Move: Around the World in 1 Minute

This will be my first post since I've started my Uni course and I've been meaning to update my blog with all i've experienced in the past month. I saw this film from Channel 4's Random Acts segment. This film is by STA Travel Austrailia where they sent Rick Mereki, Andrew Lees and Tim White on an amazing trip around the world. A 6 week journey of a lifetime crammed into one epic minute. This film would have been an interesting resource for my journey project last year.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BrDlrytgm8&feature=relmfu

Summary

My final installation follows my proposal fairly closely as i've tried to stick to my origanal plan and work around any problems I was faced with. I always planned to have a bedroom piece in the same style as "My Bed" by Tracy Emin, but to extend this with a physical representation of the dreams and distress around the room. I feel that the paper lace has come together to show this really well as its many loops and twists, along with all the the intricate detail within the chains themselves showed the complex nature of dreams. I also think that the quilt has come together well, each patch showing a different person sleeping with different dreams in each patch. This shows the variety of dreams and how each dream is individual even with some similarities. The floor piece was not in my proposal as I added this idea later on when I was planning my installation, follwing on from the lace patterns I had been using throughout the design of the room. The floor piece is not as clear as I had hoped in my original idea however I think the faded patterns do give more a dream like feel. I also think the way all of the designs are linked with the use of lace helps to bring it all together and show that its somewhere between being awake and being asleep. The film has been a challenge although I think it has turned out well, I like the way the tv in the corner of the room integrates the film into the dream like state of the room, by showing a few dream sequences and the music behind them it is part of the not quite sleeping and not quite awake theme of them room.

Floor Dust Pattern

Once i had starting planning out my installation I decided that it would be a good idea to do a floor piece to accompany the room. It was Catherine Bertola that inspirsed me to work on the floor, as she had done a number of dust patterns which i thought could be used aswell to represent dreams within the room. I decided that I wanted to continue the lace theme that has run through the rest of the piece linking all aspects together. I had a rough idea of how i could create a pattern with the lace and I had a temporary fabric adhesive that I knew would not be too hard to clean up, but would be sticky enough to create the pattern. My method of creating this pattern was to place the lace on the floor where i wanted the pattern, sprayed the adhesive over the top of the lace, removing the lace and then spreading the "dust" across the space.

I had to do some tests to find out what kind of "dust" I was going to use. I tested flour and baby powder, I found that as the baby powder was easier to spread and stuck better to the floor. I also noticed that the adheasive wasn't particularly resistant to brush strokes and this began to bring the pattern up when i was spreading the powder around. I resolved this by using a brush with more fine bristles, a make up brush worked well. I also noticed that the thicker the layer of spray adhesive meant that a thicker layer of powder stuck, which made the pattern easier to see. I made note of this so that i knew to get a good layer of adhesive down during the real piece. I also decided to test how the tests lasted when left over time, I left the test on the floor for a few days to see how it had faded. This showed that the pattern wouldn't fade over time which was good as it had to last a few days once it had been created.

The real piece was on a much larger scale, this meant that a larger area had to be sprayed before the lace was removed, which also made it harder to definitely spray everywhere, and evenly. This caused a problem, towards the end of the first spray the first can began to run out. This meant that the end of the pattern was patchy. The only solution was to clean up this section and to do it again, carefully. This is because I wanted the pattern to match up. Another issue was with the cleaning up, this is because I had to brush away the powder. I had to brush the powder around before brushing it away from the space, and once all of this powder was away from the piece it had to be cleaned up as it can be very slippery. I had to be very careful not to clean off any of my work while making sure all the podwer was up.

Cut Out Lace

I knew I wanted to have a physical dipiction of the 'dream energy' that flows around the room, I talked about this in my proposal as I thought this would be a good way of blurring the boundry between being asleep and being awake in the installation design.

My biggest influence to make these is Mia Pearlman's Cut Paper that represent clouds, the intricate design with pieces of paper twisted and intertwined shows a very complex and beautiful design which i thought could also represent the physical aspect of dreams well. I was also influenced by Tord Boontje, he worked with paper/plastic flower chains to design furniture, as he is a product designer. Although this was not the affect I was trying to achieve I liked the way the patterns in the chains showed detail in even the smallest section. This is what made me choose a lace pattern design, it allowed me to use chains of lace/paper to achieve what I wanted and give extra detail to really make the piece show the complexity of dreams within this physical representation. Another reason for my lace choice was because I had already used it on my quilt and this would help the room to flow better as the different designes would all match.

