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Glam Cam

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Glam Cam

After my tutorial with Rick, I felt like my practice was at a standstill.  He told me that my work was still too superficial, it didn’t have enough meaning.  This was difficult for me to hear, because during our second year, we were told to make as much work as possible without thinking too much about the meaning. However, after thinking this through, I realised that the meaning of the work came later and that I should trust my practice.

After the tutorial, I went to find Rory as I didn’t know what next step I should take.  I couldn’t find him, so I ended up having a tutorial with Tricia.  This was the first tutorial I ever had with her, so I was feeling quite sceptical. It ended up being the best tutorial I had had in the past three years, I was angry with myself for never having one with her before.  I told her about my work at the preliminary degree show, and explain that Rick said my work was too superficial.  She was shocked at the remark and told me that my work was one of the strongest pieces she had seen and was concerned that I didn’t believe in my own ability. I was touched by what Tricia had said as it gave me the confidence I needed at that time.

Myself and Tricia discussed Jill Magid’s work who exhibited at the Liverpool Biennial in 2004.  In this work, Magid explored how CCTV can turn civilians into victims, instead of creating a feeling of security, it turns them into potential suspects.  Furthermore, surveillance cameras also create a stage, which is what inspired my own piece called Glam Cam.  In previous work, I have explored how mass media may have distorted societies views of the ‘real world’.  However, what we see isn’t necessarily the real picture, as through the power of social media.  Individuals have been able to create a false identity that is much more glamourous than they ‘real’ life.  Magid’s concept of CCTV creating a stage sparked my interest in surveillance as a performance.  This interest developed after finding Magid’s System Azure Security Ornamentation.  The piece comprised of a performance at Amsterdam Police Headquarters, an installation of rhinestone covered CCTV cameras throughout Amsterdam, and a series of silkscreen posters.  One poster stood out to me, as it referred me back to when my research began at the beginning of my final year.  The caption on the poster said, “Big Brother in Drag”, I was so excited about this piece. Tricia then introduced me to the word ‘panopticism’ which means, by somethings physical presence it can alter human behaviour. 

Seeing this poster and learning about panopticism is exactly what I needed, as it pulled me out of the artist block.  To begin making Glam Cam, I purchased a fake CCTV camera and wanted to cover it in rhinestones.  The camera had to be fake as I wanted to play on the idea of panopticism. I then wanted to turn the camera into a stag spotlight, referring the Magid’s concept of surveillance as a performance.  I thought that this was going to be challenging to do, but after speaking to the technicians, it was very simple.  I purchased a small torch and installed it inside the fake camera.  Making Glam Cam was very last minute, as I wanted to install it for my crit which was the next day, so I didn’t have time to cover it in rhinestones.  After seeing the camera installed, I decided not to cover it in rhinestones, as it looked great without them, and after seeing the piece in a dark space with the torch switched on, it has confirmed to be that when installing Glam Cam again, it must be in a dark room with no rhinestones.

When discussing Glam Cam in the crit, it helped me to realise that I enjoy making work that is obvious, but not too obvious.  Most of the group didn’t see the camera at first, so it made them paranoid as they weren’t sure if they were being filmed, and I was refusing to tell them otherwise.  The reaction to the group was interesting, as they all sat around the perimeter of the spotlight and they began discussing other subtle lights around the room that was near the Glam Cam, as it made them more aware of the technology in the space.  

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Surtsey Exhibition

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Tutorial & Surtsey Exhibition

After the preliminary degree show at Cain’s Brewery and The Royal Standard, I didn’t know where my practice was going to lead me.  I had just handed in my dissertation, and I thought I would hit the ground running. However, it took me a while to open my mind and take the next step with my work.  This feeling of uncertainty used to make me feel very uneasy, but over the past three years, I have come to understand my practice a lot better, and therefore I can trust that this is how my practice works.  I am not able to make lots of work like some artists do, because it feels pointless and when I get an idea, I must make it to know if it works as I need to see it in a space.  Only then will I know if it is a success or a failure.

I had a tutorial with Tricia last week and explained how I didn’t know what to do next with   the footage from the preliminary degree show.  We discussed an artist I had been researching called Jill Magid as her work was centred around surveillance at the Liverpool Biennial. I found it interesting that Magid thought CCTV turns all civilians into victims, instead of creating a feeling of security, it turns them into potential suspects.  Surveillance cameras create a stage, which she portrayed in her work Evidence Locker.  In 2004, Magid spent 31 days in Liverpool, during which time she developed a close relationship with Citywatch (Merseyside Police and Liverpool City Council), whose function is citywide video surveillance- the largest system of its kind in England.  The videos in her Evidence Locker were staged and edited by the artist and filmed by the police using the public surveillance cameras in the city centre. Wearing a bright red trench coat, she would call the police on duty with details of where she was and ask them to film her poses, places or even guide her through the city with her eyes closed, as seen in the video Trust.

