15 MARCH - 10 APRIL 2010 CUMBRIA, LANCASHIRE & ONLINE'

Just found this exhibition on Stash media and thought it might interest you. An artist has photographed women in war then posted them on walls in various locations.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xcd25a_jr-exposition-paris-2009-ile-saint_creation

Emma Macklin also sent over some more information for me:

Emma Macklin suggested that I watch some titles that she said reminded her of them when viewing my own work. This is what she said:

I had previously published a post about Tenderpixel Gallery, they were showing an exhibition by Tal Rosner called 'Family Tree' and the day I went down, Tal was actually there with Rick and Christinia talking about the work we were watching. It was the first time I have ever done that and it was really interesting - The fact that I was in London, in a tiny tiny gallery space with the artist talking about his work to a group of 5 of us! I found it really surreal. And it was a fantastic opportunity for networking! (Although I have emailed Tal and it's been a very long while, and he still hasn't replied...oh well! - I'll try again sometime soon!).

hi Jenny

All the information about this exhibition is on this website:
http://www.thelowry.com/events/everyday-people/the-exhibition/
'Over one remarkable weekend in May, Tunick will make a series of photographs and a new film of his multiple-site installation in Salford and Manchester. Volunteers will be taken, via a caravan of heated buses, to eight locations over the weekend of 1 - 2 May and asked to pose naked while Tunick creates the installation. The resulting photographic and film work will the be shown at The Lowry from 12 June - 26 September as part of the exhibition, Everyday People.'
I have signed up to be a volunteer for this installation on the 2nd May. The reason why I have done this is because I feel as though it would boost my self-confidence, and to say that I have been a part of a massive art installation like this one, I know i would look back and think of how brave I must have been, but also, that I would be part of a piece of art work. The idea of that really appeals to me!
I received an email off The Lowry yesterday asking if I would like to participate in giving interviews to newspapers, magazines, radio and TV press, and to give them my story of why I joined in with this installation and tell them my experience of taking part over the summer.
This is the email I sent back to them:
'Hello!
My name is Jenny Huddart, and I am just about to graduate from a 'Moving Image' Degree which I do at Stockport College.
The reason why I would like to take part in this installation, is because it would definitely boost my self-confidence and to say that I have been a part of this big art installation is just amazing to think of!

I work with experimental/abstract short films, I would like to show my work in Galleries, or at film festivals depending on which piece is suited for which area. For one of my pieces of work I looked at the motion of the natural body, and filmed a Nude volunteer. It was one of the best experiences throughout my degree work as I felt so comfortable getting the angles of the body that I needed. When I filmed my model, I was always thinking, she is so brave, I could never do this! I feel as though Spencer Tunick has given me (and everyone else involved) the opportunity to be part of something dramatic.

I have had diabetes for nearly 21 years now, I am 22 years old. I haven't let it stop me from doing what I want to do. There have been obstacles and setbacks, but I have always managed to get past them and follow through with the things I want to do. Every college trip I have been on, Berlin and New York I had hypo's, but the most recent trip to London we had I didn't have one, even though I was expecting it! It made me realise I can overcome my condition if I control it and put my mind to it. London was a very important trip for me, networking and meeting up with design agencies and other artists to show them my work.

I would also like to do interviews for the press (Newspapers and magazines), and maybe mention that my end of year degree show is open in June at Stockport College. The preview night is Friday 4th June, and is open for the following week 7th-11th June.

Thank you for reading!

Jenny

Jenny Huddart. BA (HONS) Moving Image. 3rd Year. Stockport College. Manchester.'
I basically thought that by being part of this installation it would give me the perfect chance to get my name known out there, and to promote Stockport College's end of year degree show!
They still need to email back, and give out information on where to meet and times etc, but i do think if they allow me to do interviews it will give me the perfect chance to help promote my end of year degree show and encourage artists and designers etc to come and see the work we have produced. At this moment in time, I' feel alright about it, but I know that as the time draws closer I will become more and more nervous and scared! I just hope i get over that fear.....