I began to look at two options for this wall piece, both of which were to do with lace patterns. My first idea was to cut out chains of the lace pattern and use many of these chains on the wall to create the effect. I tested this by placing sheets of black paper on the wall, cutting out a couple of chains from a lace curtain and sticking them up to see how this would look. The black paper was to make sure that the lace could be seen clearly against the wall during the tests, and could be seen in pictures more easily when doing test comparisons.

The other idea was to create a stencil for this lace pattern and create much longer chains by cutting out this design from paper, this idea origanated from my first project as I had done something similar wih repetitve map patterns. This of course was a little different as the patterns would be much thinner and more inticate, and there would be many long chains. To test this i used blue tak to temporerily stick up a chain to see how it would look, this pattern was more easily distinquishable from the wall so I did not use any black paper behind this chain.

After these tests, I decided that the paper lace chains were the better choice as they seemed to give a better representation of dreams. This is because the actual lace chains would not stay in the pattern shape as it is flexible whereas the paper patterns maintain there shape better. Also the lace cut outs were too small for a large scale design and took a much longer to cut out as it is a very long and difficault task to cut out each lace chain as they are very intricate.

I used long reels of paper that i folded back on itself before cutting patterns into it, this made the long chains of the repeating pattern. I began putting these up with double sided tape until it looked like the right position and then using pins once it did. After putting up a couple of these chains and becoming more confident about where to position them, I decided to put some in the air, hanging from invisible thread as i thought this would help to invole the whole room in the physical aspect of the dream. As I put up these chains I made sure they were twisted which helped give it all a different look, dispite being a repeat of one pattern. This twisting goes back to my influences from Mia Pearlman, as she has twisted paper which gave the effect I was trying to achieve. I also tried to spread out the chains starting from the bed, the start here is much thicker and has more chains and as it spreads out it becomes thinner like the dreams are flowing and spreading over the room as they help to blur the line between being asleep and being awake.

Making My Quilt of Dreams

Once I had stitched all the patches together into a block of patches, I started on the boarder. I placed the block of patches on the bed to work out how big I needed the boarder for it to fit on the bed. Once measured out I cut the out the big strips and pinned it around the block of patches making sure I folded the boarder diagonally to fit each together at the corners.
At this point it was considered there was something missing on the bottom row as there were painted patches all on the top three rows it seemed like our attention was drawn away from the bottom by these. To fix this I painted on the lace patch on the bottom (the one furthest away from the painted patch above) making painted patches on every row.

When the front was together I stitched a big piece of fabric for the back leaving a hole in the bottom unstitched for me to put the wadding inside. With the wadding inside I hand stitched the small gap up with loose stitches of white thread for it to be unseen.

Having the quilt all stitched together all I had left was additional stitching all over the quilt to finish it off; making it look padded in the stitched around areas. I used invisible thread to stitch around the patches so the stitches were unseen in order to seperate the patches from each other.

Before stitching text around the boarder I needed to test out the ideas I had for what to put around the boarder. So I took a picture of my quilt and printed off multiple copies to write on text to see what work best. I looked at using quotes of dreams, quotes from the existing dreams of my survey results and sleep related words.

words - I felt having just sleep related words was quite a typical thing to do and it's something I've seen done quite often. I would prefer a sentance more that a mess of words in random places.

big Quotes- These both have too many words that it would be impossible for me to able to fit it all on and get it finished in time.

Shakespear quotes - It was left to choose between these two shakespear quotes, and from re-reading them I chose the quote from Henry V as it talks about sleep in more depth than the other.

I drew onto the boarder lightly in pencil marking out the letters for me to stitch over with blue thread, this gave me a guide to follow to make sure that the lettering was spaced well and stayed in a straight line along the boarder. I used blue thread for the text because it creates a relaxed calm feeling, and as this colour is very nuetral it also does not show any bad dreams or negative feelings and helps to show the relaxed atmosphere the installation creates. Also the blue thread fitted in with the colours already used throughtout the quilt, keeping the quilt, and the installation within the same colour scheme, ensuring that it all flows into each other as dreams do.
　
Paint Problem
When I had painted on the quilt after the front was stitched together I accidentally got yellow oil paint on the white boarder. After failing to clean it off with turps and a cotton bud, I need to fix this by covering it with something. I tested covering it with white oil paint but it was still obvious that it had paint on so I added to it by gluing cut out lace over the painted sections. This worked well to hide the paint. For it not to look odd that there were a couple of lace in the corner I add more lace the diagonally opersite corner, framing the quilt with lace. I that by adding lace to the boarder has actually improved it by bringing out the patches even more that the patches weren't seperate to the boarder, bringing it all together.

