EGRD2009: Studio Practice 2A: Methods & Madness EGRD2010: Independent Practice 2A: Interrogation Eduard Piel
Workshop: Hellicar&Lewis
Workshop: The Girls
PaperCo
Serial Thriller
Biography: Marcel Duchamp
Shooting Stars: News of the World
Studio
LAB Week
Hi Mark, hi Sophie. As you mark my work I am long relaxing in the comfort of my own home drinking hot tea. Feels good to have the work done. Muahhhahahaaa. Each spread is a massive button, if you click anywhere on the page it will take you directly to appropriate page on the blog. Please Click away.
A rhinoceros covered in white paint is like a fat unicorn
Independent
When I started the project I was completely lost for ideas. Everything that came to my mind seemed boring. It was not until half way through finishing the project, doing a video edit, I asked myself “what if I could prove that anyone can hack into a voicemail�. Eureka! I found a better idea for my project. I abandoned what I was doing before and set to research how to hack phones. It was pretty amazing the amount of inofrmation there was out there freely available on forums and blogs discussing this very illegal act. Fairly quickly from trial and error I developed my own way of hacking into voicemails. Not only did I manage to get access to some personal audio messages I was able to change mailbox features like the voicemail greeting. I did this with just one computer, a mobile phone, the knowlege of Google search and some experimentation. I can’t believe there are still mobile networks out there that have such a big gap in their privacy. If their customers were aware of this I know that it could make a few people very unhappy.
Shooting Stars: News of the World
To be honest, just have to say this, I never really liked Marcel Duchamp. I still don’t but this project has been something special. I always wanted to see his “fountain” in a gallery just so I can pee in it, but obviously that will never happen for several reasons. But what I could do is pretend I have, and I can get other people to pretend as well. So this is exactly what happened, I stuck a fake R.MUTT 1917 signature on one toilet in all the men’s toilets at University with a sign instructing people not to use it. The result is that you get the choice of using different urinals. If you choose the artowrk piece you feel more “bad” doing it and that makes it fun. Making something better than it really is. What if someone did pee on an artwork every day, does that make them a happier person? What was exciting is the few feedbacks people wrote next to it questioning wether it is a piece of art or not. Brilliant. I got other people to think. Maybe a discussion you could have in your head for one of those really long pee breaks.
Biography: Marcel Duchamp
This image in the background I have no recollection of taking, but somehow it is on my phone and those are in fact my jeans. It looks like I peed on them or something. This links perfectly with what this project was about. Me and Tom (Varney) tried to record other people’s conversations at parties, record the nonesense we say when we are drunk. Things sound entirely different when you listen to the recordings sober. Can we convey our thoughts more clearly when we are drunk? Probably not; a message lost in translation.
Serial Thriller
PaperCo
This was without question the biggest project me and Tom (Varney) have done this year if not ever. From intial ideas to finished product it was unbelievable to produce so much in such a short time. Being ambitious and just making things happen pays off. We developed and adjusted our ideas until they fit with the brand values throughout the process. The project included paper engineering the direct mail, learning to use semi-professional video equipment, working with other people to tight schedules and constantly finding alternative routes when things failed. For the electronic sting we travelled to Essex so we could get some of the shots we were looking for and that made all the difference. Carrying heavy equipment through central London, aquiring boxes from sources outside PaperCo because we weren’t supplied the material made this a very tough project.
Workshop: The Girls
Myself, Kevin Fitzpatrick and Ville Niemi had a workshop day with Zoe Sinclair from�The Girls�. We were told to take photographs of ourselves that best show our personalities. We firstly joked about making a boy-band trio photograph, but then out of pure coincidence we took a photo that looked exactly like that. Zoe liked it so much in fact that we got the winning prize of the day.
Workshop: Hellicar&Lewis
Everyone was excited when Hellicar & Lewis announced that they will be holding a workshop for us, but no one knew how good it was actually going to be. I think everyone had a fun time and it made most of us realise that great ideas can come quickly and getting them out on to paper, visually, is vital. One of the most inspirational days I ever experienced. I think trying to keep a “anything can be done� mentallity and be open to any opportunities is a good quality to have.
This is an ongoing project that started with general curiosity on why we sleep, and wether we can improve on sleep. It seemed to me like a subject not many have explored before. I have discovered that sleep is incredibly important, when and how long we sleep can drastically affect the waking state. I carried out a few experiments and found that my movement pattern during sleep doesn’t change if I went to bed more tired or less tired. I also managed to find the pattern to my dreaming and convince myself to lucid dream. I’ve used a cheap smartphone application that helped me record my conscious state to see if there are any patterns emerging. As an exhibition piece on our last studio day I fell asleep on the couch asking people to interact with my sleep. I wanted to see if people will find joy in teasing me while I try and sleep. Because I gave the permission to do this, I think people enjoyed being a bit silly. I remember being in a half-asleep state vividly dreaming about something, and the distractions around me affected my dreams. In essence people genuinely interacted with my dreams. Is there a sleeping state where you are vunerable to others affecting your sleep? I want to find out, so I will develop this further.
A rhinoceros covered in white paint is like a fat unicorn
Evaluation Studio Practice There have been some really excitingly broad projects and opportunities to go mad with process. I prefer not to have limitations. Shooting Stars might have the outcome I am most proud of. I had a crazy idea that through careful planing I made happen. I had the madness and then I came up with the method and it worked! Projects like this give you a reality check, that a lot more is possible than you think if you really put the effort in there. I really hope there are more briefs like this to come where we are given more freedom to explore unexplored areas, because these have massive potential for further work. PaperCo was interesting to work on seeing how the idea evolves, but doing this much work was just unnecessary in my opinion, we got a little carried away when we could have worked on other things. I feel like the projects have helped me add some new tools to my knowledge and without doubt I will be able to apply what I learned this semester in the new year. LAB Week This was a fantastic opportunity to bond with the first years and get some work done. Because the workshops were only one-day there was no worry of being precious over the work and it was genuienly fun. Both of the workshops I went to proved once again that a lot of work can be done in very little time. Met some lovely people, made some new connections and hopefully will keep getting in touch with them. I think LAB week is essential to make our graphics group a stronger social community. Independent Practice I started with a lot of questions, curiousity and confusion, but I managed to find asnwers to almost all of them. Not only have I gained knowledge on a subject I was interested in, it has been a very personal project. I have found out a lot about myself that I didn’t know before. I know many funny facts about sleep and if anything I am dying to find out more. The last piece I did involved me sleeping in the middle of a studio while others interacted with me dreaming. It made me think that doing a live performance of such on a bigger scale might be an interesting project for the future. Imagine somebody sleeping in a bed on the street at morning rush hour when everybody is awake and going to work, that would be taking the piss so much. I want to do this just for the sake of doing it to see what results I get. This project is definitely on the go and I am only getting started. Hopefully much more interesting things on sleep to come.
Bibliography Freud, S., 2005. The unconscious: Penguin Books Freud, S., 2003. The joke and its relation to the unconscious: Penguin Books Baudrillard, J., 2000. Simulacra and Simulation: University of Michigan Press Baudrillard, J., 1995. The Gulf War did not take place: Indiana University Press Great Thinkers: In their Own Words [TV programme] BBC, BBC1
Now look at two other “bonus” projects on my blog
Comic Strip YouLookaLikeyMeLookaLikeyToo