Transformer diptych

Well, I confess, I was a bit disappointed yesterday. I had really been hoping to use a pearlescent medium to make my transformers in my planned diptych shiny and bright, but they don't have the medium in oils only acrylic. So, I am hoping that the iridescent white I bought mixed with the right colours will be able to do the trick. Here are some sketches I did last week to familiarise myself with my transformers, Optimus Prime and Shockwave. I don't understand it, but Shockwave, who is supposed to be the bad one, seems to have a much gentler spirit than Optimus Prime. Not that toys have spirit of course! Unless you have been watching Toy Story :). This week has been spent making canvases and reading about Monet and Gauguin for an essay I need to write. Both artists have surprised me in a number of ways.

Optimus Prime

Shockwave

Metropolis: dystopian and utopian response to new technologies

For our visual culture seminar on Monday, we are required to research an artist /and /or art work that represents either a dystopian or utopian response to the impact of new technologies during the modern period (1900-1970). To do this we need to gather examples from a variety of sources. I confess I have probably done the research backwards and found the art work I wanted to research and then went looking for final support in the galleries of Edinburgh. The art work I chose was the film Metropolis (1927), directed by Fritz Lang, together with the associated set designs by Erich Kettelhut and the promotional posters. I thought that this was perfect given that it has both a dystopian and utopian response to technology and because I vividly remember watching it at home with my mum when I was younger.

"Metropolis, you know, was born from my first sight of the skyscrapers of New York in October 1924… I thought that it was the crossroads of multiple and confused human forces, blinded and knocking into one another, in an irresistible desire for exploitation, and living in perpetual anxiety." 
– Fritz Lang 1 

Peter Ruppert, the author of Reader in a Strange Land: The Activity of Reading Literary Utopias, summarises the plot as follows (http://www.genders.org/g32/g32_ruppert.html) 

Set in a futuristic dictatorship in which the ruling class lives in decadent luxury above ground while slavelike workers toil in unbearable conditions below, Metropolis tells the melodramatic story of a workers' revolt. Their Luddite rebellion is actually the unanticipated result of plot hatched between the Master of Metropolis, Joh Fredersen, and a mad scientist named Rotwang. The scheme is to undermine the workers' liberation movement and to discredit its leader Maria by infiltrating the workers' ranks with an agent-provocateur, a cyborg-double of Maria. This scheme backfires when the cyborg, acting in defiance of its programming, leads the workers on a rampage to destroy the machines that enslave them. But by destroying the machines, the workers flood their homes and nearly drown their children. Stability is restored at the end of the film after the workers burn the cyborg/witch, and the ruler's son, Freder, assumes the role of mediator between the workers and the ruling class. 

Video clip 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PAdQ5anhZE

Madonna's take on Metropolis (for a bit of fun :))
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsVcUzP_O_8&ob=av2e

Five images sourced from online libraries

Erich Kettelhut
Set design for Metropolis : 1925
Tower of Babel
(Source: ECA Library Image Collection) 

Heinz Schulz-Neudamm
1926
(ARTstor)

Werner Graul
c. 1926
(Source: ARTstor)

Erich Kettelhut
Set design for Metropolis : 1925
Hall of the Machines: View from Above)
(Source:  http://www.kino.com/metropolis/gallery5.html#gal5) 

Erich Kettelhut
Set design for Metropolis : 1925
Part of Opening Sequence
(Source: ECA Library Image Collection) 

One digital photograph taken at a gallery in Scotland

In 1952, the Independent Group was formed. Its leaders included Eduardo Paolozzi, Richard Hamilton and William Turnball. Reflecting the Utopianism of contemporary politics, but looking resolutely to the future, the artists of the Independent Group believed the modern world would be shaped by technology and mechanisation. (Source: Fry, A (2010) Eduardo Paolozzi - Pop goes the Easel [Internet]. Available at: http://www.scotsman.com/news/art_reviews_eduardo_paolozzi_pop_goes_the_easel_anthony_fry_1_808758 [Accessed 3 March 2012]).

I took the digital photo below of Paolozzi's (1924-2005) studio, as set up in the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, as the sculpture of the robot/human head is reminiscent of the scene in Metropolis where the cyborg-double of Maria is brought to life.

One online text (pdf)

https://sites.google.com/site/theblueprussion2/expressionist-utopias (originally sourced from <http://www.jstor.org/>)


One podcast

http://media.ipadio.com/98018_20110915134309.mp3 (originally sourced from http://feeds.feedburner.com/CineSci6/)

Star Wars

Well, for the past couple of days I have been crouched over an easel using a tiny brush to paint my Star Wars figures. They are not perfect of course. I am afraid their heads may be a little bit to big and Princess Leia, gosh, well to be honest it was nearing the end of the day and her face is SO small that I found it so hard to get any semblance of nose, eyes, mouth (particularly). I would put one little tiny stroke down and wipe away her previously painted eyes, which were okay, or her mouth or something. So I think the photo I post here is just before the final adjustments I made to her face - I tried to give her a mouth but it may have gone awry. It is always hard to know when to stop messing around with something. Next week I think I will do an Optimus Prime and Shockwave face-off (portraits) on bigger canvases so I don't go quite as mad. It is amazing how many times I start talking about my Transformers and how the face of the person I am talking to lights up. Whoever created them I think was genuinely amazing. It has got to the point where I was walking home with a friend last night and we came across a huge roadwork machine and we said wouldn't it be cool if it transformed and made those transforming clicky sounds. 