Film Music

Once I had finished editing my sequence together my last thing to do was to sort out and put together the music. I looked at each sequence individually to find the right music to set the mood i'm trying to achieve.

Doppelganger - When watching this i thought a minimalist style would help to show both the sureal theme that runs throughout the film and a sense of conflict between the personalities. The different layers of the music fade in as they begin to argue showing the rising tension.

Reverse - From watching this i thought it should be something very light hearted as the people walking around the table are creating an atmosphere that contrasts the serious nature of the central character. The music begins with a metronome as the other parts fades in over the top, this metronome creates a ticking sound like a clock going backwards, which coinsides with this reversed section. There is also a line within the track which i think fits well with this section "I'll always be by your side" which is ironic as he clearly has no idea of the people passing behind him.

Woods - I thought that this scene needed music that emphesised the distress and a sense that the character was lost. The music i chose helped to create this effect as it has a weird distant sound that also has an eerie feel to it.

Transitional - For these parts I wanted something quite heavy that will show the depth of the transitional pieces as there are many layers to each transition there is also more layers to the music. This also helps to seperate the different dream scenes, showing a change in the dream, like travelling into a new part of the "dream world".

After picking the appropriate songs i used garage band to edit these together to fit with the film. I uploaded the film onto garage band so that the music could be seen playing along side the film, making it easier to pinpoint where the music had to begin and finish. I had to cut down each song to ensure the correct part was with each section, and the length fitted the clip while allowing some extra so the music from each section could fade into each other.

Adding the Bedding

I wanted to make the bed look used and give an impression of a restless sleep. First of all I knew i needed a matress, a sheet, a blanket and a pillow(s). It was unrealistic to get a matress into my installation, so i decided that an airbed would be a suitable replacement. I put the airbed on the bed frame and the sheet on the airbed. I then wanted to use the pillow, blanket and my quilt to make the bed look as though it had been slept in/was being slept in. To do this I looked over my images of people in bed to see what kind of shapes and positions the quilts and pillows were left in. This gave me some idea of how to make the bed look messy, I placed the pillow, blanket and quilt on the bed in the same way they were in some of the pictures. This helped to create the restless atmosphere I was after.

Starting to Make My Quilt

I measured out a quilt to be around 2m x 1m and the biggest I could get my sleeping pics on fabric is the size of an A3 piece of paper. This worked out that I could fit 12 patches in my quilt if I made the patches square.
After making the decision of using my developed sleeping images for patches on my quilt, I needed to pick what patch technique I'd like in my quilt. My patches looked good together but it would be better to have only 3 or 4 styles and make a few with different sleeping pictures in these style shows a links all over the quilt instead of it being too overwhelming. My favorite as well as most people's opinion was the image with the lace sewn on. Having this idea to start with let me pick and choose others that would work well with it with similar trates but also use different mediums like stitched pieces. I chose one where I stitched in drawing the pattern of the lace and the one where I stitched circular around and image of someone. I also wanted to have painted patches within my quilt aswell to highlight the sleeping image aswell as trying to show dreams coming out from people in the images.

For each technique I needed specifically set images like for my circular stitches patches I needed pictures of people from above. The painted patches needed close up images, the stitched lace would need space above the people in the image and the lace patches needed the people to be in the middle with space around for lace.

When making the patches I was able to change things about the patches. i used a cream thread of the stitched lace drawing as its a similar to the colour of lace but also stood out from the white backgrounds. i wanted to use pale colours for the circular stitched and the white wasn't very noticable and the darker tones were too harsh as the paler colour for the calmness of sleeping. I didn't stitch in small flowers and leaves into the lace patches as from the distance people wouldn't notice them very much.

After making the patches I played around with the positioning of the patches, I attempted to go for a diagonal pattern for each patch type. I also kept the two lace type patches seperate because they are too similar. Meaning the rows between two lace images were for the painted and circular stitch patches. I put the painted patches quite central as these were quite bright in comparison to the others, especially the patch of the blonde haired person.

Film Editing

After filming the footage for my four dream sequence I began to edit each individually.

