26/02/2018 - CROSS COLLABORATION EDITING 1

We all got together as we had all agreed on the Monday to record the audio sections of our film, and also edit our footage and audio together with our planned rotoscoping animation. However Oliver (with the full script, storyboard and plan) and James (our only expert in visual effects and post production) were nowhere to be seen. James arrived a while later, however Oliver was a complete no-show across the whole day, and didn't really provide any explanation for why he was unavailable. This disappointed me a bit as he has specifically placed himself in a position where the entire production was relying on him, and had even asked to take the leadership/directional role. I also felt that gender issues and misunderstanding/lack of awareness were one of the key areas of interest in his artistic practice, so it was a bit disappointing to see him not willing to properly see through a project which should have been of the upmost importance to him. Had we followed me idea about the gentrification of Anglia Square, or another topic around an issue of importance to me such as ecology or the environment, I would ensure I was in every day to make sure the outcome was correctly voiced, factual and as appropriate as possible, because it was a topic I had specifically brought to the table.

23/02/2018 - CROSS COLLABORATION FILMING

After deciding on Oliver's plan for our PSA, he had specifically asked if he could take a key role in the direction and co-ordination  of the production as we went through the process. We all agreed with  this, as the entire project was pretty much entirely his topic and vision. He arrived on the day with all of his supporting material and the group got working on the filming. I had to help out with Moosey for a couple of hours intially, but made it along as quickly as I could.

21/02/2018 - CROSS COLLABORATION MEETING

In our first meeting of the new collaboration we had all pre-prepared ideas and styles that we could incorporate into the video. I brought along some supporting research around the gentrification of Norwich as well as a great video I found discussing similar development plans when they had been previously worked over in 1960. The video highlighted use of specific language such as "What I have noticed is a different type of person come down and shop in the street." I suggested that this stylistically could be used to suggest tongue in cheek issues with the gentrification, in a way which still very much preserved the dated ideas surrounding area regeneration and social whitewashing.

19/02/2018 - CROSS COURSE COLLABORATION BRIEFING

We were set the brief to create a Public Service Announcement in groups of 4-5 Fine Art, 4-5 Games Art & Design and 1 VFX, using techniques and effects as would be achievable pre- 1950. The films had to be 1-5 minutes long and needed to be for general public viewing so they had to conform to pre-watershed rules without being overly obscure, and 'explanatory for the layperson'. They would then be screened in a presentation on Friday in two weeks time.

My grouping was with Laura, Oliver and Millie, who were also all around me in my studio, which got me much more immediately interested in this group project. Already knowing them really helped me engage from the outset, as I knew they understood where I was coming from creatively, just as I in turn understood their key motivations too. We had an immediate meeting straight away after and all discussed our interpretation of the brief and a few initial ideas.

I initially started by suggesting a potential tongue in cheek 'announcement' of the knocking down and rebuilding of Anglia Square, with a more satirical nod to the gentrifying aspects of the new renovation scheme. I also talked a little bit about the actions of the Business Improvement District (or BID) that I had heard of from Frazer at Moosey (outlined in greater depth in later supporting research), to give a more general background on some of the more negative vested business interests set on gentrifying Norwich for capital gain. Some expressed concerns about the focus on the 'announcement' nature of the broadcast, and although I thought with careful attention to our dialogue and respective voice this could be emphasised, I also agreed that it would require a lot of contextual and geographical research to be well composed and factually faithful, and could perhaps come undone with too close an attack on Norwich's developing body.

Oliver also had an idea that he had prepared ahead of receiving the brief, as an explanation of the way in which people can vary in personal aspects of their gender, and how this is expressed in different ways. He referenced an educational infographic which he said was used to teach people and explain the many ways in which gender manifests for different people. Although I liked his idea, I did think there could potentially be other more immediate and of the moment issues which we had been given a podium to potentially discuss. Gender identity, and lack of understanding are of course very important matters, and another small part of my uncertainty with this topic was the level to which we could faithfully represent the scope of gender diversity without succumbing to further stereotyping. As this was a key theme to Oliver's artistic practice and research interest, I felt that if we were to take this as the direction of our collaboration, he would need to take an absolutely central role in the production in order to ensure we were faithful to his understanding of the intricacies of the topic.

I did however remember back to my experience in the curation of the interim show. I had to take a central role in organising and overseeing large amounts of the group organisation in that, keeping everyone together and ensuring no aspect of the production was neglected, however in retrospect I feel like I was harder pressed to pick up new unique skills from this position, as I was spread thinly across all areas of the production instead of being able to easily focus in and learn fresh techniques. I thought that perhaps in this project if others wanted to take the lead roles I would get the opportunity to get more hands on with the induvidual practical experiences.

