ENVIRONMENT EVALUATION

My overall interpretation of the ‘Environment’ brief was to make the brief relate more to myself and the way I done this was basing it around the Body. Rather than looking plainly at what’s around you I wanted to study what’s inside you. I found my thought process through this idea very difficult to come across in my visual recordings.

First I started looking at figure drawings and artist that mainly have work based around the human silhouette. But while writing in my reflective journal I realised that I had been slightly led astray from my initial concept. I think this was because I was looking at it far too literally. Whether that was a success or a failure to add to my body of work I don’t know. But by doing this it led me to think the totally different and I began to do studies of incidental markings. Drawing ink splatters on the floor, photographing random scuffs and marks that you wouldn't usually look at. This helped me understand and realise that what I was actually trying to make visual recordings of, I couldn't exactly see. Following the similar idea that Picasso had when he went to a market. He went to a market when it was closed to see what hadn't been bought rather than what had been. This helped me to think more ‘outside the box’ and look at conceptual artist such as Dario Escabar, Jacob Dahl Gren etc. This inspired me to create pieces that where based around every day object that could be related to organs e.g. Lungs- Balloon, Stomach- container.

I then began to look at motions for example, swallowing, breathing, heart beat etc. This then progressed to my final piece. I sat in a spare studio space all day and recorded these motions by simply listening to myself and ‘the way my body ticks’. I tried to replicate this in my recordings but I found that I was thinking far too much and not actually listening to myself. So I went on youtube and played a ticking clock sound effect and played it out loud as I work. The clock ticking replicated my own pulse and helped me create different pieces to a rhythm. Once I had collected a decent amount of recordings I then stapled them to the wall to create a complete composition. It almost seemed like a brain storm of visual recording of the internal body. From my many struggles throughout this brief, I think it was a well suited way to sum up the brief for me as a final piece. The body is a very difficult thing to understand and I think this brief made me realise the difference between the body and the mind. They work totally separately and we subconsciously dismiss our own music.

I don’t think I would have done much differently apart from doing more research, but I think I have gained an awful lot from this brief into my own understanding of myself.