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Research:

Francis Alÿs: Sometimes Making Something Leads to Nothing

Mexico 1997 

For more than nine hours, Alÿs pushed a block of ice through the streets of Mexico City until it completely melted. He struggled with the minimal rectangular block until finally it was reduced to no more than an ice cube suitable for a glass of water, so small that he could casually kick it along the street. 

The work could arguably be looked at as ephemeral as the subject is forever changing however it raises question to what is the artwork, the video or the pure performative act of pushing ice along the streets  

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This idea was discontinued as there was confusion between what the actual event of this activity was. Once everyone walked for a period of time it seemed anti-climatic, thus we decided to change idea to celebrate (x’s) birthday in an unconventional way,

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Details: 

Artwork: Blind Light 

Artist: Anthony Gormley

Location: London, UK/ New, York USA/ Kiev, Ukraine/ Graz, Austria

TypeArt: Installation

Size/Area: 10 m2

As a group, we were inspired by Gormley’s work as the people in which go through the installation are in fact the subject matter of the work. Similar to your event, without the people interacting with the work, the work wouldn’t work. Also, the ambiguous act of walking into the unknown act as a conceptual framework for our work, illustrating how the class will be in the unknown when undergoing part of the ‘event’

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Ass 3 Concept Statement

So the concepts we were exploring with our Pub Birthday Expedition were community/collaboration and also glitch. We knew that the 20-person group video chat wouldn't be easy to communicate on, and that would make talking a bit scattered (especially since we were only using that to communicate), and the whole event was based on voluntary group involvement (no one was compelled to come to the pub or join in on the celebration).

We wanted to explore the concept of birthdays on Facebook, and the limited & restricted interactions we usually have with them. So often people are satisfied with just posting a "HBD" or something similar for a friend's birthday, and we wanted to observe what everyone's interactions would be with each other together and also with Jackson on his birthday.

We also thought it would be interesting to have everyone interacting individually with the whole event through their own phone even when we could easily just have everyone be there physically. This was to demonstrate how it would be if we were all only interacting over Facebook (a digital disconnect).

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Assessment 2 - Artist Concept Statement

My final work is a collage of images composited together using Photoshop. It is a representation and exploration of what will happen once underwater housing as viable real estate becomes mainstream (excuse the pun). The house, along with the objects within and surrounding it, show the different things we value in society that are associated with the setting of the home: shelter, food, comfort, security (for intrinsic valuables and prized possessions, as well as from attack), time and family. This piece is an exploration of the future situation where we are forced to change where we keep and associate with the things and parts of our lives that we value. Instead of having access to these things in the way we have access to them now (in a normal current day living situation), they will be placed into a foreign and unknown environment but we will still have a desire to value them in the same way.

As I started my preliminary research for this assessment, I thought of all the different ways that humanity would have to live if we were in different environments (physically possible or not).

What if we lived in the sky and had to fly down to Earth to explore it? What if we lived under the ground and couldn’t go on the surface or we would fall off? What if we had to migrate as a species around the globe every year like some other animals? What if large scale meteor showers were a common occurrence and we had to avoid them? What if the mountains and valleys changed size rapidly?

These were the kinds of questions I was asking myself about how humans would relate to and live in all these sorts of situations. I finally decided to pursue a question I had about colonising the oceans if we were to run out of land or wanted better locations. It turns out that Ray White pitched the idea of someone buying Sydney’s first underwater house as an April Fools Day prank earlier this year, so it must at least be believable as an idea somewhere close in the future. Also, it could present a possible solution for Sydney’s housing crisis; with the cost of buying a house constantly growing, it’s becoming harder and harder to afford real estate. What if new land was released as underwater properties? Well, this is the situation that my final work seeks to address, particularly in the transfer of things we value in the home to a foreign environment.

During the construction of this work, a number of different changes were made to the various images used to better communicate the overall message. The family is placed in the centre of the house as one of the main focal points to show its central nature to the concept of the home; the place where the whole family lives and dwells together when they’re not out in the outside world. The house has a different texture and is not infiltrated by bubbles to show that it’s designed to be separate from the environment around it, although this idea is countered by the other objects surrounding it being immersed in the water and with bubbles around them. The underwater landscape was also slightly desaturated to better emphasise its foreign nature.

