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WHY now?

According to the dictionary, the definition of ‘now’ is: “at the present time or moment; without further delay; immediately; at once; at this time or juncture in some period under consideration”

How have we, as a group, decided to define ‘now’?

Our group decided to look at the transient nature of the moment that is now (for now is not more than this very moment in history). ‘Now’ is a moment that constitutes what we experience in the present minute. It is a moment in flux. It cannot truly be held, it can never be relived, and it cannot fully be remembered. We explored this notion through the medium of long exposure photography, and minimal print. The use of long exposure explores in a visual way the ever-changing perspective and look of ‘now’, visually exploring the concept of movement. What is right ‘now’ is ephemeral and unique - each moment of ‘now’ is exclusive to each individual, thus there cannot really be a true concept of ‘now’. What one experiences now in Australia may, understandably, be quite contradictory with what someone in Africa is experiencing right now.

In order to explore this transient and unique perspective of ‘now’, we decided that we would like to create an interactive, magazine-inspired catalogue/booklet. In doing this, we each examined three notions of what we perceive to be our individual ‘now’, through the three categories of Political, Personal, and Passion. We chose to individually look at what we perceive to be as ‘now’ so as to pertain to the idea of an individual perspective, which again in itself is transient. Through this we intended to show that ‘now’ is multifaceted,   and cannot be defined simply by one understanding or mindset.

We decided that to enhance the work, we would add in a recorded sound for each of our pages. For the most part, these sounds were recorded by us, and reflect directly the time the photographs were taken (at least for most of them, bar some). Essentially then, these sounds reflect the ‘now’ of the past;  the ‘now’ of past as we experienced it as the ‘now’ of the present.  

So what do the three P’s allude to?

Political: We chose to look at a political entity that we each individually believe to be a current predicament in the world, selecting a dilemma that we resonated with on a personal level. The political world is often seen as being corrupt, yet it is what holds the rest of the world together (and in fact, is what also tears it apart).

Personal: We then chose to examine our own current individual lives, representing through a photograph something that is important to us ‘right now’, for whatever reason that may be. This again highlighted how distinct each of our lives are - even though we share a good few common factors, our lives and our perspective of the world are so diverse.

Passion: Again, to explore further the notion that ‘now’ is unique to everybody, we explored current life on earth through examining our personal passions - what drives us currently into the future, which soon will become our ‘now’, and what motivates us. Again this enhances the concept of individualism.

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Brainstorm These are the first few pages of my book showing the initial brainstorming completed with my group. Just focusing on how we would approach the topic of "now"

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Magazine Inspo

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Magazine Inspo

Do you believe in magic?

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Documentary describing out plan/outline for our last (group) assessment

Assignment 3 Plan

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In singles and pairs, the class went out (or stayed in) to identify, observe and record some noise. When everyone had their audio, we convened to all play our sounds together - like a noise improv collective of sorts. It was up to each person as to when to cease their audio. Very nice results! Even though two people recorded my voice as ‘noise’ :/

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Glitch 4: blocking hearing when someone is talking

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Glitch 3: sitting on an upside down chair

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Glitch 2: writing on paper blindfolded

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Glitch 1: reading a book upside down

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Class Activities: Took pictures of signs around campus and select one word per sign and play it in google translate. This collage is the reinforcement of the voice player.

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Some of the found signs

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ADAD week 10

Today in class we did three studio works.

1. We had to find something and Glitch it. My group went fir a walk in the corridor and photographed signs we saw. We then selected one word from each sign and had T read out via Google translate.

2. We had to Glitch a technology. We did fout Glitches, one for each person: Reading a book upside down and back to front out loud; writing on paper blindfolded with a hat obscuring vision; sitting on an upside down chair; and talking whilst people covered their ears.

3. Record a found sound.

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Concept Statement

In the poster for Assessment 1 I focused on the idea that rebellion was individualised which I am continuing with but disregarding the contents of the poster.

To begin, I conducted research to find inspiration from rebellious creative works, revisiting an Iranian visual artist called Shirin Neshat who I really liked. Nehshat produced a black and white photographic series called Women of Allah (1994) that opposes typical western representations of Eastern culture, whilst simultaneously rebelling against the conservatism of modern day Iran. I continued to do further research looking into artists such as Adam Harvey, Bambi (a London street artist), Rajneesh (Osho), Albert Camus, the Mau Mau gallery, Faig Ahmed and the Guerrilla Girls.

I moved onto experimentation, wanting to work with wire and using a marriage equality advertisement alongside other LGBTQ symbols as inspiration. I wrapped silver wire around my finger six times, signifying the colours within the LGBTQ flag and used gold wire to spell “lgbtq”, for legibility and aesthetics. The rebellion behind the ring can differ between people, from a protest to a pride piece. I used a camera to take black and white photographs of the ring being worn, drawing inspiration from Neshat’s Women of Allah series, playing with the contradiction of rebellious notions being far from black and white in nature.

Immediately after, I did my second experiment, simply drawing illustrations on tracing paper. I continued with the idea that there is more than meets the eye to rebellious acts, particularly with the patterned square being a representation of a smashed mirror. This alluded to how the ink obstructs sight looking through the tracing paper, alike to a cracked mirror obstructing a perfect reflection. I placed a printed image of Neshat’s “Rebellious Silence” underneath the tracing paper and played around with the visibility of the images in different lighting conditions.

