The wall is just brilliant....

congratulations

hi guys, have a good weekend!

Ok so I've written up the 1000 word review and pasted it below. As I discovered, 1000 words is not very much and it only amounts to a few sentences each. So it's great that we've also got the blog to illustrate the process we've undergone! There's a lot of good stuff written on this blog....

If anyone has any major probs with this, please post here asap because Lina needs to print it out for the wall :) I read the U7 guidelines and I think it answers all the points as well as it can. I went for the second option of writing, which is the transcription of a conversation. Only I used all the conversations we've had with the blog entries etc. I haven't changed anyone's words, just cut and paste all the bits and pieces to fit into a structure that has some themes / categories.

Jess - I don't know your surname, so email Lina if you want it put at the top!
Tomo - thanks for the Bourriaud quote! I put it at the end because I think it sums up a lot - hope everyone agrees that this is appropriate.

So as follows:

STAGE II – UNIT 7 EXHIBITION REVIEW

             After a long time of waiting in anxious expectation - out popped a mouse!

Taken from conversations from 25^th January to 20^th February 2012.

Contributors: Lina Laraki, Tomofumi Yamasaki, Madeleine Ruggi,  Jessica, Yasmin Maksousa, Chang Liu, Yu Long Wang, Cecilie Thulin and Shefali Choudhury.

Initial conversations revolved around the nature of working together as a group, where it was difficult to pinpoint immediate common interests or practices. This resulted in starting a blog, with which to carry on the dialogue outside the studio. It also took the critical process behind making an exhibition out to a different audience on the internet, rather than assuming the audience can only interact with a finished presentation in a gallery. We also met on several occasions to discuss the critical themes behind our work.

How do you Start?

The nature of coming together to make a single exhibition consisting of separate work was a recurring theme. And this is reflected in the final exhibition, which is a chance for us to adapt our personal practices to a different way of working.

We all contributed photographs of our current practice to the blog.

On the Exhibition Title

Jessica: These are some photographs I took about a year ago, on a walk in Czech Republic. They relate to the mirror image worlds we were talking about. (Tuesday 7^th February 2012)

Shefali: The idea of the mirror image as well as domestic images kept cropping up in the ideas we've had for work. And we're also still all interested in the idea of transition, from one room to another, as well as the absurd. (Wed 8^th February 2012)

Cecilie: I’m very interested in domestic space and have previously used patterns to create wallpaper installations. I’m thinking of doing the same with these new patterns and creating a domestic space within the studio space. (Sunday 12^th February 2012).

Yasmin: Anticipation that grows out of expectations: As the person walks from one room to the next they will be expecting to see something different, or to understand the context of the clock and table. The audience may even search for it as they enter the second room. The book/box relates to the mouse - the audience has anticipated an interesting outcome, searched for it, only to discover the small, only slightly surprising thing to learn is that there was nothing to expect in the first instance. (Thursday 16^th February 2012).

The following excerpts are transcripts of a conversation on Wednesday 16^th of February 2012, discussing various themes arising from our collaboration:

Lina, Chang, Cecilie, Jessica, Yu Long and Shefali. 

Repetition and Reproduction…

L: I was thinking of filming the balloon and then projecting it. Maybe filming the balloon in the first space and then projecting it. In the second space I could have the balloon and the projection of the room.

…of the domestic space …

YL: I’m taking one part of the wall and photocopying it and then using Photoshop on that. Creating one, two, three layers.

Ch: I’m copying the house I live in, transferring it to the studio. This is the door of my room in paper but I’m using a variety of materials.  I moulded paper on to the walls with water and afterwards it dried and took on the shape of the walls.

J to S: Would you present your work on the floor?

S: Maybe but maybe on a table as it is meant for people to play with as it’s a sculpture of a toy. But maybe on the floor like children’s toys are. I like the idea of having work on the floor in this exhibition space, rather than being elevated, as it stops it from looking so earnest. 

Mirror Images: 

L to S: Why is there a difference between your two pieces?

S: I couldn’t remember and I had been thinking about it yesterday. I couldn’t understand their relationship to each other and it was bothering me.

J: We were talking about mirror worlds and Alice Through the Looking Glass. I think that was where the idea of having two rooms the same came from. They would be almost the same but with a tiny difference here and there, a bit like those ‘spot the difference’ pictures.

S: Things would be in the same places?

J: Yes so when it is installed, it does look a little bit like a mirror image.

