Before moving onto slogans, I have significantly shortened the longer texts that I have used for audio previously in the installations to try out a new approach- condense information that I give to my audience in bite-sized manner so that it is easier to digest, while they focus on other elements of the installation. I have also taken on the approach of repeating the same phrase, so it becomes like a mantra.
`Life is not about essays... Modern writing should be bite-sized`- Douglas Coupland
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I have also analised the text and came to realisation that it can be divided in several categories- the one that describes a physical experience of the body, mental experience or gives directions from the point of view of a therapist- narrator
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Furthermore, I have also decided to substitute the audio by a written text so that the audience `gets their own voice` participating in the experience- making it more personal.
I have planned to develop this idea in silk screen printing, however, due to the unexpected quarantine situation needed to adapt and discovered a digital expression in my text work that I have used in the final body of work( reflected in the Degree Show section of the site.
Each column on the clothes rack I have arranged according to a category of the text with the aim to guide audience through an experience of mental, physical and guided meditation.
Black and white classic typeface seen in documents expressed through silk screen printing- black ink on white cotton. The process of printing itself reflects the repetititive and orderly quality of the corporate World.
Removing the audio element and let the text speak in each viewer`s mind through the work- let their voice speak in its diversity, being easily readable and perceivable through its simplicity.
Background, age, and ethnicity of a narrator control the perception of the text.
Jenny Holzer` Inflammatory Essays` ( 1979-1982) -
`I use bold black typeface to reflect the urgency of the text and the issues that it speaks, but also to make it stand out on the street.`
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The power of language forms the base of my work
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Posters of commercial style, partly using texts already written, a lot of them political
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Douglas Coupland ` Slogans for the 21 st Century
(2011- present)
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When did we discover the future? Everything happened so quickly, the current generation did not have time to digest it
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Posters of commercial office style with short statemnets written by the artist, reflecting the urgency for the commercial world to stop and think
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Do you feel connected or put into a corner?
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Do you find that stress puts your mind out of order?
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For your thoughts and words to be deciphered, reconnect with your senses through this calming aroma
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A safe place to explore can be found in this corner
In this version of the text I have developed for the Weightless Space at the library of the college, I have used specifications of the space- a corner as the central metaphor. It reflects how people may feel under pressure and hopeless in the modern hectic world, if the perception is changed, they can reach a meditative state and corner could become a safe space.
I have experimented with presenting a smaller clothes rack that I have developed for the corner of the library in a project space, also in the corner. In comparison to the library, because it was more visible,it had an added sculptural quality, the antennas i it even made it look like a piece of technology, which I found interesting. It also in its visual characteristics and dimensions was compared to a human figure by my peers.
The aroma did not get contained in the corner unlike in the library as there was no border in between, it got dispursed and only was felt when one brought their nose right up to the sculpture.
Audio perception and presentation
Wireless speaker imbedded within cushions and a set of headphones connected to a MP 3 player?
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It was a dilemma for me as, having experimented with both, I understood that one gives what the other does not and everyone prefers a different experience.
While I have got a feed back in regards to headphones that it nums the other senses and makes them concentrate mor eon the audio, I also was told and noticed that some people would refrain from putting headphones on for hygiene reasons.
Sound through the speaker worked well in the studio assessment set up as most of the sound work around it had earphones.
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A faint sound of an audio played on a wireless speaker as opposed to headphones
Contrast of black and white - white cube space, bold thicker black frame of a heavy duty clothesrack
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Lavender placed in larger bags- dispersion of the aroma in a larger open space
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White string stretched on a black frame in a more geometric manner
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Areas of tension? Endless move between the changes of clothes
Browsing busy streets for the new ones to put on
Stress on a daily basis?
While being pulled apart having to move on
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Constantly looking for a Wi- Fi password?
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You could be suffering from CBD
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Compulsive browsing disorder affects 97% of urban clothes racks
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Take three deep breaths - in and out
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Feel the soothing aroma of lavender embedded within these pouches of textile ...
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Above: In this version of the text have taken a different approach, where I have divided it into rhythms and intentions, to reflect the journey I aim to take the audience through- a commercial consumerism to anxiety to a relaxation in the spa. It reflects the journey most people living in the cities have. What was different this time around with the recording is that it was not my own voice but that of one female and male actors that I knew. I wanted to experiment with how this would affect perception.Most people, even female, could relate to the male voice as it made them to visualise the text more. Still there was a lot of debate on whether I should include different ethnicities and ages. Below are the audios that came from that.
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Your tight muscles are stretched like hundreds of strings on that metal frame making patterns of knots
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Your busy heavy head rests on them
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Every working day it yearns to finally feel the softness of resting on a pillow again, right from the time you get up
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Take three deep breaths- in and out- feel the soothing aroma of lavender embedded within these pouches of textile
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Sense the rough patterns of knots in your entire body turn into smooth lines
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From the beginning of this year, I have started developing the text and the sculptural elements of the installation, hand in hand, where one was an inspiration and a source for the other. I was aiming to create a text that would be visually reflected in the objects making up the installation. I was thinking of metaphorical meanings and associations used in guided meditations and Nidra Yoga.
