As we returned post-Christmas in order to get the creative juices flowing and everyone engaged in studio activities a new Workshop was devised and delivered. The idea being to look at aspects of your practice and explore what you are currently doing, how you go about your practice or what your current line of thinking is about. This was a challenging workshop as it was almost as if we were learning a new language, a new way of expressing our thought processes. We were set x3 tasks, which are detailed below from the brief, intermitted with my resolutions:
Task 1 -20 – 30 minutes
· Make a diagram of your networks that articulates the following:
contexts / critical sources / influences / reading / discourses / etc.
· Each member presents their diagram to their group.
· From this the rest of the group (‘audience’) are encouraged to then overwrite the presenters diagrams with further ideas, suggestions for the above networks.
For this task I took the idea of ideas generation and one particular aspect of it. From memory I drew a badly scaled map of the walks I do locally to where I live. These walks I find very mediative and a chance to question ideas in my head and develop thoughts onto the next stage. Some of my best ideas have come through these walks. I purposefully didn't want to use any writing or explanation on the diagram but to just see how it would look as a series of loosely drawn lines. Looking back I perhaps shouldn't have restricted myself to the edges of the paper and could have added extensions and tracks off that I knew but have never explored, a reflection of ideas that have never been resolved and have only ever existed in my headspace.
There was some interaction with the original and although some I find not really something I can see worth taking forward, there are others, for example the yellow T shaped addition. This intersects several of the paths and could be seen as a branding on the original or a plan of an airfield, if you saw the rest of the diagram as a map. Maybe more of these abrupt shapes could have been added.
Task 2 – 30 minutes
· Create an unwritten diagram that articulates your practice through drawing, graphic marks and symbols, etc. to include your particular:
method(ologies) / processes / encounters / materials / thoughts /
sensations / subject position(s) / themes / activities
· Tape each diagram on the wall
· Each group spends 20-20 minutes discussing and interpreting each diagram that might provoke new thinking or questions.
For this task I wanted to explore my thought processes and what I do when it comes to actually creating any work after having an initial idea. I started with a question mark, as this seems for me the logical start point, I question a brief, a situation, a problem and look to try and work out a way to solve it or at least tackle it. This led to arrows pointing off to different ways I go about these stages, these are then linked back, crossed over and intersected at several points.
Although this particular diagram gave me the opportunity to explore the way I tackle any questions, it didn't reveal to me any unknown methods or ways I should focus on more than others. It just confirmed that there are many different routes to find solutions to problems and to keep exploring. Maybe there is another diagram that I could have done or a direction I could have taken where I explore routes I don't use and perhaps should and maybe these would reveal different answers.
Task 3 -30 – 45 minutes
· Build a diagram that is entirely propositional and forward facing.
· Describe work that does not exist and new thinking.
· Articulate ambitions for as-yet unseen outcomes and impossible dreaming.
· Allow radical thinking.
· Suspend logic and the weight of practicalities, laws of physics and budget restraints.
· Prioritise visual articulations over written.
This task I found far more interesting and informing. It allowed me to take some of the ideas I have at the moment and explore where I could take them. They are linked but not in any connecting way, they resemble I suppose what my sketchbook should look like and I believe this will be the destination for these diagrams as this one in particular has become quite informative and sparked ideas i hadn't had with y current thinking.
This particular idea shows how it might be possible to take one of my current ideas of an eye blinking Morse Code and using one of the messages to project it onto the side of a prominent building. I have used Norwich Castle here as it overlooks the City, as a castle would, keeping watch and guard over everyone. The current messages I have been working on are:
- I am all seeing
- I am watching you
- Talk to me
- Do you understand?
These fall inline with my thinking of networks and communication but also by using the eye they can be become more ambiguous, looking at the idea of surveillance and how we are constantly being watched, however innocent our intentions are. These messages link in better with the one eye being 'The All Seeing Eye' or the 'Eye of Providence' as I discussed in earlier blog (https://carldurban.wixsite.com/website/post/non-verbal-communication-the-eyes-have-it). This iteration is definitely something I need to persue.
Another idea that came from the exercise was by looking at Morse Code as a binary language, which effectively it is I could create messages by replacing the 'dot' with an open eye and the 'dash' with a closed eye. By doing this I can create full messages or even full passages of text. Effectively a wall of eyes could be used to display a statement or get over a message. Whether this is done digitally or in a very physical way by having piles of printed closed and open eyes that I can move to change the message. After speaking to my tutor I need to make some of these and see if they work in isolation or together and how many of them I do create? Lots to explore.
Anotehr idea I
Another idea that came from this exercise was one of developing some current exploration into painting from a life drawing session (https://carldurban.wixsite.com/website/post/hospital-rooms-northgate-house) where I have been looking into creating paintings from the abstracted body forms we developed during the session. This may well stay unresolved as I have been exploring the development of the drawings at at present they seem to have limited success.
This shows a selection of the work undertaken by fellow students in my area in Guntons, as we worked together and created Task 1 together. As sceptical as I was to begin with, I have found that there was some real positive outcomes from the tasks and it adds another layer of thinking and development in the way I work and particularly when you can't quite resolve an issue this process could give you a way to develop a thought in a direction not yet discovered.