'Intensive' Labculture made me think of a hothouse where exotic plants
can flower
This week I encountered
Winged humans
Wax kisses
Stomach sounds
Birdsong coming out of computers
Screams coming out of people
What it is like to have tinnitus
Flying from Calcutta to Heathrow aged four
Pointed pink shoes
Daneworld
Pointed red and white shoes
Misty moors
Sun making leaves gold
A waiter who staged his own improvised interactive performance each evening
A woman who could dance across four continents simultaneously
An erotic chair
The eroticism of telephones held close to your ear
Genital wings
Tongues like plants, like slugs, having a slow dialogue about whether
to
A majorette planting flags on a beach in a pattern determined by the names
of a team of women astronauts - red on sand
Travelling into and with thousands of points of light, entering sound
Stalin alongside a lawnmower
A doll in a straightjacket
Deer faces sketched and repeated on a wall
I was invited to participate in discussions on
Crossing borders without documents
Joining the Sunbeam Reliant Appreciation Society and how that would affect
my sense of identity
If you could leave your body would you
Whether women are more willing than men to enter unsafe areas‚ in
their art
Art or entertainment?
The themes of SAFETY and RISK emerged as dominant ones in my overall project
- not just in relation to art, but in relation to myself as a person
I was asked directly What are you doing here?‚
I learnt new language:
Sign Supported English - "Fiona, poet, thank you"
'Bins' are places you put things to keep them or to throw them away
Scratch disks are nothing to do with scratched disks
The poetry of software - stream, interlace, compress, capture, snap, zoom,
pixelate, import, tweening
I was dazzled by people‚s eloquence - "vectors, bitmaps, performative,
aspect ratio"
their ability to combine art forms
inhabit a fluid definition of themselves as artists
and resist pressures to be categorised
I arrived with some ideas and raw materials in the form of images, sounds
and voices on CD, and text - I thought I would learn to layer these and
make a piece for a website or CD-ROM. I wanted to explore PLAY - how you
play, as adult or child, why you need to play, what you need to play.
I wanted my children to be able to enjoy the piece as well as you and
others. I had a picture of objects linked with each other in a kind of
network which would interact with the viewer‚s own ideas and feelings.
I was also interested in making voice collages. The ultimate piece would
be the viewer's responses which I could not control or predict.
The tuition on Logic Audio, ProTools, Flash, Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio
Pro was fantastic. I had not used any before - this was a useful quick
introduction, and the facilitators managed to weave in commentary about
the politics of digital media, cut-up writing and their personal projects.
On Thursday I started to encounter problems.
Before I describe these, and my responses, I‚d like to engage in
a distraction activity so as to avoid entering an unsafe area (being honest
about me), and describe a couple of observations of group behaviour that
I conducted on Friday. It occurred to me that what was going on in this
environment was fascinating, and that it was easier to look at other people‚s
behaviour and be observer than look at my own
"Labculture as playground"
TIMED OBSERVATIONS
The first observation was conducted beween 1.15 and 1.20 on Friday in
the Red Room. I was seated in the corner and recorded findings with a
pen and paper. The focus of my observation was Presence, Absence and Movement.
I noted the comings and goings of individuals. The results are as follows:
Present at start:
Ulrike, Kelli, Amanda S, Guy, Fiona
Enter Mark
Exit Mark
Enter Diana
Exit Kelli
Enter Edd
Exit Edd
Enter Guy
Exit Guy
Enter Leo
Enter Gareth
Exit Gareth
Exit Leo
Present at finish:
Ulrike, Amanda S, Fiona
Outside the parameters of this observation, but also of interest, were
a brief discussion of semantics between Guy and Kelli prompted by the
re-writing on the wall to read video is for girls‚. Also an exchange
between Leo and Gareth about sound copyright and its effect on Leo‚s
composition
The second observation was conducted between 1.27.31 - 1.29.26 on Friday,
also in the Red Room. I was seated in the same position as before and
recorded by the same method. The focus of my observation was Touch. I
noted objects touched or handled by individuals in the Red Room. The results
are as follows:
Objects touched or handled:
Mouse
Lip
Grape
Pen
Wheely chair
Earlobe
Buttock
Hair
Camera
Lip
Armchair
Chair
Chair
Grape
Headphones
Console
Bag
I also made observations of group behaviour. I noticed that people's need
to interact with the outside world - animals, trees, the vicar, the barman,
shopkeepers - varied - some needed to do this a lot, others a little or
not at all
I was also interested in how people's behaviour regarding food was altered
by having plentiful delicious food provided which they did not have to
buy or prepare
Back to Thursday‚s problems - I:
-discovered that audio files take up loads of space and that anyone wanting
to download my material would end up sitting there for hours
-experienced the hell of repetitive small tasks such as scaling down images
and rebooting the computer several times because I‚d left Photoshop
on and it was using up RAM