L: That was the surprise (for the audience), that the rooms look the same.

Working With and Exhibition Space in Two Rooms

Madeleine: The use of two rooms and making them replicas of each other reminds me of Benjamin and his idea of reproductions – which is the room that is replicating the other? Which is the first room we ‘build’ and copy from?

We are relying on the memory of the viewer, of what they see initially and then notice again in the second room. People will choose different pieces of our art that they are interested in to recognise later in the second room.

The Nature of Working as a Collective and What this means for the Exhibition Space and the Audience:

Lina and Shefali: Reflecting on the nature of our show as a group curation we decided not to have individual name labels for our work. The finished show is designed just to be one experience for the audience - and very different to a show that is conceived as a collection of work from different artists. Presenting it in this way we’re trying to address the idea of the nature of an artist’s collective, which has an innately different hierarchy to a show with one curator. (Monday 20^th February 2012).

Tomo: We started from differences and we have been trying to find the way our works can co-exist in the same space. Is this collective or not? In this collectiveness, there is a multitude of possibilities. We think that this chaos and complexity can open up the potential space and can be crystalized into one solid exhibition that the individual alone cannot achieve. (Saturday 18^th February 2012).

From Altermodern by Nicholas Bourriaud:

"It seems to me that that the fundamental question that exhibitions ought to be repeatedly asking concerns the interpretation of forms: What is the message they convey today? What is the narrative that drives them? We have an ethical duty not to let signs and images vanish into the abyss of indifference or commercial oblivion, to find words to animate them as something other than products destined for financial speculation or mere amusement." 

Shefali

Mine is in form of notes from the beginning : 

The few concepts we could extract were :
- the notion of time of waiting, a delay, an indication of a period of time. 
- the idea of expectation
- the notion of surprise, something really small, clashing with the previous part of the sentence. 

So we played around, and liked the idea of the paradox and opposites present in that sentence, like heavy/light, big/small, serious/playful.
What could surprise ?
Mirror-reflection ?

We directed ourselves to having both exhibition space totally similar, or having a tiny difference, so that the viewer, after seeing the 1st room, will expect something different for the 2nd room, and would be totally surprised to see the same things, and won't notice the slight changes as a 5cm move etc. ...

Mirroring - Surprise - Humor
An exhibition that doesn't look like an exhibition

------------------------------------------------

- one space reflecting the other

- communication - virtual documentation

- influencial sentence

- strategies of display 

- how to make a start 

- challenge to create very different work

- element of surprise

- an exhibition that doesn't look like an exhibition

- humor and subversiveness 

- of the everyday, the title adds another layer when not describing the ideas and concepts / sentence separated from its context has become something else

- the way you position and object either makes it work or not

- even if any work is weak the exhibition itself needs to be strong 

- everything has to be contextualized in the correct way to become an artwork. 

- make it more compelling, subtle relation between the object and the title

- 2 rooms litterally reflecting and facing each other as if an 'invisiblie mirror (cf Madi) was in the middle

- strong connection between the 2 rooms despite all the rooms and work in the middle

- dynamic of both reflecting each other, which one is the original one ? which one is the reflection? 

- audience should be able to get into a narrative of their own

 - link to the seminar : idea of the copy, the aura of the art object, authenticity ? 

 - where to begin ? where does it start where does it end ? an open-ended come and go between the display. 

 balloon :

- play on the idea of opposites and paradox.

- space is a breathing and breathing is a language

- how to make a start ?

- something from nothing - nothing for something. opposites and paradox. 

- making something out of nothing, making everything out of nothing

- space is a breathing and breathings is a language. 

- is there such a thing as empty space ? 

- can something really come out from nothing ? what is it in air we dont see ? 

- give a solid form to the intangible

------------------------------------

Also I was thinking after all the posts it'll be very tricky not get too far from the first point, so please take the time to explain in simple words and details the starting point idea.

i tried to link it as much to the seminars as well. 

Jessie - having the blind down is interesting as in my mind it relates to theatre and the gauzes that both reflect and transmit light, to create various effects. In the space, you are concealing the outside world but then as you move around the blinds allow one to see through at certain points where the light shines through – revealing it. I was trying to think about what the opposite of a reflection is – is it a shadow? Or is it just an object/being etc as it is on its own?