Doppelgangers

I started editing this sequence firstly by putting the two film sequences together. I cropped the the left and right sides accordingly to each half and when placed on top of each other they lined up almost perfectly because I kept the camera in the same place for each filming process. There was a slight line down the middle but this is barely noticeable and sure won't be when viewed on the small and old TV in my installation. I had problems when matching up the two sides with their interactions because one side was talking a lot faster than the other. This was because when filming we tried matching it up with another person repeating the lines, looking back now I should have recorded the sound of the first side of the lines while filming and played it back to match up perfectly with the second side's lines. To fix this I had to cut sections of film and speed up the long gaps within the right side's lines to start talking straight after the left side had finished. When I edited this sequence I decided to keep out the part where the person on the right would enter the room, as we get that they have came in when they enter the shot, also this was hard to get the left person to watch the right person sit down, which was difficult to express without the other person actually being there. Once the two sides were perfectly lined up with interaction I needed to figure out what to do with sound of them talking, I could either keep the sound or add subtitles. Keeping the sound would interrupt with the music chosen for this sequence. when I chose to add subtitles i found that the words below were distracting people from viewing the sequence and by this I realized that what they were saying is irrelevant but instead that there are two of the same people in one shot which is important, so to fix this I changed the scrip into French and added these for subtitles as this also shows they are interacting and that i haven't forgot that but keeping main interest on the two people.

Reversed Chronology

When I tried to put the footage onto final cut pro there was a fault with it, it didn't up load the end part where people threw balloons and confetti. After re-uploading and starting new projects on final cut that final part would still not come up to edit, luckily I was still able to use the rest of the footage. I reversed what I had that still worked perfectly well for the intentions of this sequence. when looking through the sequence there were very obvious gaps where people there wasn't anyone walking behind the center figure, so i cut the film during these parts and speed them up, making them shorter for the next group of people to come in shot.

Woods Trail

Because I story boarded precisely what I wanted I found filming and editing this sequence a lot easier and i was able to film it all in one go without having to go backwards and forwards between filming and editing. I knew from my storyboard how i was telling the story so this didn't take very long for me to cut the sections of film and keeping them together. During filming I filmed a few parts that weren't story boarded. I filmed a close up of my main character picking up the wool he is following and I also filmed upwards towards the trees above while walking around. This really gives a sense of time passing as we have moved away from the main character while also showing that there is still movement.

Backwards Smoking
When i came back to the footage I had for my back wards smoking sequence I found that through out the footage the smoke didn't show up at all, making this footage useless for my dream sequence. it was concluded that it could have been that it was too dark for it to be capture on film and that if i were to film it again it could work if I were to have better lighting but we we're still uncertain this would work.I could either take this sequence idea out of my film or try to film it better. If I were to have more time to text this and film it again i would but with all my other sequences it didn't seem required as i probably have enough footage of surreal dreams with just my other 3 sequences.

Transitional Dreams

Using the three types of footage of projected marked and painted film, Ink mixing in water and ink dripping down a plane of glass. I layered these and changed the opacity by using the "Overlay" function on final cut pro. I tried to use footage for the three types of footage that doesn't have the same colours so we'd be able to see each layer. I used the footage of dripped ink with only one colour as with all the other footage I didn't want too many of the same colours flowing at once as you wont see the the different parts separately as the painted film footage is moving really fast.

Transitional Problem
Once I had edited all the seperate dream footage and I needed to merge each sequence together with transitions. I wanted a transition that goes from one image of footage and fades directly into the already playing next footage. I thought this transition would be best for my film as with dreams they dont stop and start they flow continuously overlaping and having no direct link as it's all a random stream of things happening.

When I tried adding a transition but when I dragged the transition over to the footage it didn't add to the sequence. After playing around with the settings and failing, it was concluded that this was probably happening because of there being so many layers of footage and so much different editing occuring at once in one project. To fix this I exported the current footage that merged all the layers together into just one strip of film when I imported into a new project.

I used the cross dissolve transition but for this to work I had to split the footage into two layers for where the footage would switch layer each time for a transition because I need the next lot of footage to have started playing before the first lot of footage would fade out and finish.

