Final Performance Evaluation

At the beginning of the day I feel absalotlelly amazng, we oth knew we had it in the bag under lock and key, even with 3 hours sleep spirits were flying high at how well we were abot to pass this class (and as evident in the video footae i dont do well without my sleep). We spent the entire train journey talking about how nice it will be after the performances to relax for a while and just accept the natural high that we will be on havig spent so much time into our work for this class.

When we got to the proud achivist it seemed like everthing was unorganised soon afterwe got there our lecturer had to eave to get something she left at home and i was given the responsibility o filming peoles work which i didnt mind one bit but it seemed veryone but us was in a really tressed mood.

Our performance didn't go as great as we had planned, the voices in the video were ver hard to hear as we were given a Bass speaker to lay our audio from which cut out all the voice frequencyes andgave favour to the bass notes in the msic,and tething is i had already plnned for audio/voice hearing problems by testing out our film on 3 different types of speakers, i just didn't know we would get given a glorified subwoofer to play our film. Also our tutor came up to us about 3 or 4 times during our (15min same as the other studentswho showed a film) video performance to ask ''is it nearly over?'' which after the first time absaloutely killed our high spirits and left us feeling like we were some sort of embarressment to the art world, so as the video was nearing its end jake started panicking and saying 'she hates it we should turn it off', i disagreed but he got up to stop it before the end to which i was like ''no don't stop our film man'' and as he got to the screen our tutor yelled ''CAN YOU TURN THAT OF NOW'' at that point i was like ''yea your right, turn it off''. What an absolute downer to the day. - This is however just my interpretation of how things happened (given no further explanation by our tutor who left halfway through the day), along with a few of our classmates who saw what happened and were also were also shocked at the level of (apparent) disrespect for our piece and our artistic expression. I don't Mean to be mean here but if  am to evaluate how i think my performance went and what there the contributing factors i must be honest and direct, it was a confusing experience for both me and my group partner who doesn't want to mention it in case he gets his blog marked down.

I am however extremely pleased with the outcome as i felt we took people on a multi-sensory journey into our lives and the experiences and 'shenanigans' that we get up to as young adults n London. I feel that e should have definitely shown the poem and the map first s that he audience could have time to contextualize what was going on on the screen and i think that if i had just watched the video first without paying much attention to the map and hearing the poem it may have looked like it was just two lads messing around and not taking the project very seriously, which is just one of those things that add to you experience as a practitioner and a performer on goes in the list of things you learned this time so you can be better next time'.

Video Editing Finished

Here is a look at our finished video titled '2 Men, Couple Drinks and a Derive' I am pleasantly surprised with the way this turned out and think we both thoroughly deserve the quality of how this turned out with all the effort we put in.
The video takes you on a journey of the everyday lives of Jake and Lloyd around London and tries let you in on some of the life experiences relating to the body as a map. And with ur use of multiple formats provide an ode to Guy Person in our attempts to offer a "dynamic perspective" in order so make the experience seem as real as possible as not something fictitious we just dreamed up.

Completed Body Map

Finally! Its 5am and the body map is completed, i am very pleased with the outcome it looks amazing, the body is presented in different section which all relate to different sites, we have our liver related to the places which we have drank alcohol, our hear relates to the places we love or have experienced love, our brain relates to the times we have taken drugs and the other parts of the body are the same accordingly.
Hopefully the audience will connect with this as i know it is mostly goig to bee sudent at the performance sceening wo have had similar experiences, as Jane Rendell notes work or this type are often “fuelled by sentimentality” (2005) .

 The map shows area's and features that are discussed in the video for example there is a plaster on my hand from where i fell off my long board trying to ride it with 2 men on at the same time which is discussed in the video itself, so this map acts as a way for the audience to interact with the video, and the video with the map also.

 You can see the stickers we stuck on, these were from a poster in my bedroom and related to the parts of the body and our experiences 'drink' near the liver 'Get munchies' near the stomach and 'love' near the heart, this connected to our use of the comic book theme and artwork used n the video and on the map making our work cohesive.



