PROCESS
Why is disruption important?
Those that have been part of the seminars and lectures throughout the term, would have noticed my obsession with finishing. I have explored this many times and have had many inconclusive resolutions to the subject. How is something finished? How do we know when it's finished? Can something ever truly be finished? One answer was - no. Nothing can be finished until it no longer exists. The construction of the garage wouldn't have finished until it was demolished. La Sagrada Familia sits in a similar vein. By the time it is considered 'finished', there will be parts that will be in disrepair. It will be damaged by the weathering effects of time and from vandalism. Another answer to that of finishing is - yes. We can apply a decisive process called GEMO. Good enough. Move on. This method allows a creative to finish works when they pass a personally-set threshold or milestone.
Disruption is my final attempt at explaining when something is finished. It gets disrupted. It doesn't matter what it gets disrupted by, as it could be any number of things. Alone, it explains nothing. Yet it provides an innumerable amount of possibilities. Revisiting this subject will be disruptive to everything else I want to do. Things are unfinished just because they are... and I'm happy with that.
Why use disruption as a subject matter?
I think it, originally, had something to do with juxtaposing the disruption of the demolition of the garage with the perceived disruption it was causing just by being there. There was, undoubtedly, a disruption. Which party was causing the disruption is another question. One that I wasn't going to answer because it leads to an insoluble debate.
From that, it developed into wanting to create a space that was disruptive to the human senses. Loud sounds and flashing lights in dark spaces are archetypal examples of disruptiveness that we tend to experience. Whether or not the disruption created is viewed in a positive or negative manner is left completely up to those that experience it.
Why a garage?
The story behind the garage is brief. It was being emptied in order to build a newer, cleaner building that would serve as a smarter storage alternative to the garage. Like most garages in the UK, it didn't house a vehicle. It was the premise to keep old, forgotten mementos among garden furniture in the winter months. When I learned that it was being emptied, and knowing that it would stay empty for a couple of days, I decided to use it as a no-holds-barred workshop. I could build in a space that didn't matter anymore. It didn't have a purpose. As I worked in the garage, I started to notice interesting parts of the space. A window at the back had gone largely unnoticed for the year or so that I had lived there. Covered by cobwebs, rust, and broken MDF. The gaps in the asbestos-lined roofing and the concrete walls, showing brief glimpses of the world outside. The 'bounce' produced by the reverberation encapsulated between the roof and three walls - traveling through the rusted sheet metal door.
This space had a story, and I knew nothing of it.
This flowchart outlines the very basic way that my interests led me to creating this project.
Firstly, my interest in audio. Audio is the reason I decided to come to university.
From Jim and Andrew's videos, I started to develop an interest in experimental film. Fuelled by Jim's Black Sun and Andrew's VOID, I created a series of audiovisual works that focused on materiality and space.
I wish I had developed the idea at the point that I could have requested a projector. Being able to illuminate the darker corners of the building in order to highlight and bring these spaces to the forefront of the project would have made the experience a touch better. I was thinking of simply projecting a white shape - a circle, most probably - surrounded by black to create a spotlight effect.
Since the gallery exhibition, I wanted to look into curation. I would have like other works to put in to the space. With a projector, I would have loved to show films inside the garage. Short experimental films - like the ones I made (HERE).
FLOOR PLAN/ LAYOUT
DESIGN IDEAS FOR A LOGO/ TITLE PIECE
I used a dry paintbrush, black paint and stencils to create a semi-unique font. This was in response to Fraser Muggeridge's lecture on typography and design. The main reason for using these stencils is the aesthetic form that they afford. They are designed in a very robust, DIY, manner that isn't supposed to be grandiose or fancy. In photoshop, I inverted the images, layered them (with some techniques I used in the second week of Aesthetic and Practises), and aligned the letters.
DISTRIBUTION, COLOUR & POSTER EXPERIMENTS
This is what the garage was.
A lot of me recording...
This is what I explored within the garage.
These slideshows document what I feel was a successful project. It integrated what was already there, with new creations.
Above is something that I genuinely enjoyed making.
Below is what I thought I was going to make.
This is where the idea developed from...
God, that was bad.
The reason I still want to present these, is to note my own confusions and misunderstandings about my own proposed project. I wanted to look back at my presentation, not as the presenter, but as someone in the audience. The subject itself is somewhat interesting. It's a 21st Century problem that is affecting more and more people.
Cool.
... That's it.
I'm not a doctor or an activist. There is very little I can do to show the importance of this if it even is important. I want to pick out other aspects of what I said to find out what I really want to make. I need to think about the limitations of my current abilities. I haven't made any sound sculptures before. Why haven't I made any sound sculptures before? Am I interested in sound sculptures? If so, why hasn't this come up in my life before? I suppose part of the Expanded Art Forms module is to try new things and experiment, research, and think about art in a new way.
Apnoea is a term that describes the disruption of breathing. From what I said in my presentation, from previous art pieces (the Panetone Feedback tin, the traffic control cone, my experiments with microphones), from the way that I am... I can only take away that my interest in art, lies within the idea of disruption.
I didn't want my artwork to explicitly mean anything. I wanted to impose an experience using sculpture and audio, without directing those experiencing, to any direct conclusion.
I sincerely hope that you have enjoyed the process that lead to my final Expanded Art Forms project, as well as the project itself.