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Hey there!

This is a closing post to give anyone visiting this blog a bit of info and context. I graduated in summer 2015 from Wimbledon College of Art's Fine Art: Print and Time Based Media degree course, and this was a (somewhat loose) online component of my research journal. I'm leaving this blog up as an archive just so that maybe it can help someone else on a similar course or thinking about doing one, and also so I can look back on the things I was thinking about and exploring here.

Please do have a look at my research journal navigation page and e-portfolio to get an overview of the projects I did and the general structure of the course (especially in third year).

I found a lot of the structure and guidelines of the course quite confusing, so I really hope someone finds this blog helpful in that respect. If in doubt just note down and annotate everything and try everything you can, because your tutors will be looking for ambition and variety.

Here are some of my favourite posts from this blog: moths in colour, a savaloy-based poem, art as therapy.

Please also check out my constant and looming internet presence here and here, and have a nice day!

All the best,

Lilly

Unit 9 Evaluation Form

Newhive Pages

Photo Project: Bedroom Candids #2

So here's the continuation of this project. I like the photos that show my tiredness and skin depression and messy/greasy hair. And it's evident which trousers I wear literally all the time. It's nice, the realness of what I look like in these moments by myself. We have a huge culture now of online sharing, but we still tend to stick behind a certain accepted way of presenting, because naturally most of us want to look our best. But who says this isn't my best? Who decides that every moment isn't my best? In every moment I am myself, after all.

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.

Connections between my personal work and my band ☆

I tend to think of my band as separate from my art practice and I'm not sure why that is. It certainly is an example of both personal and professional development in that it's an ongoing partnership - a collaboration and a business. We make artwork in the form of music, more obviously, but also as pictures and videos (often involving collaborations with other creatives outside the band as well). We build ourselves as a brand and as an entity online too, which is composed of so many little efforts. It's quite an all encompassing project when you consider all the different levels of work that go into it, the web design, copy, methods of release, and so on.

The relationship between me and my bandmate is pretty intense as we're a duo so it's just the two of us. In so many ways it's the perfect collaboration because we are so in tune to each other's ideas and I think for two people making music it's integral to have that really close connection and the ability to tell each other exactly what you like or don't like about something, and exactly what you want out of something. We also each have our strengths and weaknesses and it's a great challenge to slot those together. As individuals we each have something unique to contribute and it's great seeing that turn into some sprawling creature of our combined creation.

We've been a partnership since about March 2012 now, so it's been a good while and we've learnt so much in that time. We've had a few (very varied) music video shoots, heaps of remixes, and 3 album releases! We've found great ways to work alone, together, and with others to get the sound, look, and general style that we want. And it will keep evolving.

But why don't I talk about it in this context? Why do I consider it separate? This band has been ongoing for longer than my course has. It's the most important and successful example of my professional creative work, but for some reason it's been in a different place in my brain. Over the past few months I really feel like everything I've been doing for uni has moved more into the sphere of just "things I'm doing" or "work I'm creating" - generally moving over into my personal sphere and blurring that difference I had in my mind. So I think it's really important to discuss and document some of what I'm doing with my band (and my own music, in fact) in parallel to my other work.

What we are working on right now:

1. We have just released a full length album: Binocular. This features 5 songs and 5 alternative mixes of those songs, some of which are remixes. This can be found here (along with 3 previous releases): https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/binocular/id956314543
2. We have been curating a Tumblr blog full of primarily striking visual inspiration from renaissance paintings to photos of beautiful, happy dogs, to photos of neon lights and flowers and incredible sunsets. This is our main webpage which links to our social media accounts elsewhere, etc, and I love having it be a big museum-like blog of inspiration and beauty. This is here: http://rescueafamily.tumblr.com/
3. We are working on some new original material and a Rita Ora cover which I am particularly excited about!
4. It's also worth noting that we earned like 20p from Spotify streaming. Extremely professional!

The band is extremely important to me as a project, a collaboration, and a business. It will be ongoing. Here's a vlog of a recording session and photo shoot:

And here's a video of a 3 song performance in 2014:

Interim Show Initial Thoughts

Today was the stage meeting for the start of this term and we get to really start thinking about our interim shows now, how they're going to be set up, and how we're going to work together. We have organised into three groups based on a common theme running through our work: Technological Utopia, Diaristic Narratives, and Social Responses. These are really useful because we can really situate our work in relation to each other inside these groups. I am part of the Diaristic Narratives group and am really happy with the make up of the group because it's full of people I feel really comfortable working with, people who I know I can ask for help and stuff like that.

Today post stage meeting we all made a floor plan for our show and where each of us will be situated in our week. We also decided to make a Facebook group for our group and talked through a few ideas about lighting, space, and potential poster and drinks options.

