Summer Project

The second year's Summer Project has been set...about two weeks ago in fact but I've only just been able to reference it now. It's a little off-key but sounds fun. The umbrella title is Wearable Gallery Project:

Criteria:

We realise you might be all off around the world and therefore you summer project is designed to fit neatly into your summer schedule. We would like you to record, in whatever way you chose ,the habits, customs, everyday things you notice in your new environment (or down to the post office for the less adventurous). And compare them to your own home. We would like you to produce a series of work using the information you glean. You will need to make your work transportable and become your own
“Walking Art Gallery”. You should wear it to the first meeting on Tuesday 21st September at 1.30 in the Interactive Arts Studio.

It seems quite easy but a little too easy because they are many obvious paths that can be took. Holiday snaps, postcards, silly things being attached to teeshirts and the like or the obvious routes..Mail Art IS a route that I think I could take but, just how many are going to take that option... There's no fun in plying your energies into work and when it is shown, there are two-three people who has chosen your path as well.

I have a couple of ideas that are work in progress. They differ in style and outcomes...the presentation of the finished project will need a set of mechanical gadgets to fine tune but...

Lucien Fellowes and his Collection of Particulars

The concept that I have devised is one that involves a certain nobody who travels the country collecting road-side debris, rusty nuts and bolts and car crash remnants. He likes to take photos of road-side markings and like a butterfly collector, pins and mounts his rusty nuts and bolts.

I have evolved this character over time and devised a Facebook page dedicated to his finds. To present his collection, I will need to buy an old and tatty suitcase with period clothing and paraphenalia. Within this case will be his collection of rusty objects and certain polaroids of his locations. I have collection over twenty objects already and now need to photograph them in situ. Some photographs are going up here soon of his roadside markings.

It will be in the style of Merz, Schwitters, Cornell and hopefully have the philosophy of the trash, garbage and ruins background that I have been working towards. I have an idea for the performance side of it that involves me (as Fellowes) lurking about in other peoples (models) photographs looking a little odd.

Free For Arts Exhibition 2010

This is an interesting one, a chance to get work shown but there are hardly any takers...apathy is a little ironic here. We as a group of 1st year students have been given a chance to exhibit within the second year's exhibition. I thought there would be of some interest here but since the deadline for proposals was 10 May 2010 and another extension that ended last Friday, only 8 out of 28 has entered. I have entered my monolith light-boxes into the original deadline and now have two more...space permitting, of course. The show will bee on October 2010 in Manchester city centre. It will be a great opportunity to get work seen by the mass audience.

I need to fit the Monoliths with their lighting system real soon because I haven't even thought about this for months...just been far too busy doing other things and writing music with Andrea. The lighting will need to be wired and tested and screwed into place. I can do all this in my studio...the only problem would be the haulage task of actually bringing the damned things to MCR. I am on with the printing project with the printing firm here in Blackburn. I have scanned the polaroids that I am intending to use with the FFA2010 project if there is space and the Road-Side Markings are being a hit on www.polanoid.net so they can be enlarged if the other snaps do well.

The hard-edged collage is a stopstarter at the moment. I have start on a couple of compositions using different paperweights, textures, typography; I just want to go larger...probably six-footer utilising wood, wallpaper and cement..?

And finally, In have started experimenting with iStopmotion and created a 9second film with me and Andrea dancing like loons, this is on my Facebook page. I needed to start using this package because it wasn't cheap and I have too many ideas knocking about for my first real foray into film making. I don't know what I'm doing but I will succeed.