Molly Fuller Abbott Research Recording and Presentation IA4003

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Digital Portfolio

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Process and Portfolio briefing

blq

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Blog refresher

This week we had a refresher session on how to utilise this blog effectively, as quite a few of us had some confusion about when and how to do so. We’ve been reminded to update regularly treat it as a recording of our activities and ideas throughout the IA4003 module, as well as any other research work we wish to post about. A such, I hope to make Friday afternoons and evening my new posting schedule for the blog.

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Everyday Connections presentation

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Everyday connections layouts part 3

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Everyday connections layouts part 2

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Everyday connections layouts part 1

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photos for second Everyday Connections session

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Everyday Connections Brief/Research

Within this project we will be looking at editing and creating connections within a sequence of images. We will collect a large array of photographs and use them to create a series of five images that link together via theme or to create a narrative or visual puzzle. 

(Jason Fulford and Tamara Shopsin - This Equals That) Colour can be a very effective link between otherwise unrelated imagery.

(Hans Eijkelboom) Photos can be connected by an item or visual aspect in common, in the above series’ case, American flag themed tops. 

(Hans Eijkelboom - With My Family) Eikelboom’s ‘family portraits’ in which he plays the role of father for each one is a really interesting way of utilising the connection between these photos, although not something likely to work for this project as we’re expected to edit our sequences only after we have a wide range of photos to choose from.

(Duane Michals - Sequences) The connection between photos may be that they tell some form of narritive story or chronological sequence.

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Seminar reflection: The Performance

23/11/18

while my story was not one of those picked to be presented to the class, there are some key points that Jane has made to me in previous readings and mentioned to other performers.

- A strong opening and close are key; my openings are often interesting, the endings can sometimes feel a little short. - Sensory detail is incredibly important to pulling the reader into the story and making them feel part of the narrative. creating a tactile world through language is something Jane says I am quite successful at, but I sometimes make unnecessary reference or abruptly change focus which doesn't always work. - Avoid breaking character or prematurely taking us out of the moment; it can be jarring for the listeners/readers. - Think about use of personification and the non literal; what is real, what is metaphorical and what is the protagonist’s imagination.

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Visit Original Link

Tales of the Unexpected presentation task: The Long Walk Home

There is a very good chance, according to Brenda’s phone, that it is going to rain within the next five minutes. And even if she hadn’t looked it up the air is frigid enough to sting your cheeks and the sky hung with thick, heavy clouds ripe to burst, the occasional spit of water spilling over the and hitting the gravel. For most people, people like The Boggler, this is cause to hurry home faster, before the weather breaks. Not Helena though, no, because she knows three things to be absolute truth. Number one: there are exactly 1002 steps between the peeling black primary school gates and her peeling yellow front door. She’s counted. Twice. Number two: Brenda The Boggler is a toad faced waste of space who deserves a spider down the back of her stupid tight skirt, especially as her bloated white legs skitter down the street, knocking over Year Ones and Yummy Mummies alike to get out of the approaching rain fast, dragging Helena behind her. Number three: today is the day that Helena Zoob will slay The Dobberginga, and even the dreaded Boggler won’t stop her this time. Slowly, and with the greatest care, she begins the spell, counts her steps with practiced ease. 1… 2… Stamp…. 4… 5… 6… Skip. She clicks her tongue and flickers her eyes from side to side, side steps the split in the pavement and remembers the rules. Step on the cracks break your mother’s back. She’s got no Mummy to speak of these days, but she’s not going to risk it, just in case. Spells are delicate things you see, and this one’s got to count. “Come on slow poke, hurry it up a bit yeah?” The Boggler is tugging on her arm insistently, big red clown grin fixed in place like she actually likes Helena, but then she does that slow, thin inhale, like Mr Cheshire next door’s little asthmatic chihuahua, all watery bulging eyes and wet shuddering breathes, and Helena knows she’s annoyed.

78 steps now… 79… 80… She steps on the weird lump in the pavement outside the church, remembers to whisper at God to let her get the spell right this time, let it work. (“Why the fuck Marnie thought we should send her to a C of E I’ll never know,” she heard three nights earlier, the Dobberginga rummaging through her special draw and pulling out her picture of Mummy, thinking she’s still asleep. She’d wanted to pull back the covers and fight for her treasures, her memories, and the Dobberginga isn’t what he looks like but she can’t make herself fight him face to face, not when he looks like raspberry kisses and cuddles and deep silly voices reading stories as she falls asleep, and she’ll slay him eventually, she will, just not right then).