I hadn’t initially thought about the groups interest in the mirrors and its relation to my exploration of Jeff Wall’s ‘Picture for Women’ and Manet’s ‘A Bar at the Folie Bergere’ and both their use of the mirror, one using it as a space to show other details of the scenario, the atmosphere and environment (the Manet) and the other disguising it in the picture plane, Wall is placing us into the image, though we are invisible, we are the camera.

I like this idea that we have created an imaginary mirror, running through the middle of the studio (inbetween our two rooms)

The use of two rooms and making them replicas of each other reminds me of Benjamin and his idea of reproductions – which is the room that is replicating the other? Which is the first room we ‘build’ and copy from? Does this matter? Does this alter if we are entering the studio from different sides (the two entrances/exits at either end?)

Initially after reading the previous posts I was trying to think about what makes something surprising? It was here I began to think about colours (perhaps after my recent trip to India) and the use of bright colours, particularly against the black and white wallpaper. (This is something I have noticed in colours in London which stand out against our dull landscapes, but are also slightly muted due to the lack of sunlight/ light beneath the clouds we live under)

What is the significance of two of the same thing, of reflection/something doubled? Will the works have more impact or less? If we were to use mirrors (although I know we’re not) it would bring the viewer into the context of the art works surrounding them, (questionably) becoming a piece themself.

Reflections interested me in that we cannot see our present self in the mirror at the exact point in which we look at ourselves because of the speed of light. This is something I am currently trying to understand further.

The walk in between the rooms creates an anxiety which then perhaps will turn into surprise as they enter the second room.

We are relying on the memory of the viewer, of what they see initially and then notice again in the second room. People will choose different pieces of our art that they are interested in to recognise later in the second room.

So, I am still not completely sure of what I am showing yet, I am enjoying seeing the space develop and making work from this, I like this idea of movement through the space imbetween the rooms and what thoughts the viewer may have during this moment. Cecilie’s pattern evokes a kind of movement I think and today I was messing around with a little video on the wallpaper which could (if I decide to continue it) edit in some way and project on another different surface (though this is just a brief idea). I also thought about a film of someone talking or some kind of sound, in one room then repeated in the second room, but completely in reverse. Hope this

Sorry I realise there are lots of questions, many of which we will realise when the rooms are set up which is exciting,, and I’m sorry about the mass of words just thought I’d get them down.

Some inspirations:

Natalie Escobar

Athena Procopiou prints

My video, experimenting around the studio, just on photobooth, quite like the kaleidocope effect, again mirroring the subject 

Madeleine 

hahaha

Please be aware my friend

Thing in front of you is just one and another deception

It's close to us, but closer

You see it smiling to you; you hear it talking to you

But don't be serious

Because it's just another lie in your life.

In someone's eyes, it's colourful

In someone's eyes, it's black and white

But no one knows that colourful is really colourful or black and white is really black and white

Because we can only see things through our eyes

If one day you found

That red is not red, green is not green

Please don't be surprised

Because it's just another lie in your life.

I wake up late, because I'm in my dream every moment

You can also say that I've never been awake, I just kissed my hair

So, every move I made was just somnambulate

So, every word I said was just fudge

If you think you are awake, then my fudge is another lie in your life.

I was not natural born like this, neither were you

Stretching out and thinking about making miracles

Only for leaving radiance without colour in our this lives

We are breathing, sighing, fancying but restrained

Wondering if you remember that day we sit together around a table

Talking about our voices inside

We were all seemed smiling, but thinking about escaping, too

If you realised something

Please don't be so serious

That is just a lie we created together.

It starts

What would you like to drink, help yourself

We have tobacco ash tea, frozen canvas coffee, plastic wine, and paint water

I'm sorry that I don't have ketchup blood cause I'm not a vampire

We also have toys which you can enjoy

If you feel someone's behind the curtain

Then please touch the seemingly black and white wall

You might find something special

Or you might find a paper door under the blue balloons

Does it make you feel warm?

If it does

Please be aware that it's just another lie in your life

Once you step inside

You are supposed to get into another same space

No matter the time stops or not

You will go back to the first space again

If you smile

Congratulations

You and we just created another lie in our lives.

 

YuLong

Hello all,

My initial plan of how I wanted to stick up the wallpaper has ended up being a little too over-ambitious so I’ve come up with plan B which is going to involve a lot of double sided tape and a keen eye - so your help would be much appreciated.

I have work Tuesday but I will be in on Monday and Wednesday to set up.