-found I was in a very steep learning curve - I was trying to make something
on ProTools and Flash, which I hadn‚t used before
-lost confidence in my ideas because I couldn‚t keep up with the
facilitator's fluency with the software
-felt restricted rather than freed by what I perceived to be an expectation
that I would design my work in a non-linear and non-hierarchical way -
I was trying to do this, but my technical ignorance made it difficult
for me to achieve
-got defensively argumentative "your non-linear isn‚t really
non-linear, you don‚t understand my non-linear, poems look linear
but they aren‚t, there‚s the reader‚s selection and re-reading
of text for a start" etc etc (not helpful)
-became aware of the strain of focussing closely on a computer screen
whilst feeling a desire to be in other places as well - out in the forest,
by the sea, with my family
-grappled with the question of whether I can be an artist and a mother,
which is both practically and personally challenging for me
Everything that happened from Thursday onwards was coloured by the question
of safety and making art
In an earlier discussion about safety and art I was able to point out
to Simon a way in which he was avoiding the really unsafe area for him
and choosing something safer but apparently unsafe‚ making provocative
art and challenges to others
I was only able to do this (and I found myself shaking after speaking
so truthfully) because I myself do this ie avoid the really vulnerable
areas
I retreated from difficult media (computers, my own emotions) into easier
ones (writing, using detachment to observe my own processes)
On a safety scale of 0 (very unsafe) to 10 (safe) my most emotionally
vulnerable moment was 0
Why did I retreat?
Because when my safety scale hits 0, very unsafe, I am unable to function
as a productive artist, only as a feeling/thinking person trying to rearrange
my responses into a different constellation
The ultimate project is me - what I‚ve experienced and what I‚ve
discovered about myself in an unfamiliar environment
This will influence my behaviour and art way into the future
At the transition point, pursuing my project on Flash plummeted from 9
to 0, safe to very unsafe
Once I had regained my composure, continuing on Flash rose to 5, fairly
safe but stressful and frustrating
Deciding to move my medium into written and spoken words was safe in that
I am competent with words, but unsafe in that I was choosing to do something
very different from the rest of the group and there were uncertainties
associated with this
I was unable to locate the degree of safety or unsafety on the scale
I think this says something about making art
I observed myself trying to reconfigure my responses to adapt myself more
happily to my environment - both the external environment and my own internal
one
So this is what happened to me on Thursday:
I was working on Flash
Duncan came to talk to me
Feelings of being overwhelmed which had been building during the day fountained
and I knew I couldn‚t contain them
I did not feel able to express them there and then
I felt a strong desire to absent myself from my immediate surroundings
After talking with Duncan, I explained that I needed a break
I went to the hotel room
I cried
I made a cup of tea
I felt a strong desire to walk by the sea
I ordered my evening meal before leaving, knowing that I wanted to return
to the group
I drove to the coast
I walked, enjoyed the sea, sky, cliffs
I phoned my partner and talked about what was going on
I felt a chaos of feelings
I wanted to regain control of them
I had a desire for strong sensory experience - I took my shoes off and
walked back to the car park over icy cold grass - this demanded most of
my attention and changed the focus from my confused feelings
I drove back to the hotel
The group expressed concern and I felt cared for
Dane talked to me
By now I had decided to shift medium away from Flash
I read this in several ways:
A childish tantrum
An act of aggression
An attempt to regain control of my emotions
Again, one of my responses was defensive argumentativeness: "digital
media art is just a commentary on digital media art, it doesn‚t have
the strength of IDEA which art needs"
In his talk 'How to be irational' Heath Bunting mentioned restricting
access to his server by blocking out certain regions. I appeared to be
restricting my own access to the group because the unsafety levels had
got intolerable
How the hell was I to unpick this?
On Friday afternoon Dane highlighted my retreat from unsafety, and, gently
yet directly suggested I examine my responses
I felt small and inadequate
I had a strong desire still to contribute to the group and not be destructive
I had got loads out of being here, and think the facilitators do a brilliant
job
also I wanted to share with others who were sharing with me their diverse
and exciting work
I felt that the way to do this would be to make
an attempt to communicate more of my whole experience of being here
I have chosen words
perhaps I‚ve chosen safety
or perhaps I‚ve given you more of me
than you would have got if I‚d plodded on with my initial ideas
those ideas will get their airing through Flash at a later date
I have collaborated but not as I expected
you have affected me
I will take images, ideas, a sense of daring and innovation in your work
away with me
And who knows where they‚ll take me next?
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