This week has been spent focusing on the essay. It is great to begin to draw the ideas out. There is still a way to go and it isn’t a process that comes naturally, but like I said last week, it is a process that I am enjoying.

In Tuesday’s online chat we had individual chats with Andy, so I was able to discuss the essay. Andy was asking when a photograph became a photograph: When you push the shutter button, when its stored in the camera or when it is printed.

From reading an article by Cathy Weis on ageism, I am beginning to question if my understanding of embodiment. I have been thinking of embodiment in a linear way, time based due to our biological nature, and if in fact the notion of embodiment is far more diverse, and possibly more like a tag cloud.

I have read recently that can be argued is that rather than disembodying us cyberspace has in fact has embodied us.

This week I also managed to spend a little time on jotting down some notes for a prototype for the final show. Below is a 1^st draft for the final piece prototype:

Prototype draft 1

But having shown it to a couple of friends and discussed the options with them, they advised me against trying to travel down to Camberwell and create an installation.  Their feedback was the ideas in the presentation were too ambitious in relation to my resources and situation.

So had a good think through options and am going to look in to making a non linear narrative piece with Korsakow. That way all my recourses will be directed to a focused and contained piece and the time frame will be more realistic.

So the next step will be to spend a bit of time going back over Korsakow with my sister who knows more about the programming than I do and get up to speed and aim to put another draft presentation for the prototype together in a week or so.

I am comfortable with proceeding with a more contained project, a lot of my worries for the final piece have been based on options of getting down to London.

Korsakow is a structure that feels appropriate as it allows for interaction and the non linear narrative structure is representative of the way digital media has opened up choices and changed familiar processes. It feels as if it may echo some of the ideas above about the cyber world freeing us from a linear time biological lead understanding.

Appreciating why some of the questions we were posed in the early part of this course matter so profoundly, such as who controls the net and the sharing of information. Given how societies have structured and controlled themselves with biological based hierarchies that are in many ways obsolete in cyber space. (These some how are often found re asserting themselves. Like the sexual stereotyping of many avatars).

Just to end on an exciting piece of news about Mail Art One. At the end of last week I was contacted by the gallery director for the DLI gallery who wished to contact one of the contributors with a view to working with them.

I am really pleased about this as it was one of the things I hoped might be achieved through the publication.  Its aim was to be eclectic, democratic open to any one who wanted to could be included. I am glad I stuck at producing it. It feels really good to have facilitated that introduction.

Had a very productive tutorial with Andy last Tuesday which really helped provide a sense of focus for returning to the course.

 

My computer crashed on Wednesday and I have spent the last few days finding files and re installing programmes that had been dropped for some reason.

 

Also managed to finish the work for the Peep Wardrobe show in Wakefield and get that posted off. The work was a mix of video and paper based pieces taken from the step sequence I have been building up through out August.

 

 

Have been putting together the next issue of Mail Art One. The printing is almost done for this issue and hope to start binding next week.

 

I would like to get this issue clear and away by the end of the month as the winter issue will be the special edition for the Mail Art show at the Tron Gallery, Glasgow which Alison Stockwell has asked me to co curate along side her in the New Year.

 

http://www.ycnonline.com/opportunities/view/210/call-for-submissions-in-glasgow-united-kingdom

 

 

 

Really exciting news here is that the team at Emptyshop are setting up studios and I had a meeting with Nick and Carlo yesterday and if all goes well be in a studio space around the start of November.  It will be a fantastic opportunity to be involved with a group of creative practitioners in a face to face environment.

 

Got up to the DLI where ‘Inkubator 2’ is currently on show. It contains a wealth of artist’s books. Hope to get along to the gallery talk next Saturday.

 

http://www.davidfaithfull.co.uk/recentProj.php?ref_id=6

 

http://county.durham.gov.uk/sites/dli/Pages/Exhibitions.aspx

 

This week I have been about compiling Mail Art, which always takes longer to get together than I think it will and at the moment I am surrounded by stacks of paper waiting to be sewn.

 

A few days ago I was contacted by Alison Stockwell of Tron gallery in Glasgow and asked if I would like to co-curate a show she is planning there in January next year of mail art work.

 

http://www.tron.co.uk/whatson.php?page=Gallery+

 

An exciting invitation and I am looking forward to it very much.

 

 

This week was the private view for MADA and I was sorry not to be there or even see the online streaming of the event.