I loved Magid’s work but was unsure as to why or how to respond to it, I continued to research her work and came across a company she created called System Azure Security Ornamentation.  Where I found a poster with an image of a rhinestone CCTV camera and the caption “Big Brother in Drag”.  I explained to Tricia that seeing this poster referred me back to where my research began and how I was inspired by drag culture.  Tricia suggested that I should look back at what initially inspired me as I was so excited about this poster.  The turning point for me, is when Tricia taught me the word, panopticism, which means by somethings physical presence, it can alter human behaviour.  For example, if a CCTV camera was hidden in plain sight, but wasn’t working, the public would still alter their behaviour as they wouldn’t be aware if the camera was running or not.  This referred me back to the footage I shot at the preliminary degree show, as the GoPro Hero 3 camera was hidden in plain sight, and when people realised it was there, they would immediately change their persona. 

After my tutorial with Tricia, I went away feeling inspired and ready to hit the ground running.  A couple of days later, I received a message off the group that I had worked with during the preliminary degree show saying that we were going to put on a last-minute show at Surtsey.  We decided to do this as it would help us prepare for our crit, and it would also help us to see how we worked together in the ‘real world’, without the help of our tutors.  We all decided on Surtsey, as it is a difficult space to use with it being so small, but we saw it as a challenge trying to fit all our work in such a small space, in this short amount of time.  The show was named If the Shoe Fits, and the logo was a decagon.  The reason being was that there was ten of us and there were only four walls, so it didn’t quite fit.  I liked the premise but I wasn’t overly keen on the name.  But with the show being so last minute and everyone else liking the name, I needed to compromise which is a skill that I have learnt throughout my degree and to be less territorial with my space.  I oversaw publicising the event, so I created a public Facebook event and shared it out throughout our group and throughout Facebook.  We also advertised a show at Zuhause which was happening at the same time as our show, as we wanted to show our support.

For the exhibition, I decided to parody Magid’s work.  I took the footage I had taken at the preliminary degree show and edited it so that the Facebook Live video was in the door of the GoPro Hero 3 video.  My initial idea was to just have the Facebook Live footage and the GoPro footage sitting next to each other.  However, during a tutorial I had with Bedwyr, we played around with the footage and thought it was a brilliant idea to edit it in a quirkier way.  I then took a cardboard box and covered it in sparkly silver wrapping paper and rhinestones. I initially wanted to cover the whole box in rhinestones, but as this piece was last minute and my budget was very small, I had to come up with an alternative.  I cut a peep whole into the box so that the audience would have to look through the peep hole to see the film, but they wouldn’t be able to see it all at the same time.  Therefore, the audience would be looking down onto the people in the footage, just like a security guard does when watching through a CCTV camera, almost like they are spying on the figures.  The sparkly box reference Magid’s view on surveillance creating a stage which turns the public into performers.

After manoeuvring the space at Surtsey, I tried placing my box in the corner of the room, however, the box didn’t look right there, it looked too small.  I thought a plinth would help, but I just wasn’t happy with the placement.  I then decided to move the box to a more secluded space, which was perfect.  The wall that it was leaning against coincidentally had glitter all the way down it, which created a back drop or spotlight for the ‘stage’.  Our group worked together amazingly, discussing what work we wanted to show, staying calm and compromising when it was needed.  Our group has formed a strong professional bond; therefore, I look forward to seeing how or crit will turn out.

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Moreshin Allahyan and Daniel Rourke: The 3rd Additivist Manifesto and Cookbook

Daniel Rourke considers himself more of a writer than artist and is undergoing a PhD at Goldsmiths University.  He is interested in 3D printing, which has been around for approximately 30 years.  

His partner is Moreshin Allahyan who is going to be artist in resident at FACT in a couple of months. She is based in the USA but was born in Iran.  Rourke explained that Allahyan hasn’t been back to Iran due to her work as it criticises the Iranian government.  Therefore, she is at risk of being arrested when she arrives in Iran as her name could be on a list of wanted people.  Therefore, she has isolated herself from her own country.  When both artists were in Berlin, Trump announced the closure of the US boarders for various countries including Iran.  As Allahyan is not a US citizen, she lives in America on a green card, she wasn’t sure she would be allowed back into America, therefore she was isolated from her home country and her adopted home country.  Rourke became interested in Allahyan’s work when seeing her piece Dark Matter (2013/14).  She took objects that are banned in Iran and merged them with obscure objects such as a Buddha statue merged with a Homer Simpson head using a 3D printer.  As these objects are banned in Iran, it is impossible to get any of the files to print these objects passed the boarder.  Therefore, by merging these obscure objects and sending them via email, people can get them across the border to print them using a 3D printer.

