Building Imaginary Worlds, the theory and history of subcreation Mark J.P. Wolf. This is a book about the basics of creating your own world, one that would be plausible at least. It lists worlds from books through to online gaming. Most notably, but not surprisingly, are the heavy references and fall backs to Tolkin and his amazing imaginary worlds. They were so plausible, because no matter what you questioned, there was always a definitive rational answer. Every detail was there and perfected. However, towards the beginning of the book, it outlines, that your worlds don't have to be extremely in depth. There just has to be enough for the audience to start believing and seeing themselves within the piece. Later it goes on to talk about evil subcreators: "The figure of the evil subcreator is usually guilty of one or both sins; abusing his power and putting himself in the place of God, or using a subcreated world as a means of imprisoning or containing an individual or a community in order to further some project of his own". This is interesting as i am making these worlds for myself, my own satisfaction. And at times, it does seem that i am imprisoning people in them, even though you can't see them. You know they are there, and I am subjecting them to some sort of disaster/ terror each time.
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It was time to start filming my mountain scene. I had decided this time that i was going to use the fog machine. Insert all problems here! I needed to be by a plug socket for this to work, however, i would not be able to do this in my studio as the fire alarms would probably go off. So, could i do it outside, where i would have my normal sky view? Well, not in the gardens at uni as there would be not electricity. So i took it home to film in my garden. However, because it's quite enclosed i couldn't get a clear shot of the sky. Nevertheless, it was enclosed enough to stop the fog from blowing everywhere! So after that faff, i took it into the kitchen. I erected a white blind behind to act as a sky to the piece. This all worked well enough and the fog lingered longer here as it was out of the wind. Enter next problem. Because it was inside, there was not much natural light, which started to be a problem on the reflection in the water. I set up lamp in the hope that this would balance some light, and it did do that. Preferably, i would have proper lighting equipment! But again this is something to look to doing. I then filmed the piece a few times in different ways: fog, no fog, movement in the water, movement with the lights, filming from close up, filming from far away. That was all done with a HD Film camera. I then had a go with a GoPro. I have never used one of these before, so this was a bit experimental. I submerged the camera into the water a few times. I have not yet looked at the footage to see what i achieved and to edit, that is now my next job.
Since my initial thoughts, they have expectedly changed. I am going to look into The Uncanny, and the creation of it. I am going to stem questions from this to why artists make the uncanny, when it is a natural and accidental occurrence.
In my proposal i will outline what the uncanny is, find a good definition and description. I will then look at in terms of its historical context. I will then place my view upon it. I will then outline how i'm going to look into it and it has been embedded into art. Artists whom i shall look at are Gregory Crewdson. The film director David Lynch. And a third artist, maybe textual based or a painter? ..I will then propose questions like: Why is the uncanny important? Why are we drawn into it? why artists create the uncanny? Why are our attentions drawn to it and become mesmerised? "will explore through Crewdson with particular focus to 'deja vu'..." etc. I now need to start looking for a couple of books and journal articles for each artist. Whilst i was at home over Easter i was talking with my dad about making an interior room. I drew out the design and he cut out all the pieces and helped me make it. Since being back in Falmouth with it i have wallpapered it and just painted it. I am looking to submerge this piece in water, and hopefully the wall paper will start peeling from the wall and things may go a bit stagnant, and i will have furniture hopefully floating around. However, i was thinking that maybe before i do that, i set up the room and have some fog in this one, and make it seem as though smoke has taken over the room. I need to now find some sort of carpet to go in it.
After showing this piece in the exhibition i wanted to play with the notion of making it more uncanny by changing the sound. I wanted a sound that would get you on edge, yet it would not connect to the woodland either. I remember as a child i was scared of the ticking clock of the crocodile in peter pan and that constant notion of time and running out of it. Lewis Carroll always stated that there was never enough time. This juxtaposes well with this film. The ticking sound is constant, it does not slow down or speed up. However, the film slowly speeds up with its clip changes. This sets off a strange vibe when watching. Initially, when beginning to watch the clock, it sets you on edge, wondering where this is going. Is it resembling a heart beat? Is an alarm going to go off at the end? But setting this aside, when the clips speed up there is a weird pushing and pulling feeling happening, being torn between the constant beats of the clock yet being dragged forward through the faster clips. You are unable to find a stabilising place. It is this unsettling rhythm, that i believe makes this piece better than the one of it with the sounds of birds. Originally this piece was silent and yes, that did work - but again, i wanted to take it into the uncanny. The one thing i truly believed that did not belong here were children and happiness. This led to me adding the sound of children playing in a playground. When you start to watch it,it's just not right. I feel that when you first hear the children, you feel somewhat happy with them. But then as the soil falls on the film and the children continue to squeal, you begin to wonder if it is screams of enjoyment or of freight. There is again a nice juxtaposition here with the idea of children's lives just beginning laying with the visual of many mens death. I found myself searching around the film for inserts of the children, any clue to where they are and how they are. I did not find this one 'scary' as the one before, but unnerving and saddening. Towards the end, it made me think of children in third world countries that play in places where there are still land mines. After thinking about recording actual children outside a playground being a little creepy, i chose to find a sound clip in another language. I don't believe that it is noticeable here. I made this decision as i wanted the work to to be about the overall noise, and not the individual conversations.