Others in the group talked about areas they would like to try working with in particular, and James from VFX discussed some of the restrictions of working to pre-1950s working techniques. He outlined that this limited us from using pretty much any modern forms of animation, apart from a

16/02/2018 - FINAL TIGERS AND ASSESSMENT CONCLUSION

I was so pleased to leave the house after a second painting session to bright sunshine and dry ground. As I walked along the route I had taken the night before it immediately became clear that last night was perhaps the perfect wintertime pasting conditions, as perfect as could be hoped in Britain at least! The fox was still exactly in place the next morning, and most importantly so was the orange/red gradient piece which had suffered so badly before. 

15/02/2018 - WHITE TIGER PASTING 2

I was further hampered by terrible weather conditions, lashing rain and freezing temperatures which prevented me from going out pasting any more until the day before the deadline. I would have really liked to have done it with a bit more time to spare, but luck was on my side tonight with a warm dry evening and no rain forecast! I prepared the remaining 15 tigers for taking out, but also left a small selection of cut and uncut tigers, so that I would be able to revisit this imagery another time.

I also took out one of my older fox pieces from before I started uni, with the intention of putting this out too. I refreshed the pink tiger which had been initially so badly water damaged, with an orange and red variant which had on the whole proved it's survivablity in my previous endeavour.

I enjoyed hitting this underpass on Grapes Hill as a starting point for a night pasting, as it was actually legal to do so and made the perfect environment to get my head in the game and start working quickly but cleanly before moving to areas where the art was not as encouraged.





I put a plain white tiger on a telephone terminal box bordered by hedges and thought this would look beautiful surrounded by that naturalism. Leaving the tiger unchanged in this circumstance was important, as the unnaturalness of a white tiger in itself would stand out enough against the bright green leaves. I intended the message of the true alternity of the white tiger was better reinforced by this.

 There was another work in particular I placed on a mirrored piece of window which was also covered in some OBEY Shepard Fairey propaganda. I liked this placement as it forced the audience to confront themselves, whilst also being confronted by the censored tiger. This dual 'being looked at, but also not looked at, and looking at oneself, and looking upon the tiger' kind of reminded me of the conceptual struggles of Jacques Derrida in his work about being seen naked by his cat, which featured heavily in my essay. If I were to name this piece, it would definitely be 'Derrida's Cat'!


I tried finding more high profile locations for placements, as I had not seen much response on social media for these works yet, and attributed this to less busy (more aesthetic) locations, and also the extensive water damage. These locations offered higher risks but also higher rewards with larger numbers of people likely to see them.

As well as this, I also revisited a few locations where I knew from previous experience that peices seemed to survive well on, and pasted a few there for good measure.

The weather was really on my side tonight, and it was warm and not too windy so I was not forced to struggle with the prints when handling.
I hoped the rain would hold off, but the forecast looked promising! Hopefully there would still be plenty left tomorrow! I also noted I didn't damage any of the prints when pasting this time, and definitely felt I took things more carefully. The warmer temperatures also definitely helped steady my hand and focus on my technique.

9/02/2018 - THE MORNING AFTER...

The next morning I stepped out into a completely sodden Norwich after a night of solid rain, with tender hopes that perhaps atleast some of my tigers might have survived the night. Atleast it hadn't frozen, but based on how damaged some of the works had been by just my brush alone, I dared not think what a whole night of lashing wind and rain might have done. There was one tiger a short walk from my house on the way into uni, and I was really really pleased to see this had survived, even if it was still very soggy, as it was one of my favourite placements. The monochrome tagging framed my work well, as if made specifically as a backdrop for the monochrome tiger, and also allowed a perfect perch from which the column could rise. I was a bit concerned to see some prominent watermarks running down the image, but for the most part it was quite well preserved. This gave me some hope for the rest!

8/02/2018 - WHITE TIGER PASTING 1

I quickly felt the constraints of winter weather when planning a time to paste my tigers up. One quick look at the weather forecast told me to expect subzero temperatures and rain every night for the next couple of weeks except Thursday, so I had to act quick and prepare all of my tigers for pasting that night.

7/02/2018 - WHITE TIGER SCREENPRINT 2

I went back into the print studio to have another go with my white tiger screen. Having had several days to think about and cut around the designs I had already printed, I had a few ideas of things I could do on this second opportunity. Some of the things I was particularly excited to try included intervening onto the paper before printing anything, with handprints, wipe and drag marks, combining lots of colours to achieve gradients and most excitingly the 3D effect obscured images which I had begun to experiment with in my first session.