This lecture was informative and Rourke is a very clear and confident speaker which is refreshing to see, as some of the artists who have given a lecture recently have been very quiet and difficult to understand.  Unfortunately, I didn’t feel inspired by this artist as I have never had an interest in 3D printing.  However, I did enjoy how these artists are constantly trying to push their boundaries, when discussing the difficulties the world faces, depending on where you are born in the world, which can either be a fortunate or unfortunate coincidence.

Rourke gave us an interesting quote by Boris Groys which discusses the difference between designers and artists.  I want to refer to this quote when I begin preparing my presentation for my viva;

Design wants to change reality, the status quo — it wants to improve reality, to make it more attractive, better to use. Art seems to accept reality as it is, to accept the status quo. But art accepts the status quo as dysfunctional, as already failed — that is, from the revolutionary, or even post-revolutionary, perspective.

Modern and contemporary art wants to make things not better but worse — and not relatively worse but radically worse: to make dysfunctional things out of functional things, to betray expectations, to reveal the invisible presence of death where we tend to see only life.  

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Cain’s Brewery/The Royal Standard Exhibition

On our first meeting back for the second semester of the final year, our tutors decided to do something cruel and spring a practice degree show on us with just two weeks to prepare.  Initially, I just felt panic, I did not know where my practice was going, and I was not feeling confident about the work I had made during semester 1.  Although, as they talked us through it, I began to understand why the tutors decided to do this, it was to prepare us for our real degree show in May, and if anything went wrong, we would know how to handle it. 

We were required to form our own groups for the show and the tutors suggested that we group up with the people who share our studio spaces.  I was apprehensive about this, because I am not the type of person to be friends with large groups of people, therefore I had not formed many close bonds, this was not intentional, and it is just how I worked.  I ended up joining the group of people anyway because I am friends with one of the girls who was already in one of the groups.  We ended up being quite a large group, which I thought would be a bad idea trying to negotiate with such a large amount of artists with interesting yet different practices, so it is safe to say I went into this feeling quite apprehensive. 

We were then told we would be assigned curators who were practicing artists and some were even previous students on our course.  We were given Joe Hulme who is the Co-Founder of Crown Building Studios.  When I first met him, he came across as nervous yet enthusiastic about our group and wanted to have one to one tutorials with us.  During my tutorial, I explained to Joe that I was researching how societies views of the ‘real world’ may have been distorted through the influence of mass media, particularly focusing on reality television and how that has influence my practice, as I am focusing on a surveillance style that is similar to the reality television show, Big Brother.  It reminded me of the surveillance we experience in everyday society, as we are always being monitored one way or another. 

I then told him about my People Watching film piece, and how it did not have enough tension in it, I wanted to make myself uncomfortable as the filmmaker and see how far I could push the boundaries before I felt like I was being too intrusive.  I explained to Joe that I wanted to do a Facebook Live stream of the event; I would be secretly filming in Cain’s Brewery, whilst the stream was being shown in The Royal Standard.  As there were three rooms, I needed to come up with a third piece, therefore I wanted to have a plate of cookies on display and a camera filming the audience coming up to the plate to see who would take one and eat it, playing on the idea of when you give permission to websites to use cookies to access what you are looking at online.  Joe thought the works we discussed were too separate from each other, and I agreed with him, something did not feel right about the work. 

I then suggested another idea, where I would still do the Facebook Live Stream from Cain’s Brewery Warehouse into The Royal Standard and that stream would be shown on my MacBook Air.  Then there would be a GoPro Hero 3 camera filming the audience watching the stream from my Mac and the GoPro stream would feed to the third room and be displayed on my iPad.  We both thought it was a brilliant idea, but I was very nervous about tackling the piece due to the amount of trust I would have to put into these camera and the Wi-Fi connection and I would only be about the set it up on the morning of the show, so I was anticipating the worst.  I managed to test the connection of the cameras around the University, before taking them down to the site and everything connected really well and was even penetrating through walls.  That eased my nerves quite a bit, I just had to strategically plan my timing for the day of the show and make sure everything was charged for the night. 

One the day of the show, I was expecting it to be like walking into a lion’s den, with everyone trying to get the best space, which was very difficult to do, as the rooms in The Royal Standard were tiny.  However, everyone was very professional and understanding, willing to negotiate the space to fit each artist’s needs.  On the night of the show, I was dressed in a black velvet blazer that had a pocket the size of my iPhone 6 sewn into it so I could discreetly film the Facebook live steam and my mac was set up ready for the stream to begin.  The GoPro was clipped in the top left area of the wall facing my mac filming the audience watching the stream and the connection was successful to my iPad in the final room. 

