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FINAL WORK

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Artist Statement

Biodiversity is extremely important for many different reasons. Firstly, it regulates ecosystems, whose health is strongly connected to human civilizations well-being for a number of reasons. Ecological services we derive from ecosystems impact our quality of life by providing clean air, water, food, health, jobs and where so much of our modern technology has been modelled off zoology and biology (e.g. sonar modelled off bats, google glass modelled of fruit flies eye). However, our economy is based on resources, and unsustainable use of these resources, which are not valued until they are turned into something with a purpose fro human use.

My final work ‘Bad Hand’ refers to a poker term meaning that a player does not have a playable poker hand, or set of cards.

The work looks at the theme of responsibility, pertaining to our environment, ecology, and the natural world. Initially I began researching value, and more specifically the value we place on monetary items, objects that represent money and industries such as the gambling and pharmaceutical industry. I then wanted to compare this to the absolute lack of value given to ecological services and natural objects. I highlighted these themes throughout my work with the use of organic medium (fruit) symbolising what is not valued, while creating a scenario of objects through photography that symbolise value. I explored the gambling industry and used a hand of noticeably bad cards to draw attention to not only the idea that we have a responsibility to start valuing ecology more, but that in not doing so, we are playing a dangerous game, and gambling away our future. Each card has been carefully made out of fruit, including bananas,eggplant and capsicum. The cards have been placed on a plate, and have been photographed extremely clearly so that all focus/attention is given to the hand of cards. In doing so I hope to have effectively communicated a sense of confrontation, and irony. That a hand of cards and game that symbolises gambling and monetary values, is actually made from organic material that has a $0 value.

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Final work- study

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Assessment 3: Curated Experiments

Experiment no. 4

The last experiment I carried out aimed to replicate playing cards and gambling chips. Out of all three experiments I thought this was the least successful, however looking at the gambling industry conceptually was the most interesting. Here I used apples, watermelon and banana to achieve ‘poker’ and again used pink cardboard as my backdrop. There is something almost pretty about the images because of the colour, which is also a nice contrast to the ideas they are conveying.

Inspiration for creating images and objects:

Photograph:

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Assessment 3: Curated Experimentation

Experiment no. 3

Next I looked at ‘pills’ and more specifically the pharmaceutical industry, and value in recreational drug use among young people. I created pills out of grapes and tried to replicate heart shaped ecstasy pills with watermelon. I then created a backdrop for the photograph with simple cardboard paper and adjusted the lighting in my room so that it wasn’t too dark. I think the photographs turned out quite well and do carry some resemblance to the pills themselves

Inspiration for pill shapes:

Photograph:

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Assessment 3: Curated Experiments

Experiment no.2

For my next experiments I drew up a plan of scenarios/objects that I wanted to present, however, rather than with real objects, with fruit. I headed to the shops and bought fruit such as bananas, apples, melon, grapes and watermelon. The first scenario I chose to photograph was ‘Powerball’. Powerballs made out of melon. I wanted to photograph these scenarios in a manner that was simplistic and very clear. I wanted the images to look very minimal as well as being high quality, so that all attention could be focused on the objects.

Inspiration for power balls:

Creating the melon/power balls:

Photographs:

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Assessment 3: Curated Experimentation

Small sketches planning series of individual experiments. I sketched out scenarios that I’d like to recreate and then wrote a list of fruit items that I’d like to use in the place of these objects. fruit that could be made to resemble particular valuable objects. After experimenting with trying to create the jewels, I realised it would be too hard to create extremely detailed objects such as diamonds. However did try to create this with lemon and lime, but found that it wasn’t working.

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Assessment 3: Curated Experimentation

Artist: Marti Guixe

I looked at artist Marti Guixe and his book ‘Food design’, which is where I drew my inspiration. He has created geometric shapes with food, taking away the well known identity of the food and replacing it with pie chart looking shapes.