Reflection

After completing this project, I believe it is a successful exploration of the original research question chosen in Assessment 1, as well as the weekly concept of Value that we discussed in class. After looking at other different ways in which I could have represented the concept, I think that this was the most viable for my situation and skillset, although I recognise that other approaches would have been effective as well. However, my idea before finally deciding on this one was to build a watertight model house and display it in some sort of tank full of water, which while that would have been cool and an interesting proof of concept, after receiving feedback I decided to go with this more conceptual approach instead.

Bibliography

Tilbury, A. (2018). Peek inside Sydney’s first underwater house. [online] Ray White. Available at: https://www.raywhite.com/peek-inside-sydneys-first-underwater-house/ [Accessed 19 Sep. 2018].

Coote, G. and James, M. (2018). Essential workers leaving Sydney because of housing crisis, report finds. [online] ABC News. Available at: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-05/sydney-housing-crisis-essential-services-pressure-workers-leave/9397818 [Accessed 19 Sep. 2018].

Devine, A. (2018). Record migrant arrivals spur home shortage. [online] NewsComAu. Available at: https://www.news.com.au/finance/real-estate/sydney-nsw/sydney-struggling-to-house-record-number-of-migrants-after-nsw-population-grows-by-123k/news-story/bdc11c00f1424d9f0dcc491b6d8b77d0 [Accessed 19 Sep. 2018].

NewsComAu. (2018). Inside Sydney’s first underwater house. [online] Available at: https://www.news.com.au/finance/real-estate/sydney-nsw/sydneys-first-underwater-house-sells/news-story/03158bfb5e944f95508e00b9bf910d06 [Accessed 19 Sep. 2018].

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Assessment 2 - Final Work

Link to G-Drive file: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1jBTa2A87SbNJyAXe5RNNAYF3eXfcCXqL

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Composition Progress

I’ve decided now to make my final work as a composited collage of images in Photoshop. I have found a wide shot of an underwater ocean landscape, and was going to put an image of a normal house sitting inside of it. However, I’ve decided to use the stereotypical outline of a house instead of a realistic one because it will be more applicable to the overall concept rather than to just a specific case (one type of house). 

The whole point is to signify living underwater, not necessarily actively make a working concept of what the houses would actually look like aesthetically.

I’ve also decided to mask in a homey texture (the wood boards) with warm lighting within the house to give some juxtaposition between the foreign watery outside environment and the welcoming homey inside.

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Fishtank Photoshoot

After having procured a fish tank, I tried out today what it looks like to take photos of objects underwater within it. Honestly, it didn’t go as well as I’d hoped.

When the water was still, the only difference the water made on the photo was that it was slightly desaturated. I had a friend spray water into the top to make bubbles as well while I took some shots, and the difference that made was that the water went a bit cloudy (the bubbles didn’t really stick around). I realise that this was all done with real water, but it still didn’t give off the “underwater’ look I was going for.

One thing that did look good though was the tiny air bubbles that got caught in places around the objects (because that wouldn’t happen normally).

^When the water was still

^With water being sprayed on the top to make bubbles

^Tiny air bubbles caught

As a last idea, I tried having my friend spray the front of the glass with water to add in some “watery-ness”, but it really just looks like a dry object behind a piece of wet glass. I think maybe I should set the scene in a proper underwater environment (like the ocean).

After these experiments, it seems like a better idea for the final piece would be to composite these sorts of images together in Photoshop. This would allow me to add extra bubbles and effects to the image as well.

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Got a fish tank to try out some photography of things from the home underwater. Not sure how well it will work, but I'm keen to try it out tomorrow.

My other option that I'm considering if I can't take the shots well myself is to composite other images together in Photoshop to create the same impact and meaning of the work.

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Ass. 2 Work Concept - Underwater House

Today in class we looked at the concept of Value, including different types (monetary, social, historical, etc.) and how we each value things differently.

I did some more brainstorming (pictures still to come), and had an idea about making an underwater house concept to show a possible solution to the current real-world problem of not having enough housing in Sydney. This could either be a real model in some kind of tank filled with water, or maybe an image composited in Photoshop. Another spinoff idea I had was to put conceptual things representative of the home in an underwater environment like the house. These would show how we would have to start putting things we value (comfort, money, security, family, etc.) in a foreign environment and trust it in a new way.

