Unit X

My blog for my University Project called 'Unit X'. This is a group project and in this group is Dale Loynes, Alex Moore, Lauren Trever and Amy Victoria. Here you will find posts relating to this project and what it entails, from workshops to the final...

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Federation House - Key post 3 (part 2) Private View and Invigilating (14-15/05/15)

The Private View began on the 14th from 6-9pm. When I arrived there was already a great number of people there. It felt great to think that the work that had been produced was going to be seen by all of the people that came that evening.

On the 15th I was invigilating at the exhibition space. It was very straightforward by just keeping an eye on the work, as it was quiet. It gave me a chance to watch some of the other pieces by other people on the course and how they interpreted different things and collaborated. Unfortunately the monitor that we was using wasn’t great and you couldn’t appreciate all of the fine detail of the flowing ink we could see on the computer. If we was to do this again we would try and access something of a higher quality so it can be seen as intended.

Overall with it being the first exhibition I think that it was a success. It also reiterated to me how important an event like this can be with being able to get your name noticed out there and for others to see your work. I think there were some faults to the space as it had to accommodate for so many student and having the projectors lower down meant that many of them were covered with people accidently walking infront of them. Also with sharing a room with illustration as well as the collaborative work of filmmaking and photography, it felt rather cramped. Apart from these it was a success non-the less and look forward to the next exhibition next year as I anticipate now the work involved in setting one up. Especially with having to fundraise the money to put together an exhibition in our second year is bringing together many other skills we will frequently need to use after our degree is finished.

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Federation House - Key post 3 (part1) (11-13/05/15)

We now know that our floor has changed from the 3rd floor to the 5th. We began working in the space to make it ready for the exhibition on the 14th. For this we had access to lots of cardboard and paper which was going to be the main material to block off windows and put up temporary projector screens for the projectors to play on. For this they were covered by white paper. After covering with white paper, they were hung from the ceiling using metal hooks. The short films were put together on to a DVD and played on each projector with a time delay on each one so different films were playing at the same time and they were played on different screens around the space. This was to ensure all of the work was seen around the exhibition and so there was enough space for everyone’s work.

 However, my group needed a smaller space to the side in order to show our film on monitor with the photographs around it. We had to have our film on a separate monitor rather than the projectors, as our film was much longer.

This is an image of the space we are going to be showing our work in and the arrangement we went for.

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Final Edited video

Reversal - Time and life and reverse cycle

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Key post 2 - Other ideas and shooting (06-08/05/15)

We have been meeting up frequently to discuss ideas and where the project is heading. Although we liked the idea of doing the cornstarch, we wanted to keep active and push on with more ideas using slow motion. After some research, we came across dropping ink into water. It sounded a little different but we loved how it fell down the container/glass that it was in, to the base. We realized this would be our next step to try, as it was affordable to do. From here we pushed onwards with preparing for the next shoot by ordering some Artist Acrylic Ink of Amazon and we had booked out the studio at uni for the Friday 8th, after filling out one of the risk assessment forms. Also I arranged with my friend who has access to a studio to be able to use that on the Thursday 7th. It wasn’t going to be a bad thing to have more footage than normal. Instead of using the GoPro for this, Alex managed to lend a Canon 7D off a friend to do the video recording, and I managed to use a friends Nikon D800e to do the photography. We had decided to mainly use the Thursday to focus on filming rather than the photography and then use the following day in the studio at uni to do more of the photography.

The shoot at my friend’s studio was a success to get footage of dropping the ink in the water. Also how the different colours dropped in took over water differently. We found the best colours to use was using the Blue and Red as they were clear on the recording when making their way down the glass. We managed to use some of the vases that were at my friend’s house. This made a big difference having these as the ink had further to travel down and we got to see more of how it dispersed itself and took over the water with colour.

 Still sticking to the idea of tampering with time, we had decided that it was already slow enough and not needed to slow down in post. We had also decided as a group that we wanted to explore looking at it differently, such as playing the video backwards and inverting the video.

 At this point we had spoken about the use of the one monitor and how we were going to make it fit with our piece. We had decided that we would like one monitor in the center of the display with still images of the video around it. This having a very literal approach to ‘still and moving image’.

We knew that this was going to be what we were going to put into the exhibition and from this point it was steps forward to making this happen. 

