"Ignore."

For my second performance piece I wanted to involve my audience more. My audience being the general public. My original idea was to create some kind or directions or orders that people will see and think, what does that mean? or what does that represent? I wanted to create something that would provoke a reaction, whether it be positive or negative and ultimately I wanted to see if I could influence people's direction of movement. I began to experiment when I realised a great opportunity, winter had just begun and there was a thin sheet of ice/snow on the ground. Local to my house there is a valley where I thought would be a great place to test out some of my ideas. So one day I walked down there and began to scribe directions in the ice discreetly, but not just on the floor but also on walls, benches and any where I could do really. These signs were just spontaneous drawings which I got from the top of my head as it was only really an experiment to test the strength of the idea. The valley was a fairly busy walkway so I could watch peoples reactions secretly from the tree's. A couple of people seen the designs and ignored them, but some people reacted in a happy manner. They were smiling but didn't take the sign's seriously.

I took this on board and realised that my experiment wasn't a failure it just helped me understand what I needed to do so that people took my idea seriously. My original designs didn't look official so I can see why people wasn't following them. I came up with a better more official looking sign design and with help from college I was able to get it made professionally for me. I drew up my design on illustrator and then Green Lane Campus drew it up on CAD and had it cut out from red plastic. I chose the colour red because it catches the eye more than most colours and also as the road sign rule, red represents danger. I went down to Green Lane and was taught how to transfer text stickers onto material. It was at this stage I had my text "ignore." transfered onto my sign. My official looking sign was now complete, all I had to do was to see if it work. My design was intended for pedestrians so I had to be careful in where it would be placed so that it doesn't cause any real danger. My sign was designed for no other purpose than to almost trick pedestrians so that their movement is influenced.

                                                                                                             The actual design is a red rectangular shape with a circle attatched to the side of it. I also has the words "ignore." wrote on the sign. You already know the reason for the colour and the shape is just as important. I used both shapes so that the sign doesn't replicate something already in use and more importantly a circle because this represents an order, hopefully people will realise this. Also the circle represents a frame because there is a hole in the middle. What can be seen through this hole could be conclusive. "Ignore." is wrote on the sign purely to confuse the pedestrians even more to provoke a reation. The performance will be created by the pedestrians; the success of the performance is hanging in the balnce, it will all depending on how their movement is affected. I'm not 100% sure how I will record the performance yet, im thinking about using photography or sound as I used video for my other performance.

Check my blog later for the results of this test. 

Between these four walls - Analysis

I was seperated from society for my performance. However my equipment only allowed me to record twenty four and a half minutes of my performance piece. Although I must admit it did not take much longer before my peace was intercepted by a number of things. My performance took place in my living room, a space private to me. Also because of the time of day (10:00am), I knew I would be alone. I cleared the area where I would be recording for the purpose of the performance, set up the scene and I was ready to film. All that I would have in there with me would be a book, Gaston Bachelard's "Potics Of Space". I hadn't prepared for the performance as I wanted it to feel as natural as it could be, I didn't take a toilet break before or even have food or drink. I left my mobile turned on and the house phone on the hook. I began to film and after about 10 minutes I began to feel alone. I felt very compressed, I could hardly move and I couldn't get comfortable. I started to think about how valuable space is and how much space I need to be happy. I thought about costrophobia and how people with this phobia feel, because I felt strangled inside these four invisible walls. Prison cells came to my mind. Its obvious why they are deigned the way they are, the psychological aspect of the size is a punishment in its own right. This test made me appreciate my freedom.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9GQLW2xqO8

About fithteen minutes into my performance my mobile phone rang, prooving to me that there is actually very little privacy in your own home. My phone rang again about five minutes later. I could have turned the phone off but the whole point of the project was to see if I could seperate myself from the outside world. It was very hard because in one aspect I wanted to look at my phone, I wanted to answer it but I couldn't and in another way I was fustrated that I couldn't relax without interferance. If my performance was longer it could have been disrupted by a post man or gas man, there's so many possibilities. I got the answers I needed to back up my point. Were in an age today where privacy is almost impossible find, partly to do with the internet and technology. I've been brought up using computers and the net, its genius and I don't know any difference. However through its great means it brings some not so great one's.

 My performance was a huge success to me I reiterated the fact of how we are constantly socially involved and how hard it is to disconnect yourself from everybody else. But most importantly I discovered for myself the issue of space, how we need it and can't live without it, without room to roam we can't express ourselves and make things happen. Without space you become mentally trapped. I think i've stressed the importance of being able to move and to have our own space, which is what I aimed to achieve.

Between these four walls - Spatial suffication

I wanted to emphasise the importance of space, how we need our own space and how we would struggle if we were stripped of our freedom.

If you take away freedom what do we have?, physically and mentally.                                                                      Freedom to move and controll is human's greatest power!

