DAY 1

Since reviewing the lecture and seeing other artist's collections I am quite inspired to create my own. My preferred of the collections is Bernd and Hilla Becher's Gas Tanks, as they collected something that is passive, forgotten, ignored in most landscapes. During our photography session outside I was looking for different things to capture. As Archway is a busy area with substantial traffic, I thought of photographing seating surfaces (in other words, places where people sit). I (consensually) photographed people sitting on bus stops, public benches, cafe's, or even on surfaces that maybe were not built for sitting - the stairs on the entrance to a building, a table, or scaffolding by a construction site. I will continue to explore this idea with my collection.

DAY 2

After discussing my ideas with my peers and my tutors I have changed the direction of my collection. Partially inspired by my journey to Archway, I had been considering the idea of collecting 'the invisible'. Yesterday and today on my way to CSM I have passed two buskers in the Underground. Though I have never given it much thought I do think it is a strange place to be busking - though it does provide buskers with a large audience, most people will not pay much attention to instrumentalists. On very few occasions I have stopped to listen to buskers. I looked online to see how an artist can qualify to play in the tube and there seems to be a rigorous interview process involved. It is even listed as a tourist attraction, so perhaps Transport For London (TFL) takes a percentage of Busker's revenues in the tube. Using photographs I have of buskers I will create one-line drawings, imitating the chords of a musical instrument.

DAY 3

On the third day, we formed small groups to criticize our work. One classmate would play the role of a collector and another would play the role of the critic. I collected their perspectives and critiques of my work. 

Collector’s perspective

• it looks like all the figures belong in the same band. The cup represents the people on the street, this is the start of this band's career
• the quality of the sketch is amazing, good fast sketching. the lines look like cables that the band should use to plug in the speakers.

Critic’s perspective

• Maybe changing the presentation, put it in a frame, or on some card / thicker paper, mounted.

My own perspective

• For this project, I photographed buskers on the metro. I found the underground to be an interesting venue for musical performances as the audience is fluid and constantly shifting.
• Part of what piqued my interest is that each time I stopped to photograph a busker, I was shocked by the talent. 
• In my collection, I collected small drawings of the buskers created with one line, suggestive of a cord or a string from a musical instrument. I then attempted to link them all together to form one long cord and to link up my collection.

Overall I do agree that there were better ways to present my collection. I regret not being more ambitious with my project and taking it further - perhaps buying used instruments and taking them apart, or creating an interactive artwork with recordings of each Busker singing. However I think I should not limit myself and potentially revisit these ideas in the future. 

DAY 1

The Material News lecture has been very helpful in broadening my understanding of sculpture. I personally found Damien Ortega’s work the most inspiring - which is no surprise as his 'The Independent' series is the inspiration of the Material News sculpture unit. Besides Ortega, the other great range of artists has made me consider different mediums and approaches I could take with my own work. For my chosen article, I chose a piece written by the Guardian about the forest fires in the Amazon, which discusses the political regime in Brazil that allowed the fires to spread.

DAY 2 & 3

Since deconstructing my article further and understanding the bigger picture behind these political landscapes, I decided to create a sculpture using objects I could source myself and objects I create myself. After discussing with my tutor, he suggested I look into Joseph Beuys and his 1969 artwork, 'The Pack', which I found extremely helpful. Many of the ideas enveloped in Beuys' work I think I would like to take with me and include in my own work. I have been considering wrapping my artwork in a medium of some sort. One of my classmates used string to wrap the surface of her entire artwork, though I feel that the political undertones of my artwork should be reflected throughout. I may melt or burn my artwork and perhaps make it a performance, however, I think I will simply paint my artwork in a singular color, making it uniform. Meanwhile, I have been visiting the wood and plastic workshops to create some of my objects. I have made golf pins and cigars of plastic, inspired by Vija Celmins 'To fix the image in memory'.

DAY 4

This morning I decided I would spray paint my artwork red, covering the entire surface. During the crit session, I tried to see if my classmates could decipher the artwork, as it is very different and vague compared to some of my older work. A few students were able to understand the political undertones of the artwork. One student stated that my artwork seemed like it was selling a lifestyle to an audience, which I thought was an interesting perspective. Though no students were able to guess the original article that inspired my artwork, I am pleased with the outcome of this unit.

1. How has your relationship with sound changed during the creation of your outcomes? Has this revealed more about your understanding of sound ability to reveal the new world around you? Or does sound constantly undermine our relationships with reality via its abstraction?

2. What happens to sound once it is recorded?

3. How did the use of your smartphone influence the way in which you approached sound recording? Was it more problematic as a medium, or did it make it more personal because of your relationship to your smartphone?

