27/03/2018 - MIND GARDEN APPAREL COLLAB

Whilst I was down in Falmouth I spoke to many other students about my uni, the course I was studying and what it involved. Many of the people immediately mentioned the Two Kings vintage shop opened by some mutual friends, and the DIY screenprinting studio setup in the attic above it which had been completely made from scratch by James Morgan of Mind Garden Apparel, a grassroots startup apparel business looking to expand and create a community of creatives for pop up shops, expositions, festivals and other creative enterprises.

25/03/2018 - THE LOST GARDENS OF HELIGAN

While visiting a friend down at her uni in Falmouth, I also visited the Lost Gardens of Heligan, a botanical gardens in Cornwall first created by the Tremayne family from the 18th to early 20th century, however they fell into disrepair and were overcome by nature, to be restored and recovered in the 1990s, becoming the subject of several television series and books. I have always really enjoyed botanical gardens, and my recent essay piqued my interest as I had begun to learn about some of the history and connotations associated with them. They are one of the key historical meeting points and contextualisations of mans early interaction and interpretation/colonisation of nature.

15/03/2018 - BETH COLLAB SESSION 1

When we got together to start planning our collaboration, I brought along all of my tissue paper so that we could get experimenting with as much potential as possible. I discussed with her a bit about why I thought our works would go well together, and then also showed some examples of tissue paper works and thought about different ways we might approach things. I had in part been inspired by the compass construction drawings I had seen as a small child, which would teach you to sketch a realistic, well proportioned animal through step by step construction of circles and linework.

14/03/2018 - SIR JOHN INNES CENTRE PROPOSAL FORM

I prepared my proposal form for submission having spent a couple of days hatching over my idea and building upon it. I had been uncertain how to exactly represent the patron figure; such an essential component of my planned direction. I considered for a while, and was unable to tie down the essence of a benevolent and responsible scholar of the natural world in any way without clique, and quickly happened upon a better idea. I proposed to replace the central patron figure with a mirror, thus confronting the viewer with their own reflection in the place of any historical portrait. This in itself has interesting connotations, as it reminds the viewer that our actions will become part of the past one day, and history will reflect on these times which we think of as modern, just as we do upon that which has gone before. It also puts the viewer in a position of responsibility, making them unexpectedly meet their own gaze, and then appreciate themselves as part of a wider fabric of the artwork, and furthermore nature and the natural sphere itself.

11/03/2018 - SIR JOHN INNES CENTRE SURROUNDING RESEARCH

In preparation to create a proposal form for a piece of artwork for the Sir John Innes Centre, I thought it would be important for me to first familiarise myself with exactly the work they were doing. I hoped this would sit somewhere alongside the knowledge of carefully preserved iconic species demonstrated in the archive. I also wanted to take into account the library setting as well as the centre's place as a research facility, and make my work somehow involved with the nature of this place as a quiet zone for learning, growth and study.

10/03/2018 - BETH BARTLETT COLLAB PLAN

As our collaboration unit had now gotten fully underway, I started considering some potential collaborative partners to suggest for myself to work with. Choosing an appropriate complementing artist was of great importance to me, as I wanted someone who could not only empathise with my key concerns, but also interested in different enough ideas to push my own practice in new areas. Because of this I specifically avoided approaching artists who dealt with themes of animals and the environment, as I already feel like these themes are already strongly represented in my work and didn't necessarily need the collaborative 'voice' to strengthen it. Instead I wanted to find someone who could help me consider different ways of working and different artistic practices and ways of expressing my work.

7/03/2018 - TRIP TO SIR JOHN INNES CENTRE

I was very excited to go along on the trip to the Sir John Innes Centre to look at the botanical archives in preperation for the art brief. This project really engaged with my art practice, specifically citing themes of the natural world and genetices as key focus of the opportunity. I was really interested in what this visit could inspire out of my practice, as it was one of the most relevent opportunities for primary research that I had spotted so far. 

1/03/2018 - GENDERBEAD - PSA OUTCOME + EVALUATION

28/02/2018 - CROSS COLLABORATION EDITING 2

We all arrived on Wednesday to begin with what we hoped would be the final stint of editing. However Lewis had some news to break. He had been speaking with some of the other groups and had come to the conclusion that the photoshop rotoscoping we had used looked too contemporary for the footage. He even said how some of the other groups had specifically applied old film filters to their videos, and even removed all traces of modern technology. So we would have to come up with another way to animate the genderbread's dialogue, and discard the icons we had planned.

Oliver had informed the group that he had been called away to work in Ipswich, and would therefore still be unable to attend. We also relistened to the audio from the day before and found the recorded audio from Jake's northern accent and deep voice were a bit too monotone for the cheery, reassuring and also importantly non gender binary character of the genderbread person. It was definitely at this point when the video production started to take a definite step away from his complete plan, and started down a path of it's own, with the suggestion of filming and superimposing a genuine human mouth overtop, and recording the script again with alongside the footage of a new talking mouth. We then also chose the cheeriest voice in the group, which belonged to Kristan, and got recording.

Of course, in abandoning the rotoscoping and hand-drawn finish for a roughly superimposed and highly zoomed human mouth, especially alongside the unsettling white eyes, we knew we were definitely taking a different direction. However at this point Oliver didn't appear to be coming along to help out any more, and we were all a little tired of trying to accommodate the specific vision of someone who wasn't putting in any further effort to help deliver it, and was still in possession of most of the documents and inspirations which had been specifically prepared to help us create and piece the whole thing together.

This was meant to be a collaborative excersize, and it felt like the time to take initiative and develop areas of the footage in new ways. So everyone got to work with matching up the dialogue and mouth footage to each part of the video. James and Lewis taught those of us who didn't know how to, and everyone took a different section. By splitting up the job like this we made much faster progress and also got everyone busily working away together in true spirit of the collaboration. However once this had been completed, and everyone had transferred the areas of the video they had been working on into the central file share, there was little anyone could do further besides James and Lewis simply sitting and working through the material and piecing it together. If we tried to split this job up it could make the work look more fragmented and less cohesive, besides James and Lewis were happy to take the roles on from home, allowing us to wrap up this element of the editing.

In this second day of editing I really feel like we overcame the problems facing us with an absent director and really pulled together as a group under our own initiative. We also found a way to bring the project back into an area which we all felt more confident with delivering, whilst resting assured that the base dialogue and educational information Oliver had laid out for us as a framework was strong, accurate and informative. Although I was glad that the hard work was over on what had truly been a challenging but educational project, I was very excited to see the finished product, and felt that the boys might still make further changes during the final stages of editing and structuring, however time could only tell whether this would happen or not.