After getting some feedback, it seemed that the conceptual option is much more rich and seems like a better plan for my final work (so I’m leaning towards that one but I’ll still keep my eyes open).

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Sydney Housing Crisis

Looking around at the housing news (particularly for Sydney), a trend quickly emerges of massive population growth and the inadequate residential building speed in an attempt to match it. This means that real estate prices are going up, and it calls for a solution to the problem.

In light of this real-world situation, it seems that some of the alternative theoretical living situations for humans I have been brainstorming are becoming more viable options for real-world application.

What if we expanded our real-estate underground? Perhaps in the future there’ll be normal residential living in blimps and floating suburbs...

Flexible options like this would provide new untapped areas of real estate possibilities. Maybe one day people will be living in submarine homes in Sydney Harbour?

https://www.news.com.au/finance/real-estate/sydney-nsw/sydney-struggling-to-house-record-number-of-migrants-after-nsw-population-grows-by-123k/news-story/bdc11c00f1424d9f0dcc491b6d8b77d0

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-05/sydney-housing-crisis-essential-services-pressure-workers-leave/9397818

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Floating Islands

I’ve been thinking about what the situation would be like of humanity lived in the sky instead of on the ground. One way this might look would be if we had giant floating isles in the sky, maybe even as an extension of our colonisation of the ground (e.g. living underneath on the ground and growing crops in the sunlight on top of the islands).

Someone in class recommended that I look up the flying island written about by Jonathan Swift in Gulliver’s Travels (1726). It’s called Laputa, and is a giant 4.5 mile island that floats above the earth by magnetic levitation.

It’s interesting to note that the people of this island are very advanced in science and technology, so perhaps this kind of thing may actually be possible in the future...

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Waterproof Dollar

This week in class we looked at value. As part of an exercise we had to create something in 15mins worth $5, and I made a waterproof wax dollar by melting a candle I found into a dollar sign.

This gave me a cool idea to do with one of my concepts, with a solution to underwater housing. In this way, what we value is held safely underwater even though we would not normally put things we value in this situation.

Also, I got 11 monies which I thought was pretty good.

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Classroom Workshopping

Brainstorming with Yuka the other day in class we came up with some good maps of possibility for where I can take this next assessment.

Some notable ideas: - A building proposition for a floating ocean suburb - Some kind of 3 tiered acrylic tank that shows how humans would live in different levels of the world (In the air, underground and underwater) - Humans living in ridiculous or dangerous places (e.g. the edge of an active volcano) - Sky blimp communities

Most of them deal with some sort of housing or land crisis, and that is something I’d like to zero-in on. This could be because of overpopulation in the future, or to create new choice real estate...

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Thought Experiments

Did some thought experiments in class the other day about the different scenarios and situations that could change in the world or how humans live in it. What if we lived on the outer atmosphere and had to travel down to the surface of the Earth as somewhere to go? What if space was our "underground"? What if we had to migrate to different parts of the world throughout the year to survive? What if countries and landmasses moved actively around the ocean? What if meteor showers were a regular occurrence and we had to adapt?

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My final Assessment 1 poster - Subterranean Skyscrapers

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Assessment 1 Artist Statement

As mentioned in previous posts, this poster is a response to question 1, and seeks to show another possible re-imagining of the way humans as a society could interact with our environment.

The poster depicts a different society, where instead of living on the surface and building up into the sky, humanity must live beneath the surface and suspend ourselves from the underside of the earth. The main aspects I explored were the types of living spaces possible in this situation, particularly hanging dwellings that would be suspended from ropes or cables drilled into the earth.

I was originally going to create this concept with a flat poster (possibly printed), but after doing some brainstorming I decided that it would be more engaging to give the work some physical depth, and so decided to have it cut out of cardboard. The black card on the back was also a later addition, but I think it really gives more of the feel and mood of being underground (there is no standard clear blue sky as you would have on the surface). I decided to hang the buildings with actual string to give them a sense of flexibility and also fragility, with them not having a stable foundation or base to stand on. I also decided to add actual dirt stuck onto the top layer of the frame to give tangible texture to the earth itself (we exist beneath it).

I have really enjoyed going through the various stages of creating this work. While sourcing inspiration from other artists’ work as well, it was good to have a solid idea of what I wanted to do towards the start of the project, and I am satisfied with the final result.