The 3D effect images were what I was most excited to develop, so I got started on those first, laying down first lots of versions of the blue print. Before I then swapped to the red, I used the remaining blue pigment with some lighter tones and purples to begin experimenting with gradients too. In doing these I was hoping to save inks, cleaning materials and also time, and make my printing production less resource intensive. I really liked how the gradients looked, giving the prints a kind of filtered effect. Having unnatural colours gradiented together in this way also commodified the images of the tigers, making them appear decorative and further removed from their natural origins. The fact that there are steps I can take to make the process more economical and less wasteful makes me feel better about my position of privilege as an artist, conversely to the etching where I felt constantly aware of the wastefulness of my practice.

I then switched to red and began to add the second layers of my 3D prints. These came out much stronger than my first attempt in the previous session, possibly due to the fact the screen has been printed with and washed quite intensively since the first attempt, and now allowed much more ink through. I think this changed the look of the effect, as most of the tiger body was also now shaded, instead of the previous example which mainly captured just the strips overlaid. I had quite liked in my first attempt how the stripes had combined to make a visually confusing image, and felt this was slightly lessened in these works. The tigers took more prominent forms in these second experiments, looking less like an optical illusion and instead more like a generally distorted image.

I then wanted also to trial adding a black layer overtop to see what this brought to the image, but in the spirit of economy, I waited and again added extra colours to the remaining red pigments to turn them into another gradient. This red one was my favourite of the gradient pieces, and reminded me somewhat of the colourful pink and orange filter widely available across instagram, and further turned the motif of the wider tiger into a non-natural product / representation. As this one was slightly closer to the natural tones of a normal tiger, but inverted with a white body and orange stripes, the image had an element of familiarity but also strongly subverted this familiarty at the same time.

Next I wanted to try adding that black layer to my 3D prints. Some of these didn't come out correctly as the squeegee began to shift position in the mechanical press, causing too much black to print, somewhat drowning out the delicate blue and red behind. This was a shame as I had been really excited to have a large number of these printed, and a couple were unfortunately ruined before I realised and fixed the issue. There was one print with this layer which was my absolute favourite, because the red, blue and black layers were only every so slightly mismatched. This effected the print in two unexpected ways; intially it obscured the image quite beautifully, giving an effect almost of vibration or blur, imperceptible but rapid movement which gently defies complete visualisation. But also having the 3 layers slightly unaligned gave the piece a great deal of additional tonal depth to the work, making it appear a lot more realistic than the other, more stylised prints.

With the leftover black ink I repeated my gradient process, this time with blue, red and yellow pigments amongst the black. The red and yellow worked out well, blending into the black to give tonal suggestions of the primary colours, but the blue appeared too soft to really appear strongly with the black. These faded blends of other colours gave the subsequent prints an aged, uneven appearance like historical newspaper prints and cuttings.

Finally I wanted to trial methods of intervention, and so began dipping my hands in red pigments and pressing, wiping and dragging these around the page before I printed anything. I tried using both the blue and red from my 3D printing, but found the blue lacked impact when printed ontop of, and so preffered the red. The most powerful images were of handprints, as I felt these suggested the possesive nature of humanity, and the way we are always getting our hands on things and getting involved where we shouldn't. One in particular featured a handprint around the neck area of the tiger, which also gave an element of aggression and assault to the works. Adding the handprints definitely gave a political spin to the pieces, making them feel like artworks of protest.

6/02/2018 - INTERIM EXHIBITION VIDEO

It came quite a while after the exhibition finished, but Jiji sent us all the video of the exhibition and I really liked it. I thought the backing music she used was great, and she had obviously worked hard on the day to be in all places at once, as I thought she captured all of the key elements of the exhibition as we were setting them up in all of the different places at once. 

1/02/2018 - FIGURED FABRIC SHOWCASE

Whilst I had been printing, the Figured Fabric showcase setup was busily underway. After I finished  the pieces, I went along to have a look.

1/02/2018 - WHITE TIGER SCREENPRINT 1

After I had sent my halftone to the large format printers a day ahead, I was ready to print! I exposed my screen, and prepared it for printing. While it was drying I went along to the uni shop and brought a selection of papers to trial alongside my prints. One of the things I particularly want to try was using the gold and silver papers to give the image value status and suggest the financial motivations of the terrible situation for the tigers. It would also make them appear composed of metal, like a kind of trophy or award of some kind.