DEGREES UNEDITED

# 21 [6 May 2011]

MFA Thesis Exhibition, School of the Art Institute of Chicago

The installation period for the show went smoothly. My work features as part of Grand Bazzar, a celebration of diversity, curated by artist and cultural activist Juan Chavez.

My exhibition partner Matheu Bourque is fantastic. We worked together, we were both flexiable and we concentrated on developing a cohesive installation where our practices could communicate with each other, providing an intimate space for the viewer. Our space was not divided up as we developed our installation based on lines of sight. Activating the corners to provide seclusion and intimacy and one of our main concerns. We both also wanted space to walk within to encourage our viewers to spend time within our instalallation.

The mundane, identity, capturing fleeting moments, and the body are all concepts that our work addresses and exlpores. A variety of media is included such as painting, sound installation and digital video installation.

Our work is on display from the 30th of April to the 20th of May, 2011.

# 20 [7 April 2011]

The Home Stretch (or grasping at something)

The MFA Thesis show installation begins in 9 days. Suddenly the studios are a hive of activity. Across the way my neighbour Ivan is putting the finishing touches to his sculptural works and I can hear Su relaxing with friends before she starts work. For me it's a case of making sure i'm getting enough sleep so that the time I have can be used to my full advantage.

To The Next - I'm making shelving for the sound installation I'm planning and testing the distnce between the two speakers I'm working with. So far 90cm apart seems like the best placement to hear the pan L and R of two voices.

When I Close My Eyes I Can Still See Your Face - Another piece is being finished showing compoitions of staring contests. My intention is to have a double screen installation each with one face on it and sound of breathing, laughing, quite room tone nad movement. I'm not too sure if I will include this piece yet.

I'm finding it difficult to narrow down what video pieces to include - in an ideal world my adviser Tirtza would want me to include everything. So... perhaps it will be a bit clearer when I meet Matt who I am sharing my exhibition space with. We'll have to see I suppose.

# 19 [17 March 2011]

Leading to the MFA install

I had a fantastic meeting with Tritza Even, my graduate advisor. We watched, listened and chatted and her advice is always great. She really knows how to pull out what my concerns are and to point to new ones.

Thinking about the space of an installation as a key element to the position and the post-production process of editing and composing a work.

The corner looks to be a very promising area for my work in terms of activating the gaze of those offscreen and onscreen.

# 18 [25 February 2011]

Something Out of Thin Air

Whilst grappling unsuccessfully with the Arduino platform, I had one of those things that I suppose some people call an EUREKA moment, although I didn't figure anything else new out about gravity or anything like that.

...and unfortuantly this had nothing to do with understanding Arduino....

I had a sudden and completley formed idea in my head. It did make me quite nervous. I'm not sure if anyone else has felt this when you have a sudden thought of a complete and pretty much fully-formed idea. I wondered if this would make sense to anyone but me, if I needed to talk it through with my advisor or if I was going off to do something ridiculous and a waste of my time and energies.

So since I was waiting to start work on something else, I just decided to go ahead with it and record it anyway. When I showed it, both advisors said that it was basically done, and I didn't need to do anything else to it at all and that they really liked it.

Shawn recommended to think about context and presentation of these kind of pieces. Research artists that have prehaps done something like this before so you know similarities and differnces.

# 17 [17 February 2011]

Week 3

The third week of my last semester. I'm doing a fantastic art history course entitled The Space for Art: From Imrpressionism to Relational Aesthetics. So far great, challenging readings and a relaxed atmosphere which is really what you want from art history class.

I'm also juming head first into the mind boggling world of pysical computing through the Arduino platform. Arduino can control things like LED's, motors, speakers, amp's and can respond to data entry from a computer or from the external environment.

On our third week of class we reviewed electronics theory (thankfully) and worked on our task to blink an LED that is controlled by switches that variry it's speed.

PHEW. So I got there abouts with a few hiccups along the way. My code was described as beautiful, nice code...although it didn't do exactly what I'd thought it would. (sigh).

Oh well, back to the Arduino board...

# 16 [21 January 2011]

A Game of Chance

OK. Deep breaths. It's the last term of the course.

I feel... strangely detached from the idea of the Thesis Show, the culmination of two years of non-stop, intensive creativity.

Perhaps this may be due to the fact that as an international student none of my friends and family from the UK will really ever get an experience of this exhibition. The culmination of two years of work and life apart that has only been discussed over video chats on skype.

Perhaps this may be due to the fact that to my relief, my professor told me not to worry, work hard, and that the show will definately not be what I imagine due to the sheer number of graduating MFA students and the exhibition space allocated.

Perhaps this may also be due to the possibility of living on a remote Scottish island with a dog, chickens and most likely unemployment.

Perhaps I can turn the unemployment into self-employment.

The words perhaps, change and chance. These seem to be words that artists continually address, both in creative life and personal life.

# 15 [11 December 2010]

Re-assess and Re-visit

Critiques are done and I'm feeling hopefull. Things....worked out. I was surprised having worked on one video piece for the semester, editing and re-editing, recording and re-recording, thinking and discarding and thinking some more.

One of these pieces that doesn't come out of thin air (if they even do that really). Re-assess and re-visit is difficult but rewarding too.

1. Pathos is generated by a human subject / presence

2. Working with a reduction strategy - be careful as to how much you reduce and wht you loose through this process

3. Think carefully about what you take forward from previous works.

# 14 [15 November 2010]

Go with your original instinct. This piece has been all about trying to figure out what is isn’t, in reverse order to my frustration. It’s been a challenge to my expectations and methodologies.

1. It’s not about me personally.

2. It is about the absurd.

3. It is about the action and decision of choosing to interact with a specific object.

4. What I ask is considered but not my ultimate goal or attention.

5. The incongruous within humour.

# 13 [10 November 2010]

Items: questions // magic 8 ball // anxiety

My first foray into incorporating written text into my digital video practice. It's proving interesting. Having put text with the moving image through editing I realised that I don't think it's working. I can't really tell how exactly but it just feels wrong and it's not doing what I want it to.

Today I recorded my voice reading along a series of questions I want answered or that I think about in terms of my life. These are slowly being modified as I revisit them over again. The moment I was done with the recording and into the sound studio to edit it felt different. The spoken word now adds another very personal and accessible dimension to the footage that I don't think was there previously. It become more about an individual than an interaction with an object.

I think I am getting bogged down with the different elements in the piece, like it's become too complicated and what I want to communicate is becoming lost.

# 12 [25 October 2010]

A Constructed Sense of Place

One important issue for me is that I have visited these places and have personal memories and images about them. Another thing is that they are locations and periods of my life that I have shared with another person.

Audio Componenets

- clear / clarity / close mic / a peculiar sense of believeability of a real space within this piece - A Bellwater Cricket

The issue of recording a document and leaving it as it is. This rule is not for everybody. You have to be aware of approaches to your work and be clear of your intentions.

1. exactly as they are

2. collage works

3. It's OK to make both - selective of what elements are within the recording and when to use these two apporaches.