Third Year Practice - Sampling

Third Year Practice - Sampling

When I began sampling, I looked back over all the work that I had created or collected through out this brief. What struck me the most were my bus movement drawings, which I had printed onto acetate, I did this because I wanted the line to be the main focus and not the background. I loved that you could only see the line on the transparent paper, making the audience focus on the movement within the line giving it a new quality. This was my starting point for my samples. These particular samples are created using a mixture of hand stitch, running stitch and chain stitch, with ordinary black thread. I decided to run over these stitches on a domestic sewing machine in order to make them less rigid and neat, as I was trying to create movement in my samples. I think this worked very well as it gives off the same shaky effect that the original bus movement drawings do. These samples are literal translations of the bus movement drawings, I lay my fabric over the top and traced the movement. 

The circe is something that has come about by accident, originally the circle was just the fabric that I cut out of the embroidery hoop, however, I think that the circle works well and I have been trying to find a way to relate that idea back to my work in order for it to make sense and relate to my brief. 

Third Year Practice - Research

Third Year Practice - Research 

(Art Bin, 2010 installation view, South London Gallery, London - Taken from www.thomasdanegallery,.com)

('Sweep To Victory' 1996 -Michael Landy- Taken from www.tate.org.uk)

This artist was suggested to me in a tutorial and I was told that he would be very inspirational to my work. Michael Landy created a piece called ‘The Breakdown’ where he took an inventory of every single item that he owned, created drawings of items and writing little notes about why he has then and what they meant to him, and then burnt everything so he was left with nothing. I found this work very inspiring, if not a little odd. I loved the idea of taking an inventory of things, perhaps not on the scale that he has, but perhaps an inventory of things I see at that exact moment, or things in my bag or pocket. I could take this further by taking an inventory of other peoples things, making a list and creating drawings of them. I liked the idea of things meaning different things to people, one mans trash is another mans treasure idea.

Third Year Practice - Collection

Third Year Practice - Collections

My work is focusing on turning data into something visual and I am really struggling with this idea. I feel that everything that could be done with this topic has already been done and that I cannot take it much further. I also found that it was very graphic based and struggled to find inspiration within this topic. I decided to take a step back and look though my blog and sketchbook to find where I was really going with this work. The word ‘collection’ came up a lot and it was a word I used to describe my work so I started from there. Instead of looking at my work as ‘data’ I started looking at it as a ‘collection’. I started my research again and found a lot of inspiration and context, which is helping with my brief. I am beginning to look at my final outcome to be something of a collection of things, perhaps things people do not care about or want anymore, such a bus tickets, receipts, empty wrappers, etc.

( 'Louise Bourgeois – Aller-Retour’, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria, 2006 © Kunsthalle Wien / Photo: Stephan Wyckoff)

('Louise Bourgeois – Aller-Retour’, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria, 2006 © Kunsthalle Wien / Photo: Stephan Wyckoff)

Louise Bourgeious is becoming a huge contextual influence on my work. When reflecting back I realized that I had a collection of drawings and would like them to be accompanied into my final idea. I like her work, especially her drawings, as they are always displayed as a collection, rather than just a single drawing. This is very influential of my work and something I would like to bring to my own brief. Her work is displayed in simple frames and placed next to each other in a simple manor, perhaps not to take away from the drawings. I really like this concept of displaying the work. The frames is something that I am unsure about however I do like the liner and very rigid way that she displays her work, almost as to be viewed as one large piece rather than individual pieces. I really like the concept of creating a large scale piece but it being created using smaller pieces.

Third Year Practice - My Work

Third Year Practice - Collecting Data

After collecting a visual representation of movement and data with my bus drawings. I decided I wanted a literal version of my movement, a very simple document and way of showing where I travelled too. I found an app, which is a version of a pedometer. This app runs in the background of my phone and counts the steps that I take everyday. I have decided to have this app running throughout my whole practice brief as an ongoing account of movement and data. I like this literal translation of data as you can see the movement without seeing the travelling. It's the opposite of my bus drawings, one is the amount of steps and one is the travelling. I would like to incorporate this idea within to my brief and perhaps use it as a side line during unit x as a way of displaying all the travelling that I have done throughout the whole third year.

Third Year Practice - My Work

Third Year Practice - Collecting Data

This is the starting point of my work. I have started collecting all manor of things in order to have as much variety a possible. My collection seem to focus a lot on travel and transport, as I travel into university, so it was suggested to me that I focus my work towards documenting travel and movement, something which interested me. I was set the task of collecting data and then trying to find a way of during that data into a visual representation of what I had collected.

I created some recordings of movement whilst I was on the bus, holding a pen on a piece of paper and letting it feely move according to when the bus moved. I really like these recordings, as it is a different way of capturing travel, rather than just creating a drawing of what I see. What interests me about these images, is that you can see what was happening whilst I was creating them, for example, the small, tight images show that there was a lot of traffic that day and I wasn’t really moving, whereas the large, free drawings show that the bus was moving fast.

Third Year Practice - Research

Third Year Practice - Artists Research 

(Taken from Keri Smiths website - www.kerismith.com)

 When starting a new brief, I always indulge in artist research. It is my favourite part of a brief and I like to think that it is one of my strengths. My first source of research is Keri Smith. She is an artist that creates an instruction manual for people in order for them to document their lives or collect data. She publishes a book that has a list of instructions in them for people to follow. Her work is very heavily based on collecting data and objects. Her idea is to capture as much of the un known as possible. This is part of my inspiration for my brief. I will use her ideas and instructions as a starting point for my own brief. This will give me a basic starting point in my primary research in order to then start building up my own data.