Have been taken up over the last week with printing and putting the summer issue of Mail Art together. It is quite a time consuming business as a lot of the pages need hand feeding through the printer and the each page has to be folded. Given that there are 100 copies in each issue and around 9 A4 folded sheets it is a lot of work.

 

Last Tuesday I met the online students in year one who I will be joining. It was very nice to meet them and they were a very welcoming and dynamic group. Looking forward to working alongside them.

 

 

I had been trying to draft together an outline of my project last week to update my thoughts and post on the blog. I put the outline to the group. I’m not sure if it was very clear. 

 

Anyway here is the outline:

 

 

The original area of study for my project was about the ‘lost’ physical ephemeral body movements in relation to our identities.

 Movements that we generate everyday but are not aware of and which are absent in our online lives and to question the possible changes with our communications and identities this may bring about.

Initially I took some time to identify the type of movements I wanted to focus on and settled on non body language movements and then set about to research if there is a connection to our identities with these movements.

If it could be proved that these movements do in fact feed back in to the construction of self/identity then it is relevant to try to understand how that might affect our consciousness and relationships, understanding of self/others when taken into a digital arena where those movements are no longer necessary or relevant.

As I carried on with my research I wondered why this phenomenon might be so readily accepted and have recently begun to look at the idea of Cartesian duality.

I have just got a book by Drew Leder ‘The Absent Body’ which looks at the inner, visceral body which is generally absent from conscious experience.

I have been interested in the idea of this hidden visceral consciousness becoming more apparent during times of ill health and have been drawing on my own experience of health issues and that of my son who has on going health issues to do with allergies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Putting Mail art together although a lot of work is something I enjoy. I like the focused repetitive movements. It is a process that demands concentration. Unlike an activity like knitting where it is possible to allow your hands to do something familiar while you focus else where. I want to try to think some more about defining the type of movement and awareness. I wonder if it is something we all share to the same degree or if it varies?

 

Frank Jackson’s Mary’s Room

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary’s_room

 

The spiralling philosophies from it intrigue me.

 

 

 

Do we all experience our physicality to the same degree? Is there a gender difference in this experience? Does this experience change with age/ health?  How would one begin to establish any differences in something so subjective especially if it were done with a verbal questionnaire? How does this impact in our developing digital life and identity?

 

What about the advancements in digital technology which has lead to games such as Wii fit which taps into the physicality of the player but provides a nonphysical arena to enact these transferred movements? Will these games and type of physical interaction have an impact on our own physical awareness? Will the fact that these actions happen in a non physical arena develop or subtly change our sense of self?

 

 

During last weeks chat Jonathan asked me to explain my practical work for the project, this was surprisingly a little difficult, but it did tie in to something I have been thinking about and that is that I would like more space to make work in.

 

Here are some photos of my work room which I share with Samuel.

 

It is a nice room but not large and not really somewhere that is easy to make larger work and I need to think round this.

 

Also I would like to change the title of my project to be a little clearer about defining the idea involved if that is possible.

 

It has been a good week. Tests came back from the hospital  with reassuring results.

 

Finished Mail Art and posted out.

 

Have approached a local temporary art space http://www.emptyshop.org/  to use their venue for 2 days in May and they have agreed.

 

So I am thinking about the work I have been doing for the last 2 years for MADA and its journey and how and if I want to use this space to pull the work together to get an over view of it as I have somewhat lost my sense of direction and I would like a more objective sense of direction on returning to MADA hopefully in September. I don’t feel I know what I am aiming for or how to develop the work.

 

 

There are several ideas I would like to try out and it will be very good to get some feed back from people.

 

 

I also started playing round with some previous video clips. I am still having trouble with resolution issues and getting a blocky effect after combining several processes on a clip.

Just cant seem to get round this issue currently. Most likely it is to do with the file types. But I need to resolve this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

unit 2

    Notes of thoughts about mail art project.

 

   Realized used materials to give the issue an identity

 

 Also that the care taken in the physical production was important to me.

 

  Question arose: how do I make coherent identity with out relying on seductive/pleasing materials?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     Planning for equipment for Dance City studio session next week.

 

                                                       

 

  Digital media may strip away this seductive physical element?  But replaces with something else?

u2

My son Samuel has had infected eczema. So missed Monday’s chat and it has been a slow week for MADA.

Have completed further printing for the mail art magazine using Microsoft publisher.

Written notes on thoughts/ideas/questions around MADA.