Below are a couple of shots taken by my very good friend (and partner in crime) Samantha Brightwell.

Marks come out on June 1st, so I will let you know when I do. However, I have already accepted a place on the Fine Art Degree course at AUCB so whatever the outcome my life for the next 5 years has been decided. ( Yes that’s right, I did say 5 years! The price you pay for studying while having two children, and a part-time job, it’s just aswell I enjoy it as much as I do)  Wish me luck!

One idea is to work with the words I came across that categorise people within certain areas. Some statements are very pc, others not so much! There might be some potential in including how people are categorised rather than simply that they are?

Below are some initial experiments with how I could include different text………………………

I am uncomfortable with using the text, now that I see it in situ. The piece is not about preaching the rights and wrongs of people’s opinions, and I don’t want the work to end up telling a story.

Another angle that I have been considering is the idea that people’s category may be fixed and determined by the maps but the individual, or the area can change. This will be most apparent when the viewer looks at the piece and can see their reflection within different pigeon holes as they move. Equally places are capable of change. The obvious example would be somewhere like London, where previous areas considered ‘undesirable’ places to live suddenly become the next best thing and move into the category of ’up and coming’. Property sky rockets, investment comes flooding in and lo and behold the whole area is newly classified as ‘least deprived’; but what happens to the people who live there? Have all their circumstances changed aswell? 

It was recommended to me that I watch the classic 1930′s film ‘Night Mail’ with regards to a visual that might work with this idea of change of circumstances. The documentary is about a steam train that runs from London to Glasgow, in the 1930′s, delivering mail in the excess of 500  million letters each year. It is in the methodical approach of that delivery that my next consideration comes from. There were hundreds of pigeon holes within the train that were used for sorting the letters, and on the fronts of these the names of the towns that the train was approaching would be written in chalk. Once those letters had been sorted the name would be rubbed off and another written in its place.

It may seem trivial or obvious that this would have happened but in terms of the feeling that I am trying to create with my piece it could work really well.

I liked the smudged chalk after each name had been rubbed off. However, in keeping with this being a modern-day situation I was not sure that this material would be appropriate. I then did a sample with pen. I managed to get the ghost of the previous towns name to show behind, but I really prefer the chalk.

This material lends itself to being removed and changed easily, and I think that is important in its quality. Another decision that I have made is to work with the three generic colours I mentioned in the previous blog. You can see from the smaller image on the right I have managed to get some spray paints to match these colours. I will be using them at the back of the pigeon holes and on the swing tags. Whether I will be adding town names to them aswell I am reserving judgement until the piece starts to physically come together a bit more. (I ordered the mirrors earlier in the week and they are ready to be collected tomorrow, so that side of things should really start to come together. )

Just like the maps are becoming increasingly ineffective, this systematic, industrial, mail sorting, structure is fast becoming obsolete; as the world fully embraces the technological age of the email. Taking that into account, if I combine the reflective quality of the map shaped mirrors I think I might be getting somewhere with communicating the my idea.

I will be having a tutorial on Tues with an artist who specialises in 3D works. I am hoping that he will see some potential in what I have come up with so far ( fingers crossed!)

So that I can be as visual with my explanation as possible I have made some models. They are far from hi-tech, but hopefully the chicken wire will give him the general idea :o)

It’s really tricky to take photographs of mirrors, the proposal is for the vertical pigeon holes to have the mirror mapping reflect the viewer back at themselves. The whole of the back panel, of the structure that will be used, will show a large piece of mirror that has been etched to reveal the mapped areas of Dorset. These shapes will be linked in some places and separate in others, just like the original print I created. The racking should be displayed at a certain height so that the viewer can see the mirror map as a whole, encased within the structure.

I have always felt that I needed to include the three main generic colours of classification that are used within the demographic maps, especially as they seem to evoke such strong association from people when I used them previously. In both the images above I have been playing with ways of introducing the colours. The colour in the second image is hard to distinguish as I have coloured the chicken wire itself; it is too thin to show up on the photos and have any real impact.

 I tried the same technique with a spare shelf from the racking, which had much better results. I can see that by applying the colour in this way I can created a strong link to the grid reference system used in traditional maps. I am starting to get the impression that using the map itself may not be necessary. Is the mapped mirror shapes and coloured grid a strong enough reference on its own?

What I really love about this piece is how it is simple but effective. You have the obvious shape of a sphere representing the globe but also, by weaving the strips of the usually flat map of the world round and round into this shape, it gives it a sense of the world turning. The tantalising loose ‘thread’ speaks of how delicate the world can be, easy to unravel and take apart. This solid mass can be very easily pulled apart. I have no idea if my interpretation of the artists work is correct, quite often in fine art it is the individual perception that is most important. I find it all very inspiring!

I really must apologise for my terrible images, I am being lazy and photographed them straight out of the research pages of my sketchbook, note to self “must try harder!”

Thurle Wright’s Memory Box is another interesting piece that I discovered on the net. Once again the simple forms that have been used are minimal but very effective. The clue is obviously in the title but more than the artist mapping places that they have maybe visited or hold dear (Or even hold unhappy memories), it is about containment of those places. Whether it is because these places are stand alone experiences in their own right, or the cubes bringing reference to our memories being contained individually.

Seeing these works I realised that before I can move forward with my piece I need to decide what it is that I am mapping. Once that is decided I can drill down deeper into the visual of that concept. After looking over the past few weeks work I realised that I want to use mapping to highlight the uncomfortable notion of generalizing people to areas.

From deciding this I have made a huge leap forward with various different ideas about possible visuals I could use, and processes I could adopt. I feel the answer lies in creating a piece that will provoke a personal psychological response from people when they see it. The best way I can think of so far is to use the reflective quality of mirrored glass.

I started to etch the back of this small mirror so that I can start to recreate some of the shapes I mapped from the deprivation research I did within the county of Dorset. This process is slow, but with patience I think the finish will be crisp (which will be a necessity should I decide that this is what I take forward into the final exhibition). I really like the situation that the mirror presents. By blocking sections of the map and reflecting the viewer back at themselves I think it starts to speak of the potential involvement of everybody within these areas. Or maybe once again, my interpretation will not resemble that of anyone elses! I will need to show my peers at uni and gauge their collective response to see if this has any real potential.

I think on a larger scale this idea of mapping with the mirror could be really effective. Obviously once the larger mirror was hung/mounted vertically it would reflect the viewer rather than my radiator! The next step now is to look at whether the glass/mirror should be laid on top of the map itself or possibly look at involving the emotive demographic colours that I used previously. This could be a block of colour behind different sections of mirror, or maybe even exposing the coloured printed areas of the map and retaining the mirror effect everywhere else; similar to the image underneath…….

It’s difficult to see the reflective quality of the mirror in this photo, but you get the idea. I think I need to start making some small samples and models now, need to get more of a feel of how this idea can be presented as a stand alone piece.

For a while there my living room looked like I was investigating a murder!

I then started the process of preparing the shapes I wanted to print onto the map via a method called screen printing. It is where you transfer your image onto a screen that has lots of tiny holes in it, and then push ink through those holes by dragging the ink across the screen using a squeegee. It is a process I have encountered before. I love how hands on it is! The two images below show how I had to measure and recreate the images in order to put them onto the silk screens at uni.

The end result wasn’t great in terms of finish, and it was a very long drawn out process. However, during the course of the printing people would approach to see what I was up to. After they had satisfied their compulsion to find where they lived they would start to look at the map in a different way. First they would notice the colours. I had deliberately used the palette prefered by the council for their visual recording of areas and their circumstances. The cool blue of the 20% least deprived areas Nationally, the moss green of ‘Middle England’ and the startling red of those areas that fall into the 20% most deprived Nationally. People were surprised by some of the classifications on the map; and that resulted in many discussions on how the data collected by the council can be distorted by a small minority into puting an area into a higher or lower catagory. That said, I started to feel differently about these maps. Was this type of visual representation helpful? Had this method of catagorization become inefficent and was edging towards becoming obsolete?

The first thing that struck me was how the blood red areas stood out like bullet holes! Red has always been used as a warning, of danger. The blue and green have an almost soothing quality. I am sure that it is deliberate, rather than just ironic, that some of these colours are easier to ‘live with’ than others.

After having a tutorial with the head of year, I went home with my map and mentally brought myself almost back to the beginning of my concept. What is it that I am mapping? Obviously I have physically mapped my geographical findings so far, but that is not enough. It doesn’t go deep enough into my concept of people and places being pigeon holed. My message is not evident in this map as a stand alone piece. 

So my next stage is to look deeper into my concept and what it is that I want to say. I need to take what I have created so far and move it forward from a geography project into ART!!!!!!!!

I am now working on a few ideas that should get me closer to that goal. Once I have some photos of the various design ideas and samples I am working on I will be back!

Both of my ideas will be treated in purely a visual way and although similar in thought, could lead me down very different creative paths. They both center around the information that is contained within demographic maps. Therefore I feel it would be fitting to ask the opinion of as wider demographic  as possible as to which direction I should take. So please take the time to cast your vote, and pass on this blog address to anyone else you think might be interested.

To cast your vote simply click on the star rating at the bottom of whichever proposal you prefer. Alternatively, I always welcome any comments. (for those of you that are not already registered you may have to follow an automatic step-by-step registration procedure, but don’t worry, you will only receive info about my blog once you subscribe to it)

Thank you very much for your time. x

IDEA 1

“Broken Windows Theory”

This idea is based upon how information can be interpreted from demographic maps in a way that generalizes a type of person to a type of environment or situation. I want to try to bring this restricted visual ,that is so readily used for such important research, into a 3D form. I am hoping that by breaking away from the idea that we can all be categorised by a coloured square or area of repeated pattern, that some of the essence of our individuality could be made more tangible. Whether this is in terms of people refusing to be ‘numbered’ or simply having the right for their ‘number’ to be more personalised. One initial example/idea I have is to use the visual reference of being pigeonholed. This could help to give the feeling of restriction and containment, or a map might be manipulated into 3D; or maybe even presented in a juxtaposition with some footage or physical evidence that contradicts the maps generalisation of that particular area.

‘Deconstruction of Demographic Data’

With this idea I aim to approach the topic with a sense of scientific analysis, of the physical ‘stuff’ behind all the demographic data. To dissect and investigate (visually) the information contained within all the coloured symbols and pattern. Could this information be conveyed with more sensitivity to the individuals that our communities are made from? By simplifying the information into bite sized (microscopic even) visual references of each circumstance, whether its social/analytical/geographical etc.

For example, found materials from various different areas of classification could be used as a primary source of which magnified images could be taken from; thus having a more physical connection to that area and suggesting a deeper insight.