Another change is the fact that the two wallpapers won’t be inverted versions of the same pattern. They will be two individual patterns. I’m hoping they’ll create the same atmosphere and appear to be the same, but at a closer look are completely different.  

Many of the things being mentioned in previous posts are really interesting – I’ve enjoyed reading them - and I’m finding it hard to add to the points made.

A little suprise .....little blobs .

Hello again ,

I forgot to mention a suprise ...... My friend from Prague, Eva,  also an Erasmus student has just arrived and has brought her recent work with her , which Nooshin and I thought would be ideal for the show on thursday. She has made tiny photographs of found objects in the street( mainly clothes) and has cut their shape out precisely, they are about the size of a hand palm. They each have beautiful and unique shapes , created by random. I discussed with Cecilie in passing if she wouldn't mind if we stuck a few of these 'blobs' ( as she calls them) onto the wallpaper. I think they would look really good as they will bring an element of suprise to the busy wallpaper pattern, and also they are very domestic related; everyday clothing found on street. Cecilie agrees , hope you will too!
Eva will be there on monday afternoon and will bring some examples with her. See you then !

Jessie

Out popped a Mouse ! shadows and reflections

Greetings fellow unit 7 team members,

About a week or so ago , I was browsing in a little book shop , specifically looking at a book on japanese patterns when just as i lifted the book into my hands, guess what guys ..... out popped a mouse from under the book shelves , and scuttered across the floorboards to the other side. Amazing !

Anyway, I have been enjoying this theme of ours very much and I think the team seems to be working and weaving itself together quite well.
I like the way things can spontaneously start growing and im a strong believer in happy accidents.
The fact that the sentence we chose collectively " ....out popped a mouse!" originally came from one of Aesop's short stories is also quite interesting , as he is a storyteller, and I find that the show we are curating together is somehow telling a story in itself. It seems we are collectively creating some sort of strange room , where some strange creature lives. Each of us are adding bits of our perceptions to one collective monster ! ( i mean that in a good way)

( This image is of an installation by artist Christof Kintera , where he made this 'light' man or monster from old communist lamps and bulbs)

Without really taking any drastic decisions , the collective idea of a mirror spaced room developed ,
and all our personal works seem to be related to the domestic, the home, the wall, wallpaper, patterns, doors , shadows, waiting , playing, time, suprises.
As already has been mentioned the two rooms will be like mirror imaged spaces. First of all Alice in Wonderland and Alice through the looking glass came to mind , where nothing is as it seems , or seems to be the opposite of what we think we know. 

 

( This picture is from the student's office of Prague Academy of Arts where I study.)

Which reminds me a bit  of Mike Nelson's installations. In Tate Britain  you can see his installation  The Coral Reef 2000 , which is a labyrinth of corridors and rooms , constructed by Mike Nelson himself. Every object, wall , space has been constructed by him like a builder and every object has been found in streets, skips, markets. Then he puts them together like a mosaic , creating a new space , which somehow reminds us of something we have already seen. It all seems familiar and yet it is eery and strange , not quite right. There is definately a presence in these spaces. Maybe its the memory of objects, or the act of getting lost, recognising but not quite knowing.


click on this to see Mike Nelson talk about his work in 2007
This short film is quite interesting in the way he talks about dealing with a gallery space , that when people think they are in a gallery they have to look at the work in a certain way , but that if you replicate a space and make people forget they are in a gallery , then the viewer becomes a player.
Also what he says about mirrors is relative to our work i think.
I find his work very much connected to Alice in Wonderland and the idea of mirror worlds .

In a book about Louise Bourgeois' installation "I do , I undo , I redo " ( 2000)  there is a small passage about mirrors , as she uses these often in her work.
" When they were invented in France , mirrors were known as Psyché ,probably because of the ancient idea that the soul can be found in the 'shade' - the shadow or reflection of the mortal body.
The soulless , like vampires, cast no shadows and can make no reflections; in Romantic fairy tales , unwary students sell their shadows to the devil and are driven mad when they realise they can no longer see their image in the mirror; in the poetic dream films of Jean Cocteau , the Orpheus of "Le sang d'un poete(1930) and "Orphee"(1949) passes into the underworld through a mirror.
 Mirrors are also a profoundly ambivelent metaphor: Narcissus drowns, after all, for falling inlove with his own reflection. Thoughts of beauty , sin, lust, especially of the female variety, are all instantly triggered by the presence of mirrors. For Louise Bourgeois mirrors have above all a psychological resonance:' reality changes with each new angle. Mirrors can be seen as a vanity, but that is not all their meaning. The act of looking into a mirror is really about having the courage it takes to look at yourself and really face yourself.'"

