Author: saravipond

UNIT 3 PROPOSAL

This project is a continuation from Unit 1. On the first day of term I described how I would like to create something that was kinetic, perhaps also including light, and I was so glad that the parameters of Unit 3 were broad enough to make this possible. During my 6 years studying at NIC so far this has been a germ of an idea.

In unit 1 I visited Kin Beach Park, and in the park there were several opportunities for something kinetic. In the end my final output in this unit was a short video which showed the merry-go-round and slide interacting with some orange ping pong balls. The merry-go-round in particular appealed to me as possibly the foundation for Unit 3.

WORKING TITLE – WHAT GOES AROUND…..

The first problem was how to make a merry-go-round rotate. I have a record deck but did not want to damage it making a kinetic piece, so I resorted to the internet, searching for options for machines that rotated. My first success was finding someone selling an inexpensive suitcase-type record player – which would be capable of rotating with something not to heavy onboard.

I had an idea that in addition to the merry go round rotating I might be able to incorporate some prisms and a suitable light source to project a rainbow onto a background, and also to project some of the video already obtained at kin beach. With that in mind I found a small display unit designed for showing mugs and other crafts online as a sales technique, though I am a little unsure how powerful that might be and what sort of weight it could bear. In researching this a massive barrier, which I have yet to resolve, is that a prism needs either direct sunlight or a fairly narrow beam of broad spectrum light to make a rainbow, sunlight wasn’t really an option for me, and a suitable light source is proving to be surprisingly hard to find. I have checked with the Physics department and they use lasers now for their optics experiments, which are only a narrow wavelength of light . Gordon doesn’t have anything suitable for the dark room, but I remembered seeing an exhibit that featured prisms at CVAG, and if possible Angela will enquire from the artist what she used. I thought the darkroom at NIC would be a great place to set the project up, however it can only accommodate six students at a time, but I have managed to secure the photo studio which is a pretty good alternative.

Other thoughts centre around having sound as well, a few thoughts being – playing the rather spooky fairground music interspersed with the sounds of children playing. Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of The Moon could also be very appropriate, given the prism link. Maybe the orange balls from unit 1 fit in the whole concept somewhere – they have been a recurring theme for me throughout my fine art classes.

The best laid schemes of mice and men….After talking to a friend who designs satellite optics Now learn that making a light source which can effectively be split through a prism is incredibly difficult. The beam must be full spectrum and very narrow. The sun is good for that being 93 million miles away the light rays are very focussed, but recreating that is very difficult. So plan B – use light sources that are already colored….The merry-go-round itself is still fine though

Being RGB they will also create white light – the exact opposite of plan A…

This assignment is about slip casting multiple objects. We were explained how the process works and needed to bring in some items which we felt might be suitable and interesting. I grabbed a few items which i thought might be fun to slip cast. These are the original selection.

I rather liked the idea of casting the old audio cassette. I grew up with vinyl, in 1970 I had a reel to reel tape recorder and in the mis 1970s cassettes became all the rage. It was amazing. You could record them yourself from the originals really simply and create tapes of either full albums or – make your own mix tape!! WOW. I managed to play the cassette that I had grabbed from my desk drawer and found out it was a recording of my mum sitting at her kitchen table on 31 December 1983 on the way to my wedding. She insisted on catching the bus and arrived late only to be turned away from the registry office as they had closed the doors….. So I needed to find some different material. Too Good to be Threw came up with the answer. For the princely sum of $0.75c each I was able to obtain 4 gems.

I’m always glad to get a chance to share this photo of my mum

and here are the 4 cassettes. You start by creating a mould from clay, and because they are so thin rather than making a two part mould I had to make a single part mould.

You then make a box about an inch deeper than the objects you are planning to cast, into which the plaster will be poured

Then you pour the slip into the moulds, wait about 15 minutes and peel them out while they are still plastic

I’m not sure where I’m going to go with the castings yet……

Thinking back to my time when cassette were the primary sources of music collections as well as vinyl, I recall an experience I had when I travelled up to the studios of a radio station in London in 1980 to hear an interview with Malcolm McLaren, one of the original punks, and manager of the Sex Pistols. At that time he was involved in another band – Bow Wow Wow and they had just released their debut album “Your Cassette Pet”. The songs were released on cassette only, and as I was a friend of the girl who interviewed Malcolm, I was given a copy of the cassette. It was yellow with red elements on the case, which was the inspiration for what to do with my objects. You can listen to one of the tracks via the link below.

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=CmWG1D0sOXc

In got some retro pastel paint and have applied it to the high fired objects I already have – but the other techniques are really interesting too, so I have made some more copies that are being bisque fired and I can then muck around with some glazes and underglazes and raku firing next week (12 November).

FIN230

Link to PPT and PowerPoint above

So this is the first page in my process book for FIN230. The picture is of Kin Beach Park, one of my favorite outdoor spaces. I go there with my grandkids and we enjoy the swings and slides as well as the wooden structures on the beach and the rockpools. I am hoping this semester that I will be able to incorporate some sort of kinetic element in my final assignment and I’m going to head out shortly to shoot some stills in the park as well as some video of the swings and roundabout.

Only stayed for a couple of hours. Spent a lot of time sitting on a bench. Very quiet today with only two couples walking their dogs. Kin Beach has an amazing variety of colors and textures.

My chosen place is large and absolutely overflowing in its range of colours, textures, sounds and movement, so I have decided to reduce some of the variables to help me sharpen my focus. My first is to eliminate colour – I love working in black and white and I feel sometimes color can distract from the other elements. Texture is amazing, but rather than trying to incorporate some of the wonderful texture of wood, stone and organic material from the site into the work, I will do my best to show them through still and moving images. This may not perfectly fit the assignment – and I may just have to show my video in some way on the site to re-establish the link between the work and the place.

Another notion that intrigued me today while in Kin Beach was the concept of perception – the difference between the outside observer and the experience of the subject. I had previously recorded the swings and the roundabout in motion, and today looked at the affect of that motion from within looking out.

so things took a bit of a turn on my last visit. I had thought back about something to introduce to kin beach park and also about a kinetic element. In previous courses I had started developing a theme around orange balls and I thought that the incongruity of a spherical regular manufactured product and the range of natural colors and textures might be an interesting juxtaposition. Its going to take me a bit longer to develop this theme as I need to brush up on some of the things I learned in FIN200 videography to create a video but I have gathered a little material – and will probably need a couple more visits to get what I need.

This assignment for me was far more about the journey than the destination. I already had a relationship with Kin Beach Park having visited it more than 20-30 times in the last 2 years. Almost every previous visit had been with my grandkids so my first visit without them was a new experience. I got to experience the park in a different way, starting to appreciate the wide range of textures and colors. I still however wanted the assignment to have a kinetic element. There is a lot of natural movement in the park, people strolling, dogs running, the motion of the sea and the wind in the trees, but the playground also presented many opportunities, and had a certain familiarity. Having looked at rendering the color out of the experience, I was looking at using found elements, of which there were so many on site, pebbles, driftwood, plants among many. I do like juxtaposition and introducing a modern, plastic, perfect sphere into this are of natural textures in the end was what drove the project. This is the current version of the video. It is a work in progress and I am considering adding sound and also trying to figure out how to render all the videos into black and white keeping only the orange balls in color https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/1018848224

https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/1018848224