Rendell, J (2002). Art & Architecture: A Place Between. London: Routledge.

Stages of Making our Final Body Map

STAGE 1: DRAWING AN OUTLINE

jA

Jake drew an outline of my body for our body map.

STEP 2

We then joined up all the gaps and corrected any errors in the lines.

STEP 3

We then looked to our previous draft in order to get perspective on what we did well the first time and replicate and what we need to leave out.

Step 4

This is us adding the poem to the map, it was initially the plan for Jake to do this task as my handwriting is atrocious but after an hour and not much progression i stepped in, i was faster but obviously less neat and presentable, but it looked good the way both our poems were in our own handwriting, gave a little more insight into our personalities and traits.

Stage 5

We then stuck all of the materials we had saved in order to relate the experiences around London to the derive and our day-to-day lives, things like toothbrushes, a beer lid, a condom etc.

Fashion Shoot for My Photographer Friend in Exchange for Help Filming

 I have a friend who is a photographer and he is always asking me to do fashion shoots as he thinks i have a decent sense of style and i have never once said es but this time i decided we needed the help with our project doing filming as deadlines were approaching so i accepted on my own term, my clothes, my location and a large election of funky sunglasses.

What was good about this was the fact that i managed to use some of this in the final project when we needed more footage, this was shot in tooting park and was a recent part of my life.

Our Goals for the Video

With this Video piece our intention i the bring to life our experiencing of 'deriving' around London, for this project and in our personal lives outside uni, a virtual tour of what we get up to, our 'shenanigans' as my Irish friend put it.

Naming Our Work

We decided to change the name of our work from 'Body Maps' to '2 men, Couple Drinks and a Derive' as we thought this was more fitting o what our project was about, yes there as a body map in our peice but that was not all it was about, we wanted to add some humor into the title that was evident in our piece.

Body Map Draft

On the Thursday after recording the Camden and tooting Bits for the video. Jake made a draft of what the body map could look like at my house using an A2 pad had whilst i done the video editing for our final piece, we bounced ideas off each other whilst this was happening for the work we were both doing, making good use of our creative and teamwork skills. We then stuck tube maps on the inside but both agreed that this ruined it, as it looked much better before we had done that, so it was a good idea to experiment with a draft before doing it on our final piece.

Comic Book Style of John Wagner (2000AD)

We looked through the effects on the software and decided that it would be cool if we could find something that looked like a comic book, this came from my fascination with comic books as a child, particularly with the 'Judge Dredd 2000AD' series that i used to be completely infatuated with.

We got he effect working very well for how inexperienced we were with the software and it looked effective

Update After Using Editing Software

After using the video editing software for the whole of last night i think that my level of expertise is not at a high enough leve to make to poetry fit with the music and the shots of the derive so we are thinking about making the poem a live performance.
Although this initially sounded like a bad thing, its actually a great thing to happen to us as we now have another method of performance or 'format' in that we now have: a static map, a video and a peice of live spoken word poetry.


Every cloud has a silver lining.


We also decided after experimenting with the software that we wanted to make the footage in a random timescale, i.e not in chronological order to make the footage less boring and to keep the audiences attention, also it represents the hectic-ness of our lives and our muddled multi-task minds as university students.

Film Planning

We decided that the footage we had previously recorded was of bad quality as that had been filmed on mobile phones and that we shouldn't use them in the final performance.

We hired out a booking suite at USS but when we got there on the day we were told that it takes 2 days for the booking to actuate if its your first time. - (Nice job there UEL!)

Plan:

Wednesday: Meet Jake at at 8 in Camden town when he finises work, meet at ‘The World’s End Pub’ where our ‘reporting from base’ shots will berecorded. Then Head back to my house in Tooting and film the journey
Thursday: Leave home and travel to Dalston, taking shots throughout. Travel to Ilford to film and then central London to film.

Test shots

We Took a number of test shots that i don't think will eventually make it to our final piece but show our experimentation process.

Hilary Ramsed and Francis Alys Inspired Soundscape Experientatin

We were very much inspired by the previous research on Francis Alys and that day i had watched the video of my lecturer (as H2) performing something similar in the form of a soundscape, we used structures as instruments which in a way shows that even the most ugly things can have beauty when interacted with in the right way, we saw this very ugly gate that looked like it should belong in a prison but this gave the best variety of interesting sounds out of everything we interacted with.

Recording Noises for our soundscape

We sat in the cafe after our meal and banged various item off one another and then wrote down all of the sounds we liked (eg lighter with handle of cup) and then saved them all into a list for future reference in relation to how we could build our soundscape and use the environment as an instrument.

Map Test

We took a large number of tube maps from the station when nobody was looking

We then arranged them it different ways to see what was effective

Marketing, Safety and Ethics Form

We are going to market our performance at the proud archivist like an established business in order to generate a turnout as if we were established artists. to do this we initiated our marketing plan for the event using the industry standard 7 technique called Take a Dip With Pat :

Marketing – Rule of 7’s (Take a DIP W/ PAT)

• Direct mail
• Internet
• Posters, flyers, billboards
• Word of mouth, publicity
• Point of sale
• Advertising
• Telephone 

From these 7 methods of advertising we selected to only go forth with the ones that could most effectively market our piece, ones which were easy to initiate and execute to reach our target audience effectively.
Internet was our most viable option as with the advent of social media i no longer need to go through an address book or make 100 calls, i simply write some text advertising our show and then select names from a list, in this i will be using facebook and the UEL forum  as the latter is easier to reach the student demographic.   

Safety
our work features no serious safety concerns and we will ensure the space is safe for an audience.

Ethics
Our work is, for the most part ethically sound aside from some swearing in the video for which we can have a disclaimer is any people 'sensitive to swearwords' are present.

Jane Rendell, Art and Architechture

''At the outset, I shall make a distinction between space (espace) and place (lieu) that delimits a field.

A place (lieu) is the order (of whatever kind) in accord with which elements are distributed in relationships of coexistence. It thus excludes the possibility of two things being in the same location (place).The law of the ‘proper’ rules in the place: the elements taken into consideration are beside one another, each situated in its own ‘proper’ and distinct location, a location it defines. A place is thus an instantaneous configuration of positions. It implies an indication of stability.A space exists when one takes into consideration vectors of direction,velocities, and time variables. Thus space is composed of intersections of mobile elements. It is in a sense actuated by the ensemble of movements deployed within it. Space occurs as the effect produced by the operations that orient it, situate it, temporalize it, and make it function in a polyvalentunity of conflictual programmes or contractual proximities. On this view, in relation to place, space is like the word when it is spoken, that is when it is caught in the ambiguity of an actualization ... situated as the act of a present(or of a time).'' 

http://www.janerendell.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/Art-and-Architecture-prepublication.pdf

What Jane Rendell had done here by talking like she's a pedantic robot dictionary is try to explain her ideas of what the difference between 'space' an 'place' is in her opinion. She referrers to 'space' as something natural and where it's meant to be, in its own environment and 'place' as something or 'things' taken from one or multiple environments and made into a final assembly.

In basic terms it seems a 'space' are strawberries picked in a field and eaten there as you pick.

Place is a strawberry milkshake from Tesco's.

My Poem

''It seems like every day In my hometown of London is a derive, 
So much to see, standing on fallen crisp autumn leaves and shielding rays of summer sun cascading between the tops of trees.
A mixed bag of features, yes,  I'll agree,
From the hustle and bustle of Tooting high street, to the local parks serenity, it offers me, the clarity, to greet my Serendipity.

The smacked arse faces of commuters on the northern line,
avoiding eye contact with any passers by,
for to crack a smile would surely cause to die and wouldn't make your spirits rise.

And since we're encouraged to drink, let's be honest,
since ever other good stimulant or mind bender has been abolished
i must here embellish and say that a few tequilas and a beer on the streets of brick lane after meeting a young rosy cheeked maiden have you feeling like you just completed a good game
as you both conversate before boarding the last train.