Everything seemed to be working perfectly until about an hour into the show where the worst possible thing could have happened.  My GoPro battery died, I was so frustrated because I had charged everything the night before and I felt ashamed because it looked like I had come unprepared.  The connection from my iPhone to the mac froze too, as the Wi-Fi in The Royal Standard was not very strong.  I felt like I was internally screaming, the show was going on and my piece was dead.  I took a deep breath and realised that the show was only a practice and that this was the perfect time for the piece to go wrong, because now I could learn how to fix it and be prepared if this ever happened again.  I completely dismissed the fact that the show was going on and focused on the situation in hand.  I charged the GoPro again and managed to keep it running for half an hour, but then the battery died again.  I finally decided that I would take the GoPro and the iPad away and just do the Facebook Live stream, so the audience would still have something to look at, and during this time, one of the artists in the show approached me and explained that her friend has just received a text of her friend with a screenshot of her at the show.  The friend was a mutual friend of mine on Facebook and he had seen her on my live stream and sent a message to her straight away.  Therefore, even though the GoPro and iPad was unsuccessful, at least one audience member was experience the element of surveillance that I was trying to bring to the forefront of people’s minds. 

When the show neared the end, I took everything down and left early, as I wanted to see if I could salvage any of the footage to submit to the Bloomberg New Contemporaries exhibition.  Luckily, my friend on Facebook had saved the Facebook Live video and she sent it to me so I could download it, I then plugged in the GoPro to my mac to see if any of the footage had recorded from the second stream, and luckily enough I had the perfect amount of footage from both steams.  Submitting the work to the Bloomberg New Contemporaries was very difficult.  I could not write an artist statement, I could only submit images.  Therefore, I drew out a floor plan of The Royal Standard, and using different coloured pens; I highlighted each stream and were it would be connected.  I then used generic images from Google to show what equipment I would be using and gave them a link to the two stream I had recorded.

Overall, the experience of this exhibition was extremely overwhelming and stressful; however, I am so glad that we did it, because I learnt so much from it.  In a way, I am glad that everything went wrong too, because I learnt how to hand such a difficult situation under pressure, therefore I feel much more prepared going into the preparation for our upcoming degree show.

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Alice Theobald

Works in Performance, video, sound and installation.  The first artwork she talked about was I’ll Finally Loose the Plot, which was a three channel HD video installation running for 10 minutes and 8 seconds.  She purposely edited the film a certain way for this lecture, which is completely different to how she originally installed it.  In the lecture, she projected the film onto the wall and as there were three parts to it, it was edited so the three films were in small boxes running alongside each other. 

This piece looked similar to a recent performance/live stream I did at Cain’s Brewery and The Royal Standard as she filmed the three channels in the same room, but from different angles using different cameras.  My piece was very similar to hers; however, I streamed the footage into three different rooms.  It was quite a satisfying experience as a viewer of something so similar to my own practice, which makes me question how the audience felt when they were experiencing my piece, I will talk about this further when I blog about the exhibition.  The script for I’ll Finally Loose the Plot was described as a continuous, relentless argument as the script consisted of only five lines, Theobald wanted to deconstruct narrative and language through this piece, which I thought created a tension as I was waiting for an outburst of emotion between the two people. 

Eventually, the nervousness vanished as I began to realise that the script was on an endless loop and it became amusing to me, it was interesting how the film cause me to change from one emotion to the other so quickly.  As mentioned earlier, Theobald edited the film specifically for our lecture, however in the original installation, the sound was separate from the film, coming from speakers strategically placed around the room.  When the camera panned around in the film, the sound matched the movement, encouraging the audience to walk around the space and therefore amercing them in the film as each screen demanded attention in the installation.

It’s not who you are it’s how you are was a performance, installation and live feed video projection involving two performers.  The piece mainly consisted of recorded sound that the actors would take ques from and the space in which they performed had large towers designed by architects specifically for this exhibition.  The actors were also required to be the stage crew, so when one actor was not performing, they would film the other actor.  Alternating roles meant that the actors would be performing for the public, but also for each other.  This referred me back to my piece at Cain’s Brewery and The Royal Standard as it made me question my own role as the artist.  During the exhibition, I was performing but also filming and controlling the equipment I was using, therefore when something went wrong with my work, I would have to stop the performance and fix the equipment, however I never stopped filming when everything went wrong, so was I still acting?

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Recording of my Live Stream of Cains Brewery/The Royal Standard practice degree show exhibition, Performance Piece

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Lucy Clout

To begin our Wednesday morning guest lecture, Lucy Clout explained that she enjoys creating art that is "badly made", and therefore isn’t considered museum quality. Museum quality artwork means that the institution would be willing to by the artwork as it is strong enough to keep out on display. A lot of Clout’s works are delicate and can fall apart, this doesn’t mean that the museums wont display her work, it just means it won’t by anything. She compared this lecture to her method of working as it was unstructured, Clout was reading off her phone and came across as scattered and unprepared, which I couldn’t decide whether it was a performance piece or not.