I will perform an imprisonment, an invasion of my private space to see how I can cope with being restricted and seperated from everything else. If you stop for just a second the world still goes by, personal space and time is so important. We need our own time to breath alone sometimes. I thought it would be interesting to see how long I could go without being interupted by the outside life and society. The doorbell, postman, visitors, the phone etc. "Outside of the walls" Many other things could also get in the way of this experiment, like my need for the toilet, food and drink. There are so many possible interuptions its unreal. This I was sure I would find out after carrying out several tests. So from this performance I would learn many things, most importantly Human needs, Spatial awareness and how we rarely get time to ourselves and how hard it is to seperate from the outside world.

A private space to me is somewhere where I can go and reflect on life and its also somewhere where I should be guarenteed peace and concentration. I feel this place is very rare and hard to find. I will be trying to re-create this space using four simple markers which distinctly hold my privacy. I will be bound between these markers seperating me from the outside and holding me in my own space and society. The aim of the performance is to reflect the importance of space, how we need it and how we underestimate it. I won't make my performance a specific length of time; it will take as long as it takes to before my human needs kick in. Eventually I will feel isolated and alone, how long until I feel this I cannot guess. The answer is to be discovered.

I will record my performance using a digital camera suspended from the ceiling, so that you will see the perimeter of the square with me inside it. I believe that this will emphasise the barrier and feeling of suffication. Also its the best camera angle for actually seeing my movement around the four corners of my square. The suspension of the camera prooved tricky as I only had string to hold it but it held out. I used a wooden block with a circle inside to hold the camera lense which added a circular border to the video and also added a proffesional touch to the finished video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9GQLW2xqO8

Desire Lines- Influencing Direction.

Desire lines is a concept i've came across from looking at geocaching, urban exploration and the human's tendancy to cut corners. Often if you walk across a landscape you will begin to discover that people are creating their own informal, unofficial paths. Cutting inbetween walkways or creating a whole new route all together. I've seen this for myself in fields and you see it alot on rural walks. I went mountain walking and I seen lots of these created paths and pavements. Alot of these paths become accepted and end up being made official and sometimes they are barricaded. The closed one's often become re-used. Most in-formal are ignored and remain untouched. These paths are formally known as desire lines.

"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail"
                                                 Ralph Waldo Emerson.

At this stage of my work the most important thing to me is how my movement and direction has been affected and what has influenced me. How have I took advantage of space? 

What intereted me was how over the last four or five months my movement and direction had been affected and influenced. How i've taken advantage of space but more importantly how all humans take space and freedom for granted. I think sometimes we underestimate the freedom to roam almost anywhere on the planet. The only places we cannot go to we are told by other humans! I've noticed our common, regular useage of shortcuts. By foot or any type of transport. On foot there is hardly no limits on possibilities of where you can go, yet its not our feet which do the talking its our brains. Our heads see and create solutions under influence.

The aim of travel or movement is to get from A to B and a human tendancy is to do anything to make this easier and quicker. One of the most valuable things in life is time. I've looked at some un-noticable spacial direction, things we do all the time and don't even notice. Do we walk in straight lines or do we swerve? Do we move to avoid things? How big are our steps? These are just some questions. There are so many elements to do with movement and i'm just talking about small movements. I will look at how we use space as a world. When I walk down the street I see lots of things which could influence my direction, road signs, directions and advertisements. These are several techniques such as imagery, (signs,posters,markings etc.) and sounds that organisations use to influence our desisions. We are aware of certain sounds such as  HGV reversing or an ambulance both warning signals revealing danger. So these are technical instructions to protect us. Im interested in how these signals influence people's movement and why they influence them. My aim is to create something with a purpose to influence people's minds and penultamately direction.

Urban Exploration

My project began looking at redundant technology and my original discovery of the map like details on the back of the circuit boards has become my inspiration for my next stage of work. I began taking my camera out and about with me followind these maps and recording my journey's. Using stills it would be hard to emphasise the journey I have taken so I used a video camera. I decided an ideal place to record my video would be Birmingham City, somewhere with a good mix of old and new, historical and modern buildings and places.

To begin I had to allocate some sort of scale to my maps other wise the journey wouldn't be accurate at all. I needed consistency. I determined a common start point then I followed the lines to discover where I would end up. I always began on a type of corner. What did the silver blobs on the chip mean, and what do the numbers represent? I ended up in lots of places, one memorable place was the shop I ended up in. My findings were never going to be 100% accurate but that was not the only aim. I have learnt the importance of direction and space and how we underestimate space. Also I have learned to be more spatially aware, of where I am and what's going on around me. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4RQpuam74Q

I realised how as a nation we all cut corners to reach a destination or something we want, physically and mentally. My most interesting finding was everybody else's movement. My own movement was more static and actually robotic. I seen the city from a different prospective; I felt like electricity flowing through the circuits, I felt like energy. It was also interesting to see what was going on around me. After researching the old tower blocks I wanted to get inside one to feel the isolation for myself, to see the inside truth. I managed to get inside a small local block of flats to explore them. I followed my maps around the building and documented my findings. I used a GPS application on a mobile device as one way to record my where abouts. I also took a panoramic shot from the area I discovered. I found what I expected, althogh they were nicely furnished flats they were very isolated and disconnected from the earth.