Being a kid

So, as usual it has been forever since I posted. Listening to Finding Albert at the moment, a Scottish band that I saw live on an old school double-decker bus this week as part of a university French fete. Well, we started a new project about 5 weeks ago. I feel like I have been working pretty hard and learning a lot but don't have much to show. I didn't know what to do - the project was Phenomena. So one night I went to a Pub Quiz with some friends and with the scrap paper I started making paper planes, because it seemed the obvious thing to do. Then I couldn't sleep that night because I thought of all the things I used to do as I kid and the toys I used to have and kicking an Aussie Rules footie around the paddock with my sister. Interestingly, as I madly searched if I could buy an Aussie Rules footie in Scotland, I found out there are 3 Aussie Rules footie teams here. Anyway, I digress. This lead me onto a path of drawing toys that were similar to those I had as a kid and how to make paintings out of those - well put them into a Scottish landscape of course! So I have started a bizarre series of paintings. This is my first one, together with some collagraph prints I did last week. The Ford Escort push and go car features mostly. The ink on the collagraph prints bled a bit unfortunately as I went overboard on the material I had glued on and the ink got stuck. I figured out how to lessen the effect later on, but some people said they liked the bleeding. 

Construction

So, what do I say, as I type with a sliced open finger resulting from one of my pieces falling off the wall yesterday - that I need some major improvement as far as my professional practice goes! It's true, but trying to square up 13 pieces into one large piece is easier said than done. This time our project was headlined, "Around the block". So me being me, I was inspired by the dirtier parts of Edinburgh. For some reason, the space under scaffolding intrigued me - goodness knows what people thought as I huddled underneath the scaffolding, hoodie on drawing madly. The first week I did a large painting of the scaffolding, but to be honest, I didn’t have enough information and it just didn't work. While I learnt a lot from it, I thought next time around it would be better to do smaller pieces to make up a large piece. I went out again the next week, felt the need to draw some people, so asked a couple of construction guys if they were okay if I sketched them and the scaffolding for a couple of hours. They were fine with it, I think, but I am sure they felt a bit uncomfortable after a while. Who doesn't, when you're trying to work and someone is looking intently at you! :) 

Inspired by Jenny Martin, a local Edinburgh artist, who had a print exhibition at Leith School of Art recently and who likes using fluorescent colour in her work, I painted the ground of the boards in fluorescent yellow and orange (representative of the bright yellow of the construction workers jackets and the orange of the traffic cones). I think this especially freaked out my tutors who thought, I am sure, "Kirralee, not again!" as I have a tendency to pitch my work at the very bright end of the spectrum. I was told by a fellow student yesterday that the colours (when it was purely 13 bright fluorescent boards) were painful to look at, but after all, I am from Australia and the sun is very bright out there, so I honestly think it has influenced my tonal views! :) Anyway, here are a few images, from sketchbook to my final piece, which is currently showing at our first year exhibition at Edinburgh College of Art. 

Headland

So the photography project - disaster. Getting together 6 photos that worked together with similar lighting and a similar subject somehow ended up getting out of hand. But that's okay. I now have my trusty sister on board and hopefully one day soon we can get together and try to remedy the mess that I made. The sculpture project I had the following week made me a lot happier. Using plaster, chicken wire, paint and then a surform to mould and scratch into the plaster surface made me a very happy camper to say the least. I think I much prefer something I can physically get my hands on and change. The brief was about headland - about me, my head or someone else's and the stuff therein. I was inspired by the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the thought of trying to erase someone from my mind. When I was setting up the half-formed face and fragments in a separate room in order to throw some shadows, it dawned on me that my mind is like a workshop where I have stored certain memories in a corner to block them out and to chip away at them over time. Whether that's healthy or not I don't know, but my dad once said to me that it's okay to put things in a corner of your mind until you're ready to deal with them. 

Swept up

Got the headphones on and listening to reggae. Focus seems to be out of my reach today. I have been taking photos of the city and nature in order to create a flowing cohesive body of work. At the time I thought 6 images was not a lot of work to do but now I have to sort through about 400 photos to choose the images that will work together. While I have discovered tungsten light and how to overexpose things so I get very faint outlines of the subjects I am interested in, I really don't know how I am going to fit these together with everything else. Hence using my blog as a procrastination or should I say space to think? :) Well last week we had an intermedia project which was about drawing in the way we live our life, like footprints in the snow, mist on the window. The difference between art for art's sake and the art of everyday life. So because I like cleaning so much (ha ha only other people's houses or the studio!) I thought about the action of drawing with a broom. Sweeping up layers and layers of dust and the throw away paper and trodden on charcoal of my fellow students. And then I thought about the noise that a broom with stiff bristles makes and I wanted to record that. I had never done any video editing before either so I took the chance to use a broom cam (thank you God for masking tape and my pal Alice!) and edited it to very old school film format so that the viewer would focus on the sound of the sweeping, as the colour of the film somehow made focusing on the sound more difficult. So plug in your headphones....