".. cause you're on your own from here, 

so are you happy?" 

- Bo Burnham, "Make Happy"

MAPS AND NETWORKS 

I'm not gonna be little liar - it took me ages to come up with my idea for this project. Call it what you want; struggles getting started again; summer brain syndrome; lack of talent - the list goes on. But my brain just couldn't come up with anything from the trigger words "maps" and "networks". I mean, sure, I saw plenty of connections to what the two words could mean, and possible uses within art, but nothing struck me as "Holy molasses! I've found my idea!" I honestly didn't know what to do. 

It got to a point where it was physically affecting me in a negative way. I think all artists have those periods of self doubt. 

"How can I be cut out for this course, or this profession, 

if I can't come up with a single idea?"

I was desperately looking for someone to tell me what to do next. To tell me what artists to look at to get inspiration. Just someone to help me on my way. But that wasn't happening. I'm 20 years old now, and for every year that passes I've got more responsibility, without a manual for how to deal with it. I'm moving into uncharted territory. I'm in control of my own life. Sure, I'm still in uni. I know what I'm doing tomorrow, and I know what I'm doing next week because I have a timetable. But in two years - what am I doing then? Honestly, your guess is as good as mine. The future is literally a blank piece of paper that I somehow have to make sense of. Stressful thought eh? Yeah, I feel. 

"In a way my project isn't about maps, 

but rather a lack thereof."

So, how do I portray this in an art installation? This feeling of insecurity, and "on your own-ness". What I decided was actually pretty coincidental. I recently watched Marvels new series, Luke Cage. And there is this thing that all those series (Daredevil, Jessica Jones) do so so well, and that is colour themes. Daredevil has a reoccurring red tint, while Jessica Jones, and Luke Cage have purple and yellow respectively. Because this fascinated me so, I've played around with this in my personal photography a lot recently. This is why I want to portray my project through colours. How is the question. 

This lovely assortment of colour is a still from Simon Payne's work "Colour Bars". Rosie referred me to him after our tutorial, and I found his work quite inspiring. The minimalistic idea of colour and human emotions was something we both agreed would make an interesting installation, so seeing Payne's work, and how simple but impactful it is gave me some ideas for how I could do my own. 

I've decided I want to do primary colours. There are multiple reasons for this. 

• Colours are often linked to emotions. Red - anger and passion. Blue - sadness and tranquility. Yellow - happiness. All emotions we go through every day. "But how does this relate to your project about insecurity in your twenties?" I'm glad you asked! Not only are your twenties the years when you need to figure stuff out, but also "the best years of your life." So make sure you enjoy them! Right? We have so much to think about, worry about, enjoy, relax, party, experiment - is it too much? 
• They are primary colours. If you look at the colour wheel with creative eyes, it starts to look like your life. You start out simple - three colours. But then you mix them, and you have nine! And so on. It gets more complicated. This project is a requiem to leaving those first colours behind. Even if it is scary. 
• With multiple colours I can tell three stories. A sad one, a happy one, and a passionate one.

But how are you gonna tell these stories? 

I want to use morse code. I want to have each colour tell a poem or haiku that relates to that emotion through morse code. Three stories that together tell a story of growing up.

Thank you for reading.

TJ 

"omg in this shot he takes his clock off, but in a shot a minute later the clock is back on his wrist??"

Essentially the continuity supervisor, also known as the script supervisor, is the person on set who makes sure that each shot follows the same time line. If something changes in a scene, and that scene needs to be reshot or shot from a different angle, the continuity supervisor makes sure that anything that was changed during the shoot has been reset.

The continuity supervisor is in a way every departments back up, and has to make sure that at the end of the day the film can be cut together, and that it makes sense. He has to work closely with the director and the DOP, because it's important that these three roles agree on what the scene should look like.

Actually the continuity supervisor has to work very closely with every department, as its important that everyone is on the same page, so that the film is coherent. He'll also have a look at the script before shoots starts and make comments to all the different departments. These comments are used to by the departments to create the most advantageous and efficient shoot order.

TJ

"...what I want out of art, and the things that excite me, are things that help us see the historical moment that we live in." 

- Trevor Paglen, Clarice Smith Distinguished Lecture (2015)

Trevor Paglen is an artist. 

Mrs Paglen is in every fashion of the word an artist. What I mean by that is that he does literally everything. Whatever tool he needs to show the world his art - he will use, whether its a wielding iron, a camera, or a pencil. Most recently he has tackled issues such as mass surveillance and data collection. For this he won the 2016 Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Price. 

When I read about his project I immediately thought of our Maps & Networks project, because I feel like that in our modern world "mapping" things is very important. We want everything in the clear, and know what everyone is doing. His installation is compromised of images of restricted military and government areas,  and skylines showing the flight of passing drones. Multiple ways humans are trying to "map" out the world. He goes on to talk about how he feels like we are unable to see the historical moment that we are currently living in because of all the distractions we endure. I think this fits nicely with our  current project.

