Studio Gateway

Continuing to work on the theme that your group chose for Assessment 2, devise a series of experiments and document your process on Tumblr. You don’t need to continue with the same focus/approach etc that you took in Assessment 2, you just need to continue to work in response to the theme and follow your own interest as it is developing as and through your practice.

Considering the outcomes of the preliminary experiments, develop a final work or body of work(s). The work(s) can be in any medium or material. 

The final project must be posted to Tumblr. Make sure, if your work is not digital, that you have good photo, audio or video documentation.

You must also upload a 300-word concept statement that contextualises your work. Consider your process and the curation of the final works. This is your chance to give an account of your practice and to situate your work in the context of historical and contemporary art/media/design. Don’t just describe what you did, and don’t just make overly general statements or claims about what the work ‘means’. Keep to the specifics of the processes of experimentation, reflection and refinement. Talk about the materials you use and some of the impacts of the medium you chose to work in.

This is an individual assessment, but you should make use of your group from Assessment 2, with whom you will by now share ideas, approaches and intimacies. Ask each other for advice and feedback and pool your resources – references, materials, concepts, snacks, etc.

Make sure you think hard about how you ‘present’ the final work(s). Ask yourself: if I went online/into a gallery/into the streets, would I engage with this work? Would I be impressed/intrigued/pissed off? Remember, you are making ART, MEDIA, AND/OR DESIGN WORK! Don’t get so bogged down in the theme that you forget this fact! The themes are there to provide a prompt/provocation. The onus is on you to take up the theme and to make work that furthers your practice in the context of contemporary work. Make something you’d like to see in the world.

“ A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.” From the Philosophy of Andy Warhol

Erik Satie’s compositions Vexations (1893) is a very short piano theme that bears the instructions: "In order to play the theme 840 times in succession, it would be advisable to prepare oneself beforehand, and in the deepest silence, by serious immobilities.“ Here, difference is enacted through repetition with each iteration of Satie’s simple theme being altered by minor changes (in tempo, touch, environmental noise, the perception of the audience, etc).

Fran Barrett - 12 Hour Revolution

In The 12-Hour Revolution, Frances Barrett endures a repetition of the same act: crawling on her hands and knees in a circle on the floor of the Sydney Guild gallery space. Her pace might vary according to her enthusiasm for the action, her level of fatigue, her physical and mental capabilities and the passing of time. But the action will remain the same. It will be repeated over the course, as the title indicates, of twelve long hours. As each circle is completed, the artist will honk a horn. The sound of this horn will be recorded and relayed on the hour, every hour, from the time it is made, to the end of the 12 hour period. 

A singularly repetitive act, Barrett’s work asks: “And what is it to repeatedly endure: To travel under the burden of the same strain, under the weight of the very same laborious action over and over? Is it noble to bear this repetition in the hope that its very undertaking is not empty but instead part of a ritual, or that there is a political import to its completion?” 

On Kawara -  I Got Up

Benjamin’s influential essay ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ analysed photography and film in particular for the effects it had on aesthetic experience. Excerpt below via Yale’s modernism site. 

Eva Hesse

Repetition Nineteen III is composed of 19 translucent, bucket-like forms, each approximately 20 inches tall. Minimalist artists explored serial repetition of identical units, but Hesse loosened that principle. Her forms are handmade and irregular rather than manufactured and hard-edged. They are similar to one another in size and shape, but none of them are exactly alike. Repetition Nineteen III sits directly on the gallery floor. Hesse was flexible about the arrangement of the nineteen units that make up this work. She did not give specific instructions about how her work was to be arranged, so its overall shape varies with each installation.

Here’s a link to an excellent resource called “Collections and Archives as Creative Practice”

https://collectingseminar.wordpress.com/2008/11/02/claes-oldenburgs-the-ray-gun-wing/

Claes Oldenburg’s Ray collection of objects that look like ray guns.

1. Erik Satie - Vexations (1893)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBhjGIdL5cM

2. Steve Reich - Come Out (1966)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0WVh1D0N50

3. William Basinski - The Disintegrations Loops, 1.1 ( 2002)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYOr8TlnqsY

4. Matmos - Steam and Sequins for Larry Levan (2006)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBPUHD0rROI

5. Steve Reich - Violin Phase (1969)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nx-9UQsnGys

6. Phillip Jeck - Vinyl Coda II (2000)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryirulrJ_wM

7. The Necks - Sex (1989)

Probably my favourite triumph of art through failure.

A Spanish woman, while volunteering at her Church, was touching up the tunic on a damaged fresco. She accidentally painted onto the face, kept touching up, and eventually repainted the entire image. Everyone freaked out, of course, but I think it is utterly perfect.