I can't really write about the seminars , as I was not present , but I did manage to listen to the last presentations and I remember the talk by Madeleine on Jeff Wall's photograph ' Picture for Women' ( 1979) comparing it to Manet's painting ' A bar at the Folies-Bergere (1882)

Both are seen ( painted and photographed) through a mirror which is quite relevant to our mirror reflected spaces. As for my own work I have decided to concentrate on shadows as a reflection of everyday life. I am making little silhoette cardboard creatures, which sometimes are recognisable , sometimes not. They are inspired from things I can see around me, and from drawings I have made since arriving in London.  I like the idea that in shade we are all the same, that is dark,  and yet have  completely unique shapes. These shadows will then be stuck onto the window and the blinds will be pulled down , creating very subtle shadows of the silhouettes, so its sort of a double reflection.

All together they also create this random assymetric pattern. On the other window I will also stick cardboard silhouettes but completely different ones. So on the whole it will look very similar ; people will see shadows on the windows but they will be completely different ones from room to room.

 

See you on monday ! Jessie

For exhibition review

Hello everyone.

I have missed two group meetings but I am trying to catch up with you. I just read the reminder that we have to push our conversation online by monday when Shefali edit the conversation for us. So I'm just uploading my thoughts in order to increase the critical discussion here.

My understanding so far is.. So we started from completely irrelevant words form art, which can be read in a various way, " After a long time of waiting in anxious expectation - out popped a mouse!", as a some kind of container in order to facilitate our differences of interests. The sentence suggests that the big expectation end with mere performative acts, which led to the idea of mirror reflection. We have got two identicfal rooms for exhibition and our concern is how suprising, disruptive and abused changes we could create between these two spaces.

As to how curating functions, I think it is good to refer to the exhibition essay Altermodern by Nicolas Bourriaud. I'm just gonna quote some of his words:

"Keeping the ball in the air and the game alive: that is the function of the critic or the curator"

"It seems to me that that the fundamental question that exhibitions ought to be repeatedly asking concerns the interpretation of forms: What is the messge they convey today? What is the narrative that drives them? We have an ethical duty not to let signs and images vanish into the abyss of indifference or commercial oblivion, to find words to animate them as something other than products destined for financial speculation or mere amusement."

He talks about "collective exhibtion".

We started from differences and we have been trying to find the way our works can be co-exist in the same space. Is this collective or not? In this collectiveness, there is a multitude of possibilities, and we think it possitively that these chaos and complexity can open up the potential space and can be crystalized into one solid exhibition that indivudual alone cannot achieve.

We have been using blog as a method of construcing the spacial unity. I just found magazine and there is Paul O'Kane article! He says in the article called "Inside Outsider Art":

"Web began to provide an alternative model of the world, presenting us with a non-hierachical model of inexhaustible exchange. On this continuous interface, with neither and inside nor an outside, everyone and everything have been deterritorialising apace."



We have been very much doing good so far I think. Using the sentence as a devise out of which we can take a lot of posstibities, relating them to the "actual space" we are allocated, and using the blog as to create our "metaphisical space" in which we communicate. We are curating the both spaces in that way.  

Tomo

1000 WORD CRITICAL WRITING INFO - LOOKING GOOD 


Well I've typed up the conversation we had on Weds and there were some really interesting points in it. So I think the piece of writing is going to work very well.

As Lina said below, the deadline for comments / writing etc is Monday as I need to edit it together somehow and then send it to Lina by Tuesday. I'll also post it on the blog on Tues. This means we can make any last minute adjustments if anyone doesn't agree with anything - and also Lina gets to print it in time.

Having listened to the conversation I've picked out what I could and posted it below. I actually think it's pretty good - we've all been thinking about our work.

The U7 guidelines say that our 1000 words can be in the form of a conversation or piece of performative writing (not just an essay style) so I suggest we stick to a magazine article / conversation / interview type format. This means that it doesn't have to be one person's voice when it's written out and also that everybody gets to contribute in an unstructured way - I think it really reflects the whole process of organising the exhibition where we've worked together although we've all got very different timetables, interests and work.