Warm Bath was a film Clout showed us which was a fictitious story about 7 women living together. She explained that the title of the piece disgusted her, which I thought went perfectly with the content of the film, as the house she filmed in was old and filthy. The reason the phrase "warm bath" disgusts her so much, is because she can’t stand the idea of sitting in a pool of your own filth that is the same temperature as your own body. Clout continued by talking about how a warm bath can be a cure for loneliness, the NHS has apparently even prescribed warm baths to people that are suffering from loneliness. She then used the warm bath as a metaphor for a family, a man comes how from work after a difficult day to his family that surround him with love, like a warm bath. I thought this was a touching metaphor which confused me, as the phrase warm bath disgusts her so much.

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Semester 1 Critique

For our first critique of the academic year, I decided to show my People Watching film piece on a television screen. During the set up, I faced some issues with the placement of my film, as there was also a lot of other films being shown at the same time. Therefore, we had to negotiate with each other to use the space to the best of it potential. Myself and two other artists were concerned with the sounds and the timings of our films overlapping, therefore we agreed on a rotation system, which meant that our films were timed to play one after the other. This was challenging as we decided to do this on the morning of the critique, but we were patient and understanding of each other’s needs, which resulted in a successful negotiation. Although the works weren’t being shown to the public, we wanted to take this set up seriously as it was good practice for a real show, and it helped us to see our works on display for the first time.

When I tested my film on the television, there was only sound coming from the laptop. I discovered that the televisions we were using for all our films required speakers that had been thrown away at the end of the last academic year. Myself and the other artists solved this issue by recovering the speakers from an artist in second year, that had claimed the speakers for himself when he had seen them in the skip. We asked if we could borrow them and ensured him that they would be returned to him at the end of the crit.

As my film was 10 minutes long, I only showed a small clip of it. The part I decided to show was the old man excerpt, as that is the part that stood out to me the most. It was interesting to watch the other artists watch the clip as it helped me to understand that the film was far too long. I began to feel uncomfortable watching them grow bored of the film, bearing in mind that I only showed three minutes of it. It made me much more aware of the timing and how long 1 minute can be.

The comments I received from the other artists, based on their experience of watching the film, was that it looked like it was coming from the film makers view point and the subtitles were the maker’s internal thoughts. They said the camera angle was interesting and it looked very natural, therefore the film was relatable due to the subtitles they were reading "I wish my life was more stable". The other artists said that it made them question people and think about people’s lives differently. One artists said that it made her feel like when she goes on holiday and you can be on other family photos of people you don’t know because you were just someone in the background.

They then discussed whether they thought it was wrong to use the footage in the film as the people in the film have not given consent to it. Many of them agreed that it was not wrong as the angle doesn’t look like surveillance footage due to the angle of the camera. If the angle of the camera was like a CCTV camera, it would remind them of looking down on somebody and judging them however the angle prevents that from happening. The artists continued talking about my film on a personal level, and even began discussing personal experiences. They said that the film felt introverted and they related to the film maker. They said the subtitles provided a focal point and it gave them an image of the artist as it allowed them to share in the artist’s perspective.

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Marvin Gaye Chetwynd

I instantly liked the style of Marvin Gaye Chetwynd’s talk; she didn’t stand behind the desk talking into the microphone reading off a piece of paper. She stood in the middle of the room and made up the talk as she went along, which I thought took a lot of confidence to do that.  She is a very experience artist though, so I can understand why she was so calm giving her improvised lecture.

Insanity was an exhibition she took part in with a man she met at a formal dinner called Geon.  She explained that she is naturally a chatty person and they just got talking whilst waiting to be seated.  They decided straight away that they liked each other, so they ignored the seating plan and at with each other all night.  Insanity is a keep fit class that she was asked to do by Geon, he asked her to do a presentation around yoga.  Initially she didn’t want to do the presentation because she hates exercising.  However, as she began researching the history of yoga, it became more of an exciting topic to explore.  She was interested in the anxiety around Christianity and the religion feels that yoga cannot be separated from spirituality.  Nowadays yoga is becoming more involved in secularist societies as its popularity has grown, it could even be turned into an Olympic sport.

Chetwynd has been heavily influenced by a musical clip she showed in her lecture by Hermento Pascal.  She said that it depicts the joyous feelings she feels about life and it brings out a sort of innocence that she craves.  She compared this feeling to the biblical story of Adam and Eve and how she wanted to be around people who felt that same craving she feels, the group she found was called the Adamites.  Following on from this inspiration she showed us a clip of one of her films Hermitos Children which I found amusing, uncomfortable and offensive.  The background sound was very similar to the clip she was inspired by written by Pascal and he film started off as quite innocent.  However, as the film progressed there was extremely graphic imagery that I wasn’t prepared for which offended me.  I don’t mean to come across as prudish; I would have just preferred to have received a warning of the imagery the film consisted of.  I couldn’t help but laugh as it was so uncomfortable to watch.  I feel as though the artists that I am surrounded by at the moment are heavily influenced by feminism and it frustrates me that a lot of art I am witnessing leads to some sexual content.  I don’t know if that is just the trend throughout the art scene in Liverpool at the moment, but it is a reoccurring pattern in my research at the moment.  I have just returned from Cork in Ireland and the art community there seems to be much less judgemental and welcoming.  The artists seem more down to earth and I feel like I am taking the art more seriously there that in Liverpool.  So I am going to explore more artwork that has been featured in the city of Cork in the near future.

