final project overview

1 - sculpey still = disaster
2 - masking tape is a good material
3 - so is chicken wire
embroidered veins were ruined after first fabric layer could not be unstuck from the fitting process...veins are now painted
the secondary strings for the scroll drawing were unnecessary and did not work out well.

Artist's Statement:
Tension and anxiety are intertwined with a multitude of things that are different with each person and situation; yearning, things you don’t want, symptoms of ill health (our bodies get anxious too), fear and despair, the unknown and unseen, control (or the lack of control), paranoia, mindlessness, the relationships between our selves and others, the relationships with our selves.
I’m interested in parts of the human body as an element in these sculptures or drawings, things that are recognizable as what makes a body that is alive and cognizant. Skin, hair, bones, blood. There is something visceral about these that somehow make it almost repulsive. We’re almost afraid of skin or flesh separate from eachother, bones, hair, blood - and it’s not even necessarily the idea of death that is associated with it. But these things are us, and because our bodies are the vessels in which we experience our anxieties (which also often originates from within us, rather than an external source like fear is), I feel that it’s important to use - not just as a tool to use for some possible gross-out value. As mentioned, our bodies feel anxiety too. There is a huge and varied list of physical symptoms that are associated with it. The purely aesthetic imagery possibilities with it, separate from its meaning as a part of the body, would also work with other aspects I’ll use.
Control is another aspect that is important. We all want it - control over ourselves and our environment, and we dont always have that. Tension and anxiety have a lot to do with the level of control that is in our lives, be it control/noncontrol coming into our lives from an external source or something we take on on our own. The mention of fear is almost unavoidable when talking about tension/anxiety.

final project progressssss

sculpey is way way too soft. armature needed. mesh? chicken wire?
one more blick's trip.
drawing almost done-ish-ish for scroll but no cotton for the scroll...buy on saturday.
please test out scroll structure. holes to be drilled for a little scroll handle, the backing to be made for the draw strings, the shape determined.
um um the inside lining. spend a little sunday morning embroidering it. vessel shape/size needs to be more definitively determined to make it, which do by saturday afternoon. can fold over the brim a little bit, but must be covered over with putty or paper, and papier mached over that too. if it's decided that sculpey is unnecessary, can sew to armature instead of folding over and sandwiching. dont forget about the ribbing for the vessel. wake up early sat.
tuesday work more on the insides. finish papier mache.
wed. print out drawing, assemble.
thurs. ?? finish loose ends!
dont forget about your sea of nettingggg (buy a few more yards maybe, chinatown trip)

forget it, okay, armature mesh/wire, masking tape, sculpey ribs (wired), papier mache.

printed cotton, back layer of muslin
thick yarn
thin thread
thinish yarn
beltloops

remember, the thin tail is at the bottom, make the tail long

permission for installation site

filmwork

Five aspects
- constriction
- nervousness
- the physical
- the day
- to be seen/not seen



Constriction

Video opens in an empty stairwell, going down. Lens is partially obscured by a bone placed over the lens, so that there is a peep-hole effect.
The hole shifts around over the course of the journey down the stairs, moving towards the edge of the camera screen, edging back up to the middle. It changes.
Viewer can periodically see the stairs that are yet to come.
No audio.
Continuous shot.

Nervousness

Video comprises of four parts showing nervous movement, sped to last 15 seconds each.
The first is obsessive hair-brushing.
The second is nervous hands knitting
The third is the jittery leg.
The fourth showcases worry, with subject on the bed in the corner biting nails
No audio.

The Physical

Video opens to show that subject has gotten a nosebleed.
Subject examines it for some time in the mirror, and carefully wipes it away and rinses, even though the blood has not stopped.
No audio.

The Day
Video is spliced from different footage shot of a journey in public crowds: The ceiling of the hallway in the Arlington T-stop, the floor of it, crowds from each made stop.
This footage is sped up and cycled through, with intermittent interruptions. The first interruption comes at the 12 second mark for a brief flash of the journey-taker tired and staring in bed. The second interruption is two seconds of the same, at the 27 second mark, and again at the 34 second mark, and again for three seconds at the 41 second mark. It flashes back to the journey footage for another second and the remaining 15 seconds is the rest of the footage that was flashed during the interruptions.
Audio only on segments not of the trip.

