Maquettes

Using glo-sticks, sponge, screws and other found objects I have created some maquettes, playing with how different materials can be joined together. However, the effect of the objects is ephemeral as the lights soon fade and they no longer appear so vibrant.

Creating Maps

Using the drawing of my regular route into college, I have created a structure from fishing wire and deconstructed string. From this I have done a number of drawings to create this composition. I feel it has been quite successful, as it think the accidental nature of the drawing is quite appealing.

The Morning Route

By visually mapping my route to college, this drawing above has been created using fishing line and charcoal. I used words that I had highlighted on the train in the morning to illustrate my thought process on the journey. From this drawing a created a 3D structure using similar materials and reflecting the same ideas. I have documented these structures using photograms(below).

Psychogeography

I started by thinking about how people usually remember directions/maps, and realised that they often write them down on their hand. Using this idea, I visually documented my movements while walking a circular journey to look at whether the drawing ends up in the same place as it started. This is to promote thoughts about the walker's actual route compared to their percived movements. Also, I documented the route through photography of organic patterns at regular intervals in the journey. Some of the photos were quite interesting in both texture and colour.

Uncanny Sound



After watching 'The Final Academy Documents', a film by William Burroughs, I realised how important sound can be in create the feeling of the uncanny. In a small group, we created these structures using tracing paper and cloth with the aim of creating unsettling sound when you move within it. I found it quite disturbing when I was inside the tracing paper structure in particular as the sounds seems to take over your senses and I found it difficult to think of anything else.

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Inside the tracing paper structure.

Are keys uncanny?

The aim here was to create an uncanny feeling through the juxtaposition of seemingly normal objects. With many objects this may not have worked, but i feel there is something particularily uncanny about keys. Following my previous work using spinning keys i have found by studying them over and over i have found something quite unnerving about them. In many other contexts keys have been used in an uncanny, or even surreal, way. In the novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland the ideas of keys is used to an uncanny effect by focusing on scale. But perhaps the uncannyness of keys comes from not knowing what is within whatever is opened by the key, rather than the actual key itself? An example of this tension is very clear in Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid's 'Meshes of the Afternoon' (1943), a still from which is pictured below.

Action Above Outcome

A Swinging Key

This composition has been created using mixed media life studies of a key swinging from a string. Using the idea of ‘action over outcome’, I have used different drawing techniques without considering how the different studies would come together. Though I did not consider the composition during creation, I found in the end there was a much fresher result than if I would have consciously designed it.