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People Watching

My aim for People Watching, was to respond to how reality television, particularly the surveillance subgenre, has distorted societies views of the ‘real world’. I wanted to show how mass media has wormed its way in to our everyday lives and how we should be aware of the level of consent we give to the world to intrude on our lives. Reality television stars give permission for society to watch them go about their everyday lives whilst we impose judgement upon them, trying to mould our own reality around theirs. This happens to an individual every day, whether that be through people reading information on your social media accounts, what the government has on their databases and even through people watching whilst having a cup of coffee.

I initially faced a problem when beginning to film People Watching, I was told to charge the JVC camera I was given for 40 minutes, which I did, and then it should have been fine. However, when I came to turn the camera on, there was no power. Therefore, I resorted to using my iPhone 6 camera. Using the iPhone camera ended up being a successful solution as the filming was much subtler as I discreetly propped the camera up against some books therefore not making it obvious that I was filming. I liked how the public wasn’t aware they were being filmed, which I was going to attempt to do with the JVC camera, but it would have been difficult to hide.

I edited the film using Adobe Premier, playing back the raw footage I wanted to find certain people that stood out to me, whether that be people I judged, or people I related too. I took some stills of the film whilst editing it to document the process and show who stood out to me the most. Reverse Speed Couple still was the first part of the film I edited, so I struggled the most with it. I experimented with various effects, but I didn’t want the film to look to unnatural. I tried slowing down the couple, reversing the speed and then settled on speeding the footage just before the couple appears and then putting it back to normal speed as they pass by, therefore bringing the viewers’ attention to this couple. The reason I settled on this effect is because I wanted the film to reference when a security guard, or police search through surveillance footage, fast forwarding the CCTV until they find who they are looking for.

I initially wanted to narrate a story around the subject I was focusing on, but the stories weren’t coming to me. I thought that is what I did when people watching as I wonder what that person’s story is when I am observing them. Instead, I ended up comparing my own life to theirs, I felt mixed emotions for each person. Sometimes I felt jealous, sympathetic or caring towards each person depending on what they looked like, which is very superficial of me. The most interesting part of the film is when I am discussing the old couple and I have taken various stills of them e.g. What are they Looking at Still? A lot happens whilst they are in the shot and the woman disappears out of nowhere at some point.

When taking the stills, I preferred the stills without the text. This surprised me as I initially wanted to incorporate some language. This was due to how effective I find blogging and I wanted to find a way of incorporating it into my work, I like how not having any text in my stills gives the subject that level of mystery. There are a lot of subtitles during this part of the film and it moves quite quickly. I wanted to subtitles to be fast as it is supposed to be the thoughts of the film maker and when you are thinking, your brain moves at quite a fast, random speed.

Most of the public weren’t aware that I was filming them, however when an individual realised that they were being recorded, I was expecting them to stiffen up or approach me to stop the filming. However, the subject acted completely natural, like they were used to being surveyed. Society has become so used to being placed under a microscope that they don’t respond to a stranger filming them. Maybe it gives them that temporary feeling of stardom that reality stars crave, giving them that 15 minutes of fame. When recording the film, I could hear conversations happening in the background, therefore I was not only intruding on the people I was filming, I was also listening to other conversations happening around me that aren’t in the shot. I even heard somebody talking about their bank account. I began to feel uncomfortable whilst filming as I felt that it was morally wrong, these people didn’t know I was filming them, or hearing personal conversations and I began to question whether this was even legal. This is the reason why society needs to be careful about what it shares as you don’t know who can access it, yet everyone is trying to gain value and approval through social media, trying to live up to what mass media is portraying as acceptable, that they overlook their own safety.

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A selection of People Watching Film Stills (Blog to Follow)

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Subtitle Series

Interested in how mass media may have distorted societies views of the “real world”, particularly focusing on the surveillance subgenre.  The Subtitle Series derived from when I attended the GLITCH Festival as an evaluator.  I was required to interview young people attending the event and also document people taking part in the activities using photographic evidence. I needed consent forms in order to take direct photographs of people, which I never actually got hold of, therefore my photographs ended up looking bad quality as I had to resort to taking awkward photographs of large groups of people from a distance, this resulted in the photographs having a surveillance style element to them which felt very intrusive.

In reality television, the surveillance subgenre allows the viewer to watch the subject go about their daily lives as they appear to be oblivious to the camera, and that is a similar experience I witnessed at the GLITCH Festival.  This situation provoked thought around people watching, I have mentioned before that it is one of my favourite pass times, as I like to imagine what is happening in the subject’s life, which results in me narrating a story about them.  I then asked myself, how is the situation at the festival any different to the people watching I do whilst having a cup of coffee in Café Nero?

