FILM TITLES

I've decided that my FMP will consist of three of the videos filmed today, edited together in a choppy way to incorporate all different versions of the speech. Each actor will have a complete video of themselves reading the speech. These films will be played after each other on loops so the audience can percieve the speech 3 different ways by 3 different characters, suggesting the speech and the ideas behind it can be used in a variety of ways.

***EDITED ON IMOVIE.

FILMING.

Today I filmed the speech I'd written, acted out by three different people, including myself. I had the actors read the speech 3 times each in a different tone of voice, to change the meaning of the speech and how it would be perceived by the audience. Sarcastic, angry and saddened. Both actors were brilliant and I'm very pleased with the footage filmed.

EDITING BEGINS.

THIS IS WRONG ~ Screenprint attempt 1

These scans do not show the background of the print which is what went wrong during this attempt. The amount and transparency of the ink used was a success however lining up the two layers, 'buddha background' and 'this is art' failed. You can't see from the images above as the background is so light that the scanner didn't pick it up, but they aren't lined up correctly which is a pain. The digital scans are usable and i like them however the physical screenprints do not look good. 

To fix this I'm going to get Lewis to help me and teach me how to align correctly so as I don't have this problem and get the desired outcomes. 

SCRIPT - THIS IS ART

THIS IS ART - Written by Dale Allen

INT. – DARK, BLACK ROOM, FACES ILLUMINATED 

CAPTION: THIS IS ART 

DALE
This is art.

JONATHAN 
Are you listening? ARE YOU LISTENING? 
5. 4. 3. 2. 1. Five seconds gone... 

DALE 
Five precious moments that you will never ever get back. Ever. 

JONATHAN
We are slaving away in a false reality of telephone wires and internet connections, being told these things are important. Important? Deception. 
We are alive and present right now. Right now. 

Always trying to be somebody else’s idea of ‘perfect’. You are perfect, I am perfect. Everything is naturally perfect as it is. Yet, we are brainwashed. Every aspect of our lives is manipulated by something else. We don’t use our own minds. 
And then we claim to be free? [Laughs] 
That’s bondage! 
Trapped in this fucking mess and you don't even realise. 
This moment is yours,this moment is mine. This moment is beautiful. This moment is your reward! Stop waiting to die, stop waiting for some ‘eternal life’ in a paradise you have no proof of even existing. Faith alone is not enough. 

JACK
Not enough when you are alive right now! 

DALE 
This is Art. 

JACK 
THIS IS ART. 

JONATHAN 
This, is art.

JACK 
We think we have a choice in life…the only choice is too see reality for what it actually is – fleeting…Every fucking moment! 

JONATHAN 
Every fucking moment! - IT COUNTS! 
Do something with it... 

JACK
Make it count! Make it beautiful! 

JONOTHAN
Or, you could just...

JACK
Go to work, pay tax, follow fashion, buy shit you don’t need cause you're told to. 

JONATHAN
You could vote for a leader and fail to see you are you own fucking leader. Don’t follow your dreams and stay in fear. Continue being a worthless puppet living a  life in bondage. 

Or, you could just wake up?
WAKE UP.
Wake up and realize that you have the final authority. 

The only choice worth making is to see reality for what it actually is. 

[Pause] Don't be a slave. Be free. 

JONATHAN LAUGHS TO THE CAMERA. SCENE SWITCHES TO DALE ON CHAIR. DALE MOVES OUT HIS ARMS. 

DALE
I'm done!

END CREDITS IN 

JACK
5, 4, 3, 2, 1

CUT TO BLACK

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This is the first draft of a script I wrote. The setting with just be them in a dark room with a camera. Very intimate. The camera will act as the audience, being hit with this speech. Excited about this and think it may turn out to be my final outcome for this project. 

THIS IS ART.

This idea came about after looking at 'trusims' by Jenny Holzer. A piece of paper - art- which simply tells the audience that it IS art. There is no hidden meanings, no subliminal messages. No deception. Just reality as it is. I liked this idea and I like this saying, I think i'm going to explore it more in monoprints. 

I had some other ideas for posters aswell but think I'm going to focus on continuing the 'THIS IS ART' stuff. 

Mark Making // Birdcages

After taking on board what was said in the group critique I started to draw some birdcages using the mark making techniques I'd learnt previously on the course. Techniques such as left hand drawing, blind drawing, continuous line and drawing only in dots (which took forever and killed my hand I don't ever want to do it again).

Happy with these outcomes.

GROUP CRITIQUE

Birds seem to be a popular way of expression freedom. But it's not really freedom itself I want to show. It's how people are not free. 

A SINCERE EFFORT IS ALL YOU CAN ASK

This is a mugshot of Lindsay Lohan. After numerous spells in prison Lindsay never learnt her lesson and continued doing wrong conciously or not. We're all victims of doing this, seeing reality yet still chosing to ignore it. This is basically a rip off or Barbara Kruger with a quote from Jenny Holzer, but it's if you know the history behind Lindsay then the quote meaning changes and it suggests that Lindsay is making a real effort to change her ways, however after numerous returns to prison it's apparent that the effort is not all there, like each and every one of us at some point in our lives. 

I did this on photoshop overlaying images and text. Was fun to do. I like Barbara Kruger. 

RESEARCH // MICHAEL LANDY

Michael Landy RA (born 1963) is one of the Young British Artists (YBAs). He is best known for the performance piece installation Break Down (2001), in which he destroyed all his possessions, and for the Art Bin project at the South London Gallery.

Break Down, the work which put him in the public eye, was held in February 2001 at an old branch of the clothes store C&A on Oxford Street in London (C&A had recently ceased trading, and the shop had been emptied). Landy gathered together all his possessions, ranging from postage stamps to his car, and including all his clothes and works of art by himself and others, painstakingly catalogued all 7,227 of them in detail, and then destroyed all in public. The process of destruction was done on something resembling an assembly line in a mass production factory, with ten workers reducing each item to its basic materials and then shredding them.

