Andy Goldsworthy

 "At its most successful, my 'touch' looks 

into the heart of nature; most days I don't 

even get close. These things are all a part of
a transient process that I cannot understand
unless my touch is also transient; only in this
way can the cycle remain unbroken and the
process be complete."

-Andy Goldsworthy

As research for my elemental approach to the project I've been looking at Andy Goldsworthy, an artist who collaborates with nature and produces very interesting and personal pieces. I love the fact that he uses a huge range of materials which are all natural and I found that very stimulating and it gave me idea's for my own project. I would love to go out to a forest for a day and spend the time trying to use the environment to create some artwork. Andy creates incredibly interesting pieces and this also encourages me to go out and try this sort of thing for myself.



The idea of touch and Earth really appeals to me because I've always been very outdoorsy (even if I'm a bit of a techno geek) and when I was younger I spent most of my time outside and loved going to visit my relatives that lived in the country side. I hope that by party basing my project around something that I like, I'll enjoy the overall experience more and that will lead to more productivity. Already since settling on Earth and touch I find myself with more idea's and a better output of work.

Colour in Motion

After exploring the senses and Synaesthesia, I kept with the idea of colour and the senses. I thought of touch and of all the different surfaces and colour we touch during our day. It made me think of how colour and art is always within our grasp, or at our finger tips, if you will.

I did enjoy the idea of colour at our fingertips and experimented with the idea by doing my first stop motion. It's quite short, so I know that if I made another one I'd use more photo's and definitely use a tripod.

The Stop Motion;

 

YouTube; http://youtu.be/aoorKVbrx9I

From here I want to continue with touch but incorporate defined set of colour into the idea, like the elelements and the the colour associated with them and the seasons.

Space, the Senses and Synaesthesia.

When we were first given our project brief, I admit it, I was definitely skeptical. At first I thought 'how am I going to manage this?' I'd never done a brief that was so... open ended before now. Any brief I'd been given in the PLC I did was always fair straightforward. You were told what they wanted to see at the end and all I had to do was work towards that, step by step.

With this brief it was completely different. Being given the project 'My Sense of Space' was daunting. It's completely open to interpretation and you have no idea what they're look for from you. Then again, once I got over the whole 'oh god how am I supposed to even start without an idea of where I'm going' aspect of it, I did some research which made me realize that having so many options could be a good thing. I could do something completely unique, if I worked hard enough and explored as many options as possible in the time frame I had, maybe I could come up with something a little unexpected.

Some of the first things I looked at were fairly basic, the 5 senses, touch, taste, sound, sight and smell. I thought about how the senses reacted differently to different stimuli, like the nose and good smells vs. bad smells, or the eyes and bright light vs. dark light. Next, space. Infinite and so much of it unknown. Of course I could find plenty of idea's in that. The idea of black holes and the way they suck in space was very appealing to me. Still, I felt as though I was limiting myself. I liked both the idea of the sense and Space (as in outer space). They stood out to me more than any other idea, but they were such literal idea's. I was basically getting a couple of words out of the brief title and saying 'Oh hey, I have my project already!' Yeah right, I came to art college because I wanted new challenges, and even though I've only been here a week I already know that I can't just wait around for someone else to come challenge my idea's but had to challenge them myself.

So I went a step further and did research about Synaesthesia, a disorder I've known of in the past, but haven't known much about.
What I mean is I knew it was basically a neurological disorder where the sense are mixed up because of wiring in the brain... or something like that, though I never understood how that would work. Like, smelling touch? How would that work out?
But after a couple of hours of researching I knew so much more about it, yet still was quite unsure how someone could taste a flavour in a name. It seemed far fetched and I thought about abandoning the idea, but I was limiting myself again. Just because I didn't know how it felt to have Synaesthesia (of course I don't, I don't have Synaesthesia) didn't mean I couldn't imagine it. Even if it is tricky to imagine someone seeing how a song looks as they listen to, doesn't mean I can't imagine it.


After all, I wanted to challenge myself, didn't I?
- :)

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