I read certain pages from phycology books about empathy to research further into the topic of empathy which im exploring in my 'being human' project. Something I found interesting was Sigmund Frued’s notes on how narciasism is often when the recesses back into an infantile state where they still do not have a grasp that others around them have their own perspective and emotion. Narcissism therefore is often caused when something during this stage in the infants life is disrupted, not allowing this part of their understanding to fully develop.

This reminded me Dali’s painting ‘Narcisissus’ which I saw at the Sigmund freud museam in hampstead. Where he explores the greek myth from Ovid’s ‘metamorphsis’ by using autobiographical elements to make it into a self anaylasisis.

This made me think of the surrealist movement who took great amounts of inspiration from sigmund fried in the 1900's due to his publication of 'interpretation of dreams' in 1901. I thought about Giacometti's 'woman with her throat cut' and how it is placed on the ground for the viewer to stumble upon it infiltrating themselves in the crime. This use of active aduaice engagement is something i would like to take forward into my work as it is a good way of exploring the theme of empathy as it requries a direct response from  the person engaging with the work

A book I am reading at the moment called ‘ all about love’ new visions written by female philosopher bell hooks had an interesting page which I thought realted strongly to this idea of defining emotion for someone who hasn’t felt it before. She states towards the beginning of the book that the reason societity is experiencing such as surgence of ‘lovelessnes’ is partly because we do not have a concrete, taughtdefinition of love, which is causing us not to know how to express or process it. She states that the reason we have not done so it that it will force us to confront our lack, that by having a vauge meaning we will not have to be confronted with how we are doing it wrong. ‘’had I been given a clear definition of love earlier in my life it would not have taken me so long to become a more loving person’’

An artist mentioned in the Being human presentation was Katie Patterson. i have come across Patterson's work before during GCSE art however when re-searching her again i remembered why i was so interested in her work previously. her use of scientific research in order to create very moving organic and accessible works are very inspiring to me as i think it is really interesting how she can take something so distant such as the light bouncing off the moon and bring it into the gallery space in a very personal sense through a disco ball. Another piece of hers which i found intriguing was a piece where she plays an ice record until it melts which plays the sounds of melting glaciers.

In my contextual practice session, the artist who came in to give us a talk said a quote from Giacometti which I found really inspiring. It was that Giacometti found when we went to galleries he tried to focus on the art but would more than often find himself gazing at the people wandering around the gallery looking at the work. I went to tate brtiain this evening to see Alexandra mcqueen’s Year Three exhibition however this quote re-surfaced to me again as I found it incredibly touching to see a school trip of stuendets who I assume will be in some of the images try and find their picture along side their families. Furthermore the placement of a sculpture of two paetns hold ing a baby in framed within a doorway of the exhibition further hammered home this idea of youth and family. I know there is much more meaning to the year 3 portraits but I found it touching none the less.

 Douglas Gordon, 24 hours psycho, 1993 

I feel as though this piece quite strongly relates to my idea of taking out the scenes of horror from the film carrie, as this piece is slowed down so much that it also subverts the context of the film as the viewer will not be able to grasp any sense of a linear narrative unless they stay for hours at a time. Furthermore i like how this piece actually reveals new things about the film, such as the famous stabbing scene where we find she is actually only ever stabbed once.

RICHARD LONG- Richard long’s line made by walking’ made me think of the big data work we are doing as he is n a sense leaving a trace of his own ‘data’ in the grass (performance piece where he walks over and over until making a line in the grass with his feet’ however interestingly this data is removable and tempory as over time the grass will lift up removing any trace of him. this links to my project as the left behind data in books is similar to this in a way however it is placed in a more permanent and private way.

 DELETE

Thoughts from the text 

• interesting idea that we NEED to forget in order to function. life would be too much if we remembered everything 
• but at the moment we are heading in this direction, everything is archived on our phones. looking through your camera roll is like looking back and remembered from the past 4 years. however can we remember REALISTICALLY how we felt in that moment 
• does the subconscious ever forget ? sometimes we think we have forgotten something but it can resurface
• trauma at times can be pushed down forever, trauma victims can't remember what their trauma is 

 After a discussion with my tutor i came back to this page of research as he said something very relevant to when i was looking at data left behind in books, that at one point in time books were so valuable in Ireland that people where placed in cages in the library if they wanted to read their books. The library goes back to the 18th century and is still open to the public today. 