I find this idea very very interesting and very liberating as he technically threw away everything he owns to prove the point that WE DON'T NEED ANYTHING BUT OURSELVES.

The etchings are all meticulous, life-sized studies of individual weeds the artist found growing in the street. Landy has described why he was drawn to these ‘street flowers’. He has said, ‘they are marvellous, optimistic things that you find in inner London ... They occupy an urban landscape which is very hostile and they have to be adaptable and find little bits of soil to prosper’ (quoted in Buck). Weeds are hardy, thriving in often inhospitable conditions with very little soil, water or direct sunlight. They grow between paving stones or on waste ground in the city, tenaciously asserting themselves despite being overlooked by the majority of passers-by. Landy collected a number of these plants and took them back to his studio where he potted and tended them, making studies of their structures including detailed renderings of roots, leaves and flowers.

Landy includes the imperfections of each specimen. The simple beauty of the etchings which dignify the most commonplace of plants also made these works appealing to collectors.

RESEARCH // BARBARA KRUGER

 

Barbara Kruger (born January 26, 1945) is an American conceptual artist. Much of her work consists of black-and-white photographs overlaid with declarative captions—in white-on-redFutura Bold Oblique or Helvetica Ultra Condensed. The phrases in her works often include pronouns such as "you", "your", "I", "we", and "they". 
Much of Kruger's work engages the merging of found photographs from existing sources with pithy and aggressive text that involves the viewer in the struggle for power and control that her captions speak to. She develops her ideas on a computer, later transferring the results to oftentimes billboard-sized images. In their trademark white letters against a slash of red background, some of her instantly recognizable slogans read “I shop therefore I am,” and “Your body is a battleground." Much of her text questions the viewer about feminism, consumerism, and individual autonomy and desire, although her black-and-white images are culled from the mainstream magazines that sell the very ideas she is disputing.
Kruger juxtaposes her imagery and text containing criticism of sexism and the circulation of power within cultures is a recurring motif in Kruger's work. The text in her works of the 1980s includes such phrases as "Your comfort is my silence" (1981), "You invest in the divinity of the masterpiece" (1982), and "I shop therefore I am" (1987). She has said that "I work with pictures and words because they have the ability to determine who we are and who we aren’t." A larger category that threads through her work is the appropriation and alteration of existing images. The importance of appropriation art in contemporary culture lay in its ability to play with preponderant imagistic and textual conventions: to mash up meanings and create new ones. Her poster for the 1989 Women's March on Washington in support of legal abortion included a woman's face bisected into positive and negative photographic reproductions, accompanied by the text "Your Body is a battleground."

Addressing issues of language and sign, Kruger has often been grouped with such feminist postmodern artists which she was interleaved by Jenny Holzer. Like Holzer, she uses the techniques of mass communication and advertising to explore gender and identity.

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I like this artist as she makes you think. The text overlayed on pictures which it's blatently trying to contradict is very powerful and I like this a lot. 

RESEARCH // JENNY HOLZER

"Being happy is more important than anything else..."

a little knowledge can go a long way 

a lot of professionals are crackpots 

a man can't know what it is to be a mother 

a name means a lot just by itself 

a positive attitude means all the difference in the world 

a relaxed man is not necessarily a better man 

a sense of timing is the mark of genius 

a sincere effort is all you can ask 

a single event can have infinitely many interpretations 

a solid home base builds a sense of self 

a strong sense of duty imprisons you 

absolute submission can be a form of freedom 

artificial desires are despoiling the earth 

at times inactivity is preferable to mindless functioning 

at times your unconsciousness is truer than your conscious mind 

automation is deadly 

awful punishment awaits really bad people 

bad intentions can yield good results 

being alone with yourself is increasingly unpopular 

being happy is more important than anything else

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Jenny Holzer is an American conceptual artist. Holzer is mostly known for her large-scale public displays that include billboard advertisements, projections on buildings and other architectural structures, as well as illuminated electronic displays. The main focus of her work is the use of words and ideas in public space. Originally utilizing street posters, LED signs became her most visible medium, though her diverse practice incorporates a wide array of media including bronze plaques, painted signs, stone benches and footstools, stickers, T-shirts, condoms, paintings, photographs, sound, video, light projection, the Internet, and a Le Mans race car.

 

 

I really like this artist work. I like how she projects little sayings that everybody knows to be true but in everyday life they are somewhat ignored. I like how she projects them onto big buildings to hit her target audience, it's very effective and I would like to do something similar in my own work. I really like quotes and work with text involved and would definitely like to use text in my final piece. 

Tutorial notes.

Had a review with Lesley and Lewis and we talked about the concepts behind my piece. They're happy with my progress so far.

I've been told to research artists Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Michael Landy and Mike Nelson.

Also discussed George Orwells book '1984' and it was suggested that I read bits of this book.

We discussed my ideas for my final piece in which I'd exhibit and I think I'm still unsure about what I actually want to do.

MONOPRINTS

Three monoprints of the buddha with the message 'You are the final authority. Whether you awaken or not is completely up to you'. This basically means that in everything you do, you yourself are the decider and can chose to whatever you want, but whether you act on your own authority or follow somebody elses rules is up to you. Basically you're free. 

1 came out too dark, the other was ok and am happy with it. Another I just used the remaining paint and did a 'reverse monoprint'. Pleased with these outcomes. 

I also did a couple more random ones to back up my point. These ones have less meaning but more or less suggest freedom. 

These will be put into my journal and the buddha ones will be mounted onto a worksheet. 

May work into these on photoshop.