Tim Gregory COFA1001-2015

Ways of seeing: Summer Hill on a Saturday Afternoon

Experimenting with an animation based on photos I took in the piazza in Summer Hill, sitting on a bench watching people and watching pigeons. Even though I sit here often, I get this strange feeling of intruding on the space of the old men who sit for hours every day, and the pigeons who seem to loiter in a peaceful way, pecking the ground and, uh… courting other pigeons.

I was here for 45 minutes just sitting and noticed the details which contributed to the sense of stillness and movement in this neighbourhood. It’s busy but quiet, and nobody rushes around but everyone’s walking with some purpose.

I ended up choosing photographs of pigeons showing affection towards each other and collated them into this .GIF, which summarised much of my experience of watching these pigeons. I looked down from above as they danced at my feet.

I then edited and mashed a series of photographs I took of people’s legs as they walked back to their cars in the car park. I took these photos from a pigeons-eye-view (i.e. ground level – it’s hard to engage in courtship procedure while flying) without a tripod. I think the agitated movement of the animation mimics the peculiar rate that time passes when you sit and watching the world, so it’s kind of like what pigeons experience of people when they’re taking a break from pecking invisible crumbs and having sex. 

Ways of seeing continued: For this experiment I used 3 layers of paper where a hole is ripped in the first one to provide a window for the face.

I wanted to explore and reflect on identity/racial blurs in humanity, blurring our ways of categorising and classifying our identity via different means, e.g. Things we like/how we ‘accessorise ourselves etc.

It would iterate a way of seeing our identity embedded into one: simply humans - our identity that is stripped bare from all materialism and culture, often culture that is romanticised I think?

WEEK 11- CHANCE

randomness procedure complexity constraint indeterminacy contingency salad aleatory unexpectedness Fluxus Oulipo Situationist International Dada probability surprise predestiny serendipity RAM accident involuntary forms

Aims for Week Eleven: • Consider the role of chance in the experimental process; • Discuss chance-based or ‘aleatory’ art and design works; • Strategise how chance can be used in practice as a means for developing projects; • Discuss the relationship between control and chance in creative practice; • Consider the role that chance can or does play in your Assessment 3 work(s).

Studio Exercise

This weeks studio exercise for our class directly involved the notion of chance; especially the randomness and unpredictability factor.

Each of us had to put our mobile number into a raffle, each person pulled out a random number each. The task, was to text this person for the week. Overall, we had 2 conversations in action at once.

This task was really interesting, with 2 different tones to each conversation. My conversations were with, Aidan and Sylvia. With Sylvia, I played a game of 20 questions for the 7 days, asking weird and wacky questions to each other, without revealing our identities. The conversation with Aidan, focused on our projects, sharing our ideas and improvements we could make, and also general conversation.

Note: In regards to assessment 3, I found this class experiment quite relevant to my assessment. The idea, that the information we are provided with, effects our perception, the opinion we form. Without knowing who these people were in initial conversation, my only information is what they supplied.

This is Clare’s log of class activities during the experiment conducted by Tim’s class and ours.

11:27 Ten students leave for pub/food 

11:30 One student begins drawing on a whiteboard 

11:32 Class integration between two students observed 

11:35 Five students integrating, others talking/working on assessments 

11:35 Three students approach the lectern. Giggling. 

11:37 Student closes door 

11:39 Students put the Lion King on 11:39 Heckling 

11:40 A student issues an ultimatum to the class whilst waving a metal rod, denies reentry to other students 

11:41 Lights turned off 11:42 Inter-class flirting at lectern 

11:43 Man mans the mouse at lectern. Group of women oversee. 

11:44 Man leaves lectern. Women rule the lectern 

11:45 Cats on internet. 

11:48 Declaration of Independence played 

11:48 Students unable to reenter classroom 

11:51 Students break in using force 

11:54 Student reenters, dons dress from Vinnies with tags. 

Responsibility

Mark Greif’s Seeing Through Police 

Pablo and the Art Workers’ Coalition

A public is never found: it is always built

Interview with Bernard E. Harcourt

EDITING EXPERIMENT ONE

Changing image formate and visual perception.

2D → 3D