On Saturday 9th, as the other members of the group had either gone home or were busy, I had decided as I still had access to my friends studio that I would do another shoot to play around and experiment with the ink some more. I had decided I wanted to see how droplets of ink would be feasible and if so what it would look like. These are a couple of the final edited ones I got.

To get these and to ensure I knew the set up needed, I photographed it with all of the settings I would need. Also to get an idea of the working environment that was happening when doing this shoot.

I really enjoyed the experimenting with the ink and seeing what different results I was able to get. I also love the final images that I managed to get and think I will be using them as my work to put forward into the exhibition.

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Cornstarch shoot (01/05/15)

Following up on one of our other ideas of Corn Starch, we managed to find equipment such as a speaker, amp and lighting to use. We had decided to shoot the cornstarch on the GoPro and the iPhones for video, and I did the photography for it on a Nikon D300. For this shoot at my house it was Alex and myself. Cornstarch and water on a speaker makes it morph into weird shaped, which we thought would look good playing in slow motion, also to capture moments of it as a photograph. Along with using the cornstarch on the speaker, we played a high bass song found on YouTube. We loved how the movement of the speaker brought this material to life and as soon as it stops, the material just flows back down into a liquid. I thought that capturing this, as a still would make the viewer try and interpret and make sense of the image by pulling the image apart. The filming done on the GoPro 4K Black Edition using 1080 resolution at 120fps. Parts of the video has been slowed down to 10% in post production.

This is one of the images I took and edited as one of the stills.

These are some of the images of the set up we had and how we had the space set up.

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Key Post 1 - First meet up and Initial ideas (27/04/15)

After making a facebook group and getting to know each other more on there, we met up to have a talk about other ideas in person. We had started off my thinking about doing photography/film with a tampering of the element of time. We wanted to explore different areas from slow motion to time-lapse. Beginning by looking at Martin Klimas and their work shooting vases of flowers pulled us in right away. From here, we got some vases of our own and decided to try and film the destruction of breaking the vases and playing it in different speeds. Also we started talking about the exhibition space and how we can use it. We had some ideas of using monitors instead of projectors as I found the space to be brighter so I thought that monitors could be more versatile and work in a range of spaces. We was thinking that if we had something spread over 4 monitors that are all lined up and had videos/images on each that worked across all monitors. For example, something starting at one end of the monitors, and working their way over to the other side. We had a few ideas of videoing someone throwing something across and get it to play through the screens, or a droplet going horizontally. An idea I was interested to do was Corn Starch. These were the ideas we put forward for our meeting with the tutor. The tutor liked the ideas we had and encouraged us to move forward from the breaking of vases as a video and some droplet ideas we had as the outcome of them (ie the contact with the floor/water) was already expected to come. From here we thought more equipment wise on what was possible to use. Unfortunately none of us could get any of the better equipment suited to what we needed so we decided to do some filming with the use of a GoPro and using the slow motion and time lapse setting on our phones.

 These were our first shoot and experimenting with the GoPro and the slow motion on the iPhone.  As the GoPro is waterproof, we were able to put it into the balloon to get another perspective when the balloon burst. I liked this as it you hear noises that you wouldn’t normally think of and just found it interesting really.

These were the first two ideas we explored before going to the tutorial. After the tutorial we pushed forward with the idea of Corn Starch and made a plan for the day of shooting and the ideas we had from that point.

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Super 8 - Manchester

After a long wait to see if/how the film came out for my groups Super 8 video, I was finally able to see it today. The film is slide film and needed to be sent to Germany to be developed and we received back the reel of film. Surreal as it was having something like that was quite cool and different. For the film to be easily digitized, it was recorded on a DSLR when being put through the projector.

For our Super 8 film we had decided to use it as an opportunity to get a feel for the cameras and to experiment. For this we had decided to go around Manchester and record things that caught our eyes and things that we may normally walk past without even paying much attention to.

I am very pleased with how the film came out. There were parts of the film I thought may not work initially but it seemed to flow and we, as a group was able to judge the correct exposures of the environment and what was in the shot. My favorite parts of the film are where we have managed to get that lens flair without blowing out the whites. Also how much it has managed to record in detail, such as the sunrays coming down through the sky. When watching our film back weeks after shooting it, I found that it would be very difficult to be able to tell when it was actually recorded, with what was shot and the format we had shot it in. After doing this workshop I am happy to say this would be another area that I would like to explore and see what work I can produce by using this process. Although I would need to source my own way of getting the film developed somewhere closer as I wouldn’t want to wait as long for the results and also the cost factor involved in sending it far away for development.