This made me think of how the value of data has changed over time. whilst at one point in time information was so valuable a person would have to be imprisoned if they wanted access to it, now we can read articles and view images at any point at any time. in a sense maybe this is bad in a way that we are overexposed and therefore desensitised so we do not value the knowledge we are intacing as much? furthermore i think this mass amount of content we are exposed too makes us trust it less as anyone could post anything at anytime, rather than having to go through the process of finding an agent and a publisher ect. maybe this is a negative and old fashioned way of thinking though as when picaso exhibited his 'still life with chair gaining' people said it was bad art as there was less skill and craftsmanship in the medium of found objects and collage but who is to say that less physical effort in labour and time means a more provoking or successful piece? maybe its a great thing we have so much content at our finger tips. 

Exibition: Christodoulos Panayiotu

Act 11: The Island 

I saw this exhibition at the camdem arts centre after seeing it on the recommend exhibitions for the big data project. I went with a friend who is also from cyprus which made the visit even more interesting as he was able to relate a lot of the aspects of the art to his childhood, such as the floor tiling.

I really liked the room where there were three projector set up in a dark space which showed different images every few seconds sometimes simultaneously and sometimes one at a time. at first it appears random however the longer you stay in the room you bend to notice that links appear within the images such as colour themes or similar imagery like fireworks, however after a while of links there is sometimes a strong juxtaposition such as nudity on one screen but intense violence or war on the other which was very disconcerting.

another thing i found successful about the exhibition was how things where displayed such as the visible wire which plugged in the water sculpture or the way that the tilestesselated with the pattern on the exhibition floor. i wonder if he knew what the floor would look like before he installed the piece.

As i am looking at the second hand book annotations as a form of  'confession' i was recommended to look at  the scene from the movie 'THX 1138' where a man speaks to a digital confessional box.  At first it is eerie to see someone be so personal and open with a screen which only offers a blank stare and mechanical replies such as 'go on' or 'excellent' however as it progressed i found i became de-sesitised to its weirdness and became used to the idea. This made me think of how people are more open online than they are in person, and how that is also a form of talking to a digital confessional box. 

This also made me think of lots of advertisements i have been seeing for online therapy which at first i thought was a really good idea especially for people who do not have the luxury of spare time and the money to spend on talking to a psychiatrist, however it made me wonder how successful it would be, as a largely successful part of therapy in my personal opinion is the idea of eye contact and being in the presence of a listening person as i think that the coldness of communicating machine is part of the problem why people feel so distant and lonely recently. 

Tate Modern

When going to the Tate Modern to see Dora Maar's photoraphy exhibiton I stopped to see the two white fountain sculptures by Kara Walker. Although her large scale one towards the furthest back of the Turbine hall was very impactful and striking my favourite was the first one you see when entering the gallery of the smaller clam shell with a crying boy's face rather than a pearl. Due to the pieces exploring the corrupt/racist and disturbing truth of collonialism and the British empire, i remeber learning in History of Art about how slave boys/girls would often be painted with a pearl earing as it signafied them to be 'exotic'. Therefore by replacing a pearl with a boys head was very moving and powerful to me. Furthermore as we are so often used to fountains in Rome being made out of white marble with very powerful and magnifienct jets of water travelling up for metres into the air, having the water only trickle slowly out of the boy's eye in streaks of tears was so moving. 

Dora Maar's exhibition  1921 

in the first two rooms of Dora Maar's exhibition i was not super inspired. i thought that her work was not very striking or different to that of other black and white film photographers at the time. However what these gave the exhibition was an understanding to the viewer of how she came into her style. in the room showing her fashion photography they have an eerier edge to them such as a woman's face overplayed with a spider web in order to sell an anti ageing cream. Her work then progresses into her surrealist work which was my favourite. i particularly liked when she printed them very small to the viewer had to lean in very close to the wall in order to see the detailing. she did this is one print of an illusion of a man's head severed onto a piano.

Today i saw a heavily Conceptual opera by Philip Glass. I wanted to write about it here as i thought that the themes it explored and the way it was arranged upon stage was very relevant to 4D and BIG DATA.

The play explored self obsession through a parisian poet who falls in love with death who he can visit by entering through mirrors in order to see her. I though this metaphore of accessing death through a mirror was interesting, as if it were saying that our own self love will ultimatley lead to our demise. this made me think of social media and how we are obsessed with how we present ourselfs online to other people and how it used to be something fun but now is causing an influx in anxiety and depression. this makes me think of a quote by Molly Soda in the interview i watched of her's where she says she doesnt think people are having 'fun' online anymore.