I believe both of these pieces have worked best with placing with them sounds that don't connect, and i will look to do this further. Casebere works with constructed photography. He is somewhat similar to Demand and Crewdson, and so it is no wonder that i have come across his work. He creates small models often on tables and then photographs these. He has been known to create scenes of suburban America but has recently turned to creating sculptures/ photographs of more institutionalised places, such as prisons. These are very cold and uninviting pieces to muse over. His worlds are also absent of people, which aids and encourages you to make up your own story to go along with his work. Other artists who are associated to this 1980s emerging artist are: Barbra Kruger, Robert Longo, Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman and Laurie Simmons. He works with simple materials, and in the prison pieces he seems to be working with clay? Because i haven't really looked into making interiors, i would never have thought of using clay - this could definitely be a material to look to using. All of his photos have some uncanny feeling to them and at the moment, whilst thinking of dissertation ideas, most of the artists that i look at create uncanny work. This could be something very probable to look into. Something else interesting about Casebere's work is that all of his final pieces are photographs. This was what i was originally going to do. However, i was suggested to me that perhaps with photographs you don't get enough feeling or oumf (is this a word?) brought with it. After this i started turning to film. And now, reflecting on his work, i believe that to be true. it would be interesting to see his put to film, even if it was virtually still, just to see if it would give more - which i believe it would. http://www.wired.com/2010/08/the-psychology-of-power/
This article touches on a few ideas that could relate to my work.
I have been reading up online various things about imagination. Most interestingly has been why people believe they have such a vivid imagination and why they do it.
I was reading on a forum where this man talks about how he, for the last 10 years, leaves the real world and 'plays' in his imaginary world in his mind. When sat in a chair he drifts off and plays out these imaginary peoples lives, he even goes so far to say that he knows everyones (30 people) eye colour and past relationships etc. He asks at the bottom if this is an alright thing to do and to why does he do it? Some of the most interesting comments were as follows: It is a form of escapism, one that is quite obsessive. It is a way of projecting bad things that are happening to you right now onto your fictional characters to make it not seem so heavy on you. Or, it could act as a pick me up. If you are one of those characters in your head you can make just good things happen for them - making yourself feel better in the process. You can pretend these things aren't happening to you. This then led onto someone else commenting that they made these imaginary worlds too as a way of disconnecting from their life as they were suffering with depression. Someone who made a massive imaginary world and documented it heavily was Henry Darger. I was then reading why children have such vidid imaginations and why they create imaginary friends. The main thing which came from this, was that they do it because it's a source of power. They want to be in control, but at their young age that is certainly something that wouldn't naturally happen. So they invent these worlds or people as they have total control over what happens, giving them the compensation for feeling helpless. Then finally, i was looking at the imagination of characters. There is always a lure for immoral, bad characters. People become fixated on them, drawn to them. "why give up seducing married women or buckle to social pressure when we can simply kill husbands and set our own standards of living?...it's the vicarious thrill we get from entering their stories". And this is true. We live through these people in stories and imagination because we realistically wouldn't do this in our lives to other people. Yet, our imagination provides us with an outlet for darker thoughts. Doyle works with model scale and openly shows and acknowledges this. When i am working with model sizes, i am always put off if people determine themselves the scale that i am working with - Doyle embraces it. It is then because of this, that he almost throws the rules out and enables you to believe that it could be real and start working out what has been going on within the scene. Doyle places his work in unusual setups. Some of his pieces are placed on plinths, but they always have a glass outer shell. It creates a feeling of you playing god over his work. There is a sense of fragility brought forth by the connotations with glass. For me it opens the ideas that people that live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, this saying in relation to his work suggests to ,me that we should not just what is happening here. Some of his other sculptures have been placed between walls and you are almost breaking into the work and have made the scene freeze by you doing so. His work is based around the theory of memory and creating work which is almost dreamlike, "fog of time". Like i have been doing with my film work and sculptures, creating scenes of uncertainty, i want to also embrace openly showing that my work is of a small scale. Because of this i will have a go at creating interiors out of dolls house furniture. These scenes will hopefully have something unpleasant and unsettling about them in the way in which i film them. At the moment i am unsure as to whether i believe these pieces will work because of you being able to tell the size, but like Doyle i need to embrace this. On another side note, his use of the underside of his sculptures/ below ground level is interesting, and that might be something worth looking into/ pursuing. Radio 4 is a great place to find different articles. Recently they have been airing a series entitled What does it mean to be me? I listened to four separate talks on this issue.