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Visiting the Federation House (08/04/15)

A group of us decided to go and visit the space to get an idea of what it actually consisted of. I found it hard to put Unit X into perspective on how we can exhibit without seeing the space. With it being my first exhibition to be involved in the making of, I found it difficult to imagine where all of the people that are on the both courses were going to display their work.

This is one of the photographs taken from the space. This image is showing how bright the space actually is and with the combination of filmmaking, Im not sure what would be the ideas on how the space would be changed for our exhibition to accommodate projections.

This next image is taken facing the other side of the space. This is showing the windows being covered up using bin bags to darken the room to accommodate the projection. I think that the windows would need to be blocked off for full appreciation of the projected piece of work, however, personally I thought there could be a better and tidier alternative in blocking out the light as I found the bin bags on the window were a little tacky and distracting.

Overall I found the first trip to visit the exhibition space was a success as it meant that I was able to speak to my group more about it and other possible ways of using the space. Also, by seeing the space in the flesh and having it in such a raw state, it was a good feeling to be able to fix the place up and make it something our own.

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Image, Space, Projection workshop - Paul Procter (19/03/15)

This workshop involved having a laptop and a projector. Paul Procter gave some examples of how we can use the projector to portray messages and make points, in some places on a large scale. Some of the ideas were using the projector in ways to project alternative pathways or a repeat of something that is already in the image again on an alternative wall to give an illusion type of effect.

For my group’s projection, we wanted to play with the idea of perception and size by projecting something that has a large scale, down into smaller spaces. To do this we needed a darker space to be able to see the projection.

We also tried projecting other things in the space such as vehicles.

Next we were encouraged to experiment with using just text to project on a wall. I found this approach a simple yet very effective way of portraying a message.

I enjoyed this workshop as it showed me another way to use a space. Also how by keeping it simple, it can still have such a big impact on the viewer. I would like to take this method further and experiment more with the idea of projecting nature on/in other man made things. Also if I was to do it again, I feel that a DSLR is an essential tool for recording this, as all I had to capture this was my iPhone.

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Inspire Lecture - Le Gun (Neal Fox and Robert Rubbish) (17/03/15)

Le Gun is a group of seven people, two of which came to speak to us in one of our inspire talks. Neal Fox and Robert Rubbish are the two from that group. Le Gun established in 2004 consists of seven graduates that met at the London’s Royal College of Arts department of communication art and design. Five of the graduates being illustrators and two being designers. This group has worked in producing 5 magazines, with seeking inspiration from artists such as Robert Crumb and Art Spieedman. Although they worked on making these 5 magazines, they weren’t able to have them published until they had enough money to do it. For their first magazine to be published they held parties to help with fundraising. It is described that they create “idiosyncratic imagery, which blends a punk, occult, pop and surrealist aesthetic.” The magazines that Le Gun produces are not all of their own work. They accept work that people send in to them to be possibly included in their selecting process. Their process of what and how it is included in the magazine, all of the pieces are placed on a long wall to see the pieces complement each other and viewed as one piece rather than individual pieces, the intention being to create it as if a “Visual Poem”.

Le Gun’s work didn’t stop at doing illustrations for their magazine. They also create large paintings and displays. One of their paintings was a map called LeGundon, which is inspired by London by including places that they recreated into LeGundon. These paintings and larger pieces further moved into 3D art. One piece being a living room with many images on the walls. All life size, including a table of LeGundon in the centre.

Le Gun has a strong black and white theme that is used throughout their work with using black ink on white paper. I liked that it was just black and white used as it gave good strong contrast and some pieces reminded me of a comic strip. Also they have an interesting quirky approach to their work, which makes it something different to what I have seen before. Some of the other images that they produced I found funny as it had a crude/silly quality.