After the festival I typed up a script of the interviews I recorded, and the main interviewees that stood out to me were “YP1, YP3 and YP4”, because their language and mannerisms were the most awkward and uncomfortable.  When listening to the person speaking they become more aware of how long the interview is going to take, as it was a lot of questions.  They begin to feel pressured when they don’t understand some of the complex questions that were supposedly aimed at young people.  The interviewee seems to feel like they have been lured into a false sense of reality, which resulted in the awkward language portrayed in the script and in the subtitle series. 

The surveillance subgenre of reality television stems from popular culture. Popular culture involves society into a community without them being aware of it, as the language is relatable. What they don’t always realise is that popular culture influenced the pop art movement.  Pop art began when the young artists at the time didn’t feel inspired by what they were seeing in galleries and what they were being taught in art school. Therefore, they migrated to popular culture as that is what they felt their lives were involved in, which resulted in pop art and popular culture merging into one.  Therefore, it is becoming increasing more difficult to differentiate between the two.  The language used in the interviews was not what the result of the festival was meant to be, the aim of the festival was to involve young people in the artistic community. However, these questions were not relatable to the young people and therefore they panicked.  Unlike popular culture, whose main target audience is young people, this is because they can relate to it.

The Subtitle Series was a response to not being able to escape mass media due to my point about popular culture and art merging into one.  The series responds to the feeling of always being watched, the idea of Big Brother is always watching, and this resulted in the surveillance style photographs.  I didn’t plan on using these images, therefore the orientation of two out of the three is wrong.  I would prefer them all to be landscape instead of portrait and when I display this series, I would like them displayed on an old, bad quality security television screen, or on a projection that glitches to add to the uncomfortable element of always being watched.

The Georgia Horgan lecture I attended was extremely interesting and has influenced the next stage for the Subtitle Series.  I liked how her work was mainly research based, and how she republished the historical texts she used as zines, in her exhibition at the Collective Gallery in Edinburgh.  Therefore, I want to transform this Subtitle Series into some montages and then collate them into a zine.  

I want the zine to be handmade and hand bound as I think making a zine is a very efficient and intimate process.  This zine will contrast the mass production of magazines, as a zine is a private and personal object that you can choose to publish if you wish, but they are normally much more delicate and handled with care.  The purpose of magazines is to gossip and make money and as they are digitally printed you can mass produce them.  You can do this with certain zines, but they are normally hand printed which in my opinion makes them more valuable.  I am going to experiment with various methods of making this zine once I have created the montages, and as I am researching the pop art movement, I am considering screen printing some elements of the zine and experimenting with the orientation due to feeling unhappy about the layout of the current series.

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Holly Bowers

Subtitle Series (2016)

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Georgia Horgan

Horgan is interested in the feminist ideas of language, its history and what history represents.  She is intrigued by how history is formulated through stories and how assessing the past, we are able to make sense of the present. Her work is mainly research based, which is something that interests me because at the moment I enjoy researching the topics I am interested in more than actually creating the work.  I think this is due to how much I enjoy writing about my research as I get so caught up in writing down my thoughts.  That is why I am trying to incorporate more language into my practice.  I admired Horgan’s honesty in owning that she enjoys researching and has turned that into a work of art, embracing her strengths.  She sees art as “knowledge production”, which means how we know things and how they can be deconstructed and challenged.  She works in performance lectures, films and textiles focusing on themes of feminism and witch craft.

Horgan’s work was exhibited at the Collective Gallery in Edinburgh which was heavily inspired by Silvia Federici’s, The Scottish Witch Hunt.  The works that she talked about were Machine Room, Witch Hunting Accusations in a Sample of Rural Areas and Witch Hunting Accusations in Industrialising Areas.  Machine Room was a display of her research about the increased use of the textile industry in Scotland and how this impacted the patterns of witch hunting.  I thought displaying her research as a work of art was quite beautiful and as she went on to explain that she republished the historical texts she used as zines I thought the research was more personal as she turned it into a work of art.  

I have just created a series of images Subtitle Series which I am intending to turn into digital montages.  The reason I want to turn them into digital montages is because I had a dream that I really wanted to paint, and making montages is what I used to do before turning them into paintings.  I am not planning on painting at the moment, but I will see where these montages lead me. After seeing Horgan’s zines, I have been inspired to turn these future montages into zines, and as I am researching the impacts of how society has distorted views of the real world due to mass media influences, making these zines will reference the privacy that people crave which contrasts the intrusive nature of reality television.  

Zines are delicate and homemade, it is an intimate and unique process to create them, which will completely contrast the content of the zine, which depicts surveillance style imagery. Zines are more organic, they aren’t as forced as mass media magazines that are out to shame celebrities, and referring back to my point about wanting to incorporate more language into my work is another reason I want to make a zine, as it is an effective way of turning my research into a work of art.  I want to display my research in a way that is aesthetically pleasing.  The language used in the Subtitle Series depicts elements of my research as it is first hand interviews that I recorded and scripted whilst attending the GLITCH Festival as an evaluator at Mostyn Gallery.