Another of Paglens projects is this cube that you can see to the right here -->

This project is called "Trinity Cube" and is a part of the 2015 "Don't Follow The Wind" project. This is an inaccessible art installation in the radioactive area around the power plant that exploded in Fukushima, Japan in 2011. The cubes outer layer is made of irradiated broken glass from the Fukushima Exclusion Zone, while the the cubes inner core is made from Trinitite, the mineral created on July 16, 1945 when the USA exploded the worlds first atomic bomb near Alamogordo, New Mexico. Thereby incapsulating the humans race contact with atomic power. I feel like this could also fit our project, although in a different way. When human beings discover something, we become obsessed with fully exploring it. Sometimes this leads to great discoveries that furthers our sciences, and sometimes it ends with mesmerizing destructive force. Nothing fits both these explanations better than nuclear power. Whether its for energy, like in the Fukushima Power Plant, or as a weapon in the 1945 nuclear bomb explosion. It effects everything, thus connecting it to all our lives. 

The installation will become open for the public whenever the Exclusion Zone is safe to open again. This can be anytime from the next 3 years, to the next 3000.

If any of you want to read more about this, feel free to follow this link.

http://www.dontfollowthewind.info/

TJ

"There is... a lot of work located in galleries and put on a pedestal that wouldn't hold its own on the film festival circuit, where it would be seen as very surface and shallow."

- Andrew Kötting

Andrew Kötting - who is he? 

Born 16th December 1959, Andrew Kötting grew up in Kent, and later went on to study BA Fine Art at Ravensbourne College of Art and Design; MA Mixed Media at Slade School of Art, and is currently working as an artist, writer, film maker, and is teaching Time Based Media at University for the Creative Arts.  

Widely known to be an experimental artist, following the spirit of the late David Jarman, his work ranges from running around a field pretending to ride a horse, to feature length films like Gallivant (1996) and Swandown (2012). In interviews he has claimed that he still sees himself as a performance artist even though he now does feature films.  

"I wouldn't think of myself as a feature film-maker. I'm just making longer pieces of work."

All At See - 2016

In his latest work Andrew has collaborated with his daughter Eden, who at an early age was diagnosed with a rare genetic disorder - Jouberts Syndrome - which causes a sort of underdevelopment in the cerebellum. They have also worked together in the past, for an example on his feature film, Gallivant. All At See is a companion piece to the film It's All In The Mind, and takes place at sea, featuring animated versions of Eden drawings. The video posted in the post is a compilation of Andrews recent work, including All In The Mind and All At See. 

- TJ

THINGS ARE NOT AS THEY APPEAR from andrew kotting on Vimeo.

we'll fix it in post

Now we have to make this film come to life. We are still nervous that we don't have enough footage to realise our original idea. We want to give these items a new meaning, bring them back in a new light. That's why we used the blue gloves, to give them a delicate touch, almost like a museum curator preserving precious treasures. 

We also want the sound to match the objects, not necessarily literally, but possibly a link to where we found them, or to what they were used as in their previous life. For an example: We found a lot of our items in the park, and that's why we want to have nature sounds (birds chirping, wind etc) to match those. But we also found piano notes made by a composer called Wilfred Sanderson, so we found another piece by him that we wanna use in our sound track as well. 

i love going item scavenging

So everything wasn't as simple as we thought. In Surrey you're not allowed to take objects from landfills, and lost and found boxes are also off-limits. This greatly limited our search radius, and we now had way less chances to find objects than what we originally hoped to have. 

On the first day we went to charity shops and looked for items we could use. We found some good postcards which all of us agreed nicely fit the aesthetic of the film we envisioned, and we also asked around if they had some items in the back that they might not be able to sell. This further led to some items we could use. 

On the second day of item finding Preston, Arturs, and I went to Farnham Park to see if there where any objects there that we might be able to use. We also picked some flowers and leaves. These will look really nice after we film them. 

Ah, I forgot to mention! We might be scanning the postcards, but for the rest of the items we had to figure out a different approach. That's why set up this intricate recording studio: 

As you can see it consists of a sheet of glass, held up by two tables, with a camera underneath and a white screen above. This worked really well with most of the items - some of the denser items look too dark, but the more delicate ones like plants, and a cassette tape look really nice because they're almost translucent.

We are struggling with having enough footage though. We might have to rely on found footage as well. 

the idea, and how we thought we could make it reality

So Natalie's original idea was this: 

"The main concept for my film is a moving photomontage under the theme of lost and found objects. Everything in the film must be found be the filmmakers. Even the camera has to be one found in a charity shop or second-hand shop. This includes archive footage and pieces of fabric that are found outside shops, or interesting textured nature found on the ground. 

All these things complied into a montage will create a beautiful concept with an interesting and unpredictable aesthetic. The film will begin with simplicity. A montage of  clips from archive footage will play. The layering will become more complex during the climax."

Our group consists of Natalie, Preston, Arturs, and myself. During our first meeting we discussed the idea and how we could do it. We all agreed that finding enough objects might pose a challenge if we wanted to have it as fast-paced as Natalie described in her pitch. We decided to give landfills, and places where they might have a lost and found box a call, and visit charity shops in person. We also set up a calendar with a schedule for which days we are going item hunting in the streets, in Farnham park, landfills, and lost and found boxes.