At the very end of the opera when the large audience was applauding i closed my eyes and was taken aback at just how much it sounded like i was standing outside surrounded by very very heavy rain. i quickly took a voice recording of this (which i have attached abouve). I thought this linked interestingly to when i was documenting organic data which people had left behind in books, as this is another form of anonymous data on a much bigger uniting scale. I think it is too late to intergrate this into my current project however i would love to re-visit this recording in the future. 

Undersea Cables by Paglen.

From researching this piece i leanrnt that the artist himeslef actually learnt to scuba-dive and took the photographs himself. i thought this was interesting as at times artists can think of the idea but not have the skills of knowledge of how to exicute it so they hire a specialist in that field to create the finalised product. However by doing it himself i think displays how interested he is in the theme he is exploreing. 

I think that the dark blue and greens in these images create a very ominouse atmosphere which links to what he is exploreing that we are always being monitored and watched. this piece also interested me as i didn't know we had anything in the ocean that was connected to data or the internet. i think this works well as it reminds me of a childhood fear that there could be a shark swimming underneath me when i went in the ocean, however in this instance it is not a shark but government surveillance. 

Emotions Go To Work by Zoe Belloff has been really eye opening. She discusses how our emotions are being monitse and turned into currency online which is then used to make us buy things. 'The transformation of money into captial' I found it really terrifying when she discusses a case study of a brand of barbie doll which could interact with children by replying to them in real time. it was later found out there was a microphone inside the doll which was recording everything the children where saying which is really scary. a lot of what she wrote about really brought to light for me how little transparency there is online about what is being done with your data and how much information about you is accumulated. I bet someone on google knows more about me then some people I went to school with which is such a sinister thought. 

 24/7 exhibition at summerset house

So far I have gone to this exhibition twice it is so mind blowing and there is such a vast variation of work to see I feel like its impossible to take it in in one sitting.my favourite work from the exhibition came at the very end called 'I heard there was a secret chord' made as a collobartion by the Daily Tous Les Jous. the piece actually made me cry haha. it came at the end of the, to me, very harrowing exhibition which was incredibly thought provoking in a bleak sense of how much technology is damaging us. however this piece had a much more uplifting tone to it and it really makes you take a step back and reflect. The piece was made up of people humming to the song 'hallelujah' and it was linked up to Spotify so that every time someone started listening to the song on Spotify other voice would join in the humming. You could sit on the benches and hold a microphone to ur mouth and join in and the the bench would vibrate. The piece can still be heard from the gift shop which makes leaving the exhibition very reflective touching and calming.

As a 4D artist I am aware of the irony of critiquing digital problems of social media act whilst also utilising the media I am critiquing (iPhones, software, VR). it is interesting too consider maybe works about digital issues are more impactful when utilising digital media. you are confronting the problem with the issue itself.

Tim Walker Wonderful Thing exhibition 

 I thought this exhibition was very beautifully curated and played out. entrain rooms where almost more like installations, however they never distracted from Walker's photography, only heightened it. I thought this was interesting especialy because walker's photographs are incREDIBLE immersive and sensory, therefore to make the exhibition a reflection of that is very fitting. 

I especially liked his nudes of kate moss which where printed incredibly small. I thought it was really successful to print them very small as it makes the act of looking at them very intimate. you need to be close and lean into it in order to see the detail. for some reason I think it made the images appear even better. I would like to explore this action of contorting the viewer in the future.

Shana Moulton exhibtion 

I had never been to this gallery space before and I really liked how it still very much held its church aesthetic as you walked around the exhibition. the stain glass windows at the top baloney are very beautiful and you can go up to the top pews to see the art from looking down which I have never been able to do in a gallery before which is interesting as it makes you consider how the work should be viewed.

I really liked the strong use of DIY aesthetic and a consciously naive approach to the work. her use of green screening is something I would like to experiment with as I have never explored it before.

I was recommend in the crit to look at Isaac Julien’s way of presenting his work. I think it’s really interesting to have screens at different levels and angels as it creates a more immersive way for the viewer to engage with the film. It reminded me of the Mark Leckey instillation I saw at the Tate modern where he shows his work on three panels and also projected in large to another wall. Although his is something I would like to explore, we are presenting our work at lux on a show reel and therefore I won’t be able to make any alterations in the way it is presented. However maybe this is something I can explore within my own time? As I am using green screen to put nature onto my body it could be interesting to project this back onto nature again to create a third layer to this meaning?

I was told that my film reminded my tutor of the ‘green man English folklore’. I’ve looked into this tale and it seems he’s a deity often appearing in the symbol of a face surrounded by leaves who represents rebirth and the cycle of growth in spring. This link to paganism is something I am interested. I recently saw the horror film Midsommar which I also explores nature in terms of a cult with frequent references to paganism. 