Hi Jen take a look at this guy, I think you'll like him. He seems to do quite a lot of stuff, but if you look under his video section there's some pretty cool stuff.

Ben Wilkinson is currently studying a Graphic Design/Animation degree in Australia. He has created a short film called 'House Of Cards' which looks at the subject of Depression/Loneliness in a different way.

House of Cards from Ben Wilkinson on Vimeo.

I like the idea of representing a subject using things you wouldn't normally associate with the subject. I think it reflects a good sense of creativity. In his description he mentions 'Each card that is focussed upon is symbolic of an emotion that the character cannot escape' He has successfully represented the atmosphere of feeling trapped i think, especially with the use of close-ups on the structure of the house of cards.
Another part of his description I was drawn to was 'Contrasting the different way each card scene was framed was symbolic of isolation versus overcrowding. This was specifically evident when the colour was adjusted to the existing lighting so that each scene was ‘cut off to the world’ as they were surrounded by darkness. A lonesome card surrounded by an abyss of blackness is bound to produce isolation.' I quite like his way of looking at Isolation, and the different techniques he has explored when trying to create this atmosphere. This has given me the inspiration to consider exploring the idea of using different objects to give them characterisation to represent the subject of isolation.

Another film that I have been looking at is by a film maker named 'Soulman' His real name is Devin Butterfield, amateur video creator who has a heart for lost people. He has his own website www.betyoursoul.com The website looks as though he uses extracts from the Bible which refer to certain emotions E.g. 'Wish you were never born?' etc.
The film I have looked at is called 'Alone In The Dark' which focuses on suicide and is putting across the message of what that person is feeling and going through and that it affects everyone not just the victim.

Alone In The Dark from soulman on Vimeo.

This video appeals to me because they have shot it from the viewpoint of someone who is feeling these emotions - We are seeing the world through their eyes which is what I would like to represent in my own abstract film. I'm not too keen on the music they have used in the film, but I do think that the visuals and techniques they have used are a good representation of someone feeling disorientated and lost.

For my Final Major Project, I am exploring the subject of depression and looking into representing the isolation felt by people who suffer from depression.
I came across this video on Vimeo by a film maker named 'Krazy/Skull Films' called 'Sell Up'.

Sell Up from Krazy/Skull films on Vimeo.

I'm not really looking at the style the film was made in, they are focusing on one person going through his own personal journey - I'm not looking at that style, but what I did notice within this film, are certain techniques the film maker has used to represent the emotions - such as blurriness and a it was filmed hand held which gives it a more rough and uncertain feel to the film. I like the use of extreme close ups used to emphasise that the most simple activities such as eating are a difficult process to go through when feeling these emotions.

I have found a Gallery in London that I would like to visit when I go down there.
This is how they describe themselves on their website:
'Tenderpixel is a cutting-edge contemporary art gallery located in central London. Most gallery exhibitions provide the artist with their first solo show in London, and a major component of Tenderpixel's remit is that work showcased in the gallery be original, and previously unexposed. Despite the gallery's small and pixel-sized space, it maintains a uniquely experimental and 'tender' world view, aimed at supporting emerging talent and contributing to London's cultural ecosystems.'

From February 12th to March 6th, an exhibition that they will be showing is Tal Rosner's 'Family Tree' video installation.


'Family Tree, is a seven channel video installation, where a display of family photographs is transformed into a digital wall of pulsating rhythms and bundled/scattered flashbacks. Family Tree deals with personal recollections and the perception of memory re-learnt, interlacing performance and moving image. The installation synthesizes a microcosm of relationships between the abstract and the real, pieces of land and body-parts, interiors and exteriors, colours and shapes.
Combining synced monitors, and projectors, Rosner creates a double-layer of image perception: one coming from within the screens and another via projector juxtaposed on top. Exploring and widening the possibilities of combining these existing forms of technology, the show elevates them to a new, unique and highly kinetic level of co-existence.
The installation is produced by B&W Films Ltd (Rosa Bosch & James Pout) with the support of Patron Jenny Hall and Arcadi, and features a poem by Rozalie Hirs (from: "Charm", Amsterdam, Querido, 2008). '

I am really looking forward to seeing this installation when I visit London in a weeks time. Once I have seen the piece, I will write about it again, expressing my own feelings towards it and the type of atmosphere surround it etc etc.

KEN PAUL ROSENTHAL

Ken Paul Rosenthal works with photography and film. His early body of experimental films explores an organic style, and direct manipulation techniques. Rosenthal’s recent projects look at personal and political narratives portrayed in a poetic way with visuals of landscape.



A project that he is working on at the moment which comes out in the summer of 2010 is called 'Crooked Beauty'. On the website www.crookedbeauty.com the homepage tells you what it is all about, and the intended message.

'Crooked Beauty is a poetic documentary that explores positive and compassionate models for transforming the experience of madness in our culture. Artist Ashley M. recounts her journey from the psych ward to the innovative mental health activism.
Flickering light and shadow, and fragmented montages of urban and natural landscapes visually evoke the fluctuations of mania and depression as a backdrop to her testimony. Crooked Beauty redefines the stigmas surrounding mental health by presenting a new healing culture and political model for living with madness as a tool of creativity, inspiration, and hope.'

It also has a trailer for the short documentary, which i became very inspired by, the type of imagery that he has used playing with shadow and light are similar ideas to how i was thinking of representing depression in my final major project.
At the start of the trailer, there is a statement which says 'Birds with perfectly symmetrical feathers cannot fly'. The intended message here being that no one is perfect - I like this message.
I have sent Ken Paul Rosenthal an email, asking how he decided to use the type of visuals he did to represent depression, and whether he has any advice for me to take on board when dealing with the subject of depression.
Crooked Beauty : Style of film visuals -

On the 23rd January 2010 I went to Newcastle to visit a friend, for a little break away. She took me to the Baltic Art Gallery, which was a nice surprise.
DAMIEN HIRST
The first exhibition I saw in there was 'Pharmacy' by Damien Hirst - The exhibit is in a large space, and as soon as you walk in, you enter from behind the desk, and your eyes are just bombarded with medicine packaging, boxes and bottles arranged by colour and shape in glass cases around the edge of the room. These packaging are also arranged to suggest the representation of the human body, and is sometimes installed with preparations for headaches at the top of the cabinets, stomach medicines in the middle and preparations for the feet at the bottom. For my own personal experience, I felt very claustrophobic in a large room, but by having all these medicine packages taking up that amount of space around the edge of the room, this is where the claustrophobic feeling came from. In contrast to the overwhelming atmosphere of manmade medicines etc there are four bowls of honey on small stools at four points in the centre of the room, it was so nice to have that space to wonder through to give your eyes a rest from staring at the mountainous packaging! The honey bowls are there to attract flies, there is an insect-o-cutor fly killer hanging down from the ceiling in the centre of the space - This is representing a merciless God, killing without emotion and without distinction. The medicines circle the agent of death ironically.
Hirst has basically put the message across that our society today places unquestioning confidence in modern medicine, offering the suggestion that our whole idea of medicine helping the diseased body is maybe just a belief system that is centered on death.

KIM SOOJA
The second exhibition I saw at The Baltic, was a video art installation by Kim Sooja called 'A Needle Woman'. Her work explores ideas about time and consciousness. To create this piece of work, Kim Sooja travelled to major cities all over the world which includes Tokyo, Shanghai, Delhi, New York, Mexico City, Cairo, Lagos and London. Each performance is projected through one of eight video channels. It is the artist herself who stands with her back to the camera, they are all silent and motionless apart from the environment she is stood within. Everybody still goes about their everyday life, in some cases people just ignore her and brush past her, but in other cases people become curious about her and the camera.



When you first sit down to watch one of the channels, the immediate thing you do is focus your attention on her presence, but as time passes, we become more aware of the faces of the people in the passing crowds and the type of environment that she stands motionless in.
When I experienced this installation, I became aware of the environment that I was in - The whole piece is silent therefore the echoing of peoples footsteps within the gallery became more enhanced and the muttering of peoples voices under their breath. I dont know wether this was intentional, but it was as if we were the soundtrack to the piece, I thought it was very clever.

There was another little section at the end of this big room which showed a ninth video installation - It was the same concept, the artist standing silent and motionless, this single piece is called 'A Laundry Woman'. The setting for this pice is the Yamuna River, India. This represents a very big contrast to the previous 8 channels you see/walk through before viewing this end piece. A Needle Woman was all set in Urban environments whereas A Laundry Woman is set in a natural environment, much more peaceful and relaxed. The work considers the relationship between the body and nature, stillness and movement, and the cycle of life and death. Compared to A Needle Woman, A Laundry Woman has no hussle and bussle or any motion of bodies - the only motion in this piece is the floating debris of earth and twigs etc floating dreamily past Kim Sooja.
When I experienced this piece, I felt a lot more intimate with it, it is mesmerising. Also, you still here peoples footstaps in this tiny room, and their muffled voices, it became really annoying and distracted from the silence of the piece whereas in the other 8 video channels it was acceptable. As soon as people became still and quite, there was a sense of relief!




KIM SOOJA Talking about this piece of work.

I also asked at The Baltic Gallery wether it would have been possible for me to talk to someone about the process that the artist has to go through to get their work shown there - The woman on the information desk was very helpful, but told me the person I needed to see really wasn't in on that day! He looks after all the artist archive library, and she said he is very helpful and would talk to me with pleasure if I want to come back. So I plan to visit Newcastle again at Easter and wil definitely plan to visit again on a day that this person will have time to talk to me.

This installation consists of 3 films based on the theme of the japanese butô dance. The dance involves grotesque and playful images and taboo topics, there is no set style, although it is traditionally performed in white body make up with slow hyper-controlled motion.
The 3 films were directed by Yaan Bertrand in collaboration with Damien Serban.
"IKI"
(6'50'') | 3D Animation | 2004
Fully created in 3D and keyframe animated, IKI symbolizes the
dancer's breathing by altering his dance and his rhythm to the
complete destruction of the body.

"MONO"
(6'50'') | Mixed Techniques| 2004

Among the dancer's interaction with the elements of nature, the
filmed footage of MONO blends with the computer generated textures
creating a new matter.

"UGOKI" - part of the Chrysalide installation
(6'51'') | 3D Animation | 2004

Slowness of a movement, and the maniacal attempt to perfect it in
cycle until exhaustion. A particularly controlled walk brings the body to
dysfunction.

This video is a small preview of the 3 films - I think they are absolutely brilliant. The different techniques used are very inspiring and I have always had an interest in the body, and how other people represent the body in motion.

Another film that Yaan and Damien collaborated on is called "Silken".
"Inside the protective warmth of his mother’s womb, a man experiences everyday life as eternal bliss".
This is another short clip to represent the 10 minute film - I am drawn to the type of editing and certain techniques they have used to represent unfamiliar parts of the body. I am very impressed with the type of work these two men from Paris have produced. I like the style of editing, visual effects and filming etc.

This big art installation is based in Berlin and was done by the Brazilian artist called Nele Azevedo. It consists of 1,000 tiny ice men which have been sculptured individually to just sit there and wait to become melted. It's purpose behind it, is to open peoples eyes to the climate changes. It was done in collaboration with the WWf to highlight the issue of global warming. The men began melting within half an hour of being placed on the steps of the concert hall in Berlin's gendarmenmarkt square. At the days temperature of 23 Degrees Celsius.

I think this idea was very clever, however, I think that it could have different meanings for different people - They can interpret it in whichever way they look at it. For example, when I first saw these pictures, I immediately thought of the fragile state of the human being, be it emotionally or physically and how we're all melting away as we become older and older!

I came across this Blog and have been checking it every single day ever since I found out about it! I like the idea of creating a small illustration for everyday of the year based around random facts that people send into the site. The people behind this site, are a UK based design studio called 'Young' (http://www.weareyoung.co.uk/). They specialise in brand identity development, print, interactive design, and obviously illustration.




This is the daily blog website: http://www.learnsomethingeveryday.co.uk/

When I was researching Fire for my most recent project, I came across a music video for a band called 'Firekites'. It had nothing to do with fire, apart from the name, so i was about to dismiss it until i started watching some of the music video which was created by Yanni Kronenberg and Lucinda Schreiber. It was all done using chalk boards, chalk, and stop motion. Apparently it took 4 people working full time 6 months to complete it and consists of around 1900 frames! I really do like the style of the video, it is different and engaging waiting to see what happens next. I feel that the style of this animation suits the melodic music perfectly. I am especially drawn to how they have left on the previous marks of the chalk in previous frames to help create an echo of images representing motion beautifully.

Firekites - AUTUMN STORY - chalk animation from Lucinda Schreiber on Vimeo.

I especially like how the camera pans out at the end to reveal the working space of the environment of where it was all drawn and put together - It has a lovely charm to the whole piece and the ending just proves that they are proud of what they have produced and how they created it all.

Stockport College's Moving Image group visited the Corner House theatre in Manchester back in November to see the last screening of the best short films by UK student filmmakers from all over the country. A couple of the films had caught my imagination.
The first film, is 'Body' by Zhivko Dimitrov who is from Central St Martins College of Art and Design based in London. The film is based around the human body and a little lonely fictional character trying to find himself. This character is on a journey within a different world which consists of bodily like functions and textures and motions etc. It is a fantasy world, but the filmmaker uses body matter to create this different world. He used thousands of photos and video footage of actual intestines, hearts and fake blood and different body parts were used to create the background environments. Photographs, life action and 3D techniques were all combined in after effects to produce this fantasy world. I think that the use of rich textures and experimental design is what drew me to this piece - I have always had an interest in the human body, how it moves, what it is made up of, the different combinations of cells etc. I like how it creates some unusual patterns and visuals, it is a completely different world and I like how designers represent their own perception of the body as a different world - You tend to see things you didn't expect to see etc.

BODY from zhivko dimitrov on Vimeo.

Another film which really stood out for me was called 'Stuck On The Edge' by Jennifer Fearnely who is from Goldsmiths; University Of London. Her interest is Documentary style films and this film documents Jennifer's great aunt Mavis' everyday life, activities, stories and her outlook on life at the age of 100! Jennifer's intent behind this film was to provoke people into thinking about their own elderly relatives situations and also tap into current debates about the responsibilities of care and end of life choices. This film contains a lot of humour - which came to a surprise to the filmmaker - I think that the end result of the film had a real charm to it, mainly down to the character she focused the documentary on!
The filmmaker filmed everything herself - there are no other crew that take credit for the documentary, apart from the music score which was created by Stephen Wright.

I am unable to find a clip representing the film, but I would just like to say that if anyone ever comes across this film, I definitely recommend that you watch it! It has a lovely charm oozing from it! It is 27 minutes long, and if you find some spare time in the day, sit down, watch it, and you will learn some truths about the reality of the situations elderly people are dealing with today, along with Mavis' humorous out look on life in general!

I've just found a 'Visual Label' called AntiVJ.
It looks like it is all based around installations, projections, new technologies, VJing, visual mapping etc etc.

http://www.antivj.com/

The intro page really drew me in, and I have watched the intro video about 4-5 times because I am just in awe of it all! I will definitely be doing a lot more research into this visual label, and take a look as to which visual artists are involved etc.