REFLECTION

LINK TO FULL SOUND PIECE

talking about the decadence of silk and how the tape is distorted now 

this has been a project about humans on the internet, the ways in which we live temporarily in intsagram stories and snapchats, how we tell our stories by shouting at our audience then throwing away the evidence. the temporary spaces we inhabit and the fleeting importance of the latest technology. 

Originally this piece began when I was examining Facebook statuses as non-permanent digital statements and turning them into permanent physical things. The initial plan with this installation was to focus on the idea of the marriage between nature + technology, the fresh and the synthetic - but as I re-read the poem I wrote and re-evaluated the choices I was making with my props and themes, I realised that really I was talking about who we are online in a much more metaphorical sense. We all have this desire to own the space we take up, and through social media we get the confirmation we need that this is our space and this will be new tomorrow. 

Essentially I filled a room with crap: things people don't need, things we throw away, things that have a short life span. These objects became the physical representation of my written piece, as they were things I had found - some of which I had thought about more than others - and given more importance to than originally intended. A glittery plastic apple is a temporary Christmas decoration outside of this artwork, in January it won't hold the same purpose - but within this artwork it has a purpose simply by existing, in being it's usual crappy self 24/7 and holding more gravity than it was supposed to when on sale at Wilko's. 

The importance of the tape player lies in the theme of nostalgia, and how not only are our representations of ourselves online ever-changing, but the means with which we document ourselves are changing too. Additionally, by giving a digital sound piece a physical body I have shifted its permanence and, in a way, reversed the idea of an instagram story. When we put ourselves online we move from a physical human to a version of ourselves made up of pixels and data, when a digital collection of sounds is put onto a solid tape it is now a physical being. 

An interesting aspect of this piece was the participation, and the comments I received from people who spent the 5 minutes in the room listening to the sound piece. 

comments on the piece: like walking into another world

summed up the early noughties internet 

I enjoyed hearing people's feedback as this installation ended up becoming quite personal, in that the room felt like a bedroom, looked kind of like my bedroom, in how i collect tat and display it like a museum of crap. Each person's experience will be different as everyone has different associations with the contents of the room, as well as me as the artist - where some people are disturbed, some feel it is an accurate insight into my brain. 

The two major obstacles I faced in the duration of this installation were: 
1.) Hesitation. People's uncertainty as to whether they were allowed in the room or if it was just to be seen through the window. I personally noticed a few times that people were craning their neck to see around the room from the outside, without opening the door, but once I spoke to friends from my studio about it they told me they had seen a few people enter. To improve on this, next time I would make the participation aspect more obvious - I did put a sign on the door but I feel perhaps an actual prompt from me would make people feel more invited? If I asked them face to face and told them about it? I was unapologetic about inhabiting the space but was I still nervous about it? Next time I aim to be more bold in my own self-advertising. 
I put together a film of s(crap)s, however due to copyright on the song used in the background I have not been able to upload it to YouTube, and the file is too big to upload directly onto this blog. In the film I try to capture the room to the best of my ability, but I really feel the best effect was felt when actually standing in the room with the door closed. 
This is what I wrote after taking s(crap)s down on Thursday: 


2.) Rewinding the tape - quite a few times that I went into the room to check up on everything, the tape had been left running, meaning it had to be rewound. I amended the sign I wrote next to the tape player, so the audience were asked to stop the tape once finished listening, but some people were confused as to how the player actually worked as it had been a long time since they had used one, if ever. I enjoyed the idea of audience labour, and the fact that they were required to do something in order for the piece to work, so I am not sure if I would change how I did this. Instead I could have made the instructions more clear, or perhaps mentioned to people as they went in what was required of them. 

I also feel that more people would have ventured into the room had it been up longer, but I had to take it all down the day after it was installed. This rapid existence itself could be seen as an additional commentary on our temporary online diaries and the elaborate homes we have created for ourselvesthere. 

Overall I am very pleased with the outcome of my installation project !!! (Today I got called a true artist, I put a whole chunk of myself in a cupboard for anyone to have a look at, I have to deal with a lot recently - this is my release + my safety net / happy place). 

ARTIST INSPIRATION: ALEX DA CORTE

Before creating my installation I came across Alex Da Corte's show at the Josh Lilley Gallery incidentally through my friends Instagram story. This neon dreamscape was exactly the type of atmosphere I was aiming for with my installation - a surreal space full of common objects made uncommon by their surroundings. It's a fun, colourful space remnant of something from a video game, grounded briefly through the rough texture of bricks or floorboards.  

Something kind of delicious, a thing that is tangible, hitting on our sensory pleasures (soft colours, plush carpet), fresh and futuristic and exciting. 

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: