I started this before i realised we didnt have to do a rationale, so yes 

AUDIENCES RATIONALE

 

When first starting audiences brief I was quite enthusiastic. I saw it as a good opportunity to investigate different ways of presenting my work. I have always been quite concerned when it comes to repsenting my work, as a lot of the time, I only realise the final piece a few days before having to exhibit. The outcome always being a badly presented final resolution, and all in all quite a disappointing exhibited work. I saw this brief as an opportunity to explore the work of other artists and ways in which they present their work, and how I could relate this to my own work.  

   At the beginning I feel I was enjoying and interested in the module. I really enjoyed visiting different art galleries, and focussing on how I was receiving the work as the audience, and why I was reading the work in certain ways. However as the module continued I found it very hard to consider how an audience viewed my own work, as for a long time, I didn’t have any work. It takes me a long time to make work. So I was falling behind in this module. I think it would have been better if we were allowed to focus on one part in particular, which is what was suggested at the beginning, e.g. Fixtures and fittings. Then it wouldn’t rely so much on the success of the practice and materialty brief to be successful. 

I am wondering what to do for my final piece. I was considering ways in which to exhibit, and thinking of how to repesent. I thought about exhibiting the cards, next to their result.. Lie the cards cast giraffe next to the cast of the giraffe. Thought I don’t really like this idea. I think it’s a bit boring. It might look nice though, and probably would look pro maybe, but I think its too bpring. Also it would seem strange to now at the end of a project based on chance, to have such a rational way of presenting, it doesn’t really fit.

 

I also thought about creating a game for the audience, as a performance piece, I could provide the audience with the cards, they could pick them and then do the actions. Though I think this is more about the interaction, and the ideas about fluxus than about randomness. Would the ideas of randomness come across?

 

Also I’ve made the other things down to chance, so I would like to stick with this idea for the final presentation/exhibition. Maybe I could create more cards to tell me what to do for the exhibition and final performance/piece?

 

Another thing that concerns me is that it isn’t going to be clear or seen what my point is… Though because it is about randomness and not making sense, then if people don’t get it, can’t see the connection, etc then that would be the point, and it would be a successful thing. I have been considering using the cards again for the final presentation, and following what they say, keeping with the ideas of chance dictating the work, and have realized that a lot of it is to do with belief. If the cards say to hang the print of the axe, then people will just see a hung print of an axe, without any knowledge of the process before, but me knowing and committing to the idea and having the confidence to do something like that even thugh people may not get it is important. 

Games?

As i have been making cards, and performing the instructions generated by the cards, and chance, one of the most obvious things that springs to mind is to make work interactive. Cards are meant to be played with, and so displaying them, so people are unable to touch them and interact with them, takes away from what they actually are. Could i invite the audience to play with the cards? The audience could do what i have been doing, and perform the random actions? i could provide the equipment/ways to record? or nt ways to record, they could just be undocumented events? Then it could become even more random, as i am not in control of the way the audience may try to rationalise the two random words to create something.. OR would people say... but these don't make sense? but then still wouldnt that be successful because it doesnt make sense? there is no connection between the cards, and any combination could be drawn from the decks?  

THE ART MACHINE

OKAY, so Keith Tyson has a time machine, stole my idea went back in time and did it before me. BUT still im going to carry on because its interesting to me, and if you think about it, how many landscapes have been painted in the world, and no one ever stop and says GOD someone panted this landscape before, its HOW each person has interpretted it, and done it in their own way thats important right? ANYWAY

Mr. Keith Tyson is interested in the nature of causality randomness, life n that. He generates instrucions through computer programmes and flow charts. I think mine is much more of a game though. 

For some reason everything i try to upload wont upload other than pictures. The video stills on upload, its very annoying. Basically, i am using these combinations of cards as instructions. Thinking about audiences, for this instruction, the location could have various meanings and ways it could be taken. Overdraft is a word most students are fairly familiar with, so if performing this action in the student canteen or in college, it may be recieved as something to do with finances etc. Though this is not to do with anything, it is a completely random combination. I am quite confused about the audience for this work, because the point of it is not to understand, it is meant to be random, and there is no 'meaning', the meaning is that it is a random act. I think in some places the acts could be interpreted as other things, or misinterpreted..? i dont know im confused.. but then thats the point? maybe? if people don't get it, then they have got it? 

The Art of Indecision

I have been listening to these radio 4 programmes calle dthe art of indecision, they are realllly interesting. It basically talks abot decision making, and one programme is about how people recntly choose not to choose. Back in the day, when we were all living in caves, there wasn't a lot of choice really. The main concerns were food, like huntin n that, producing bambinos and not getting eaten by wolves etc. Now we have about 50 varieties of baked beans to choose from. Does that make any sense. In this radio programme it went on about people, and how we don't actually know how to make the decisions that we have to make, so people choose not to choose. Stick to what they know. Out of all the flavors of ice-cream, vanilla is ALWAYS the most popular!?? though its not even that good. It also had an interview with this man who has made every decision for 19 years by rolling a dice. Odds are the first option, and Evens are the second. He met his wife because he rolled a dice on whether or not to her, and it said yes speak to her. It made me think, you can never ever know the what the outcme of choosing the other option would have been, so why stress over making a decision? why spend hours and hours fretting over a decision, weighing up the pro's and cons, when you can never know if its right or not. This guy thinks that using chance is the only fair way to make a decision. I dont really think this, but i am interested in the role of chance. Is a decision made by chance equal to a decision not made by chance? RANDOMNESS. acknowledging accepting and celebrating it.

Having to make sense of things.. why can't things be random, why do we feel have to force an explanation onto what is random? Combinations

RANDOM IS NOT A DIRTY WORD, honestly. 

I have made my own cards as a way to generate instructions for making art. The words on the cards are all random, from a random word generating website. Thought i do have conerns about how genuinely random this is, in fact im not sure if its random at all, and can randomness be faked anyway? When you flip a coin, sometimes you can judge by the pressure you hit it with what the outcome will be.. also computers and technology and things like that. they will have a programme to gerenate randomness, ipods on random shuffle arent random at all, they are programme to appear to be random, they have people working on new programmes and codes to make it more random, because apparently the real random wasnt random enough, sometimes two songs from the same band would come up, and you can't have that really can you. I got to this by altering ordinary playing cards. Playing cards- games based on chance. I erased the values of the playing cards, and have considered what i could do with them, i could put them back inside the package and back on the shelf of a shop, or replace any playing cards i see with a blank packet. But i dont really think that would echo the point, i think it would be very irritating. It could make a point about competition, games, gambling, unable to play cards/gamble/compete. BUT thats not what im really interested in. 

habits

I have always been very uncomfortable talking about my work to other people. This is both in front of groups and on a one on one basis. It was pointed out to me than during these conversations I am constantly ‘fidgetting’ or ‘messing’ with something else, for example tapping a pen, biting my nails, playing with my phone. These actions might be distractions, me trying to distract myself from the situation, giving my mind something else to focus on. Instead of talking and explaining myself/listening and taking onboard what others are saying to me, I would be focused on folding a piece of paper over and over again, spinning my phone round repeatedly or other similar actions. This got me thinking of the audience for these small actions and habits.  The audience for these actions is me, and for me they are a comforting thing. I do these to make myself feel better when something I don’t really enjoy is happening.; to take the focus away and onto something else. This is not intentional, during crits and tutorials I really do try to listen and get something from them, for some reason clicking the end of a pen as fast as possible seems far more important at the time.  I never really think about the people who may be watching me and noticing these habits. Though I do these actions to relieve nerves, to those watching me, it will probably emphasize what I am trying to cover up.

 

As the audience for these actions are usually only myself, I wondered what it would be like if I filmed myself talking about my work and performing these actions. I wonder how it would change the meaning by where/or how it was viewed. We have an exhibition in the atrium gallery in the hospital, which is a cancer treatment ward. To have a personal nervous habit displayed in this environment I think could change the meaning. A lot of the patients in there may be nervous themselves, waiting for results or being treated for serious illnesses, they may perform their own versions of these habits while waiting in the hospital. I think in a way it could be a bad thing, it could add to the tension of the viewers of the video. Highlighting un comfortableness awkwardness and nervousness, but it could also be quite interesting. Would it increase the level of tension? 

ahhhh I've just realised I hate this project. Every decision I've made during the project has been because of deadlines and worries, and i dont think this is a good way to make work. I dont really feel any interest in continuing with this borders theme, and though its very late in the game to keep switching ideas, i think this idea is shit, because its not interesting to me, and its not really what i want to be doing. SO im going back to the original randomness thing. If you speak to sheila you will get one opinion, then stephens will be completely different, and so will everyone elses, so basing my work on this idea which is based on what others think is quite a stupid thing to do, I should be doing what i want to do yes? and what Im interested in? 

