel the piece serves as a reminder to artists- to remember not to produce work that is boring. To capture the audience's attention, to make them think, to get them interested. The act of writing lines forces you to remember what you have written- so that the message is so built into us that we can't help but follow the advice.

I'm an Art Student.

I was looking for John Buldazari ( PLEASE correct my spelling if you know the artist i mean- i can't find any info on him!!), as suggested by my photography teacher... remembering the work of Daniel Eatock, but not his name, I thought it was the same person.

I like this http://www.eatock.com/project/i-list/ piece by Eatock.. I think it gives an insight into the author, and their life. Some of the strange items on it, for example 'I have individually dotted every single millimetre square on an A1 sheet of millimetre graph paper using a 0.1 millimetre black Edding pen.' Remind me a lot of the strange things I myself have done as a consequence of being an art student (for example, last Thursday, I filled each square on a 2 sided squared A4 page each with a dot, in order to explore the idea of obssession. I have also done bizarre things like eaten caterpillars, cut up a pigs head, and bought over a kg of breakfast marmalade all in one go.). There comes a time where you realise that no matter how bizaare a thing it is that you're doing, it can be explained with the 4 simple words: 'I'm an art student.'