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Developed Research Outline

How has the mass media distorted societies views of the real world?  Particularly focusing on the reality television surveillance subgenre, with reference to how the mass media has influenced the popular art movement.

Theories exploring popular culture normally deal with it as a whole rather than exploring the mass media, however it is too complicated to differentiate the two as they are so connected.   Popular culture signs, and media imagery dominate our sense of the real world and therefore distort our views of reality, a perfect example of this is through reality television (Strinati, 2004).  What interested me, is how the viewer can admire the reality television stars and attempt to model their lives around them.  

The power of reality television has distorted societies view of the real world, by allowing us to assume that our lives should be the same as what we see portrayed by the media. The particular subgenre of reality television that I am interested in, is the surveillance subgenre.  This subgenre allows the audience to watch the stars go about their daily routines, offering unprecedented access into their lives (Riddle and De Simone, 2013).  This type of subgenre offers a unique type of surveillance which I think is extremely intrusive and provokes the question, why they would give consent to do this? This relates to my artistic practice as I am exploring an experience I encountered at the GLITCH Festival in Mostyn Gallery.  As I was attending as an evaluator, I was required to provide photographic documentation of the event.  However, as I didn’t have consent to take direct photographs of individual participants, I was expected to take subtle photographs of large groups, which felt extremely intrusive.  This has led to a film piece I am currently making around people watching and how that offers a level of surveillance and judgement that we bestow on the reality television stars we see on our screens.

The surveillance subgenre provides viewers with a sneak peek into people’s everyday habits and activities using documentary style filming techniques (Riddle and De Simone, 2013).  This fact provoked thought around a series of film stills I made which I am now going to revisit, Radio City Talk Interview Film Stills.  When receiving feedback about this work, an artist said that the stills looked like the person was being watched via surveillance cameras, and not knowing much about the individual offered a level of mystery to the work as the subject of the series looked like she wasn’t aware of the stills being taken.

There are various theories exploring popular culture, but the one I am interested in exploring postmodernism.  Postmodernism describes the level of power of mass media has, and how influential popular culture is.  This means that they can influence many aspects of social relationships as they depict what is considered the social norm (Strinati, 2004).  Postmodern Theory investigates a question of control, the media was once considered to portray honest facts, allowing the viewer access to information from around the world and therefore allowing a wider social reality. However now society cannot tell the difference between the medias reality and the ‘real world’.  In a postmodern world, we are increasingly consuming signs and images and disregarding the deeper meaning and value, as a result of this, artistic merit and integrity are disregarded.  If popular culture signs and images are distorting societies views of reality, this means that aesthetics are becoming more important than content.  It then becomes difficult to differentiate between art and popular culture (Strinati, 2004).

Pop artist, Andy Warhol’s print series of Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Mona Lisa, is an example of what postmodern theory is trying the explain.  This print shows that the uniqueness and artistic impression is shattered due to its infinite reproducibility through silk screen that Warhol was best known for, this print series is called Thirty are better than One which is mocking the original painting (Strinati, 2004). Art is becoming progressively merged into the economy as it is used to entice viewers into purchasing products through advertising.  This method of combining art and advertising was recognised by Andy Warhol in his prints of everyday consumer items of the Campbell’s Soup can and Coca-Cola (Strinati, 2004).  

Pop art is an artistic movement that grew in popularity in the 1960’s in America and Britain.  It began as a rebellion against the central methods found in art and traditional views of what art should be.  The young artists at the time felt that what they were taught and what they saw in museums didn’t relate to their lives, so instead they turned to Hollywood films, advertising, product packaging and pop music (Tate, 2015).  American and British pop art was inspired by similar subject matters, but there are still distinctive differences between the two. Early British pop art was powered by American popular culture viewed from a distance, whilst American pop art was influenced by what they experience in their daily lives (Tate, 2015).

Bibliography

Riddle, K. and De Simone, J.J. (2013) ‘A Snooki effect? An exploration of the surveillance subgenre of reality TV and viewers’ beliefs about the “real” real world’, Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 2(4), pp. 237–250. doi: 10.1037/ppm0000005.

Stiller, C. (2015) The horrifying science behind the #KylieJennerChallenge. Available at: http://fusion.net/story/123818/kylie-jenner-challenge-the-gross-lip-plumping-science/ (Accessed: 6 November 2016).

Strinati, D. (2004) An introduction to theories of popular culture. 2nd edn. New York: Taylor & Francis.

Tate (2015) Pop art. Available at: http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/pop-art (Accessed: 10 November 2016).

Thyra, K. (2016) The Kardashians and beyond: Why do we love reality TV so much? Available at: http://moviepilot.com/posts/4035775 (Accessed: 6 November 2016).