Everyone in the studio seems to be marking their own territory with various structures and fortresses. Borders boundries trespassers will be prosecuted or shot.

tape do not cross. 

Here are some artists i have been looking at. Borders, interventions, control, public n that.

TEXT: Inside the white cube. I have been reading inside the white cube . As I pretty much can’t not to any work for much longer ive basically had to pick something to do. This sort of feels a bit contrived and I don’t really like doing it, but I don’t want to wait any longer and hope I get an idea that I genuinely want to explore, because I really don’t know whether this will be in a day, or a day before the deadline, from experience it will probably be 1 week before the deadline, and I don’t want to get into that way of doing things again. So I’ve decided to go back and continue with an unresolved project from the first year. The theme is kind of borders/boundries. After visiting a lot of galleries and exhibitions for the audience brief, I started thinking about bundaries within the gallery space. Like at the Perhaps Something Perhaps Nothing opening, the invigilators standing at either end of the Rachel Whiteread sculptures really made it uncomfortable for the audience of the work, and changed how it was read. The audience being kept at a distance, DO NOT TOUCH,  standing here is fine, but here is too close. Also being watched isn’t very nice when your trying to look at work, I don’t like it anyway. So I started to think about how small interventions could change how a work is viewed and perceived by an audience.  

WHITE

We went to the White exhibition, this was the hardest place to find in the world. Even harder than the marianne springer one, i think it was a test, only the best navigators are allowed to see this work. even though we cheated because we got a taxi. Anyway the exhibition was called white and featured the work of four artists whose work had not a thing in common other than the colour of the pieces. One of the works was loads of milk bottles dotted aroudn the floor. Relational aesthetics and all that jazz, people were drinking them and such things. so we did too. Though if we hadnt seen everyone doing this already, i wonder if i would have done it? As i went in i wondered whether i should be stepping over the little bottles or am i allowed to knock them over as i please? ALSO the exhibition was called white, because of the lack of colour (thats what it said on the flyer) but what about the lids of the bottles? blue for whole, and green for semi skimmed.. these were very colourful. Though i liked this exhibition, it was not intimidating, and the usual "private view" crowd weren't there. The exhibition seemed like maybe a student show, all the people there were around the same age as us, and it was only on for a few days. also they had crisps. Maybe this is why there weren't the any art folk there- not for a stuuuddeeennttt exhibition gosh. Anyway I thought it was good to see a space that could be somewhere that is accesible and possible to exhibit our own work in. After this we went to carpe and they stored the milk in their fridge for us, so we were free to enjoy the rest of the evening without the fear of the milk turning sour. all in all an 8/10 experience.

Murrr still don’t know what im doing. I had this idea about decisions n that. For some reason I can’t seem to make any. Stuff like decision making, how people choose,choice chance randomness, probability fate chance choice chance chance are these things important, how important is chance, how much stuff is based on it and why is it not really acknowledge its role, other than to blame bad things on it rather than on our own judgement? When you make a decision you don’t know what the fuck will happen, you can only guess weigh up the pro's and cons and that. Is this a better way of making decisions or just a different way?
Making decisions are guesses so why does everyone love them so much. If I guessed the answer to a question with two options, would it be as valid as randomly choosing between the two answers?
Is making a decision based on chance better/more valid than making one you chose? i wish i could write in a more academic fashion because i dont think these sentances are making any sense.
Then I had a crit and couldn’t really explain very well and started to think this was a bad idea,no work has come of this. oh dear. One day I hope for a decent idea. In the meantime Ive started reading inside the white cube!

Im finding this very difficult. How do you consider the audience for your work, when you don't have any work?

4.

We went to the Marianne Springer opening the other day. It was really different from the other galleries and openings I've been to since the start of the audiences project. I have some pictures which I'm going to try to upload, and I was also trying to use photoshop to put my own work in the space, but I've realised that I am very terrible at photoshop. so maybe I'll stick to what i know- PAINT! 