Following this I did some brief research into political and protest badges that can be display during rebellious acts, as a statement piece/s or other. I then made a list of categories that accurately represents different base topics of rebellion, created simple symbols for each of the areas and inscribed  those into small clay ‘coins’. I used these coins as experimentation into following my idea of individualised rebellion, presenting them to a group of diverse individuals and asked them to select a coin/s (topic) they would be willing to rebel for the cause of, taking more black and white photos.

I continued research, revisited quotes, drew some sketches/plans, then completed my fourth and final experiments. Firstly, making a simple kaleidoscope then making smaller, alternate versions of the final work, drawing inspiration from the Tokyu Plaza Omotesando Harajuku by architect Hiroshi Nakamura.

My final piece is an 8-sided object (octahedron) made from a piece of A3 white cardboard that is ‘lined’ with mirror-board on the inside faces, however one face has a triangle cut out covered with clear acetate. On the inside of the object are 9 printed, black and white images folded into cubes, representing the 9 categories from earlier. The purpose for this final piece is to be a representation and a stimulus in conveying the idea of individualised rebellion.  The object is designed to be interacted with and manipulated, inspired by the idea of endlessness in kaleidoscope imagery. The cubic images inside will reflect around the mirror-board thus creating many different visual combinations. 

The overall notion behind this object in relation to rebellion, is that each individual will look into the octahedron and see the images in unique reflected formations. These images serve as stimulus to evoke thoughts, ideas and/or emotions. An individual can alter the formation of the contents of the object in hopes of better seeing the images they best relate to or to generate random results. Either way, the images seen will cause an individual to react differently to the next, regardless even if two people see the same thing inside. As such, this is how I am best representing my answer the question of “what would a contemporary creative rebellion look like?”- it is difficult to say exactly what I think a contemporary creative rebellion would look like as ideas, cultures, values and more are constantly changing and everyone has their own way of perceiving the world and expressing their views.  I have however captured this idea of individualism which can then be applied to creative rebellious acts.

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Final work This is my final work which I am presenting/submitting as my piece for this assessment. It is an interactive piece in which participants are able to shake and rotate the octahedron. They can then look through the triangular clear acetate window to see how the cubed photographs are positioned and they reflections throughout the 'walls' of the object. The compositional possibilities for the inside of the octahedron, given the 9 photographic cubes, is almost infinite. As such, each individual who looks into the object should be presented with something unique. Subsequently, the ideas and emotions that are evoked will be different and constantly evolving between each individual, alike to the ever changing and individualised contemporary creative rebellions.

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Bibliography

Websites

Alejandre, S, ‘Octahedron Net’, in The Math Forum, 2017, viewed 16 Spetember 2017, http://mathforum.org/alejandre/workshops/octahedron.net.html

Charlotte, ‘Art // Journal inspo’, in Pinterest, viewed on 16 September 2017, https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/335940453426366897/

Cluett, C, ‘The art of anonymity: The ongoing mystery of London’s Bambi’, in ArtGallery.co.uk, Dec 2014, viewed on 11 September 2017, https://www.artgallery.co.uk/blog/post/2014/12/05/the-art-of-anonymity-the-ongoing-mystery-of-london-s-bambi

Harvey, A. R, ‘Stealth Wear ‘Anti-Drone’ Fashion, in Stealth Wear, 2013, viewed on 2 August 2017, https://ahprojects.com/projects/stealth-wear/

 Jo

hnny, ‘Now open: Tokyu Plaza Omotesando Harajuku by Hiroshi Nakamura’, in Spoon and Tamago, April 2012, viewed on 16 September 2017, http://www.spoon-tamago.com/2012/04/25/now-open-tokyu-plaza-omotesando-harajuku-by-hiroshi-nakamura/

Kaleidograph Design, ‘How many different combinations are there?’, in Kaleidograph, 2016, viewed on 16 September 2017, http://kaleidographtoy.com/combinations

Neshat, S,  ‘Artist Statement’, in Signs, Michael Magoulias and Jennifer Ringblom, 2012, viewed 17 August 2017, http://signsjournal.org/shirin-neshat/

Sam, ‘Faig Ahmed: Remixing traditions’, in TextilesArtist.org,  2016, viewed on 14 September 2017, http://www.textileartist.org/faig-ahmed-remixing-traditions/

Vowles, A, ‘Beautiful kaleidoscope craft for kids makes upcycling fun’, in sheknows, Dec 2016, viewed on 16 September 2017 http://www.sheknows.com/parenting/articles/1008403/diy-kaleidoscope-craft-for-kids

Young. A, ‘Shirin Neshat, Rebellious Silence, Women of Allah Series’, in Khan Academy, 2015, viewed on 11 September 2017, https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ap-art-history/global-contemporary/a/neshat-rebellious

Article (Newspaper)

Stern, C, ‘Adam Harvey Launches Stealth Wear, an Anti-Drone Clothing Line: New York-based artist Adam Harvey creates garments that shield you from drone surveillance.’, The Daily Beast; New York,  The Daily Beast Company, New York, 2013,

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Final brainstorm and planning These images just show my final stages of brainstorming and planning how to go about creating this final object which will be a larger version of the previous experiment, filled with 9 cubed images, each of which represent the nine categories I formed earlier on.