Lighting: we were thinking about using spotlights. These are quite dynamic and can have quite a smart look. Holly and Briony want specific lighting conditions, as I believe they are working partially with light and don't want it to be drowned by outside light, nor drowned by darkness.

Space: I'm pretty flexible with space and just need about a square metre of wall space for my work, with no particular requirements concerning what sort of space I need. Louise needs a dark space, and the way the three groups are arranged means that in each group there are only one or two people needing to use a dark space, so this is easily transferred to the next group instead of having to be rationed out/compromised/overcrowded.

Posters, drinks, etc: We were discussing coming up with a name for the show and someone came up with "bed", prompting Holly to draw a cute little symbol of a bed. I think this is a really nice idea in itself, and fitting for the work of some of us, but we'll see how things progress. We want to make posters and are going to share pictures on Facebook until we agree upon a good image to use. As far as drinks go, we would like to have some as they're a staple of openings. We quite fancied having a mystery punch, as this was something that went over really well in last term's Elbow Room.

We have two weeks to hone these ideas, and then we have to set it all up!

My plan for what I'm showing is a wall collage, assembled very messily with sticky tape from a folder of collected drawings, paintings, and other collected images. This will be a test of this mode and I'm hoping to (if it works well) show an extended version of the same principle in the final degree show.

Visualising Soft Sculptures

In a potential future installation, I'd like to make some doll sculptures to sit alongside my book and other things - to bring the book's world into reality. I want them to look purposefully crude and childish, but also adequately reminiscent of my character drawings. These are some general plans about the look and feel of the dolls I'd like to make.

MCP writing planning/methods

I had my first MCP tutorial this week with a small group of students (there were 7 of us). We described our research and focus to each other and then had to explain each other's projects to the group, the idea being that we could pinpoint what parts of our objectives aren't perhaps very clear to an audience. We also discussed methods of getting the work done, and were given these hand outs. I've definitely brainstormed ideas in this haphazard sort of way, although I tend to lean more towards lists to get ideas out of or into my head (although in many cases very messy lists!).

In order to organise my time at the moment, I've started keeping a box of notes. I use a small notepad to make several different lists each day - a general to-do list and more specific ones, lists of things to do daily, or lists of questions or things to look into regarding certain ideas or categories. I find that organising through multiple lists works really well for me, and I can revisit past lists easily if I store them in a dedicated box (looking back on previous lists often provides new ideas or reinvigorates old ideas that I can revisit or elaborate on). There is also a great website called listography.com which I use when I want a digital list. Sometimes I write down a lot of things quickly on a page and then transpose that into an easy to digest list, It means all my ideas are syphoned off onto paper and I don't have to worry I've forgotten something because I know I've written everything down and can thus concentrate fully on one task.

My MCP draft is reasonably close to being complete now, but I need to make sure I'm still working away at it, because some of the bits that are left to retool are quite tough bits. I find it so hard to keep going sometimes after I've been working on a piece of writing for a long time (I've been writing this essay for several months) but I've found it quite encouraging to go through the essay so far with someone else and discuss with them how I can change and expand sections. Having someone else look at your work can give you a fresh perspective and make you feel motivated again.

It also just feels very rewarding to have successfully improved a part of your essay, so I think it's good for me to remember to work small in order to really concentrate on one section and not get overwhelmed, as well as to ask someone else to give me some feedback - I don't need to completely rely on myself reading my essay again and again, desperately trying to figure out a way to change something.

Notes & exhibition ideas following first stage 3 tutorial

The main conclusion I could gather from my tutorial with Richard is that I need to concentrate on/plan for future assessments and ultimately the degree show and really figure out something that I'd like to show that is big enough and bold enough and sure enough. My 360 book is a great little world, but for exhibition purposes I really want to be aiming at bring that world out into a bigger space (like the picture of my wall below, covered with pink paintings).

I have sketched & brainstormed some ideas for a small installation space reminiscent of my original 'Lilly's Clubhouse' placement exhibition idea. I think it would be really fun to have a little corner with all sorts of things poking out of it - shelves, sculptures, paintings, collage, trinkets, my 360 book, and maybe other homemade books of some kind. There are lots of possibilities and I really have to explore this now and try to show something bigger and more world-like.

Dalston Anatomy

Lorenzo Vitturi's show at The Photographer's Gallery focuses on the incredible depth of colour and culture he sees in Dalston. In an interview with Time Out*, he explains that he has "always been interested in states of precariousness." It is clear that, like me, Vitturi has an affinity with the moment - those beautiful and unique instances all around us, thousands and millions of them new and then gone, over, every day. Vitturi says: "Using all this organic stuff like fruit from the market, photography is the only way capture it - otherwise something might only last for five minutes." The transience and expiration of the things/moments pictured in his photographs are integral to his practice, and he marvels in the unique joy of each one.

