Progress

I have just been brainstorming this weekend and have allowed my millions of thoughts and ideas to go where they wanted, not limiting the ideas by the logistical contstraints I might face when realising the brief and so i have come up with a lot of great and viable ideas. I have decided to definitely go with an installation and it must involve the visitor and not allow them to be simply a passive passer by. Now, what I am discovering is that an installation need not be confined to a room, gallery or even the great turbine hall, it can take on many forms. This is pretty ecxiting, I wish to engage people and surprise them, get them involved and leave them feeling joyous and positive about art and the experience they have just had.

http://gb.pinterest.com/pin/569494315351458119/

I remember this wonderful and simple piece during Final Cut at Manchester Art Gallery last year,
 I could have stayed within its gently swaying branches for hours, it made me feel very peaceful and happy, very calm and smiley.








So, do I keep it within a traditional installation design, a room, indoors or branch out.. go outside, hide things about like easter eggs to be discovered... I do quite like that idea. In fact that is the main premise of this project, for the work to be discovered by the visitor, not presented obviously by me. Things like this

Found these stuck around Picadilly
gardens and they were gone the next day

around Manchester qualify certainly, and are fun and make people happy.

Time to get started

I am still a little up in the air as to what direction I would like to go with this project, a possibility is to continue with some of the more interesting and interactive elements from the visual languages brief and work out some exciting analog and digital outcomes, although this feels a bit lazy because it is a continuation, however there was and is so much in that brief that I had not had time to explore that it is a viable option. I really want to explore how we take visual cues, what we look at and why so this does fit.
I see so many people walking around who are not looking at anything but their phones, almost being run over, missing out on wonderful things that are there or are going on so I want to look at what it takes to capture people's attention, how to make them look up from the phones and either pay attention to the world around them or look at something specific. I am a person who is looking around at eveything all the time, I don't miss much so I find this fascinating.

I'd also like to really go to town with printing and go back to the idea of making my inks and papers for whatever I do, I want to look at different inks and in particular a conductive ink that makes a 2d work interactive. So these are all exciting ideas with a lot of scope. I am sure a few days with all my journals and sketchbooks will help bring it all together.

I want to really also look at the concept of art as a precious thing to be put behind glass and velvet ropes, not to touch and to be revered and almost afraid of, this came from a visit to Australia's national gallery in Canberra a few years ago where if a person got ever so slightly too close to anything, honking great alarms would go off and it really made me feel pretty crappy and not want to be there at all, it was and remains the single most unwelcoming experience I have ever had in a gallery or museum. As an Aussie it was also pretty embarassing that the visitors to my country were being greeted this way. So this has informed a lot of the shows I have put on and has been in my mind a long time. So I'd like to create an exhibit that is purely tactile, either in a darkend space or something similar.

So three ideas, I think the printing will have to keep for now, it is not really beefy enough for this brief so the looking one or the touching one are the way to go.. now to choose and refine the concept.