Sourcing My Bedroom Furniture

The first thing i did for my installation was getting the furniture, this is because it helped me picture how the final installation would look and give me a better idea for sizes with the other sections. As I already had an idea what I wanted the final piece to look like, i knew what kind of furniture I needed. The bed was the first piece, I wanted something wooden because it give a softer tone than a hard metal bed, along with a warmer feeling than you get from a cold metal bed. The recycled bed I had chosen works well for the atmosphere i'm trying to create because of it's dark colour and scratches showing that it is worn, which is important to show that it is a restless night. I thought that having my film played on a tv beside the bed adds to room aswell as enphasizing my aim to show dreams coming into the "real life" by having my dream sequence film integrated into the space. I needed a bed side table for something to put the tv on as well as adding to the bed room feel. When picking the bedside table I wanted it to be wooden so it wouldn't contrast with the bed.

When putting the furniture together in the space I switched the tv and bed around so the bed wasn't up against the wall. This opens up the space more making it bigger and inviting that they feel more in the room and involved. This also put the tv in the background making people look over the bed to view the film. So that i could plug in the tv and link the DVD player to it, I had to have a hole drilled in the wall so that I could reach a plug and place the DVD player elsewhere, this stopped me from having wires running across my instillation which would have ruined the atmosphere.

My Space

For my plan of my final installation to work I will specifically need a corner for me to create what seems like a room. I'd also need it to be quite big area for me to be able to fit an entire bed in aswell as extra space for my floor idea.

When I got my area I didn't have to change much of my plan because the biggest wall was on the right I had to reflect my plan accordingly for it to be the same.

Planning My installation

For my final installation I will be making a bedroom that is inspired by Tracy Emin's "My Bed". I will be doing a similar piece to this, creating a bedroom that shows restless sleep. I will be adding to this view of a room with a physical representation of dreams, to show show dreas merging with reality.
As the actual spaces for installations were not given to us at first i had some idea of what i wanted it to be like before I began creating it. This general idea helped shape the development of the space once it had been assigned, however I was unable to get a real plan in place before i could see what i was working with. Once I was able to get a feel for this, I could begin work on developing my ideas into the area I was given.

Dream Patches

I struggled to begin my dream patches because it's hard to make or draw something that doesn't exist like dreams. It was hard to picture these small stories into one single image without experiencing them. So I moved on from trying to make collages from the existing dreams of my survey results to looking at common dream themes as this would make it broad to create an idea of a story on a textile patch.

I looked at Dadaism for collage ideas of how to set out dream images, to use a lot of random images to create collages of a dream stories. Dadaists imitated the techniques developed during the cubist movement through the pasting of cut pieces of paper items. They used scissors and glue to express their views of modern life through images.

I also referred to the work of Tilleke Schwarz that uses a mixture of images and text in embroidery that contains a narrative quality. Schwarz's work would then over through Vicky Lindo's work for image design of patches as it would worked better with the collages, as it'd be like the collages but in a textile element.

Eventually I found that I was going nowhere with the collages by trying to use images I had sourced from the internet and the collage I was trying to make with these didn't create much of a story. This wasn't going in the direction that I wanted for these patches so I scrapped the idea for these patches. Instead of my dream patches I made the decision to change all my patch ideas to my developed sleeping. This works out easier as I have already developed sleeping images and it will add to my idea of dreams coming out into real life within my installation and make it more obvious what I’m trying to express by seeing images that describe it.

Initial Ideas for Quilt

When making patches for a quilt I looked at Vicky Lindo’s for its lucid stitch and appliquéd textile that show simplistic childish fantasies. I want to look at the stories of dreams that I had acquired from a survey I sent to everyone at my college.

My original idea is that I'll use the results from my survey as of existing dreams to use as ideas for the dream patches on my quilt while referring to Vicky Lindo's hand-embroidered pieces as a style for how the patches would look.

Thinking of patch ideas I came up with other types of patches I could include in my quilt plan, adding patches of sleeping images and text of dream quotes. I realised I'd need a boarder and looking back to my resources in my research folder I took inspiration from Jane Dunnewold's Baby quilt to have text stitched around the patches on the boarder instead of patches of text.

Fabric Dreams

Moving on from photography with the same aim i've attempted to show dreams on sleeping images using stitching, applique and paint.

Scratched Photos

Originally inspired by Soo kim's hand cut photography i attempted to cut and scratch into my own photos of sleeping images to attempt to describe with the marks dreams transgressing into a consious state.


i developed on from this by marking into undeveloped film of sleeping images again. i scratched, added bleech, ink, oil pastel and put it through a typewriter. The effect from these were quite nightmareish by looking damaged and partly over exposed. when i sent the film developed there was a problem where half of the images were printed incorrectly whihc i think really addes to the effect i was trying to create.