“Well you’re a little snail today aren’t you?” The Boggler titters, high and reedy, boiled egg eyes caught on the heaviest, darkest cloud above them, black and bruised and fit to split the sky. Helena ignores her, focuses hard and clicks her tongue twice more. She may not know much, but she knows rules, the ones she heard from Mummy and the ones she learned in the playground. Pull a face and the wind will make it stick. Stepping under a ladder brings bad luck. Step on the crack, break your mother’s back. Actions have power. That is what will save her, what will bring back Dad and rescue Mummy from where ever the Dobberginga stashed her. If Mummy can’t save herself, it’s up to Helena. It may not have worked the first time, or the time after that, but this time it will, because she knows this spell by wrote now, and actions have power. She will give them power. She will be powerful.

626… 627… skip… 629… hop… Every step counts. Suddenly a fat drop of liquid hits her cheek. Then another. Then another. That wheezy, high inhale, and The Boggler’s grip suddenly tightens, pulls harder. “I’m not getting soaked to the bone for you, you little brat, now hurry up!” Her steps speed up, and by extension, so must Helena’s. 659, 660, 661… She can barely keep up, half tripping to avoid the split in the step outside the pharmacy, just managing the next hop in time.

715, 716, 717, 718… Faster and faster they walk, Helena digs her heels in to slow them down, clicks her tongue faster. Not now, not when she’s so close. She kicks out at the chewed glob of gum stuck to the fence at the end of her road, knows there’s not much time to get this right. 801, 802, 803, 804… She stamps her feet with every step now, eyes flickering in a frenzy, breaths heaving out in sharp, bright little gasps. Power thrums in her skinny little arms, vibrates on her tongue. She tastes copper. “… Hun? Helena will you stop that, we’re nearly home now.” The Boggler’s right and wrong, it’s Helena’s home but it will never be hers, will never be the Dobberginga that stole her Dad’s face’s, and today she’ll take it back. 998, 999, 1000, 1001… The sky bursts open overhead; she lets out a final kick of her legs as Brenda whimpers and scrambles to open the peeling front door and then, it’s over.

1002. “Babe? Babe we’re baa-aack” Brenda bleats out as she shucks off her coat, roughly tugs Helena’s arms out of hers; she barely feels it, too anxious to see who’s going to walk out, the Dobberginga or her Dad. It’s neither. Brenda lets out a shriek as she reaches the kitchen door, Helena following close behind. Immediately eyes catch sight of them, the legs poking out, stiff and awkwardly lolled, from behind the island counter. The room is prickling with electricity, Brenda’s sobbing screams drowned out by the pounding behind Helena’s eyes. She blinks. She breathes out. “It worked.”

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23/11/18

This Friday we recapped the ideas we’ve discussed in precious sessions; what makes a good open, the concept of the heroes journey etc - as well as the short stories we were given to read and what made them so effective (as discussed in my previous post). For our final session next week we’ve been tasked with writing a short story that is roughly two sides of A4 based on the prompt “Tales of The Unexpected,” creating a story that deals with some kind of issue in a surprising way, taking up no more than 10 minutes.  Having only written very short stories no more than a paragraph or so long, I’m initially struggling with this task but taking inspiration from “The End Of Firpo,” I’m interested in trying to write something from the perspective of a child on a darker subject, as its interesting to consider the way a young child views the world and copes with difficult subjects they may not entirely understand (such as Firpo and his lack of comprehension surrounding his own death). Drawing on my own memories from being younger I’m considering the plot to be based around the superstitious rituals of a child against some perceived, possibly real, evil.

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In today’s story telling session, we looked at the importance of the opening for drawing the reader in and giving them an idea of the kind of story to follow. The opening is what makes the reader decide whether to keep reading or not.

Our first task was to write a story opening with the following guides: - Character = an ordinary person. - Setting = a small forgettable town in the UK. - Action = something terrifying, damaging. “Life changing in the most fundamental way”. Our second task looked at the idea of making anything interesting to read about, having to characterise an inanimate object in the room, in my case an askew ceiling tile. It was interesting trying to give personality to something without any to start with, to have to create a conversation from something largely ignored or taken for granted.