But sometimes I forget that we don't need drink or weed, or a pretty girl to feel free, just the imagination to succeed,
so I get on my Longboard and go down the nearest Hill at 3000 miles an hour with a smile on my wind swept cheeks and a nicely elevated heart beat, and I feel free, experiencing glee that I remember from the bouncy castle or the park slide or just after blowing out your birthday candles and making that magic wish when you were 3,
and I say London is MY city, and I make it just what I want it to be.''

The point of me referencing my experiences in London within this poem was to allow the audience member peek inside my brain, my brain as a 'site' on the map of the body and let them know some of my feelings about the experiences which ill add to the overall cohesiveness and depth of the project as experienced by the audience.

Calligraphy

We spent quite a bit of time considering which type of pens o use on our Body Map as we wanted it to look professional, the pens we had at the time, we decided were a too thin to be read from a distance which we thought was an important thing to consider, so we decided to, com back to the 'drawing board' with a different selection of pens another time.

We wanted the writing to be in a thick bold font so that someone who was a the other side of the room would be able to make out what was written and hopefully be intrigued and come on over for closer inspection.

Testing out a few pens we had on hand

This one was better but still too thin and faint to be read from a distance

Planning Where To Have Our Display At The Proud Archivist

We have decided to place our Body Mp Against this window as it is the only place where we can stick up something of its predicted size

Behind the Adam Dant artwork is a big screen TV which we wil show the video on

Adam Dant Inspiration

Adam Dant '50 People of East London'

This is a piece of artwork that was on show a the proud archivist where we have our lessons and after studying this picture i can say that Adam Dant has made some clever observations about the types of people in and around London, particularly east London for some of them and after laughing at this for a while me and Jake were inspired to do some 'nature filming' where we went out onto the street and narrated for passers by in the voice of a typical nature documentary presenter like David Attenborough for instance, we had our own stereotypes like 'the Middle class jogging enthusiast' or 'the Barclays biker' this proved to be a lot of fun and gave us some perspective on how we wanted our video to be filmed.

Here is a clip of our social commentary inspired by Adam Dant

Project Proposal

 Our group project is going to be a multi-format reflective experience that will allow our participants to experience some of our memories and experiences in London, the use of multiple mediums i our performance will give added depth and perspective to the experience of site as we present it.

Body Map:




We shall provide a life size model of the human body with some bodily organs, and show the relationship between multiple locations in London and the organs that have a physical or emotional connection to them, for example - Liver - places where e have been inebriated through the use of alcohol, or on the skin we will be including most of our scars and then linking them to places where we received them. This will present the idea of site being one with the body, memories and experiences to our audience and allow them to experience the relationship

Soundscape 'Music Video':

This is the gel that will stick everything together in our performance, we hope to take people on a journey with us through London, our lives and our experiences and allow them to view our personal 'site'. It will be showing the locations and the journey between the places that have made a strong impression on us in Londonas we take them through a guided derive with help from the map.

Poetry:

We are in the process of writing poems about our London experiences that will put into words what we think about the experiences that have happened to us in London so there can be some added objectivity, adding to the personal level of experiencing our 'sites'.

Francis Alys 'Railings' Inspiration

Practitioner Francis Alys shown here in this clip is the one artist that inspired us to use a soundscape in our final piece. Jake showed me this clip and i was immediately taken back and inspired to get out and start immediately, he uses the environment to create sounds using an instrument to tap on different textures, objects and  materials to provide the listener with a sensory journey through different sites.

Looking at this and more of Alys's work i can see how this is good evidence as to how site specific art can be socio-politically and philosophically engaging.

13th March Session Planning

Today we made a plan of all the things that we had to do for next week to we could be on top of things for the upcoming final performance, we both noted that getting the planning stages out of the way now would help ease the pressure at the deadline approaches.
 
List of things to do before next weeks lesson:

- Book out the digital equipment to record the sounds of the environment to create our soundscape that will provide the beat to our rap poem in our video derive footage.

- Collect various  types of papers to experiment with and various types of pens and pencils to see which will work best for our body map

- Finish the poem and be ready to record

Body Map Research

I met up with Jake again today to do some more planning for the body map so we got our research heads on and had a look at some great body maps that were out there on the interweb.

These ones gave us a little insight into how the body map might have tured out had we stayed with the food idea

We liked that text was used outside the body for this one, we might write our poems like this

This one had lines coming out of certain parts of the body which is how i originally envisioned the idea of the map notes

This one blew my mind, i just wish i was an artist, or could draw above the level of a 8 year old

This is the type of thing we decided would be most like our final, drawing aroud a body then filling in bits of experiences

Update conversation and Sketch

We have been meeting regularly to discuss our ideas for the performance and have taken some of what the practitioner Mike Pearson has said into account about engaging the performer, the site and the audience/participant all at once which we are looking to do by having different formats in our peice, due to the restrictions set about by it being a university project we cannot take people on a walk all around london but we can provide them with more dimensions to the experience.

We know that some of the students in our class will be using a stand-alone map as their final performance but we have the idea to add another dimension to our performance, that is, a map  but also a video to guide you around the map and add that extra cohesiveness to help the audience fully comprehend what it is that's ON the map.

 We weighed up the pro's and con's of this idea in the sense that we are giving ourselves a lot more work to do and that it will probably be quite stressful with so many deadlines but this is the first time me and Jake have worked together properly after wanting to for two years and we will just have to prove it to ourselves that we can do it.

A Preliminary Illustration of some ideas for the Video

A Vision Of How We Could Implement Our Ideas

This is a visual aid to how we could implement the ideas talked about in the previous entry

Some brainstorming over a bacon butty...

Further to to joining with Jake in a group we went to a cafe for lunch and discussed our ideas for the final performance, this being such an early stage we still did not have any concrete plans but after talking we both has some good ideas that involved using the human body as a site and we began to brainstorm.

Last week we had been using maps and that began to mix into our conversation of using the body, we discussed ideas and different ways we could incorporate both ideas of the body and maps cohesively and proffessionally and we came up with a name 'body mapping' that rang a bell in our minds  as it was catchy and represented our main focus clearly. We strted to delve onto the topic of where in london had the best cafes and that lead onto a conversation about the different types of food that we had experienced around london so we started to then think about making a map of typical cusines you can find in different areas. This lead into a conversation about the memories we had experienced around london and maybe mapping these events (eg where you got that scar on your hand, where you received your first kiss, first time you got drunk...) into a life size cutout of a human body.
I had the idea of creating a rap song about these experiences and filming them in a music video style, visiting all of the places from the map and making them in to the video, i wanted to pay homage to a Hip-Hop group called the Pharcyde and shoot the video in reverse which i thought would give a nice added style to it so i showed it to Jake and he loved the idea. 
Our idea infuses the body being represented as a site and the 'site' in a locational sense, with the perspective of us (the bodies) and how we reflect on the experiences that took place at those sites.


Heres the video 'Drop' by the Pharcyde, classic 90's Hip-Hop at it's finest.

We also discussed the iea to use sounds from the environment at those places to create the music track or 'beat for our music video which is a exemplary way in which to make our project more site specific and we got this idea by drawing inspiration from our tutors video which is also up on Youtube in which she also uses a sound-scape, unfortunately i couldn't get the thumbnail to be displayed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hEUNTkD55M

Site Specific Performance – Mike Pearson (2010 Palgrave Macmillan)

In this, Pearson describes the idea of architectural
& geographical elements and how and why they are interactive, describing how the audience experience and engage with a given location in context of its character built up from its history and overall vibe.
He introduces the reader to a place called 'Trace' in Cardiff, a venue that is always being molded into something new as each new performance is staged there.

