During the first week of Interdisciplinary Practice 1 a lot of ideas were thrown around; while I was not originally sure what mediums I would work with or what kind project I would pursue I now have a slightly clearer idea of what I might do. Activities like automatic writing and automatic listening opened my mind and let me access and acknowledge my thoughts and feelings which generated some ideas for potential projects and helped me to move past my initial fresher’s nervousness. While I’m still unsure of my final project I am currently mulling over a few ideas including working with clay, fabric and textiles, poetry, and aspects of media.
I considered making puppets or dolls to stage a small interactive exhibition with, or a multimedia piece featuring projected elements and distorted sounds to create some kind of experience, or an installation centred around the idea of ‘Samhain’ a celtic festival celebrating the end of harvest during which offerings of food and drink would be left to the spirits. The latter was my strongest idea as I could envision it best. I considered doing a spin on the concept of ‘Samhain’ in which I explore my childhood and notions of grief, loss, and abandonment through a staged dinner scene. For this I considered sculpting food items and staging a Norman Rockwell ‘Freedom From Want’-esque dinner scene with a projected film featuring a montage of childhood clips intercut with moments of adulthood behind it as well as actors frozen like agonized statues (think silver living statues). I brain-stormed this and took note of points of inspiration and have continued to research it in my own time beyond the studio.
Moving forward I plan to create a project outline and continue to mood-board and research points of interest for this project and others in an attempt to narrow down my thoughts and vision until I have a more refined idea in place. Below I have attached some scribblings from my IP notebook which depict my initial thought process.