*The interview is here.

Paper Trail (an inspiring collaborative project)

image via Rookie

This morning I came across this collaborative collage project posted here on Rookie Magazine. The two collaborators describe their build up of "daunting" unused materials and their efforts to finally overcome them together. This was the perfect thing for me to come across today, as whether working collaboratively or not it's always worth being reminded that materials are there to be used. Everything is transient, including all forms of my produced art, and regarding them as special can get in the way of making, moving, shifting, recycling, etc. The only constant is change.

Further Thoughts On Collaboration

Following my previous post on LAB451, performance art, and my ideas for creating collaborative artworks, I have discovered a couple of useful/relevant/interesting things today. The first is a blog in which an artist details her (reluctant, at first - on her part) collaborations with her daughter. Her daughter essentially demanded that this artist share her sketchbook. Whilst the artist was initially peeved at this idea, she soon discovered that co-creating with her daughter was incredible fun. This blog post is here, and the most delightful part talks about the child's unashamed derision of her mother's artistic choices.

The second thing I found is an article by Brian Sherwin, titled "Collaboration in Art -- mutual respect, mutual work, mutual exposure". In it, he discusses the potentially beneficial effects of collaboration. Sensitivity is mentioned. It's true that artists often work in their own worlds. Art can be very solitary and personal, so often in order to collaborate effectively, artists must struggle through their psychological responses and habits. Anyone reading this is likely to have struggled through agonising group work at some point. Working with others can be exhausting, stressful, and downright impossible. If a collaboration is successfully traversed, however, it does offer some fantastic benefits. There is a great scope for learning through working with others. Collaboration forces people to address and modify their methods and barriers. This can easily be a disaster with the wrong people/situation, but with the right components in place it is ideal. Artists should recognise the importance in continuous re-evaluation, progression, and improvement. The right collaboration can facilitate just that.

LAB451 at Camden Image Gallery, performance, and collaboration

LAB451

I don't get to see much performance art very often usually, but my band recently performed at a performance art focused event in Camden. Performance is effectively a component in every artwork through the process of creating it and the process of showing it. These actions can be termed performance and can be viewed through the lens of performance. Performance art is not something I directly and purposefully interact with in my art practice, however I perform in a musical context, and in a wider sense my art practise concerns itself with the methods via which I make art and the emotive transmissions and transferences therein.

I made a video journal depicting the night at LAB451 which is viewable below.

During our performance, my band/duo (Rescue A Family) played projected videos with each song. My bandmate, Ed, usually controls visual filters and effects as we play. Different effects are assigned to a series of knobs which increase or decrease effects as they are turned one way or the other. We wanted to invite audience participation after our initial performance by running our videos and allowing people to play with our effects as Ed does as we perform.

COLLABORATIVE ART

In tandem with my MCP essay (currently titled "Why Do People Reject Themselves As Artists?") I have been increasingly interested in collaborative art. My art practice has always been very solitary, and following criticisms of it's insular nature and accessibility concerns it seems it might be an idea to work with other people as a way of pushing myself towards work that is more comprehensible and purposeful. I particularly would like to collaborate on projects with people who are reluctant or shy about art.

I'm interested in bringing "non artists" (or as I like to refer to them, the "artistically dormant") into my art practise and into art making generally, as an exercise that would serve to create bonds between both us as people, and between my collaborate and art. Functionally, I sort of want to drag someone into art against their will.

I have elicited several drawings from my boyfriend - a person who doesn't really draw. I thought a nice way of making "unwilling" collaborative art would be to collect requested drawings and then myself organise them into a college, which I can then embellish. Thus the collaboration is completed without directly collaborative participation from my collaborator. Sneaky.

I have attempted to have us both draw alongside each other in a booklet, but (as is evidently the natural fearful response of someone who is not really used to drawing) he tends to locate his drawings far away from mine and usually with quite a lot of blank space around them. This doesn't really work for collaborative purposes as he instinctively distances his drawings from mine (as well as from each other). This is the reason I came up with the idea of my doctoring of his images as a means to construct collaborative artworks, as that way he can contribute in a passive way to a collaborative project - the only way it would be possible (unless he shed his artistic instincts and barriers).

Malika Favre

Favre's use of colour and shape to suggest object, faces, and scenarios with a minimal approach is really interesting.The power of suggestion is smartly employed, all the shapes together suggest thickly detailed scenes, where our imagination is allowed to give each piece a sense of largeness through the absence of lines and object boundaries.