Creating inorganic shapes with organic materials:

For my first series of experiments I wanted to try using fruit, an organic substance, but somehow presenting it in an inorganic way to create juxtaposition. It was a small experiment but I really liked using the fruit as a symbol for something organic and easily changeable; I might continue on playing with it as it related back to my initial ideas about how natural objects are dismissed of having any value, until they provide some service 

I played around with the shapes and composition of the pieces of fruit, and played around with setting them up as if they were not organic objects 

Experiment no.1 

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Week 10: Assessment 3

During this weeks studio I thought more about Responsibility, erasure and chance after having a quick chat with Karin about how to initialise my work. Experimentation is so important for this assessment that concepts are expected to evolve with experimentation. However, I did want to have some vague idea about where to start, and have been thinking about Responsibility erasure within Ecology. In a science lecture on Tuesday, our guest lecturer spoke about the economic value of ecology and biodiversity, which I thought was really interesting. We value the byproducts of our natural world, but not the living species themselves, apart from industries such as illegal trade. I also began looking further into industries we do feed money into such as the gambling industry and how relevant casinos are currently in NSW. I want to explore these concepts further, as they tie to the notion of responsibility really well. E.g. a tree outside is worth $0, however if the tree is then turned into timber or a table it becomes valuable, but what responsibility do we currently owe future generations in preserving that tree- and how can valuing these objects facilitate this? I think our economic system is inherently flawed, as we rely on Biodiversity and Ecology to survive, through technology, medicine, and for basic living requirements such as clean water and air, however place no value on them. 

I began thinking more about our responsibility to make these environmental factors valuable, and then how we already create/ fabricate value in our society. Objects do not inherently hold value, but are assigned it. One of the initial aspects I looked at was purpose. We give value to items that can serve us a purpose, however it is apparently ‘too hard’ to give ecological services value, even though they serve us fundamental purposes. I began thinking about how once natural objects become man-made they then become valuable.

I have been looking at artists such as Piero Manzoni 'Artist's Shit' 1961 where the artist questioned what art collectors where actually paying for in regards to his work. He numbered large sealed cans and valued them equivalent to gold. By the time he died, one had been auctioned for $181,000.

The purpose of art can be to reveal and generate new value systems, and artists can make thought provoking works that point out the flaws in our economic and monetary systems

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Week 9: Assessment 3

I was away during this weeks studio class, however quickly read over the assessment sheet and began thinking about which theme I would like to explore in my artwork. In our group work we looked at responsibility and found it to be a very versatile theme that incorporates a lot of different aspects of society. I want to keep exploring responsibility, but include erasure and chance as well. I think the political aspect of erasure is really interesting, and the idea of not having control over something, leaving it to chance. There are so many current affairs within and outside of Australia that revolve around erasure. For example Wikileaks and Julian Assange - and how obsessed authorities are with labelling him as some sort of terrorist and wanting to have him extradited. It still amazes me that in 2017, Assange is still facing death for revealing truths about the American Government, as well as continuously revealing truthful information about our political world leaders such as Hillary Clinton. I think erasure of information, especially from society by an authoritative source, almost as a sort of censorship is a really interesting, and something I would like to explore in my series of experiments and final work. I also think chance is a great theme to work with in terms of gambling and probability. A lot of value is driven into the gambling industry, which is ironic as that value could be placed into other more important and beneficial industries.

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Artist Statement

Initially our group looked at Marina Abramovic’s work ‘Rythym 0′ and the theme responsibility to draw inspiration for our work. Within her work, Marina conveys several predominant concepts. The first and most notable being about ones individual actions and how they have a chain reaction effect on others. Marinas performative pieces became a stimulus for us to contemplate using the audience as the artwork to replicate a social scenario, and therefore we had to think about how we could incorporate a sense of responsibility within the audience. We wanted to highlight a complex idea using a simple scenario, as well as incorporating Marinas instructional and militant style and introducing a reward system, we aimed to draw attention to themes such as greed, social responsibility, individual power and cause and effect. The final work replicates the use of Marinas instructional techniques used in both ‘Rythym 0′ and ‘In residence’ where the artist appears on the screen giving audio instructions for physical movements or leaves written instructions giving the audience the option to participate. Further to this we looked at different psychological experiments, and gained more insight into how we could create a work that leaves the audience feeling pensive about their actions, and in some way realise the effect of their behaviour. Our final work uses monotone audio and begins with instructing the audience to remain silent, and avoid interaction. The audience is then asked to place on their blindfold, which removes one of their senses and cuts off conscious awareness of others and their senses. A box is then passed around with rewards inside and the audience is given the option to take as many as they like. At the end of the circle the audience is asked to remove their blindfolds and those with more than 1 chocolate are asked to stand at the front and eat their chocolate in front of their peers. 

The piece is so highly based on the reaction of the audience that, as a group we have to give leeway for no one to take more than they are ‘supposed’ to. This is simply the inherent nature of performative pieces and, as long as we can briefly explain the purpose of the assessment, we must accept ‘failure’. 