To Be Seen/Not Seen
The camera is placed under the stairs, occasionally peeking around.
No audio

sound

anxiety in sounds
anxiety as the source in the form of sound will explore the build up of apprehension with the end of the crescendo marking more finally the tension.

sound possibilities
- someone running in echoing place (heels?)
- low volume highpitched noise
- white noise
- glass breaking
- uneasy breathing
- mishmashed noises of tv and irritating noises
- ambulance/fire truck alarms
- low nervous fast whispering
- intermittent buzzing
- scratching noises

the six sounds
- low volume high pitched noise
- scratching noises
- uneasy breathing
- heels running up stairs
- vacuum cleaner (irritant) that stops and then glass breaks
- high pitched noise spliced and looped (from the T tracks)

Source update

Continuing with the source of anxiety, I would like to take the most anxious (at least, they are often presented as so) gender and one of their most traditional mediums - sewing and handiwork, and utilize this medium to help render my source as a book. I choose sewing/embroidery for the very nature of its labor intensiveness, the possibility for unexpressed anxieties to be channeled into obsessive, controlled dedication that produces pretty results and accomplishments. I use figures in the vein of Munch's "Puberty" and line and contrast for the book's contents, which are to be tightly bundled inside the cover.

MFA Photographic Figures exhibit

The source, the human form, is immediately recognizable in the dramatic black and white photographs (most were b&w anyway). The exhibition is first divided into body parts, then progressively into the full body and face, with the most similar forms and themes grouped together. It was an appropriate way to arrange the broad array of photos, and it made it mentally easier to work your way through the gallery. Though not necessarily always my favorite photos out of the exhibition, I found the experimental photos most interesting (experimental as in experimental in the developing and printing process), and I would've liked for more detailed information on how the artist achieved the effect than what the placard gave. Experimental photos aside, I recall liking some of the smaller work especially - some by a group of three artists, two male and one female, that lived together on a beach - particularly the photo of the three of them together.

lisa mark

reading an overview of the broad range of possibilities for "sequence" and "time" helps me figure out what is also possible for my book. it would've been much more helpful of the essay to provide visuals rather than lengthy written descriptions of the book examples - not just for the way my particular mind understands things but also just in general, it would've been nice to see them - but otherwise good. Below are some highlights from the essay I felt were particularly important and interesting.

In the broadest sense, sequencing in artists’ books is concerned with two kinds of time: the time of

the reader and the time of the book. The time of the reader is an implied continuous present distinct from the

time of the book; the book (the embodiment of the intentions of the artist) may concern itself with present,

past, and/or future—even suspending time—in myriad different ways.

But, of course, any discernable storyline is a testament to both the artist’s

and the reader’s tendency to make meaning from even the most random groupings—and perhaps to the

resilience of such clichés.

Using a process normally created to reproduce a “still” image, Polke instantiated the otherwise

unmarked seconds during which the original is scanned.

Jutta Koether’s incandescent book 20 Minuten: Aufzeichnung/Recording (1989) conveys a sense

of making explicit what might otherwise be suppressed or even forgotten[...]

You cannot just erase left-overs.

You cannot just erase painting.

Not, even with some radical operations, doing

them made leaving more left-covers. Action

and objects, which inform me now, make me saying I

know the idea of beauty still makes sense.20

Arden’s remarks point to a dual reality underlying Feldmann’s book: it tells two stories—that of an

individual and that of a certain social reality. As both album and archive, it creates a more nuanced “portrait”

than might be possible in a single image.

The book’s sequence—in terms of what comes at the beginning, middle, and end—was of less importance to

Roth than the cumulative effect of so much information in so many days. Sequencing in this instance becomes

an act of amplification.

In addition,

while practice of the I Ching appears intended to achieve randomness, the point of this method is not so

much that as the acceptance of the results it produces. In Not Wanting to Say Anything about Marcel,

“randomness” gives way to “radical presence.” Nothing would be gained from resequencing the panels; one

need only experience the work.