Influencing Direction- Conclusion.

Once I had designed my sign and had it made, all I had to do was to display it somewhere to see if it worked, too see if it would influence people's direction. Firstly with my cardboard designs I experimented and put them in various places to have an idea of what may work and what wouldn't. Once I had experimented for a while I got the real sign and started to use that instead.

I began to using the sign down sandwell valley which is local to my house. I thought that it would be a good starting point where people would see my sign. It turned out that when I took my sign and displayed it there were virtually no people around I couldn't create my work. I came up with the obvious conclusion that it needed to be somewhere which was busier and where more people would interact with it. I thought of a few ideas in the public where I could put it, for instance shop windows, road signs and car parks. Some of the ideas I had to scrap because either they were illegal but more seriously dangerous, for example covering up important road instructions. The idea I deemed to be the best was to place my sign near a car park pay meter, somewhere unavoidable for its users. This was a lot more successful in terms of how many people actually seen my sign, it was unmissable. I recorded my findings with photographs as I would be recording people secretly and taking photo's is quicker and more convienient than video. I was aware that I would probably be approached if I was caught video recording people. I took my photographs from my car which was parked the ideal position.


After about two minutes I first saw interaction with my sign. A man seemingly stared at my sign confused as to what it meant. About Five minutes later a woman approached the pay meter. She also stood and looked at the sign bemusingly, and another woman followed after with the same response. I had noticed their confusement but all three still continued to buy tickets. Prehaps because of the proposed fine for not having a ticket. I had interesting results but to my annoyance my experiment was cut short because of a ticket inspector. I had to quickly retrieve my sign as I did not want it to be conviscated. I was also aware of the possibility that what I was doing was illegal. A lot of people had passed through the car park but didn't get close enough to it to see. From the three people who viewed my sign I learnt that from an order point of view it did not work but it did have a physcological affect on its viewers and did slightly affect their movement, all be it by a few yards. It did not go ignored. I was hoping as a bonus it would affect their desision but it was always ambitious considering the fine they would have to deal with. Im happy with this experiment and I achieved what I wanted, I will be looking to extend this work futher in the future because I think it can become bigger.

Presentation.

This presentation will be about my current influences in the world of art and what inspires me and my own personal practice. I will be looking at whose work has been pivital and inspirational towards me creating my own project and the work that's influenced them. I shall explain the concepts driving my work forward and who's also explored these conceptural areas. I like to understand the concepts and theories behind things, how things have been done and why? I would like to focus a large part of my presentation on a few particular works by certain practitioners who i've taken an interest towards. I will also evaluate how art has evolved throughout the recent times and how we view art as a whole today.

 

At the moment i'm interested in the work of MTAA (M.River and T.Whid Art associates.) MTAA was founded in 1996. It's their '1 year performance video' that im particualarly interested in. The performance video is portraying a the process of a simple net diagram (1997).

I see MTAA's performance work as an ironic link to the work I have been making on my previous project. I've been trying to find uses for humans wastage however MTAA are moving in the other direction creating and exploring new ways to create art. They are using the modern technology available to create a new medium of work in today's age. "1 year performance video" caught my eye whilst researching but what also interests me is the idea that this evolved from. Hsieh's "one year performance" (1978-1979) also known as "The Cage Piece." MTAA replicate Hsieh's performance, adapting it to the internet age.
http://www.turbulence.org/Works/1year/performancevideo.php

Alike with my performance, Hsieh spent a period of time confined in a space, however he spent an entire year living within a cage. He documented himself throughout this time with photographs. My performance was alot shorter but both in-fact were psychological tests of the human's strength and state of mind. I think I achieved similar findings to Hsieh but Hsieh pushed the boundaries alot futher than I did.

 

The performance is a statement about how human activity and life experiences are being replaced by computer's. Similar to my "Between these four walls" it defines new media's ability to manipulate our perceptions of time, make us believe that what we see is always the truth and more so relevant with my work, how modern technology has a huge amount of interference with our private lives.

http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/322

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/19/arts/design/19perf.html?_r=1

I came across these signs a while ago. They are created by hundreds of artists from all around the world. They are scattered all around the city of Lyon in France. I like the irony that some of them portray. They are almost the voices of people that otherwise cannot be heard. Similar to my sign they look real enough to make people notice them. I can imagine the reactions these signs have provoked, there's a good sense of humour about the project and I would have loved to have been involved. I drew inspiration from this huge project whilst practising my own work.

These signs give off all sorts of different signals, it would have been interesting to see peoples responses. I think art has definately become more public, you see art everywhere now and alot more people are involved with it. I think this project in Lyon is a great example of people joining forces to create something brillia

I find the use of text interesting, pictures and images speak a hundred words so people can make up their own beliefs of what it means, but when text is involved it really makes people think because you feel the need to know what it means. This is the reason I put text on my sign.

http://www.yeeeeee.com/2008/11/20/the-fake-street-sign-project-54-pics/

Mark Wallinger is an example of an artist who uses alot of external issues that he is passionate about to create his work. He's an artist im familiar with and I thought it would be good to show his work. His performance piece "Sleeper" represents the cold war and the separation between Germany around that time. He’s almost walking down the middle of the gallery which is emphasising separation and a divide between the country. I found this performance fascinating for many reasons. He actually did this work in the Neue National gallery (Berlin) which is hugely ironic as most of the cold war took place in Germany. He’s discuises himself as a bear. He stresses that the bear is neither scary nor approachable to kids or adults and that at certain times of the night when he walks round nobody takes any notice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LD05OVIRkNY 

Personally I think that it’s to do with how in the cold war so many people were forgotten and how many people died. And the fact that nobody even cared to notice. The word FORGOTTEN is very important because it means no memory, which is why I think he chose the gallery to be empty.  I believe it’s a huge metaphor towards the cold war, with irony but also Wallinger’s personal hurt. I understand the importance of the polital issues in his works; they are very important and influential to him.

My project has been very rewarding so far, i,ve learned many things I did not know and discovered some great artists who have inspired me along the way with my work. Also i've learnt more about myself and the way I work, performance art has been a challege for me but i've enjoyed it.

"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.