 Mike Pearson

Pearson further writes a weekly schedule that aim to offer the reader a variety of real world situations and magnify the environment things like "sit in a public place and try to hear a conversation" he also goes into some details some things that effect a persons view and experience of an environment or location, things like the 'mindset' that the individual is in, if you are in a bad mood there is probably a larger chance of you encountering negative experiences, The 'environment' itself, if you were in a pitch black scary house you would be more likely to develop certain feelings (e.g. fear, panic) and the aura of a place like if you were at a 16th century church it would have a different aura to the high st Barclays bank branch.

 Pearson in addition says that it is substantial to allow viewers to get a dynamic perspective and for that person or viewers to directly interact with the setting as a way of experiencing from a primary perspective and for that reason provides for the actual development of individual understanding along with decryption the location or 'site' provides.

The most significant point in this particular extract will be his debate regarding how architectural factors impress human being existence along with it’s ability in order to prohibit our movements along with creating a partition in people culturally and by simply class. By means of experience he says we can take a great understanding of how place, performance and participant come together.

My Ideas For Final Performance So Far....

From the research i did on Monet I think a GREAT idea for my site specific performance would be to focus on the change of a site from light to dark, i was also shown his recently when i went to the forest a few weeks ago on a ''spiritual journey'' and we were in th most lush meadow surrounded by trees of every color, but alas, we ventured to far and had to make our way back in the pitch back with no torch or source of light and the are changed completely, it was terrifying, gone were the over-saturated colors of the plants and trees and every rustle in the bushes felt made you think a giant rapist leopard was imminently pouncing. I would like to highlight the importance of sunlight, and color in relation to site specific performance.

 Here are some photo's i found during my research that signify the great power that sunlight has to transform a site.

Monet Reseach

I read this excerpt from a website ht i totally stumbled on by chance whilst writing about the Spiraljetty and it as inspired me on a great level, I've never really been into paintings that much, of course i like them and i find some amazing but its not something that i follow but this website intrigued me so much with this one paragraph and some of the late impressionist's paintings.

CLAUDE MONET (1840-1926)
'Rouen Cathedral - The Portal', 1894
(oil on canvas)

CLAUDE MONET (1840-1926)
'Rouen Cathedral in the Morning Fog', 1894
(oil on canvas)

CLAUDE MONET (1840-1926)
'Rouen Cathedral in Grey Weather', 1894
(oil on canvas)

CLAUDE MONET (1840-1926)
'Rouen Cathedral - Harmony in Brown', 1894
(oil on canvas)

'Rouen Cathedral in the 1890's (photograph)

''Impressionist painters tried to capture the quality of light and atmosphere of a subject under particular lighting or weather conditions. The Impressionist’s painting technique allowed artists to create colours and tones that had more natural appearance than anything achieved by traditional methods of painting.
The Impressionists rejected the old idea that the shadow of an object was made up from the colour of the object with some brown or black added. They avoided the use of brown and black. The range of colours Monet used was drawn from the spectrum. He did not mix up his colours before he painted them, but broke them down into their separate hues and then painted them in small strokes of pure colour next to each other. For example, if he was painting a green object he would paint strokes of yellow and blue together which, on being viewed from a distance, would form a green in the eye of the spectator. Another technique he used was to tint his shadows with complementary (opposite) colours to give them more vitality. For example, in this painting of 'Rouen Cathedral in Full Sunlight' he creates the brown shadows of the building by painting strokes of yellow and red to make orange and then darkens them with spots of blue. All this is done with strokes of pure unmixed colours which blend in the eye of the viewer''

 http://www.artyfactory.com/art_appreciation/landscapes/claude_monet.htm

As shown here, the cathedral is or the most part a static element, something that does not change in appearance day to day but through Monets paintings we can see that the site can change in how it looks just by a change in the weather, from looking glorious and holy on a sunny day to looking dark and sinister when there is an overcast.

