Photo Project: Bedroom Candids

I've been wanting to do a simple photo portrait project like this for a while but I guess I thought I wouldn't be able to take very appealing photos with the way my bedroom is set up so I avoided it. I decided to try it though and I like the mundanity of these shots, the greyness of them. The massive square of light intruding from the window like this big, bright thing kept just separate from me in my room. I don't know, I like lots about this, and it's another thing I could very easily continue with and build up a big time lapse series with. I'm not sure how else to progress with this, but for now I will just to continue with it and build up a series.

(Almost) Daily Newhive Pages Update

So I'm creating collages roughly each day on Newhive at the moment, including a one take vocal cover of a song autoplaying on each page. I think these are pretty effective as snippets, and I'm treating them more directly like diary entries by collaging photos I've taken that day with pictures I've seen that day, some inspiration from that day, as well as in my most recent page some text examining something of my thought processes, again on that day. So it's very much another diary-like project. I think the text really gives this entry more depth, so I will be continuing to use text like this. The key strength of this project, I think, will be the cumulative aspect of the collection of entries. They are reasonably small collages, like snippets of life (I like this and really particularly wan to keep this aspect, so I hope it will be appealing to an audience in this form), but altogether should build up an impressive database and unusual digital diary. Approx. 3 months worth of pages should look pretty decent by the time the degree shoe rolls around.

I do need to think about how I might display it, given that it involves a lot of sound and needs to be interactive so people can click through the chain of pages. The obvious choice would be to display it on a computer, but I'm not keen on leaving my only laptop in the exhibition since I need to use it for work and projects and things, so I'm not what options will be available.

Further progress & experimentation with this project - I could try to implement more video and personal drawings, overlay more images, use more moving images/glitter images, make my pages denser, etc. There's lots to play around with, so I definitely need to explore that as much as I can.

The screenshots in this post include 4 entries. You can see them all on my main Newhive page here, and watch out when you click through to the actual project pages because they have autoplaying songs.

Hell My Friend: Newhive Pages & Action Plan

I made a new Newhive page (click here, but be warned - it autoplays me singing Britney Spears). So I've played with Newhive a bit before, but I think I have an idea which brings back the 'new entry every day' concept I used as part of my 360 book. I liked that concept a lot and the way it recorded time in a consistent way, and I figure if I make a new Newhive page every day it will:

1. allow me to continue with that sort of incremental record of the passing of time
2. build up until a sizeable collection of pages by the time we get to the degree show

It also I think intuitively feels more loose and personal and candid than the 360 book because I can combine my drawings, pictures, and all sorts of visual things, but also I can have music and movement, which obviously was not possible in a book. This is a big advantage to creating some sort of digital landscape. There is a much bigger scope for what I can do and what kind of atmosphere I can create. I also really like the idea of simply recording myself gently singing well known songs and autoplaying a song on each page. The lone vocal with reverb makes for a really soothing and intimate atmosphere.

I'm not sure how I would show my Newhive pages given that it needs to be clearly interactive, so that's something I'll have to figure out.

TUTORIAL - Plans, Ideas, & Artists To Look At

These are ideas, concepts, and points of research discussed in a recent tutorial with Rosie.

Whilst looking for Sadie Benning videos I stumbled upon this instead:

I love how spooky this is, and just the use of time/time-based phenomena.

It's the atmosphere and the portraiture more than anything that I'm interested in, but I spent a while looking up slit-scan techniques and I realise this is essentially what I do with a scanner.

The History and Science of the Slit Scan Effect used in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey from FilmmakerIQ.com on Vimeo.

Here is a catalogue of slit scan video artists and research.

MOTHS: A Poem

I wrote a poem for the purpose of exploring potential performance options as I've been advised to look into adding a performative aspect and dimension to my work.

My poem is called MOTHS and can be listened to here.

I wanted it to be cryptic and dense and filled with imagery from pop culture, sensory experience, and insects. I also wanted to include singing parts to break up the poem into something with more tonal variety, and at the same time just to bring it fully into the pop sphere (the poem includes sections from One Direction, Taylor Swift, and Britney Spears songs.

It has a very furious, feverish feel the way I've read it here, which I think (hope) would be very engaging (and hopefully even mesmerising) performed. I am interested in having a hypnotic effect of some kind on an audience as that would really allow me to take control of their senses and make them feel odd, thus drawing into my world via that altered sensation.

IDEAS:

I would possibly like to write a very long poem that could become quite a big (although intimate) performance/reading. I am unsure whether to combine this with other media or if it would be best suited on its own - mad and stark against a background of blankness.

full poem as of now:

MOTHS
the hearts align,
squashed together,
bleeding into each other,
not like a metaphor,
pushed up close like a scrotum on a window,
all soft and folded,
like a bedsheet but pulsing,
I know that feeling,
like your skin is strobing,
disco sensation,
lampshades are like bodies,
high and bright,
round and waving,
I love flying into both,
bruising lampshades,
kicking bulbs,
loke mate I ain't here for a sausage roll,

Ed Sheeran and chips,
dripping nice and heavy nice and slow,
mud pies for breakfast all balanced on the window,
the smell of grass is in my mouth,
I smell like flowers and I taste like milk,
heaven is in one direction
[sung] do you remember summer '09 wanna go back like pressing rewind

snakes and birds of prey sit on the little mountain and sing,
they love east 17 and missy elliot,
my alcopop has spilled on the floor but everything is bliss,
my toes are midnight blue,
the stars are inside them,
the stars are in your eyes,
the stars are in your toes

I am all moths,
I eat your clothes,
your pocket's in my mouth,
detergent sandwiches for supper,
[sung] you got that long hair slicked back white t-shirt and I got that
insect hunger for your delicious worn elastic
[sung] oh baby baby how was I supposed to know
the threads have frayed to dust,
with a faint smell of Lynx and Geri Halliwell,
how can I tell what the moon smells like?!
well I ask

The Distortion Of André Kertész

Discussing warping and distortion in response to some photos I warped via a scanner here, a friend recommended I look up André Kertész as someone who played with distortion. A Google image search shows me an interesting selection of portraits that make the subjects look like stretched blu-tack or the rings of Saturn if they'd gone through a few spin cycles in a washing machine.

It's interesting to see an entire human form captured and moulded like play-doh into spooling, curving, looping abstract figures. It also reminds me, peripherally, of Jenny Saville's work and all sorts of fat acceptance stuff. A lot of popular fat acceptance stuff I see online has this vibe of sanitisation, of being just right - fat but the perfect shape of fat only, curves in the right places. There can be, within pro-fat spaces, a hierarchy of acceptable/appealing fatness. The connection between this and André's work also reminds me of the "lumps and bumps" Commes des Garcons s/s 1997 collection as analysed in an essay here by that friend who mentioned André.