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Assessment 2: Experimentation/Finalisation

We played around with different ways of distributing the chocolate (in a bag, in a pringles container) however decided to go with a small box. We also attempted to have the box passed around a group of friends with their eyes closed however this didn’t quite work as they weren’t aware of where they were passing to, so we decided to have someone standing in the middle of the circle guiding students hands into the box. 

We really liked resolving the idea with the eye masks included as it takes away an entire sense, which will hopefully mean more focus on the instructions and thought about what they are doing.

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Assessment 2: Experimentation/Resolution

Over Mid-sem break Dana, Jonah and I met up and resolved our previous ideas into some visuals. We also had a group of friends run through the scenario to see what worked and what didn’t, as well as gathered their feedback. From this we decided that using blindfolds may be preferable, and rather than a bag, we might use a box instead for ease and to reduce noise.

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Assessment 2: Progress

This week (week 7) we met up and discussed the work we want to produce and brought together our ideas- we spoke about creating a work using the audiences participation, as well as heavily focusing on the concept of ‘responsibility’ while still referring back to themes in Marinas work. Marina refers to her upbringing as ‘militant’ in many of her interviews, and we wanted to create an atmosphere that reflects this notion. Marina also gives her audiences instructions in many of her works such as in ‘Rythym 0′ as well ‘In residence.’

(Marina Abramovic: In residence Sydney 2015)

While carefully pulling apart Rythym 0, we encountered a powerful message Marina carried through the work; That you are not totally aware of your actions on someone else until they are inflicted on to you, and until then, a satisfactory sense of social responsibility cannot be acquired by an individual. This was true of the work as explained by Marina- that after she had finished her performance, the audience had to realise their actions and ‘ran away’. After considering this idea in depth, Dana, Jonah and I spoke about how we could convey this concept in the simplest way through the audiences own actions, and then create a sense of reflection in the class.

We also considered a few psychological tests and studies that have been undertaken in the past such as: -The Standford Prison Experiment (1971) -Milgram Obedience experiment (1963) -Diffusion off Responsibility (1968)

To begin with we discussed the importance of choice- the personal choice we all have in regards to most things we do to others. We also then thought about reward systems and greed. How, once a reward is involved, the responsibility for equality may become corrupted by opportunistic and selfish behaviour. We then thought about punishment, how could we give the audience the choice to behave irresponsibly, and then to realise how their reactions impact others.

To communicate these elements in the simplest way possible in 5 minutes we have created a scenario for all students in the class to participate in. A monotone voice will instruct the class to sit down in a circle facing outwards so they cannot make eye contact with one another.

A box will then be passed around with enough chocolates for the entire class, however the students will not be told this- they will merely be told they may take as many as they like, without telling them the consequence of their actions (as we usually unknowingly act before considering repercussions or a follow on effect.)

Then students who took more than one chocolate will be asked to stand and stand at the front of the class. They will then be asked to eat their chocolate in front of the class, as to invoke a sense embarrassment, and uncomfortable guilt.

A small message will then be displayed on the screen for the whole class to read about the meaning of the small experiment/game they have just participated in. Students will all be asked to remain silent and without interaction throughout the entirety of the 5 minutes.

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Assessment 2: Research and Artwork

In this weeks studio we spoke about the second assessment and looked at each weeks lecture and topic to help us narrow down what we would like to make our own work based on. Our group chose responsibility as we thought it was a topic that is very relevant in terms of current social, environmental, political realms. This relevance is a perfect starting point in which we can decide what direction we’d like to go with our work. We also narrowed our choice of artist/work to Marina Abramovic’s work “Rythym 0″ which is a performance piece that deals with “pushing the energy or psychological aspect of the human body more than it is about pushing the limits of the physical human body.” Marina labelled herself as an object, and allowed the audience to use 72 carefully chosen objects (including roses, food, nails, chains and a gun) to do whatever they pleased to her..for 6 hours.  

We all agreed on doing some initial research into the work and I also watched her documentary “ The artist is present” which was really eye opening and super interesting. It gave me a lot more respect for the artist as well as providing a better insight into what her art is generally about; challenging pre existing limitations. She also briefly spoke about Rythym 0, where she described the work as her “most extreme” and as dealing with human nature. A critic in the film also made an interesting comment: “It is terrifying how a group of people will become bestial if you give them permission to do so”

We have started brainstorming around what we’d like our concept to be but haven’t begun experimenting as of yet.