I enjoyed this inspire talk as we got to see what different approaches to presenting an exhibit and other ways of showing a piece of work. Also found it interesting how they saw things differently with their process of selection and how they interpret the world with seeking inspiration for LeGundon.

http://www.nomad.org.uk/artists/le-gun

http://www.legun.co.uk/

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Camera Obscura Workshop - Alan Jones (17/03/15)

The next workshop we had was a personal favorite of mine as it is something I have wanted to do for some time. Being inside a ‘camera’ and you doing what the mechanics would normally do. Stripping away all the nonsense and experiencing what a camera is really doing. We began by being shown the set-up of the camera obscura done by Alan Jones in a section within the Holden Gallery.

For this a lens for a 10x8 camera was used. It was mounted on the wall and sealed with duct tape, which was to ensure no light was able to enter. To get into the camera, a lightproof material was put across the way in and was closed off when inside to prevent light leaks. Inside the camera was an easel which had been placed within focus for what we was photographing by placing the board on the easel a distance from the lens to get the image in focus.

 Taking our turns in taking an image to work out the correct exposure, beginning with 10 seconds and working our way up increasing by 5 seconds each time. We were using darkroom light sensitive paper to create a negative image and found that an exposure of 40 seconds was the best exposure. The reason for the long exposure was due to the low ISO of the paper we was working with. However, when photographing on such a large scale like this it is the best affordable option.

 After finding the correct exposure we rotated around the groups to photograph someone. After taking the image, the exposed paper with the negative image on it was placed in a light proof box to be transported to the dark room to be developed. After development we had a negative image. We could do a paper negative and produce a positive image by overlaying the exposed paper with on unexposed and shining the light through the image. However, to speed this process up, I used an app called “Negative Me” which does this process for me digitally.

This is one of the images that I took of Zoe. It is an unedited paper negative.

This image is the positive image of the other one above. I have used the app “Negative Me” to change it from a negative to a positive. I like how this image turned out as it is well exposed. However, it has slight motion blur which is expected with an exposure of 40 seconds and think Zoe did a great job in staying still for that long.

Overall, I loved the experience of being able to play around with this. It puts everything in a great scale with physically being able to go inside of the camera. I also love the final outcomes that I got from it and plan to explore this further in the future.

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Photography and Film Lecture - Mary Stark (16/03/15)

One of our combined photography and filmmaking talks was one by Mary Stark. Stark is an artist with a background in textiles, photography and filmmaking. She spoke to us about how she is exploring film whilst bringing in these other background areas. Stark uses film more as a material than thinking of using it as its sole purpose as film.

Stark was exploring film further as a material by combining it with her prior knowledge of textiles and wanted to produce performances whilst deriving ‘voices’ from fabric through optical sound. She did this by taking a blank 16mm film into the darkroom and overlaying it with different materials such as lace, ribbon etc. once overlayed she would expose the film through the material and then develop the film.

To give the material its ‘voice’ she would pierce the soundstrip on the film, giving it a sound when it goes through the projector. These sounds that were being created by doing this were harsh and some sounded quite like static. However, I found it interesting how she approached film and incorporated another different medium within it.  Other things mentioned in this talk were:

Weaving the film and printing in the darkroom.

Showing how ‘blank’ film isn’t blank and it picks up dust, scratches and other marks.

Using black over-exposed film will be closer to being no image than blank as marks are less noticeable when projecting.

The films that created the ‘voices’ were put in a loop so more than one film could be played on multiple projectors at the same time. Stark also used multiple projectors to play different videos from different angles on one wall for them to overlay which I found interesting also.

To finish off her talk/presentation of work, she placed the used films on a rail whilst projecting a plain light from an angle onto them and she used a desk fan to blow on the film from below for the light to reflect off the film. This gave a watery effect that felt as if it bounced around the room like waves of light.

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Inspire Lecture - Zoe Watson (16/03/15)

One of ourinspire lectures was by Zoe Watson who’s job it is to curate the HoldenGallery. Watson gave us some of her work curating and in particular about her time at the Holden Gallery whilst highlighting key points. The key points that Watson said are:

 Large open area. This allows other work such as other film work to be placed in the center to break up the space.

With it being a large space, it is unsafe for having sculptures as all work has to be securely fixed to the walls.

It is a bright space. This makes it difficult for projections and light sensitive work to be displayed in the main area. Alternatively there are alterations to make a darker space for these to be viewed.

 Other points Watson gave about curating in general were:

All electrical items must be PAT tested for health and safety reasons.

