INSTALLATION PICTURES

TODAY

Today I set up s(crap)s in the cupboard. It took about 4 hours and the final layout came about through trial and error - I have been collecting objects and bringing them to the studio throughout the week and today I just moved them about the room until I felt that each object was in its right place. Some items were bought over the weekend, some I had at home, and some I already had at uni. I don't think it would have been possible to plan the installation fully, not only because I was uncertain of the size of the room, but because the idea of improvisation and an ever changing space ties in with the idea of using the internet as a temporary digital space. 

The prep work that I did basically consisted of making lists of what needed to be done and what objects I was planning on using, like this: 

INSTALLATION LIST

• extension lead
• sphere light + remote
• round glass bowl
• plastic fish
• disco ball 
• horse light
• fairy statue
• pink silk
• tape recorder
• tapes 
• tinsel curtain 
• blu tack 
• chair
• table 
• plinth ? 
• flowers (fake and dead) 

The room has ended up becoming about tat, how instagram stories are like cyber-tat, how we hoard useless items, hoarding fleeting documentation online. 

Most people who have been in the room so far come out with comments of how it was funny or entertaining, my favourite comment is that it's like the 'physical embodiment of a meme'. 2 people also came out saying it was disturbing, which I thought was really interesting as I wasn't really aiming for that and I normally am in my work.  

 - most people have put videos on their Instagram stories.

Dani told me it made her think of this video: 

I guess the tackiness / over the top quality of the whole thing ??? I really appreciated it anyway. 

Getting people's feedback is honestly so intriguing and beneficial because I get to see my work through their eyes, and it means different things to different people. 

This is my first large-scale installation, and I actually really enjoyed directing a space in this way. Personally, it was a great test to my confidence because I am still working on how to unapologetically take up space + filling this room with something that is so very obviously mine was cathartic, like a release of anxiety that I turned into a shiny, neon bubble. 

Last week during my print workshop induction, I learnt how to make a screen print - at the time I wasn't planning on using it with this installation project, but I was planning on sticking posters around uni and the prints actually seem to fit with the room. Additionally, I made them with no intention of giving them a purpose, and was just going to keep them for no reason - fitting with the idea of throwaway content. I put up a few posters today in the Street and the Canteen, and tomorrow I  think I will put some more up as I still have some prints left. I also posted about it on Instagram and Facebook to reach out to more people and because I feel that this project was born there. 

Tomorrow I am bringing in my camera to document the installation, I'm thinking of making a short film as well as taking photographs, but it depends on which one I feel captures the room best. I'm interested to see how many people go in / how they react / how the room might change. 

PROGRESS

Things I have completed:

- sound piece and then recorded it onto a cassette tape

- Lizzie McGuire text piece 

On Friday I set aside the day to create the sound piece that will essentially be the centre of my installation. Initially I planned to simply play a repeated recording of myself reciting the written piece s(crap)s, but when it came to it the recording ended up sounding too stern and also I hate the sound of my own voice, so I wanted to add to it to kind mask my voice but also give the piece more of its own atmosphere. 

~~~ Perpetuating this idea of throwaway digital content, snippets of people's lives they share with hundreds to thousands of people then it's gone, and the next one pops up and it's like a temporary memento, like an online stream of consciousness, layers of sounds = overload of stimulation from social media, a room full of people talking at the same time trying to talk louder than each other, checking their views, not necessarily in a narcissistic way but more in a way of just documenting humanity and watching people watch you, viewing yourself as an online persona as a type of thing online as a brand??? Like how the Kardashians have become their own brand, like how we present these vignettes of our life in a way that will fit with your online brand and then it disappears and you make a new one / INHABITING A TEMPORARY DIGITAL SPACE ~~~

{ Comments on my sound piece so far: 

- like the Arthur Jafa video 

- visualised as pink and ice blue, like the cover of a barbie DVD

- sounds colourful, it’s got movement, sounds like walking into a very big very busy very overcrowded japanese toy and gadget store }

At a contemporary dance class last Tuesday, we learnt a movement sequence to a piece of music by Philip Glass and it struck a chord with me. Since then I have been listening to his music without any intention of tying it to my own work, but as I began recording s(crap)s I played a piece of music called KYOKO'S HOUSE ("stage blood is not enough") to fill in the silence and release some of the tension I felt when recording myself. Following on from this, I realised that it could really build a good foundation for my sound piece if I were to have an instrumental background (it also meant I had a timing template to collage the other sounds onto and figure out how long I should make the piece). The result is this emotive atmosphere is created, and the sound clips have more emphasis in the piece. 

After finishing my sound piece on GarageBand, I played it out loud and recorded it onto a tape player. I'm hitting this idea of nostalgia, 'a simpler time', and reflecting on throwaway culture as a permanent fixture - giving the void that people yell into a physical body, keeping it on tape and shifting the weight of it. The conversation with an uber driver is the weight of the 10 seconds it takes to watch, but on a tape player there's gravity and you can rewind it and play it as many times as you want s o it's heavy and it's held in your hands it's on a table. I've only recorded the piece once onto tape, so the viewer has to interact and rewind the tape themselves. 

Another thing I have completed is turning a line from the written piece into a banner, like something from a kids party.

I drew and cut out the letters freehand, which gives it this DIY feel but the blue shiny paper is reminiscent of a web space. I plan to hang this on one of the walls in the installation room, but I have to be careful not to make it the centrepiece of the room, as I'm hoping there will be no one thing that dominates the whole room, rather a collection of objects that make up a space. 

ACTION PLAN (ROUGH)

Guidelines of how to manage my time before the installation takes place.

INSTALLATION INITIAL IDEAS 2.5

This David Shrigley post from Instagram that I saved: turning an ordinary object into something bigger than it is, giving importance to small things, literally cementing something that is impermanent like a shopping list, a monument to the things we throw away, putting time into something made in 2 minutes, something that is fleeting.

INSTALLATION INITIAL IDEAS 2

Josh Kline at Modern Art

I thought of this piece when the idea for using a tape recorder came to mind - the whole installation is basically built around this tape recorder I bought off Amazon. On it I am going to play a recording of myself reciting a piece I wrote titled s(crap)s, which is a poem I put together using a combination of notes from my phone/ipod/laptop, pieces I had written on Pages, and random thoughts that occurred when collecting the text. 

This text piece has been influenced by my reading of Darcie Wilder's Literally Show Me A Healthy Person, wherein she compiles tweets she has made into a book that is a poetic insight into our intimacy with social media, and the intimacy we share on social media. 

In previous work this term I have been extracting Facebook statuses from a friend Claire Eady, turning them into digital text pieces and printing them. 

An extract from my recent report elaborates on this: 

Within my own work I am fascinated by the effect of human nature on the digital world and vice versa. How a person exists online versus how they exist when you shake their hand. In my recent text pieces I am essentially examining a particular person, my friend Claire Eady, as a Facebook entity, by taking her statuses, which could be seen as throwaway digital content (something that appears fleetingly before it is scrolled past and left lingering in cyberspace) and immortalising them in printed work. These words permeate through the  physical, to the digital, then back to the physical realm. 

This is what I aim to continue doing in this installation piece - I'm calling it s(crap)s after the poem it features - and I hope to create a sense of the in-between, of being in a space unidentifiable in any dimension. 

A sketchbook page featuring the title of Darcie Wilder's book alongside a drawing of one of Claire's Facebook profile pictures (Chloe Sevigny shot a pumpkin) and the caption it had (7yay) 

I have booked an installation space in the studio for Wednesday and Thursday of next week, in the hope that it will take the morning of Wednesday to set up, and the rest of the time it will be open for people to venture into. 

(Issues to take into consideration: rewinding the tape? Should I leave it playing or leave it up to the viewer to play?) 

INSTALLATION INITIAL IDEAS

I usually find that it just takes one thing to set off a new idea, and this installation concept began when I came across this image from @imsorry.dad's Instagram story:

Something about the feeling of nostalgia through objects, growing up alongside rapidly developing technology, becoming a grown up with the digital intertwined (becoming a grown up), Simple Pleasures, when GameBoys came in different colours and colours were something to get excited about, plastic, pretend things imitating real things. 

Following on with the ideas of 

- the digital / physical 

- artificial replications of natural things

- nostalgia / simple aesthetic pleasures

I have collected some initial thoughts and artworks that are inspiring my installation concept.

Alex Wallbaum + Aleia Murawski

creating new worlds / space age / dreamscape / curating a mess 

Phone note: