My Installation: ‘A City is Nature Too’

I arrived at location (cross roads of Albion Street) at 9:00am on Thursday 20^th May 2010. As I began to install my piece I hit an immediate conflict. The wall I had chosen to use to display my papers was on the corner of the lingerie store ‘La Senza’, and their security guard became increasingly interested in what I was doing. After positioning my chair, tripod and approximately half of my papers; the guard came out of the shop to talk to me.

Security Guard: “Hello erm what is it that your doing?”

Me: “Hello I’m an Art and Design student from the College of Art; I’m just putting up an installation for my current project. It’s just blue tack holding paper to the wall temporarily so I’m not causing any damage.”

Security Guard: “Well the community support officers are always walking round here and they’d probably do you for vandalism so be careful.”

Me: “Do you mind that I’m here?”

Security Guard: “Well err, the store owner will be in at one o’clock and I don’t think she’d take nicely to u using this wall. Its part of her property you se.”

Me: “Well would it be ok if I stay as long as I take it all down and move on before one o’clock?”

Security Guard: “Yeh I guess so as long as you’ve packed up before one. I’d watch yourself with those community support officers though!”

Me: “Thank you I will.”

I had intended on continuing the installation until six o’clock pm but I decided that I would just do my best to interact with as many people as possible within the new time constraints. After all I still had the backup plan to invite people that I already know to come and take part after six when the shops are closed.

The installation was assembled by 9:45 and I managed to find my first willing participant by 10:20. I had forgotten the extent to which people are reluctant to even communicate with a stranger!

New Plan:-I would pack up at 12:40 so as to avoid a run in with the owner of La Senza. I was feeling nervous to approach people and it only got worse as more an more people shot me down. I had to suck it up and gain confidence to approach every person that passed by if I was going to make the most of the little time I had. Thankfully by 12:40 I had documented six participants which I was really delighted with. Although I had intended to document a minimum of ten, I felt that the conversations I had documented showed a varied reaction to the installation giving me lots to reflect upon.

One of the people who participated was actually one of my class mates James Hirst. His response to the installation was as valuable as the other five participants; however his coincidental participation reassured me that I did not want to repeat the installation inviting people that I already know. It would have been nice to have had a larger audience experience my work, but I felt that James’ response interview lacked a certain authenticity found in those with strangers. My initial documentation of the city centre space became quite focused around the lack of interaction and natural communication between the strangers who shared it.Although my main intention was to take inspiration from the site I originally chose in Hyde Park emphasizing the presence of nature within the urban landscape, I also wanted to reflect the themes of communication and interaction between people whose lives run parallel within my city centre space. Interviewing people who I knew and had purposefully invited to come to the installation would have been irrelevant to my whole concept, themes and intentions. The interviews could have also been negatively affected by anything that my friends may have already known about my intentions. The whole point of documenting peoples responses, was to gain honest feedback telling me if I had achieved my intentions whilst also interacting with the people who genuinely use the space day to day.

Planning My Installation

Components

• 1 Comfortable Arm Chair

(Intended to make the installation inviting and comfortable offering an alternate experience of the space, as well as an alternate view point for observation)

• Hand Made Paper covering some of the bricks on the wall
• (Intended to integrate nature into the city in a more obvious way (through the presence of flowers and leaves collected from the Hyde Park site), highlighting the existing presence of natures beauty in the urban environment.)
• Audio Track

(Played from an ipod through one size fits all, comfortable headphones. Intend to bring the sounds of Hyde Park’s natural environment into the city space, allowing the listener to experience both sites at once in hope that they can truly feel the co-existence of natural and man-made environments.

• Dictaphone

(This device will be used to record my conversations with participants regarding their experience of the installation, documenting responses and reactions on location.)

Location

• Cross roads of Albion Street in between La Senza’s two display windows.

Date & Time

• Thursday 20^th May 2010
• 9am-6pm

Method

• Construct Installation
• Approach everyone who passes by, introduce myself as a Art & Design university student and explain that I would like approximately 8 minutes of their time to participate in my installation. The installation involves sitting in the chair and listening to a 5 minute audio track whilst observing the surroundings. To conclude I will talk to you about your experience asking you about your thoughts, fee

My Installation Space

I Made Paper :D...

Sound Recording/Editing that i've done...

I decided that for my installation i wanted my final audio cut to be no longer than five minutes. Through previous art projects where i have interacted with the public, i am considering the unfortunate fact that people are rather unwilling to take part simply as an instinctual reaction. To encourage participants to spare me some of their valuable time i chose the five minute time frame and a casual approach to what i was asking from them. I spent alot of time recording in the park at different times of day and in different weather conditions, and i too collected a vast amount of interesting audio. I recorded the obvious everyday sounds of rustling trees and singing birds, but i found the signature sounds of how the space was being used to be most endeering. The beat of joggers stepps and the scrape of the gardeners rake were two of my favourite examples, although i would say the oppertune moment where a hover fly happened to land on my speaker as i was attempting to capture the subtle hum of its wings was the highlight of the whole thing. Truely listening to the overlay of sound that surrounds us just made me keep thinking of that film 'August Rush' you should see it if you havn't already. Its awsomely cheesy and abit beautiful hehe.

Narrowing down the audio files to five minutes wasn't an easy task but i think that having so much to work from made it easyer in a way. My recording techniques improved as i mastered the altertion of intensity, and so i was able to select and cut out the highest quality/most relevant sections.

I've found the sound editing and cuting really easy to be honest. I used a programme called lodgic Pro and it was all straight forward i familiarised myself with it quickly and achieved exactly what i had hoped for. If you would like some help at all just let me know! When my participants had listened to the five minute audio track, i also recorded short interviews with each of them which i have looped onto the end of the track.

This is what I have been doing earlier...

I have been recording sounds up and down the high street, collecting snippets of people talking, footsteps, buskers (which is very lovely to listen to) and sounds within shops.
Ever used Audacity? It was difficult to get my head around at first, so I looked up some tutorials on you tube which helped loads and loads.
However...
The files didn't save properly! So I am now using Garage Band to put all of my clips together and save them properly but still using Audacity to edit my files. Works a LOT easier.

Hyperlink didn't work

http://www.sitegallery.org/exhibitions/view.php?id=44

This is the link to the website where I found the information on Paul Rooney and Susan Phillipz.

Sound as a..

After telling April about my idea to use sound as the main medium for this project I started looking further into Paul Rooney's work as when I first encountered it I felt it was very emotive. Looking through his collection I discovered this collaborative sound piece with another artist called 'Susan Phillipsz'.

"This exhibition brings together artists Susan Philipsz and Paul Rooney whose work has a shared interest in the way sound can be a trigger for memory and the emotive charge that voices and music bring to a space."

Both artists have a great interest in using popular music in their work 'the idea of being shifted from our seperate, individual experience of music, and of the world, to an experience of music that relies on belonging, being part of a group - on adding our voice to the sound of the crowd.'

What I was thinking today whilst walking home

well.. it started with I'm really hungry, need bread, then I started looking at the people that were walking around town and thinking about how they could be used in the setting of a park.




Then this little beauty came to mind...

I'm going to do some drawings and take some photographs of peoples expressions and movements tomorrow as well as photographing the brick work and architecture.

Just Because...

He's amazing!

The subtle way that Solakov has intergrated his little drawings in to the patterns on the wall paper has turned a decorative pattern into a series of other worldly stories that are humourous, political and satirical.
Zoe

Wallpaper 1

Nedko Solakov Wallpaper

I knew about this artist before the project through a book I have called '99 Fears'. His linear ink, pen and pencil drawings are cute as well as have a sad tone to them. Looking at his website http://nedkosolakov.net/content/index_eng.html I found a light-hearted an appropriate piece of research for our project called 'Wallpaper'.

Marcel Duchamp concept, ideas and methodologies

Marcel Duchamp's 'Fountain' 1917/1964, urinal made of sanitary porcelain, 61 x 48 x 36cm, Private collection.

"The work of art is always based on the two poles of the onlooker and the maker."

Duchamp's work raises doubts about aesthetic judgements questioning audience perception of art itself. I too am interested in working towards an aim to attempt to raise doubts about perception, with an alternative focus on observation and interaction within my city centre space. Duchamp originally drew inspiration from the cubist idea of simutanious different perspectives, relating to my explorations of how the public percieve and experience the juxtaposition of the natural and urban environment. The defining element of my intended interactive installation is the intergration of the natural environment into a typically man-made urban space. As described in the Andy Goldsworthy quotation posted as a starting point of our research, 'a city is nature too-the ground upon which it is built, the stone with which it is made.' My intention is to explore this idea by inviting willing members of the public to experience my installation as well as giving them the oppertunity to reflect upon their personal experience.

'Duchamp kept the focal point of meaning of his work deliberately vague, and invited the beholder/reader to take part in what are ultimately inconcludable reflections on the meaning of the work.'

Taking on board Duchamp's intentional methodical thinking behind how his work would be recieved, I am going to refrain from divulging detail regarding my intentions until after i have taken record of each participants uninfluenced reaction. I plan to simply introduce myself as an art student and invite people to take five minutes to sit in my installation space and listen to a recording that i have made . In order to fully inform participants and to recieve quality feedback, i will also have to explain that i would like to record a chat with them after the tape has finished just to gain a little insite into their thoughts and experience.

Marcel Duchamp's 'Fountain' lead me to consider the status of an object in its own right. I am looking to create an installation that will be enjoyable and inviting to my audience, and so i intend to use a ready-made, comfortable chair to immidiately suggest comfort and relaxation. As the chair stands unoccupied, it will hopefully act as an out of place/context attention grabbing object. Duchamp described this use of inanimate objects as:

'the simple idea of interrupting the use-flow of everyday things.'

My installation will be context dependant in that the perception, reflection and reaction will be built around the context of location and atmosphere in which the sounds and installation are being recieved. I cannot say that my work will be the constructed installation or the assemblement of the hand-crafted paper. The work itself cannot be truely documented, it must be Experienced. The closest thing you will have as documentation of my final realisation will be a pieced together recording of my audiences response and reactions.

"It's the viewers which make the pictures." (Marcel Duchamp)

Marzona, D. (2006) Conceptual Art.USA-Los Angeles:Taschen.

Litsa Spathi

'Visual Poetry Or Worlds To Be Build' by Nobody@Flux-Gen.gr/alias

Litsa Spathi

I am really interested in visual poetry allowing visual language to peak and recording the success of this by recording the onlookers response.

Fluxus Collaborative

http://fluxlist.blogspot.com/.

Check out this Fluxus blog. Such a wide online networking discussion community.

Fluxus formed around the architect, artist and organiser George Maciunas in the early 1960's, ecplicitly took up the political utopianism of Russian Constructivism and at the same time rediscovered the instruments of humour and irony which had been tried out by the Dadaists, in order to break open the outdated formal aesthetic view of art.

Joint Time Plan

Collaborative Communication Agreement

Joint mind mapping for both sites

My chosen Space...Hyde Park

After completing my on foot exploration of possible sites to respond to, I am set in the idea that Hyde Park combines all of the elements I will need to develop my concept. All over the city I have seen aesthetically appealing shape, texture and colour; however Hyde Park's sense of calm in the tranquil presence of nature is unique. I tend to draw my inspiration from naturally occurring growth and transformation that are two elements that I feel more in touch with in this site. In the hustle and bustle of the city nature is ever-present but buried beneath the mechanically man-made and the rush of self involved people. I feel that it is important that I can work comfortably here taking sanctuary in the audio of sustainable life, shared public space and the sheer beauty surrounding me. Already i feel a connection to the work of Richard Long in the circular set paving stone and Sophie Calle and her claim of ownership of public space ('Phone Booth'). I see potential for the combination of environmental, public, interactive and site-specific art. I am confident at this stage that the Hyde Park site will not put any constraints on my creative strategy or on the implementation of any idea that I may develop.

Calle and her collaboration with Paul Auster

Sophie Calle’s unsavoury reputations lead to her collaboration with writer Paul Auster in 1992 combining their mutual subject matter of identity and authorship. In Auster’s book ‘Leviathan’, Calle appeared as a character named Maria and went on to create Maria’s artworks such as ‘the chromatic diet’ as described by Auster in the book. Maria was an artist but her work had nothing to do with creating objects commonly defined as art. Some people called her a photographer, others referred to her as a conceptualist, still others considered her a writer but in the end she couldn’t be pigeonholed in any way. Her work was too unusual and idiosyncratic for that.

In their collaboration, the identities of the author/artist and that of the character/subject begin to merge together creating a confusing post modern outcome. This too is an aspect which I find relates directly to my planned collaborative installation with Zoe Moyden. Although we are both interdisciplinary artists our working methodologies differ and we draw inspiration from very different sources. The final installation will merge together our mutual idea and concept with our opposing influences (hers drawn from architecture and the urban environment, and mine from nature and its influence upon the urban environment). The interactive installation will also merge our methodologies in our individually selected materials, media and processes used to create objects to re-invent the space.

The concept that my collaborative partner and I are currently developing around our intended site specific, interactive installation attempts to break down social restrictions applied to communication. This is one of the areas where I feel that Sophie Calle’s working methodologies inform our concept and practice. In Calle’s collaboration with writer Paul Auster where she responded to his book ‘Improving Life in New York City’, Calle smiled at strangers keeping a record of smiles given and received and inhabited a phone box in the city, painting it, adding flowers, snacks and a pad of paper for people to leave comments.
Our concept differs in that we want to create a comfortable space in an outdoor environment where passers by rarely stop to sit and reflect or interact, and an opposing uncomfortable harsh space in an otherwise tranquil, meditative environment. Differing from Calle’s intentions with the Phone Booth to claim a public space as her own, we want to make a public space more inviting/alluring to alter its use and peoples perceptions of it.

Sophie Calle’s most famous works consist of re-creating moments from other lives. One example of this process documents the artist getting hold of a lost address book and calling everyone inside, asking them to describe the book's owner and then published their answers every day for a month in the leftwing newspaper Libération - to the horror of her victim, who tried to get what he hoped would be revenge by persuading the paper to publish a nude picture of her. She was simply delighted by his response. I like the idea that we could publish or exhibit the final outcome of our installation within the space that we used which will appear as if we were never there. As a record of an event that did not exist to those who were not there to see it, perhaps the documented memory of our installation could provoke just as much of a reaction as the live thing. Ask people who participate if they have an inanimate object on their person that they could leave in the installation space creating clutter like that you would find in someone’s living room.

Sophie Calle Research

Sophie Calle (b 1953) is a French installation/conceptual artist, writer and photographer whose work is distinguished by its use of unrestricted constraints frequently depicting human vulnerability, and examining identity and intimacy. As in the Sophie Calle piece ‘phone booth’ in which she took ownership of the public space, visiting it daily and decorating it to make it homely, I am interested in choosing an outdoors public space to respond to in this brief. The idea of identity is ever present when I consider the city as inspiration for art, as I find the lack of communication and observation within the masses of shared outdoor space to be quite peculiar but very common. The psychoanalysis of this human behaviour compared to the altered behaviour seen in indoor public spaces is fascinating and is of great interest to me.

As France's most famous conceptual artist, Calle has narrated to her audience depicting stylised portraits of her own life and images of the lives of strangers for the past 25 years which has been greeted by French critics with irritation and enthusiasm in equal measure. With our intended public interaction I find Sophie Calle’s narratives of strangers’ lives inspiring. To alter the atmosphere and use of the public space we have chosen, audience participation will be essential to achieving our conceptual communication. Documentation of the public interaction within the space will provide the evidence to further explore our concept, and I think that we could use some of Sophie Calle’s methods of interaction. As part of the Pompidou exhibition Calle exhibited ‘The More Painful The Break Up The Better The art’ documenting herself telling strangers about her traumatic break up in return for their stories about the worst thing that has ever happened to them.

Calle Said: ‘The stories of other people's distress are captivating - beautifully and movingly written - and they save the project from being merely contrived and pretentious, or an exercise in self-indulgence.’

I think that the interactions with the public within our installation need to be recorded or at the very least-documented in order to achieve the same integrity that Calle describes. The intention is not to merely place home comforts in an outdoor space for effect of the transformation, the depth of the work will lie in the audience interaction and how much of an insight we can get into their perceptions of the site from the new perspective we are offering via the installation space. I think that we need to develop a dialogue for communication with our audience that will help them to observe and experience the site in a different way to how they usually do in order to receive insightful feedback.

To bring a sense of tranquillity to the hustle and bustle of Leeds City centre will hopefully allow people to slow down the pace of the urban rat race and take in their surroundings with time for thought and reflection.

Sophie Calle

Sophie Calle 'PhoneBooth'

Durational Sound Installation

(94 Speakers, Mini Disks & Circuit Boards)

by CutUp Collective

CutUp Public art and Installation

More recently CutUp have started other projects such as replacing small buss shelter advertisements with a drilled sheet of wood. The illuminating back lights that turn on at dusk revel an image as the many holes light up against a dark background. The concealed advertisement is still partially visible adding to the traceable memory of the buss shelters transformation. Working in public space seems to be and important conceptual element of CutUp's work, however my attraction to the group stems from a fascination with their use of existing platforms to display works and inspire ideas. In particular i am interested in considering how i can incorporate lighting in public spaces into the Site Specificity brief.

Although CutUp mainly deal with art on the street, the group have also created installations, including setting 96 different alarm clocks one minute apart and other sound installations, made up of 94 speakers, mini disks and circuit boards.

'Self Portrait' by Chuck Close.

Site Specificity Research 'CutUp'

CutUp is a group of London based artists, whose work mainly revolves around the manipulation of billboard advertisements. Their first works consisted of removing a billboard, painstakingly cutting it up into roughly 4000 small rectangles, each one in essence a pixel, and then reassembling the billboard. This fragmenting devision of a whole image re-invents each rectangular segment as a tone to define the surrounding 'pixels' forming innovative imagery and text. Addressing the issue of in-your-face advertisting as a prominant influence upon popular culture, CutUp provokes their audience to question mass media advertising by abstracting it directly from its source reaching as many viewers as the original advertisement. Taking billboards as an example, the impact of persuasive imagery to advertise is deliberate in its entirety. From colour scheme, type face and text; to scale location and visual stimulants advertisers use every available element to manipulate their target audience. It is by breaking down these ideosyncratic elements that CutUp creates a re-invented impact of art on the street replacing consumerism.

Aside from the obvious similarity between cutups billboards and pixelated digital imagery, I feel that the aesthetic impact of these works resembles that of the fine art portraiture paintings by one of my favourite artists Chuck close. He too constructs imagery through a devided grid of shapes and tone, expanding the boundaries of hyper-realism by working from photographs to paint roughly executed regions of colour consisting of painted rings on a contrasting background. Each devision is intended to contain a percieved 'average' hue which makes sence from a distance. The result is eye catching and as with the CutUp billboards the finished images seem to carry more information and underlying meaning through the abstracted devisions.

Richard Long

I recently saw this piece at Liverpool Tate and it instantly popped into my head when I was sitting in my space. I am interested in the idea of natural stone being cut, re-arranged and re-defined by man. In a way we claim ownership over many of natures materials simply by manipulating them to fit a purpose. In doing so I think that man and nature combine in construction and technological advances, in that new structure and form cannot exist without the collaboration of the naturally occurring and the man-made.

Tate Liverpool (2010) Richard Long 'South Bank Circle' 1991[Online Image]. Available from: http://www.tate.org.uk/liverpool/. [28/04/2010]

Joint Installation Mind Mapping

Starting Point

“A building no matter how beautiful is a dead space compared to the outside”.

Andy Goldsworthy

My immediate response to the site specific brief was to explore potential outdoor spaces around the city. I find it very predictable that artists usually respond to such briefs by looking at derelict or run down areas addressing memory, loss and repair. However i favor making works based around the people who inhabit spaces and the existing collaboration between the man made and the natural environment.

April Suzanne.