 DAY 1

Since viewing the lecture I've been inspired by the different artists and their works. Though my background has mostly consisted of photorealism, I am excited to explore more abstract and conceptual painters during this unit. To initiate the process I brought in images of architecture, wildlife, and nostalgic locations. Using an image of the 'Llotja', a cathedral from my hometown in Mallorca, I have tried to expand and draw what would go beyond the image. Its quite an intriguing process as part of it has come from memory, but part of it is also from following the patterns and perspectives form the small photo. I also have images from my mother's youth which I would like to manipulate in case this is an area of interest.

DAY 2

During this production day, I wanted to branch out and attempt using different mediums, so I purchased different types of papers at the art shop. Meanwhile, I enlarged and colorized photos of my mother from the 80s she did for an art project. I have then recreated portions of the original photos on acetate using acrylic paints. I would like to create an abstract arrangement with these sheets of acetate so I will continue to experiment and evaluate my options.

DAY 3

I was very pleased with the feedback I received during the crit. It was intriguing to see the number of narratives this artwork produced by other people. One student mentioned my artwork was suggestive of a crime scene, which I thought was a clever interpretation of my work. Some other students believed it was a piece about women's roles in society, ultimately a feminist artwork. While I enjoyed all the interpretations, my artwork was really about the close relationship I share with my mother but how her contrasting youth shocks me - my mother and I are the same age in the photos I recreated of her. I am still thinking of ways I could have taken this artwork further, and would like to explore a similar concept in oil paints.

1. Consider your relationship with your chosen place. How can you advance your understanding of this site through the use of alternative methods and mediums?

2. Consider ways in which you can reveal/deny an interpretation of your chosen place

3. How was the specificity of the sitting (kings cross) affected the development of your work? Was this challenging and why?

4. How was peer criticism? What was said, and what ideas would you like to take forward?

DAY 1

After looking at Valie Export's 'Body Configurations', my group took on the task of becoming household furniture items. We pretended to be objects such as notebooks, rubbish bins, and coat hangers, filming ourselves on our phones. In turn, this would turn our performance pieces into photography-based artworks, almost losing the raw quality that is there in the real moments of a performance.

DAY 2

After the lecture, my group and I set to undertake two tasks. For the first task we, as a group, chose a stereotype for each member and then each group member had to guess what their own stereotype was. Using our mobile phones we filmed ourselves attempting to guess the stereotype we had been given, which was helpful. Many of the terms we chose were actually from this modern technological realm, such as the term influencer.

For the second task, we interviewed different girls across the campus and asked them if they had been catcalled or received verbal abuse from strangers, to which a shocking majority agreed, giving us details of their experiences. Afterward, we asked male students if they could read out some of the ale catcalls, some of the female students had received to see their reactions. 

DAY 3

On day three of 4D, we explored sound, its relationship with our environment and its significance to the world around us. In my group, we took the phrase 'drop of a pin' literally and recorded the sound of us dropping small, pin-like objects (including an actual pin) to see how the noise would become lost, in some cases simply blending with surrounding noises.

DAY 1: King's Cross

During the site visit, we were able to see the white plaster walls and the 'street' we would exhibit our works in. Though a part of me wishes we would have been able to exhibit our works in a less intimidating and less traditional area of CSM, I was already getting ideas on how I could suspend my artwork. During the site visit, I also sat down and traced the movement of people the building in my sketchbook, as we had discussed the theme of transportation earlier in the day.

WEEK 1

After the lectures and the site visits, I was especially inspired by Don Ho Suh's artworks. It had been a long time since I could deeply understand and connect with a piece of art, but I find that his cross-cultural pieces about his homes and places he identifies with were very powerful and touched close to home for me. It has definitely inspired me to pursue a similar theme during this Place unit.

WEEK 2: Exhibit & Crit

After establishing the themes I wanted to explore in this Place project, I had prepared small sketches and models of my artwork. My piece was to feature floorplans drawn from memories of my previous homes in other countries. Though I was conflicted between constructing a mobile or a simple flat lay structure, I thought it would be more interesting to lay the floorplans flat against each other (drawn on acetate) and at the end include a reflective paper that would distort the colors and shapes in its surroundings, but in a perfect moment, create a reflection of the viewers. During the crit, many people liked the use of acetate to create the floorplans, labeling it a '3D collage'. Some students suggested experimenting with the wooden structure I created to make it more discrete - perhaps using metal sheets or a thinner wooden frame as the suspension itself was quite light. Overall I was very pleased with this project and the outcome, and I have generated many new ideas I would like to explore in the future.