Smithson's Spiraljetty and The Ghosts of the Site Specific past

Last week i was advised by my tutor to look at Robert Smithson's 'Spiraljetty', A piece of site specific art in which the earth was moved to form a 1500 footling and 15 foot wide spiral out of basalt and other rocks protruding from the shore of a salt lake in Utah, USA. The Spiraljetty is a fine example of site specific art as the spiral is situated in a particular salt lake where the rocks give off a reddish color due to microorganisms that thrive there and the spiral itself representative of what the salt crystals in the lake look like close up. Smithson's work can be compared alot with Monet’s Rouen Cathedral series. Monet was a french imprssionist who painted a cathedral at a certain time each day as to get what he considered the perfect sunlight to gather the ideal perspective on his artwork on canvas, except with robert Smithsons work he did not use nature as a bridge between him and his hanvas, he used the earth itself to create a canvas right in nature itself. ''By drawing a diagram, a ground plan of a house, a street plan to the location of a site, or a topographic map, one draws a "logical two dimensional picture." A "logical picture" differs from a natural or realistic picture in that it rarely looks like the thing it stands for. It is a two dimensional analogy or metaphor - A is Z.'' (Smithson, 1968) http://www.robertsmithson.com/essays/provisional.htm

Gianfranco Gorgoni’s famous picture of the Spiraljetty

The idea of the Spiraljetty leads to the idea of 'ghosts' and memory of a site that i was reading about in relation to site specific performance where there was discussion about what you leave as part of you at a site for example when you go to a festival on the first day you enter lush green pastures and by the lime you leave the are which the festival was held looks lie a site where a battle had taken place, there would be rubbish everywhere, lost items of clothing, and even weeks after when all the debris has been cleared the earth and grass will still look damaged, so the imprint of the performance (the festival) has been left as a memory in the site. This again is apparent in the Spiraljetty artwork in a sense that Smithson has created an imprint in the site of a lake that will be there for a very long time even when the beauty of the intended look has been diminished the imprint and the evidence of tourists attending the the site will be there for a very long time.

.

Session 3 The Proud Archivist and a new French Word

Today's lesson was at the proud archivist in dalstn, a lovely location, right next to the canal for a bourgeoisie overpriced coffee shop indeed, it seems like this will be a nice place to study this semester and i cant wait to see what's in store for us.

This lesson i learned a new word - 'derive', which means to explore a location in order to grasp as much detail about it as possible, so with that n mind i joined a few of my classmates and we went for a walk, or 'derive'.

We went on our derive along the canal, paying detail to every step of the journey and taking the time to take in the many normally disguised sights along the journey, the first thing we saw was what looked to be an old oven made out of bricks at the side on the canal, this, to me looked like a great place to cook some sausages at breaktime next week perhaps, or MAYBE we could get it running again and offer bbq food to passers by in exchange or a story about the area? or fill it with with firewood on a cold night and film who comes to stand by it for warmth?? FINAL PERFORMANCE IDEAS After taking in this sight we moved on, on our derive further along the canal, and stopped under a bridge to sing some songs in the greatly echoed surroundings of the tunnel,

we also noticed that the light when pictured at the tunnel from outside was completely different from the light when pictured inside.

and then headed past a vast amount of house boats which made my site-specific-ly tuned mind think about the meaning of home as a site to the people living on those boats, for most people  the notion of home is static in that your house is always in one location but in those peoples cases the idea of home as an area is constantly moving and fluid, just like the water itself. 

at the ed of the canal we came to a park that had inside a separate are with a children's Park where w stopped for a bit to eat (and to play on the climbing frames) then we came back to the proud archivist to re-group and there i met Jake whom i spoke to for a bi and then we decided to be partners in this project.

When we arrived back at the proud archivist we were asked to draw the journeys we had just made on a piece of paper, basically making a map of or our recent derive, so we began to draw a map of our journey using the pencils, maps and glue provided, but i got bored of the ingredients we were given as they did not represent my memory of what i had seen on my journey so i started using the salt brown sugar ( to represent the gravelly path on which we walked) and pepper, water and soggy tea bags (to represent the murky canal), amongst a few other things dispensable that i could get my hands on. I very much enjoyed this activity.

Images of the maps we made

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