Film Resources & Filming

For me to set this out right i needed to look a existing resources for my films.

Doppelgangers: Seeing Themselves
Meshes of the Afternoon (1943)
Youth in Revolt (2009)
Fight Club (1999)
Black Swan (2011)
Biffy Clyro - "Mountains" music video (2010)

Process of Filming:
I set this in a class room as i've found from research that it's common for people to have dreams of being back at school. I needed these two people to be doing something when together in shot so i made a script for them both to interact, but because what they are saying isn't more important than them being together i made it simple as for just a disagreement. To make this i needed to use split screen meaning i would have to film this twice using the same person but also making sure the camera aswell as everything else remained in the same position.
Reffering to Fight Club I made obvious differences of the same person by the clothes they wore and the character they portraid. I made one wear lighter colours while the other wore dark colours giving the idea that the lighter dressed character is the good guy and the other is the bad guy. I contrasted with this by making the darker dressed character the light hearted and easy going character, where as the other is quite irritable.

Reversed Chronology: An Array of Different People Walking Through a Room With Someone Without Them Realising
Dreams: Cinema of Subconscious Documentary
Michel Gondry's Solving a Rubix Cube (2006)
Coldplay - "The Scientist" music video
The Pharcyde - "Drop" music video

Process of Filming:
Taking this idea from the inception dvd's dream documentary (Dreams: Cinema of subconscious) of an array of different people walking through a room without someone realising. i set this in a home for it to be more unusual that there are people walking through their house. I needed this to be in a continuous filming process as the person in the middle will constantly be in shot while the people walk behind. As I dont have many people to help me with this i'll be using them in shot a few time for walking by but in different outfits. For this i would have them getchanged quickly behing camera while others are in shot. I'll need to plan out exactly what people were wearing and what order they go out in order for this to work. i would be reversing this footage for these people to be walking unusally so i had the people walk backwards when filming for me to reverse the footage for them to walk forward.

Backwards Smoking: Reversed
Shutter Island (2010)
Richard Billingham's "Tony Smoking Backwards" (1998)

Process of Filming:
I'll be Filming someone smoking and once i've got the footage i'll reverse it for the smoke to go backwards. I've filmed at different angles to switch between. After filming i looked back at the footage to find that the smoke didn't show up on camera. As i dont have time to film this again and test out how i can fix this i've had to remove this idea.

Travelling Through the Woods: Following
Francis Alys' photographic documentation of expressing journeys using various materials like unraveling a wool jumper
City of the Lost Children (1995)

Process of Filming:
As i've planned this sequence the most in exact detail for which shots i'd be filming and what order. I took a trip to hartshill hayes woods to find a completely wooded area to film this. During filming i added some extra footage of a close up of my character picking up string and filming the view upwards to the trees above while moving.

Transitional dreams: linking between dream footage
Len Lye
Stan Brakage
Zineb Sedira
Foo Fighters - "Everlong" music video

Process of Filming:
i'll be layering the footage for these creating a middle transitional of dreams. I'll be painting onto clear film at the unravel workshop (longest painted film in britain) where i'll record the results, mix ink in water like Zineb Sedira and drip ink down a plane of glass similarly to the transitions into dream by Michel Gondry's video for Foo fighter's "everlong"

Film Planning

Looking at results from surveys I have found 12 common dream themes that people have:

• Flying
• Falling
• Being Chased
• Water
• Public Nudity
• Searching for Something
• Being Trapped
• Back at School
• Getting Lost
• Car Problems
• Travel
• Death

From my survey results, film research and watching a documentary on sleep and dreams (Dreams: Cinema of subconscious) showing through out a variety of beautifully made dream shorts, I decided on some film ideas:

• Reversed Smoking
• Being Followed or Following Something
• Being in the Woods
• Traveling
• Doppelgangers
• Flying/Falling Stopmotion
• An Array of Different People Walking Through a Room With Someone Without Them Realising
• Transitional parts between the footage

After more planning and working out what is possible for me to do aswell as all my work I cut down on all the more time consuming and difficult ideas. I got rid of the flying/falling stopmotion as this would take me the longest and would leave me with no time for my other work. I also didn't want to have any traveling footage as I've already worked with the theme of travel in film. I have combined being followed or following something with being in the woods, giving a narrative to a possibly dream area. I needed something for them to follow and looking back at my previous project where i left trails of string on journeys i went the opersite way by following a trail of string.