The height of the piece of work will be usually hung at 150-160cm from the center. This is unless the artist/curator wants a certain part of the piece at eye level. Either this or that the piece of work is larger than the average size.

With projecting film, Watson would figure out where and how the projection would be done. This is so she is able to paint the wall around the projection with a dark grey rather than leaving it plain white. This is to create a contrast between the projection on the white wall to the dark grey around it.

This was an interesting lecture as it was different to the other lectures as it was from a curators point of view and what the thought processes and tasks that you are faced with when presenting your work in a gallery. This is helpful as the techniques and processes will be needed when presenting my final work for my Unit X. Also how it goes down to the smaller details on how the work is presented which is what I will need to consider when presenting my work at the exhibition.

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Moving a Still Image - Andy Wyatt (13/03/15)

My secondworkshop was Moving a still image. This workshop ran by Andy Wyatt, was toteach us how to create a moving image from a still one. A technique that isalso known as a parallax effect and gives 2.5D, an illusion of 3D and 2D. Thiswas first used by Disney in the Mickey Mouse cartoons. With the image beingseparated into individual layers painted on glass slides, they are able to moveas individual slides rather than the whole background moving as one. This was the parallax effect.

For this workshop however, we used a more modern approach and used Photoshop and After Effects to achieve the same result. We went through a variety of different techniques starting simple and working with a simple 2D shape. For this we used a stick man and moved his body and got him to perform some actions. To do this we used the puppet tool to put down the key points of rotation and where the anchor points are. I also used the same technique but applied it to another image of a motorbike on a track and applied my own movement to the image.

We then moved onto using the ‘Camera’ tool, which we used on another image of clouds in the sky. They were set up into layers, which we manipulated in order to zoom into the clouds, and give them that 2.5D look and that little more engagement with the image.

I enjoyed this workshop, as it was another software I hadn’t used before and it doesn’t hurt to be more open minded about what can be included within your projects. I think I will be using this method at some point in the near future weather that is within a section to put towards the course or simply just for me. I have seen the results that you are able to get with using this techniques and think that it is a great way for me to bring some life to my work.

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Super 8mm Workshop - Jenny Baines (11/03/15)

My first workshop was the Super 8 workshop ran by JennyBaines. The purpose of this workshop was to get hands on with the Super 8 cameras and to learn more about film. In this workshop we was given the task of shooting (in groups) a super 8 short film. We had 50 feet of film to shoot, which worked out at about 3 minutes. We had the option to shoot the film in either 24 frames per second (fps) or 18 fps. When shooting at 24fps it is seen as real time whereas shooting it at 18fps it makes the film more sped up. Some of the challenges we had was that we had to shoot the entire film in chronological order. So all editing had to be done within the camera and no reshooting. There were a few cameras available to use for this workshop, there was one that could use single frame shooting which would give a stop motion, and another that was able to shoot 32 fps which would then give a slow motion feel to the film. We were also shown some videos to get some inspiration and ideas about what we would like to film. We was shown a little of Baines’ work which I found interesting. One of which was a video of Baines winding up the camera and it filming her running away from it and jumping and then the film stopping. This was a continuous repeat as the camera needed to be winded up to film. She disappeared during mid-jump which gave a feeling of curiosity to the film as it was as if it was on a continuous loop and she kept attempting to jump over the obstacle and she kept being pulled back to wind the camera up again. Some part of me just wanted her to complete the jump just for the satisfaction of completion, which I found engaging. Another film from Baines is ‘Untitled (Victoria Park), 2007 - 16mm film clip’ which is a clip similar to the jumping one where Baines is running from the camera and goes to perform an action where she is then cut off by the camera mid action.

After this we put ourselves into groups that wanted to explore a similar avenue eg. Stop motion, real time. For this I was in a group of 4, me with 3 other filmmakers. I didn’t have many ideas to begin with, I just remember what it was I found interesting. I wanted to take this opportunity to get to know the camera and to explore the concept of the moving image rather than the still image.

For this we as a group decided that we wanted to just have a hands on go of the cameras and simply flaneur, using the cameras to record things around us that caught our eye. We also decided to take the film at the speed of 18fps. A reason for this was so we all got a little extra time to use the camera, also that with the content of what we were filming we wanted to give it the impression of being sped up and it flicking from things quickly to show that when we are out, the mass of things that are just around us.