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Strings tied to a metal frame of the clothes rack reflect muscles stretched on a skeleton that are tied in knots due to an incorrect posture and stress, cushions are also tied in knots unable to be a relaxing object as the body needs something more to be relaxed- the mind needs to be influenced to fall into a meditative state.
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I combine a narrative of an experience of a city dweller with a guided meditation from a therapist.
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Below: The audio with the first vesrion of the text I released for assessment in October
Employing a principle of an eye pillow filled with dried lavender that we use at the spa in the context of a fine art installation to produce a source of an aroma that will be calming and rebalancing, help to create that space of calm within the larger space of the gallery. My aim with that is to bridge the spa world and the fine art world where one enhances the other.
Audio Above: A recording of me analyzing the reoccurring pattern in client`s concerns in regards t the tension they experience in the body due to a stress of their hectic city lifestyle and how they are glad to finally lie down , as well as how eye pillow and clothes rack- main elements in this new series of installations came about as metaphors
Looking back at my personal genuine experience with inside and outside of the human body on the daily basis, influenced a new direction in my work at the beginning of the second year of the course. I have realised that in my job as a therapist i was constantly leading conversations with other people, my clients, in regards to the inner body being affected by a human reaction to the conditions of the invironment, how the inner gets neglected by focusing mainly on the outer. I decided to take on the approach of creating a relationship between an object in installation and text to create a network of sensory stimuli that would draw into inside while making a viewer aware of the outside, however not to focuse on it, visually.
The approach of visualising the outside being reflected in the inside that i have been developing during the first year paradoxically tended to remove a viewer from their bodies as sculptures ended up being organic, to a greater or lesser extent, reflecting surroundings in them or allowing the audience to look through them onto the surroundings. They did not draw the viewer`s attention inside their own body. If i gave sculptures more physical characteristics of a human flesh, it would have produced an effect of disgust .
How do infrastructures in our rooms relate to the infrastructures of our bodies?
Do they ever become one- an extension of one another?
Window is a metaphor for the window into the soul- a portal to the public outside world from the private inner world.
Can we look at ourselves through our bodies?
Combining artificial with natural, where one reflects in the other
Jonathan Baldock `Facecrime` Camden Arts Centre (2019)
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These totem pole like, cylindrical organic sculptures that i saw in this show by the artist inspired a development of an audio, aroma and scent element. The artist embedded audio into these structures making them into sort of characters of their own, he has purposely chosen textures of the carpet for instance to display them on. They were about that relationship between inside out- insides spurting out, with addition of the other senses
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It also influenced my development of that idea of looking through the void onto the outside world and a network of tubes as a visual language to reflect the body as a structure made ourt of tubes.
Light shining from the inside of an organic structure- a body
Transforming something organic into slick, polished and shiny, metal like by a means of glazing
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Left:
A video shot in a collaboration with a friend, who is a professional film maker. Thee intention for it was to show the process of making but also to explore the concept behind making those sculptures for Sparks
Here i position myself as a creator of this malleable incredible `creature` that i have made from a mass of clay by forming it with my hand, carving a network of blood vessels into it, like breathing life, almost
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I was conscious about the story of first human beings Adam and Eve, being created out of a piece of clay.
Clay is a product of the earth- the human body comes from the earth and disappears into the earth, when dies.
Kiki Smith: " You see how much of your life surrounds those liquids. Semen and saliva are social and political, and also extremely personal. Diarrhea is one of the largest killers of children" ( Frankel and Weitman, 2003,18)
Left: Untitled (1986) by Kiki Smith displayed at Whitney Museum Of American Art.Here, the artist represents a human body as a series of 12 jars with names of bodily fluids written on them.
Julia Kristeva in The Powers Of Horror An Essay On Abjection ( 1982) :
"The `abject` has only one quality of the object- `that of being opposed to I "(Kristeva, 1982,1)
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"Refuse and corpses show me what I permanently thrust aside in order to live" (Kristeva, 1982, 3)
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Taking a human intestine- colon as a visual source for a creation of an aesthetically pleasing object which fascinates with its formal characteristics. Taking an abject to create an object in order to highlight that its not
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Balloon Dog( Yellow) by Jeff Koons from Celebration Series as a part of Jeff Koons On The Roof at MMA, New York (Apr 22nd- Oct 26th 2008
Glorification of a pop culture. Similar balloon sculptures would be sold in a circus for children. Commercialization of everything, including innocence.Removal of everything raw and pure
Images of a human colonoscopy - a camera into the inner intimate world- one of its main tube like vessels.A journey through a network of inner tubes to spot of there are any imperfections, such as polyps
I often feel the pressure of this slick, commercialised outer World at which i can not look through my insides. It feels like i need to suck them up, neglect their existence and their raw beauty, formal complexity that takes my curiosity as an artist
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A network of prolonged clear baloons, making a sculpture through which you look out at the environment is a metaphor for me for the Inner becoming transparent to the outer world , where they combine into `One`, unapologetically.