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.