Bill viola water/fire

I  really like this as a reference as I think I have unconsciously created a much ‘safer’ and easy version of bill viola’s performance where he literally becomes the element by covering himself in it. This piece is incredibly striking.

Casper David friedrich

how not to be seen a fucing educational

After college I went to a gallery opening which I was plus one’d to by a friend titled ‘One More Slope’. The piece that I was really struck by was a three min performance which was presented in three stills titled ‘The Bounce of Remaining’ where a man is covered in black bin lining and walking across the shore. I thought it was effective how it was presented along side a poem, which made me think of Salvador Dali’s ‘narcissus’ painting which Is also paired with a painting.  I wanted to write about the experience at the gallery as it kind of opened me up to a side of the art world that I don’t think I was so keen on. It felt mostly as though people where going in order to be seen themselves rather than look at the art, and it was more important to be on ‘the list’ and who you knew rather than to look at the how the work is effecting you. I have never felt more aware about what I’m wearing and how I’m acting in a gallery before, however here I felt very conscious of how I was presenting myself, even thinking about how I looked looking at the art Which is  bizarre as I have always viewed galleries and cinema as one of the biggest escapes from ones self, ( or maybe a way to reflect  ) . I also like how in galleries there aren’t windows as the frames of the work acts as windows themselves onto other phycological non literal ‘worlds’ and ‘views’. I didn’t feel that so much here. I’m hoping that my art won’t drift into this category however maybe its the only way for your work to be seen Is to network like this?

Sigmund Freud museum 

uncanny exhibition

 This was an installation that was part of the exhibition  which was a Childs room and in it was a chair which has been elongated to look like the silhouette of a man. its looming presence seems incredibly threatening but also parental to me? it reminds me of lying in my bed at night and looking at a pile of clothes on a chair and my brain tricking me into thinking its a monster or a man huddled in the corner. Despite being aware it isn't real part of my brain was utterly petrified and frozen.

there were other terrifying elements such as a masked face in blue lighting in two mirrors  and strange sounds and projections coming from the beds. this installation has really stuck with me since seeing it. it is not often that artwork actually makes me really really scared but as soon as I stepped into this installation I was torn between immediately wanting to run out of the room but also stay and look at what was inside of it. it really really successfully provoked the sense of uncanny in me and took me immediately back to being terrified as a child of looming figures in my room. there is something so menacing about that chair. 

(nature book/ analogue book)

This is a book that I have been reading recently by a French philospher. I wanted to include it here as it made me think of the Flan Eir Buadilare text we read as a class. This section of the book she talks about how we used to define criminals by physical attributes such as the width of your nose could determine if you were a protitude or the size of your knuckles could say if you were a thief. this made me think of Max Nordeu's writing on 'degeneration' and how you can tell if someone has lived in a modern metropolis because they seem 'infantile' and 'sterile'. this is interesting in the instance of the weimar decadence in Berlin in DADA collages which explore this fragmentation of the self in the city through comparing the body to the machine. I thought this was all really interesting in terms of of a parallel to how baudilare writes about city life.

whilst thinking about memory in sense of being subjective, I thought about Louise Borgou's interview/performance where she reflects on how her father used to peel an orange at the dinner table when she was a child. as she describes the act she reenacts it herself. the video is very interesting to me as although the simplicity of her action and her tone is light hearted and comedic there are very strong undertones of darkness through her story. the way in which her dad humiliates her in the story is very painful to hear about and therefore makes it difficult to watch.

 Ann Hamilton's use of her mouth as a camera was super interesting to me and something I really want to explore in the future. 

In an interview I watched with her she described how she would almost look passed out while taking it as she would have to lie on the ground before someone helped her. this process of it being very painful and drooling and gross for her made me think of the process as a kind of birth. furthermore the images themselves look very bodily and intimate with their small scale and highly saturated colours. for some reason if I had to imagine a picture taken from someones mouth I would imagine something similar to how hers look. I love the imperfections in them. its also interesting how the prices behind them is just as important as their outcome. to know they where taken with sa mouth makes them much more interesting. 

The use of a stage and light being used in a suclpture theatrically reminded me of Bernini's ecstasy of snt Theresa as a window at the top allows for daylight to shine down like a spotlight and the use of undercutting creates dramatic undulating shadows. 

I was also interested in how Laura Provost explores time in her pieces by writing words that juxtapose the image or subtitles whichch are not matching with the dialogue to create her own reality. or showing an object on screen and saying this means one thing so when it appears later in the film you have an association with it.