You can see that as well as typing up the dialogue I've also tried to arrange it thematically and this gives it some critical structure it think. So I'll stick to something similar for the final piece but with more blog content that we're all going to upload by Monday. Although what we have is good I think it needs more info about what we've been reading / seeing / relating it to the seminars...that kind of thing...as well as our thoughts about the curation process. So maybe everyone can upload a short passage here. Either way it looks good and I think we'll have a strong piece of writing as well as being able to show how everyone has contributed.

Ok so this is the conversation transcript and look forward to uploading the full piece by Tues...get writing! 

Conversations 16^th Feb 2012-02-17

Repetition and Reproduction…

L: Is everyone making objects? I am thinking of sticking parts of plastic bags together and switching on a fan. Maybe doing a projection on it but it wouldn’t work if it’s too light.

J: I’m actually thinking of putting the blinds down and doing things on the window.  I have been making silhouettes from cardboard. They are things I see around me but when I do the silhouette they look completely abstract but you can see something in them. I paint them black so they would contrast on the white wall. I was thinking of putting them on the window with a thin sheet of material.

S: I saw a projection on to a balloon a few years ago. It looked amazing as if it was glowing.

L: Did the projection go inside the balloon?

S : Not really, it was projected on to the surface of the balloon and in a darkened room so it looked as if the balloon was glowing.  But up close it seemed like a really unusual kind of screen – it was interesting because I’m still so used to seeing projections on flat screens and surfaces.

J: Does anyone have a nice looking old chair we could put there? So people could just sit there and look at the balloons? I like exhibitions where you have chairs because when you sit down and look at an art work you take in so much more.

L: I was thinking of filming the balloon and then projecting it. Maybe filming the balloon in the first space and then projecting it. In the second space I could have the balloon and the projection of the room.

J to S: Would you present your work on the floor?

S: Maybe but maybe on a table as it is meant for people to play with as it’s a sculpture of a toy. But maybe on the floor like children’s toys are. I like the idea of having work on the floor in this exhibition space, rather than being elevated, as it stops it from looking so earnest.  I want some frivolity.

… in the exhibition space…

YL: I’m taking one part of the wall and photocopying it and then using photoshop on that. Creating one, two, three layers.

J: So you’re photographing the wall in the space?

S: And changing the dimension of the space?

J: I’m interested in the layers.

S: And everything collapses into itself which is similar to Cecilie's wallpaper effect.

…and of the domestic space …

Ch: I’m copying the house I live in, transferring it to the studio. This is the door of my room in paper but I’m using a variety of materials.  I moulded paper on to the walls with water and afterwards it dried and took on the shape of the walls.

J: Would that be a picture or a sculpture?

Ch: No it’s a sculpture really. It’s 3d but made of paper.

S: Is it fragile once it’s dry? It might be hard to bring in?

J: Maybe you don’t need to bring in a whole door.

Ch: Yes just sections.

C: What kind of paper is it?

Ch: Just normal brown paper.

J: That would work well against black and white walls in the space.

Ch: Are we far away from the title?

S:Yes but no because I think that was the point of the title.

J:It was about nonsense. And I also like work that has a contrasting title that doesn’t mean anything specific.

Ch: It’s like the idea of the B-Team seminars where we can present different pieces or our own work but the unifying thing is that we’re a team.

Links between the exhibition space and the domestic space:

L: There are two rooms, with two walls each. There are other rooms in between but they are not ours.

Ch: Can we make a link between the rooms or something in the middle?

YL: I like the idea of having the rooms the same.

J : Like mirror images.

S: It reminds me of moving house. I have a lot of clutter and every time I move to a different place, the room has changed but it still looks the same. I can’t get away from it and always think when I move it will be different but somehow it is always the same.

J: When I moved to Prague I had 10 suitcases. I needed my things to feel at home.

Mirror Images:

L to S: Why is there a difference between your two pieces?

S: I couldn’t remember and I had been thinking about it yesterday. I had to change one to make it different and had to remember why and it didn’t make sense. I couldn’t understand their relationship to each other and it was bothering me.

J: We were talking about mirror worlds and Alice Through the Looking Glass. I think that was where the idea of having two rooms the same came from. They would be almost the same but with a tiny difference here and there, a bit like those ‘spot the difference’ pictures. Opposites, the same but a bit different; just subtle difference. For the wallpaper effect on the window I’m using silhouettes that are the same colour and size but the drawings will be a bit different.