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Reading short stories

Popular Mechanics by R. Carver.

This story was utterly disturbing in the best way, as two seperating parents begin to fight over who will keep their baby which dangerously escalates. The story builds up tension by starting in the middle of the fight but slowly building up the escalation of the shouting, throwing things at each other, until suddenly the baby is being physically pulled by both parents and you suddenly realise neither of them are going to let go. The story actually reminds me of a twisted version of The Judgement Of Solomon (pictured above) where two women both claiming to be a child’s mother were ordered to pull the child to them and whoever holds onto him will have him. The real mother lets go to prevent her child from harm, but in this story the child’s safety is completely ignored, the baby never even given a name, which to me made it feel as if neither parent cares about the child, only wanting it as a weapon against the other and making it horrifyingly clear by the end that winning the parental tug of war may be at the cost of the baby’s life.

The Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe The Tell Tale Heart is fantastic at ramping up tension and horror, the narrator in his description of the lead up to murdering the old man and hiding his body slowly descending into madness, the descriptions becoming more frantic and horrifying as it progresses. Poe also manages to create a rhythm in the text that almost has that heart thumping quality in itself.

The End of Firpo in the World by George Saunders This story was absolutely heart wrenching, hearing the terrible behaviour towards the child narrator, the horrible nickname of Firpo and the lack of sympathy for a little boy before he is hit by a car and presumably killed. The boys death is made all the more tragic for two reasons, the first being his lack of understanding at the situation; we the readers understand what is happening as the man that hit him tries to comfort him, but Firpo doesn't realise what is happening at all. Second, throughout the story the narrator has many childish thoughts about how he can make things better, either to get back at those who have wronged him or to win the approval of them, but with his death those plans for the future become a point that he will never be able to progress or make those plans or even win his mother’s approval as he wants to. The bicycle made a really interesting narrative tool, the boy giving small anecdotes that reveal his character as he travels past specific sites related to them, rather than just stating what his character was statically.

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This week we started a new project, Storytelling with Jane Hankin.

Jane says that oral tradition is one of the oldest forms of story telling, passing them down generation to generation, and that storytelling is to “take something abstract and make it experiential.”

Initially we looked at what makes a story, the narrative arch and journey of our protagonist, the need for a protagonist or focus that is revealed throughout the story. We also discussed the misconception that a story must have a start middle and end in the traditional sense when much post modernist works have experimented with stopping or fragmenting the passing of time in their stories quite effectively.

For our first task we discussed in groups what sensations we would attribute to an emotion, in this case fear, expanding upon the obvious statement of the emotion for a more engaging description.

We also created instructions for a potion in groups and acted them out as a way to explore new worlds and fantastical ideas in a semi serious way.

Finally we wrote short stories around the prompt of “leaf,” mine being about a fallen leaf on the ground. Jane seemed to like my descriptions within the story but suggested considering more paired down phrasing on occasion.

Independently Jane has asked us to write a 100 word story based on the title “The Lonely Road.”

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26/10/18

This Friday our seminar was hosted by former KSA Illustration Animation students on using our RSJs (reflective study journals) and visual diaries. Arguably the most significant point made throughout the talk was on the necessity of rough notes/drawings and not being precious. The point of these journals and diaries is not to be a perfect fully finished set of notes or illustrations but a place to record and document important information quickly for later use and improvement of ideas. In the case of the visual diaries creating faster looser drawings has its own merit, capturing just enough of what is needed for the image and often holding an energy that more careful drawings may not, using symbolism sometimes to present something ( similar colour rather than the exact colour for example) rather than trying to be perfectly accurate. Similarly, the point was made that our RSJs should act as a place to record our thoughts and ideas, not just the notes we make in our seminars and workshops. It was also suggested that we experiment with how we use these formats; different sized visual diaries could work better for other people and following the lines in our RSJs isn't necessary if it isn't conducive to how we record information and process it. This talk has been significant to how I treat my RSJ in particular; up until this point I’ve been using it to present a somewhat edited,sanitised, neater version of class notes. This particular talk has made me think I should use it as more on a live document of thoughts and ideas, to be less censored and careful with it and just write whatever ideas and concepts come to me in the format that works best at that time.