The one that stuck with me the most was: Philosopher Jules Evans on Jung and the mind. Jung thought the unconscious was a shadow (part we don't like), place of human darkness but also a seat of human creativity. He believed that you should face/ embrace the unconsciousness and face your shadow. Jung believed "To see is a possessive kind of sense, you want to get hold and make it your own. But to listen, you have to take in and make something of itself - listen deeply". This is interesting in relation to my films, perhaps the sounds is more important to what is being shown. "We are so full of fears and apprehension...need more understanding of human nature. The only danger that really exists is man himself. He is the great danger. We know nothing of man". Jung believes that fables, stories and myths are our way of confronting the shadow. There needs to be hope in stories. Man cannot stand a non meaningful life. We need to overcome our will for power. Well, my dissertation seems to have come round ever so quickly. Lets write these thoughts down so i don't forget or loose this!
At the moment I have been having thoughts on what I could do mine about and have been thinking at looking into how: through constructing scenes and imaginary places helps to explore the human condition and fragility. Whilst group critiquing my work, it was suggested that I should perhaps play sounds that don’t necessarily connect instantly with my work, yet still add to the theatricality and feeling to it. This was then hard trying to think of possible sounds, because there are so many sounds that you could put with my work that don’t connect, but I had to work on reigning these in.
Trenches: Floorboards creaking, children singing, silence, revving of engines. Firstly, none of these sounds would be expected. But I think the most eerie and interesting one that I could connect and put with these would be children singing. It would have such a striking hit on the concept of mortality. ß Might present this piece. Woodlands montage style: Silence, sirens, clock ticking, chainsaw?! From these I believe a clock ticking would be most apprehensive. You have the time beat of the montage clips, and then if you were to add in the incessant noise of the clock ticking it adds in another beat. I believe in this case it would be an annoying one as it probably wouldn’t fall in line/ in rhythm with the clips, making it a stressful film to watch. And if nothing more, clocks ticking bring forth their own connotations – peter pan and the ticking crocodile! Mountains: Gun fire, screaming, muffled voices, horn, sirens, tapping on a window. I have not yet filmed this piece and so of yet I have not got a clear image as to what this film looks like. At the moment I believe I will try: muffled voices (maybe smacked on the head/ not with it/ stuck under water), horn (your in the way, or someone going into the water/ falling off a cliff?) and the tapping on a window (firstly is someone stuck in the car and where is it? This would be interesting to use a microphone where it has surround sound and have the sound coming from in front of you where there is no visible car). Yes, this was wonderful. It was great to have a chat through with someone else about my work, I think I will look to have more tutorials with him in the future. We were mainly talking about the types of cameras I use to film my sculptures, and what other equipment I could use/ involve.
· I spoke about how I would like to use mist/ fog when I film my lake sculpture, and he said that I could borrow a smoke machine from the performance centre – didn’t know this so that’s wonderful. · Look at the tempo within my work (this was after discussing Gordon’s work). I could have an extremely slow piece, and don’t just slow it down via computer as you then have to deal with it clicking frame by frame. Ideally, use a better camera! The duration of my films could also be interesting – significant durations perhaps? · Next was the types of filming I could be doing. 1) Telephoto, using different lenses so I can be filming from really far away as you will sense that distance when re watching. This could make it seem as though you really are on large scale. 2) For the water, I could use a go pro and actually film underwater. Film slowly immerging from the water or going into it. 3) Maybe look at perspective, filming circling the sculpture. 4) Use an old tape camera as this will again give it another feel. · Use underwater microphones and talk – see what comes from that and if it works with the film. · Finally, artists suggested to look at: Wallace and Gromit Aardman, Olafur Eliasson, James Casebere. Am i creating a microcosm? well yes? i am trying to create a complete section of our world. I am not creating things that don't exist, i.e. fantasy. The worlds i create, are what i see to be perfectly real and rational. Everything needs to be to scale for it to work.
microcosm definition A representation of something on a much smaller scale. Microcosm means“small world,” and in the thought of the Renaissance, it was appliedspecifically to human beings, who were considered to be small-scalemodels of the universe, with all its variety and contradiction. ( Comparemacrocosm.) (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/microcosm) it seems that you would need to have a complete!? person for this to be. I am trying to create complete scenes, leaving them open to many possibilities. I try to gage the sense that something has happened, taken place in my world, and it's up to you to rationalise what has happened. mi·cro·cosm (mī′krə-kŏz′əm)n.A small, representative system having analogies to a larger system in constitution, configuration, or development: microcosm (ˈmaɪkrəʊˌkɒzəm) or microcosmosn1. a miniature representation of something, esp a unit, group, or place regarded as a copy of a larger one 2. (Philosophy) man regarded as epitomizing the universe (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/microcosm) This too seems right, i want my work to have this sense that it is part of something bigger, that it is not just a stand alone thing. In reference to epitomising the universe, does it sum the universe up? I dont know, i try to add in the darker side of the universe. I allow people to make their own decisions on what my work is about and whats happening/ just happened. Does that then make my audience the epitomiser of my work, the audience and my scene come together and become the microcosm? |
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April 2016
Kerry FosterThird Year Fine Art Student at Falmouth School of Art. Fellow artists: |