Having come from a relaxing reading week I have come fully energised to pick up from where I left in week 5 and thank god I have because I certainly have a lot to catch up with in not too much time. This week I have been mostly answering emails about the open call, sending the open call to friends and other Welsh universities’ English and Creative writing departments. Little by little I am getting submissions coming along. I have also been diving deeper into both research and experimentation.
Research
All across reading week I have been reading a book I got from the library called Expanded Cinema: Art, Performance, Film edited by Rees, A. L. This book has been fantastic to give me further insight and theory into my practice, as well as vocabulary about it. Because of it, I can now categorise my work as what Paul Sherits calls Live Cinema, and see the connections between my project and the rest of Live Cinema performances. It has made me think deeply about the power of live performance and what the presence of the artist creates in the piece. As I read about it and immerse myself more and more into the work of other Light artists (such as David Dye, Guy Sherwin, and Annabel Nicolson) I am realising all the layers that a simple beam of light can have, as a creator of space, image, perception, as well as presence and otherness at once.
Experimentation
My main concern this week was to see how I could blend the projections, the mirrors, and the writing together and for them not to operate as separate entities. I have been playing around with a thousand million possibilities for displaying the three elements of the installation, but I think that by experimentation I have achieved a favorite setting.
I have decided it was enough light-related experimentation by itself and that this close to the deadline I had to start incorporating the writing into the experimentation. I have gone to charity shops and bought different materials that I found could suit the purpose of being translucent and have the capability of being written on. The experimentation this week has felt a bit against the current, like the materials were resisting me a little bit, but I guess that it is just part of the process and I have to take it as errors that are pointing me in a direction and from which I can bounce back from. At the moment I find myself trying to think around the materials, how I can get hold of a large-scale mirror and print on a semi-translucent material (on a large scale) with it not being too expensive. I am also thinking about how I can create this project without producing too much waste for the environment.
If it comes to it I am thinking of doing a crowdfunding online or bake sale for my project.
These are some photos of my notes, mostly writing down questions to ask myself about the exhibition, trying to keep critically reflecting as I go:
These are some photos of the process of brainstorming and experimentation:
After a lot of hits and misses with the experimentation of writing and materials this week, I have gone back to the 3D model of the exhibition I started two weeks ago, and it has honestly genuinely helped a lot to see things clearer.
Workshop
During this week’s workshop, I presented my Workshop proposal presentation, where I proposed a Light Interactive Workshop for all to play around with light and water. It was nice to listen to all the ideas for the upcoming workshop as well as to hear where everyone’s own projects stand.
This is my proposal for the workshop presentation.
These are my notes:
Hi Sophia, Great to see your experimentation with light, surface, projection and scale. Your research seems to have found you a home – Live Cinema. This is exciting, and gives you some good creative and historical context. Moving forwards, think about how you situate your own practice in relation to this field of work, who are you riffing off, who makes work that you respect? Why do you respect it? Your maquettes are good, is this going to be what you build in the bandstand? How are you going to build and document the installation in time for week 10 presentations? I think it’s best to keep it simple, perhaps you have two to three set ups that you display, document and these become the documents of your exhibition that go into the takeover form. Leave time to critically reflect on what works during your creative experiments, what you discard and choose not to run with, and explain your reasons. The reflective and creative notes in your notebook show careful thinking, and planning into the possibilities of the show. In your take over form, be clear what work is for the takeover, and where and how the exhibition sits within this module – my understanding is it will run in January, so think carefully about how you include the exhibition in the research and development of your creative project for this module. Make sure you go through the assessment criteria and assessment information on Blackboard so you’re confident with what you need to do for assessment. I will go through this in class this week too. Keep up the good work, and think carefully about how you will document your concept for the form and presentation in week 10.