Restless Movement

I was inspired by Claire Sloan’s "Sleep for Days" photography, a series of super long exposures. Some of these were for 6 hours. It’s her portrayal of movement during sleep that I was most interested, that within one image you can see the restlessness of the night.

With this in mind, I’ve tried to create my own similarly. As I am unable to take such long exposures I’ve fashioned an alternative way to create moment images. Instead of taking long exposure photos I took a series of photos all keeping the camera in the same place and layered them in threes on Photoshop. I then changed the opacity to reveal the ghostly figures.

New Project: Sleep/Sleepless

For my final project of my foundation art year i'm am to begin with a proposal describing everything I intend to achieve during this project. This project is going to be looking at sleep and sleeplessness by trying to show both concious and nonconcious sides within one.

Proposal: 'Never Really Asleep, Never Really Awake'

The title of my project is a quote from the movie ‘Fight Club’, where the lead character describes his insomnia. I chose this as I wanted it to express both the conscious and dream states of mind. I shall be creating an installation piece based on an insomniac's bedroom. A film will depict their restlessness, hallucinations and dreams transgressing into real life. In my previous project I combined textiles with film and I now want to extend this idea, by working on an even larger scale with multiple elements. The film will challenge me the most as it will require detailed planning and editing to create the narrative. This combined with textile techniques that require a lot of experimentation will mean I have a very packed schedule.

I started my research by looking at work that refers to sleeplessness and insomnia. I found Pablo Arroyo's staged photography in 'Sleepless Men' and Claire Sloan's and Mohammed Amine Nasseri's portrayal of movement in sleep, to be a good starting point. 'Picasso' by Gjon Mili influenced me to consider brain activity during sleep. I wanted to then look at ways I could represent and it was Louisa Bufardeci's embroidered sound waves that I found very similar to brain waves.

When making patches for a quilt I looked at Vicky Lindo’s hand-embroidered pieces for its lucid stitch and appliquéd textile that show simplistic childish fantasies. I want to look at the stories of dreams that I had acquired from a survey I sent to everyone at my college. I’ll be using these results to influence my quilt and film. For film ideas I began to watch films either about insomnia or dreams. I looked at dream sequences in Salvador Dali’s ‘Un Chien Andalou’, Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound, Michel Gondry’s ‘Science of Sleep’ and Maya Deren’s ‘Meshes of the Afternoon’.

I’ve related my installation to Tracey Emin’s ‘My Bed’ and ‘To Meet My Past’. I wanted to infer that there is or has been someone within this room, this idea was inspired by Floris Neususs’ ‘Be Right Back’, that I saw at the ‘Shadow Catchers’ exhibition at the V&A . Both Parul Thacker’s ‘Cosmic Dance’ and Mia Pearlman’s ‘Eye’ create a physical form that depicts the dream state. I will try to develop something similar inspired by clouds and nebula.

My initial drawings and photos will be of beds and sleeping images. I'll start to progress into images of insomnia. I'm also intending to create movement in still images to show the restlessness caused from sleep disorders. I'll be using various mark making, stitching and typography to illustrate the constant activity of an unconscious state. Slowly advancing from sleep into dream, I’ll be taking dreams and composing them in an illustrative fashion in order to describe an entire story in a single image. I’d be bringing this forward into constructing a quilt, each patch representing a different dream.

Throughout my whole project I’ll be constantly planning, filming and editing my dream sequence film. I'll be taking in the results of dream stories and looking at common dream themes and I’ll disarrange them to produce an erratic flow of scenes. To create this I’ll be storyboarding, planning and making arrangements. The mise en scene is going to be a big

part of my planning, mostly creating the perfect setting as there’s going to be a lot of change in settings and they’ll need to be able to easily portray the story within it. For this dream sequence to work I’m going to have to closely relate it towards surrealism.

Moving on from this is my final piece, the room installation itself. I’m intending to show my film on a small TV besides bed as its common for people to stay up watching TV when they can't sleep. The bedding will be plain and I'd like to attempt to make movement under the sheets. I wanted to have something hanging above from the ceiling which is where my lighting will become apparent. I want to have multiple lights hanging from above and I’d like there to be flickering light to relate to the restless activity that happens in the room.

Simone Shubuck

While researching for my new project I came across this Artist/Illustrator; Simone Shubuck that I thought was just beautiful and i had to blog it instantly before I forgot about them or couldn't find them again.