S: Things would be in the same places?

J: Yes so when it is installed, it does look a little bit like a mirror image.

L: That was the surprise, that the rooms look the same.

Shefali 

FYI

Hello Everyone,

hope you are all doing well. I think the group is very happy with the way things are going and I'm really glad to be part of it.
We decided last wednesday meeting to have Cecilie's printings as a wall paper for the entire room, I'm sorry for those who were not there as the decision has been made without their opinion.

We decided to have it in both room, it is in black and white, and would be color inverted in the second room. so please all of you think of your work as in relation to that, there would still be 2 walls in concrete i think where you could show work without the wallpaper as a background.

We all have a meeting on monday afternoon, 2pm in the allocated spaces. Please bring your work or anything in progress so we can discuss the curation, see what works and what doesn't.
Also, as regarding the 1500w critical writing, we figured it'll be very efficient to have EVERYONE contributing by posting from now on to monday, a paragraph of their critical understanding of the curation and the work made in response to the seminar. we have a few notions of postproduction, repetition, communication, etc.
Shefali very generously offered to edit all the paragraphs together afterwards, so please respect the deadline of monday night so she can have time to do it.

We will also have a printed version of this blog as a supporting material of communication and progress,
does anyone volunteers to print it ?
I will be in charge of printing the last piece of writting for the exhibition.

it is very important that everyone contributes to that as it is the point of the entire collaboration.

thank you all for the progress made until now.

L

Yasmin's Work

Hey all,

Couldn't believe that I didn't make the meeting yesterday - I was asked to go into work to open up as an emergency (typical) but should be at Mondays meeting!

Anyway - I have decided to create a separate installation for the unit 7 based solely on the theme and on what has been discussed at earlier meetings. I have really ran with the idea of ''great expectations'' and the anti-climatic let down that follows soon after.

Basically what I find interesting is the anticipation that grows out of expectations. How we create and exaggerate scenarios in our minds and then the real experience can come as somewhat of a downer.

So here is the installation idea: - Using the ''domestic'' theme and the quote as a prompt I want to display (identically in both exhibition rooms) a clock on the wall and a small table/cabinet underneath with a box placed on top the table.

As the person walks from one room to the next they will be expecting to see something different, or to understand the context of the clock and table. The audience may even search for it as they enter the second room. The book/box relates to the mouse comment in the theme - the audience has anticipated an interesting outcome, searched for it, only to discover the small, only slightly surprising thing to learn is that there was nothing to expect in the first instance.

The clocks relate to the time we spend thinking of this potentially great outcome and the time we spend actually searching for it and the time we waste further investigating when the outcome isn't as we first imagined. Ie. ''After a long time of waiting''

If I decide to use a book then I would like both books to be different but similar in appearance and generic dull story. So that when the viewer notices the books are not the same they may expect the ''surprise'' or great piece of art to be the book itself or contained within it - the idea being that the let down is the fact that book is equally as dull as the former.

If  I choose to use the box, then both boxes will contain pieces of costume jewellery which will be of no interest to the viewer. Again the idea being that you would open the box expecting something  interesting and getting nothing.

Looking forward to seeing everyone's work once it is installed together!

Tomo

Hi I finally got here! :)

A Proposal ?

Hi all

From the beginning of stage 2 I have been playing around with what one could call ‘information visualization’ and pattern making. I am interested in using digital information and bringing into the material world.

Lately I’ve been interested in the effects text messaging has on communication especially the effects it has on the development of new relationships.

In the beginning of this year I got my first IPhone and was interested how ones text messages were archived into a stream of dialogue.  This became even more interesting to me once a new friendship began in early January where there was an everyday interaction via texts for an entire month.

The latest patterns I have been working on are originally text messages taken from the month’s interaction as I thought it was interesting to notice how language, tone & context changed over the month period of everyday texts.

Example of texts:

Example of texts made into pattern:

I’m very interested in domestic space and have previously used patterns to create wallpaper installations. I’m thinking of perhaps doing the same with these new patterns and creating a domestic space within the studio space. I read Jessica is thinking of doing something with wallpaper too and maybe there could be an interesting interplay here ?

Example of pattern as wallpaper:

Anyway, I just wanted to fill you in with where my heads at but I’ll be seeing you all Wednesday to discuss further. See you then.

Cecilie.