Anyway yes, i've uploaded pictures now so thats good! This exhibition was really different from the other, i noticed it was set up in a more commercial way. It was like a shop, and it was clear that selling work was one of the main concerns with the set up. On the desk there was a price list, and it seemed there wasn't much consideration to where the work was placed, and how it might be viewed as a result of that. It seemed as though it was about getting as much work up as possible without looking too crowded on the walls. The audience was completely different to the other two exhibitions, which had attracted mainly a fine art audience. This exhibition had more of a community feel, which made it a lot more friendly, and less intimidating to enter. There were lots of families and children running around. The work itself was illustrations and soft sculptures, i wasn't really used to being able to understand and read works so easily for what it is. I'm used to going into galleries, being confused for a while, and trying to decode and work out what its all about, in here it was quite nice to just look at it and appreciate the work for what it was. I've got to get out of the computer room now- i dont even know what I've written because i haven't read it though... oooooh well 

3.

Perhaps Nothing Perhaps Something

Audience was again limited, everyone there was an art student or tutor etc. No real effort to address anyone not already within the art community, general public etc. I didn't see any flyers for this exhibition except inside the gallery. There was a feeling of awkwardness and superiority within this gallery, I felt I wasn't really allowed to be in there and if I was, I was only to talk about the work and be very serious about the whole thing. It got me thinking about what kind of barriers and rules or restrictions we conform to when we enter a space like this. Making sure we don't touch anything, being very quite and polite, not going crazy with the wine, and only talking about the work and nothing else, and definitely don't look as though you are only there for the free wine, (even if you are?). I liked Rachel Whiteread's casts of negative space underneath chairs, but I wondered whether the artist or the gallery had the most control over how these were displayed. Two invigilators at either end of the casts, were on guard, to stop anyone from touching (or walking through ) them. The feeling of being watched and monitored really made it uncomfortable, and a lot more difficult to engage with the work. I also wondered if this was the artists intention, though probably not, whether it would have been better if the audience was allowed to interact with the piece for example to sit on the stool like casts? 

Also Cornelia Parker's piece, the wire/string was attached to a mental grill/grate on the ceiling, which was not how it was originally meant to be. There were two versions, one in which the wires were attached to little hooks  screwed into the ceiling, and the other where a new ceiling was constructed with holes in it for the wires to come through. The fact it was attached to a metal grid showed that the work was adapted and changed to fit in with the gallery space and fittings. I thought this took away from the work, and made me think that the gallery was more in control of how the work was displayed than the artist. I also thought the shelves used for Sarah Doherty's work weren't very good. They were too blocky and solid, and looked a bit shoddily put together. I noticed on the wall behind on that there was a weird bit of plaster painted over in white, it looked a bit rubbish really, not much attention to detail, they were probably too busy making people feel awkward to fix this. 

2.

RANK- opening

Rory performance piece, accessible to audience outside of the gallery space, passersby, non- art folk! Audience= NOT exclusively art folk. General public.

ART FOLK= Artists, their husbands and wives, Art tutors, Art Students, ex art students, males and females who work in galleries and museums.

It was good to see this performance, and how live art can be presented and be grand and good and not shoddy like when I try to do things like that. 

Although the performance included general public and the community as an audience, (was not limited).- the private view was invitation only (I didn't have one though ...shhhhh) Tom Cookson and Sam Shaw got questioned at the door for their invitations... I didn't notice anyone else that did, I thought this was a bit strange, and didn't really like that. I think the invitation only made it seem exclusive, in a bad way, it limits their audience to only art folk and excludes others. It wasn't accessible. Although it was the private view, and the exhibition was open to the public after, I think that kind of exclusivity discourages people from going to see art. Even though I was there, i felt guilty about it.  One good thing was that the invigilator people didn't follow you round breathing down your neck waiting for you to accidentally go into the wrong room with your drink. yaaaay

I didn't really like the layout and way it had been curated maaaybe. Mixing the old with the new, the research and sort of archive style things putting them together with the art. I don't know maybe this makes the art more accessible? but the not being allowed in enles you know someone didnt't really fit with that. I wondered whether this was meant to be somekind of relational aesthetics style affair going on, but i didn't really get it. I thought it made everything a bit harder to read, like was it meant to be art, or information and statistics... or what? Overload of stuff I think.

1.

I've started to think about the different ways i could look at this brief, and I've decided to focus on art galleries, and exhibition spaces, and how the work presented related to an audience, and what audience art institutions attract. I think the way something is presented (fixtures, presentation and things) can have a really big effect on how it is viewed by an audience. I always find with my own work, that the presentation of a 'final piece' is a bit half-arsed, last minute and a bit bad really, so i'd like to explore this and hopefully make me think about how to present my own work better.