About Me

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Manchester, United Kingdom
BA(Hons)Interactive Arts Student. Manchester Metropolitan University.

Saturday 30 October 2010

Presentation of Shelter Project

Masks - Pete Kingsford / Thom Thatcher / Andrea De La Rubia
Face Gallery - Pete Kingsford
Wooden Painted Masks - Sasha

Just 4 weeks after the project was set and some intense day before the event editing, we manageeing said  to present all our efforts in a relatively well received manner.

due to the software that we had used to edit our film "masks" we found ourselves restricted as to how and on what we could show the film. That being said, I descovered that I could enable my laptop to show seperate applications on two different screens, which enabled me to play the movie and my personal slide project at the same time. One big sigh of relief and a lesson learnt for the future - Use different software and leave more time to try out differnt ways of showing work, (If this had been an exhibition I would not have been happy at all with the compromise I had to make).

Photo of mask project

After we had walked around and viewed everbody elses work we each had to comment the following:

1) What is the meaning that the work is communicating?
2) How effectively does the work communicate issues/ideas around shelter?
3) What could be improved? (production, communication, presentation, etc)
4) Give a mark 1-10 for how experimental the work was.

Although the feedback given was generally positive, there were quite a few closed comments. This meant that no real opinion of direction was given or examples of how people thought that this work could have been done differently or developed further in the future. For this reason there has been quite a lot of doubt cast on the effectiveness of asking for feedback at the moment of viewing and discussion has started on new ways of approaching this.

Thursday 21 October 2010

Liverpool Biennial

Although I am going to offer some kind of review, concentrating on one or more artists, I thought that the trip as a whole had to be commented on.

We had part of one day to try and take in as much as is humanly possible (excluding the Tate), of the Biennial exhibition. Looking back now this sounds like some kind of record breaking challenge rather than an educational trip. There are 18 locations highlighted on the tour map, some of which we knew from the outset were just not achievable, but some we deffinately had to see.

I and several colleagues managed to get around the following in something of a whistle stop tour:

52 Renshaw Street; FACT, The Black-E; Europleasure / Scandinavian Hotel; A Foundation Liverpool / Bloomberg New Contemporaries and Contemporary Urban Centre / City States.

Although there were probably some extremely noteable works on show throughout the exhibition, but the speed at which we had to try and take them in made it almost impossible to concentrate on any of them for long enough to really take them in and give them the attention that they deserved.

For me the inevitable highlight of the trip was at Crosby beach where I finally got to see a work by one of my favoutite artists: Another Place by Antony Gormley.


Wednesday 20 October 2010

"Masks" - Shooting the Film

Artists - Pete Kingsford / Thom Thatcher / Andrea De La Rubia


With the story board drawn up, all the masks made and the final facial designs agreed, it was time to shoot the film.

With a mini D.V recordre hired, we sat down and decided what order we woild shoot the scenes in. We had a limited amount of time (1 day) and it was important the we got the order correct so that we shot as much as we could in each location and didn't have to backtrack to re-do things.

It was important to us that all the outdoor shots in particular were shot on the same day; weather conditions being as they are in Manchester, it could be a long time before we saw another clear and sunny day. Aalso on our minds was the dead line for showing our work and we wanted to give ourselves as long as possible to edit the footage.


Morning in the house, choosing a mask to face the world.



The mask to work in.

Walking through the park.

We found that a major challanege was trying to avoid the appearance of too many other people in the frames. We were trying very hard to emphasise the solitude of the character in this piece; so with this all being shot close to the city centre, this meant waiting around for the right moment and then getting the shot done.

I think that, had we much longer to film this work, we may have done things differently. We could have spent (potentially), hours on each scene; filming in both several different locations and from different angles, so that when it came to editing which more material to choose from, not only for one piece to show but maybe the chance to produce a series of work showing the same scenario, from different view points. 

Tuesday 19 October 2010

Whitworth Lecture - Wu Chi-Tsung



This was the first in this years series of lectures by guest artists at the Whitworth Art Gallery and it didn't dissapoint.

Taiwanese artist Wu Chi-Tsung, currently the resident artist at the Chinese Arts Centre, spoke about his work, both past and present. His background in art was steeped in Eastern tradition, including calligraphy and ink drawing, this artist was eager to investigate the world where painting influences the use of digital media and create new inspired works.

Breathe - Wu Chi-tsung
Wire ii

His series of work entitled "Wire" used light projected the a wire mesh experimanting with movement/ speed/ focal length, to change the way that an object can be viewed. The artist states that:

"Very small changes can open a totally different world"

His fascination with light and how it can alter the way that objects and landscapes appear is a common theme through-out Wu Chi-Tsungs work; as in his "Longtime Exposed Landscape" from 2004, where his work showes how the natural light changed the very view from his studio window; to his more recent work "Crystal City" where he has contsructed a city scape out of clear plastic material and has a light source travelling back and forth on a track, casting a constantly changing shadow on the studio walls.


Thursday 14 October 2010

Shelter Project - "Masks" Film

Artists: Peter Kingsford / Thom Thatcher / Andrea De La Rubia

I think that following the initial brainstorming session for this project, the three of us were already sold on the idea of producing a piece of work on film.

The idea of looking at the the different personas that people use in diffrent situations and showing this as physical masks, we agreed was going to be presented most effectively as a performance or story told on film.

Original story board for "Masks"

The initial story / idea came together quite quickly. We wanted to show a normal, fairly non-desript day in the life of an unidentified character. From the start of the day; the journey to work; the events of the working day and back again. The importnat thing was how the mask (the face shown to the world), changed as things affected the character and as with all of us did not always show what was really going on in mind of the individual.

We had our story board and had set ourselves various tasks, designing mask (Andrea and myself), location hunting (Thom) and then with time quickly dissapearing we would have to start filming.

Tuesday 5 October 2010

Shelter Project

The word shelter can mean so many different things, to many different people. Our interpretation of any word is effected by out environment; our culture and heritage; our religion; politics; family and the people and the things that we interact with on daily basis, from the moment that we are born.


During our initial group discussion, a huge range of ideas came out including the following:

The Womb / Mothers Arms / Family

Constructed Shelters – A House / Caravan / Tent

Objects of purpose – An Umbrella / Hat/ Coat

Musical association – The Rolling stones “Gimme Shelter”

Your own skin / Your mind / Persona

Make up (Cosmetics) / Masks

After throwing out so many ideas we all appeared to talk about the ‘shelter’ we create within ourselves and the face that we present to the rest of the world. We agreed that generally speaking we create a persona for the environment that we are in and the people that we are with.

This persona is comparable to a mask, as it is not the real you! It is not usual in your day to day life to openly show how you feel about what is happening in your life; there tends be relatively few people that we feel safe doing that with, usually those that we are closest to.

Too create a physical representation of these personas we looked at how masks were used around the world. Theatre was an obvious area and in particular I looked at the Japanese Noh masks. There a fixed number of Noh masks used in Japanese theatre, used to represent characters in various stories and lighting and head position is used to show the different moods.

Idea

To film a day in the life of a character, from the start of the day through everyday activities, showing how a physical choice is made regarding the face that is shown to the world and affected by the things that we experience.

A simple paper mache mask