Reflective Paper.
My piece entitled ‘Shuffle’ is now installed and fully functional within the exhibition space. The work itself is in no way – finished, or resolved, but I am happy with the product I have so far developed and feel proud to exhibit this prototype as an embodiment of a rewarding creative process.
Blogging was the first significant skill I learnt on this course and it is also one of the most beneficial. This practice provided oversight to both units of the M.A and has proven enormously helpful as a means of merging my theoretical interests and my practical work. Through my blog I have been able to tie together, or pin down some erratic thoughts and ideas that would have otherwise drifted away from each other.
The Objectives chapter of the study proposal I wrote early into the course concluded with the following statement ;-
‘ I have a lot of interests that are related but perhaps not complementary, while I have no hope of decidedly realising all of the objectives defined here, I would like to find a way to package and deploy these ideas and potentialities in a more concise way, without generalising or trivialising my research interests, I think this should be my ultimate objective.’
http://andrewburgess.wordpress.com/study-proposal/
With regard to this statement one of the incredible things about this project is that I feel as though I have actually managed to package and deploy my research interests though my practice work and I think this can be attributed to a dialogue between the two which has emerged from blogging.
Words are important to me and the blog has given me an outlet through which to interrogate the conceptual motives of my work. Earlier during the course I felt frustration because I had identified some thematic interests that were motivating my practice, yet there was no strong sense of cross over between theory and practice in the work, I felt as though I had to use conceptual reasoning to defend and carry my work and that it could not defend itself, this feeling was brought to the surface during a painful crit where I was not permitted to talk and it tortured me for many months after.
The main reason I am so happy with my installation is because I feel as though it is an embodiment of a conceptual journey as much as a practical one, not only are my conceptual ideas effectively packaged and deployed through my practical work, but also I am in a place whereby; the practice itself is actually carrying the theory, I can no longer tell if my words inform my work, or if my work informs my words. This is a beautiful place to be in and I have not felt this inspired to make work for a long time, (if ever). Making and thinking have somehow become synonymous with each other, and I never thought this was possible for me, since I generally suffer from a highly strung analytical mindset which in the past has lead me into periods of procrastination. In this respect the course has been a massive success for me and a life changing experience.
The best form of evidence I can present to show how my theory and practice have merged is the Tag Cloud which is featured on my blog.
I have become fixated with this somewhat and it has become a brilliant means of comparative analysis, I think the Tag Cloud serves as a fantastic representation of my project. Not only am I able to talk in length about how any one of these tags relates to my exhibited work, I am also able to draw lines that cross any number of points and talk about how my work connects these themes/ ideas.
Apart from blogging discussion was one of the main things that has helped to inform my present ideas, there were some discussions and arguments between myself and other students that were extremely interesting and that will stay with me for ever. Among the most significant are possibly a discussion with Noel about whether lines connect or dissect , a discussion with Simon and Zai about the difference between wandering, the derive and being lost and an intense argument with Tim about the importance of human authorship in a context of programmatically driven art, these are just a few examples, there are countless others, of discussions I have had through the duration of this course. I feel as though my work is entirely indebted to the other students and the ideas and experiments that they have shared with me.
Since I have claimed that my theory and my practice have become inseparable let me now outline both simultaneously before considering my exit strategy from this course.
My Video Art.
For many years I have been exploring the medium of video within an artistic context, what I love about video is the process of capturing and it’s ability to merge disparate moments and fleeting glances and provide context for such phenomena. The process of video art that I am engaged in is not about passive observation, it is a spontaneous engagement that finds expression in moments where meaning takes place neither, within the screen/viewfinder nor, the external world around it – but somewhere in a crack between the two.
I am interested in mythology, superstition and mystical belief systems. What I love about these strands of culture is their ability to adapt, evolve and respond while constantly re-evaluating the symbols they absorb.
I see mythology, superstition and mysticism as a means of archiving the symbolic in a manor that gives life to an ephemeral sense of meaning, a form of meaning that can be evoked, but never defined or captured.
The description of my work that I offer on our show’s promotional website is as follows;
‘Shuffle is motivated by Paradoxical enquiries into methods of capturing the ephemeral and searching for the meaning in the search for meaning.’
it consists of a media library that is played in an unpredictable order through an interface designed within the pure data programming language.’
What would it be like if our brains had a ‘Shuffle’ feature; if we could experience the world as a de-contextualised succession of moments and impressions?
Would we find serenity in blissful waves of meaningless stimulation. Or would we become consumed by the void of nothingness between sensory pulses?’
While I have always been drawn to video because of its potential as a spontaneous act, I have been struggling to find inspiration in the process of post-production. Actually I hate the term ‘post production’, to me post production has always felt more like a post mortem. I am thus excited to have found a way to reconfigure my video production process so that less emphases is placed on the linear alignment of dead material. My material is able to re-invent itself within the context I have designed and can engage in a dialogue with a whole library of material and not just that which is placed behind/in front on a linear time line.
What I have designed with ‘Shuffle’ is not a resolved body of work, but a demonstration of a methodology through which my practice of Video Art can be taken to a higher level, both personally and conceptually.
Plans for the future.
My artistic process has developed a new flexibility and the notion of place is no longer relevant to my work, thus my artistic explorations are starting to feel slightly tethered by my base in south east London. I want to use my video practice as a means of exploring disparate parts of the world. For me at the moment my art work is about journeying and searching, I feel it is time to leave my home in London behind me for a while. What I would ideally like is to create a situation where my income is not fixed to a specific location. Two methods for achieving this are online stock footage sales – www.pond5.com is a site that specializes in this, and from which I am already getting regular payouts with just a handful of standard definition clips uploaded. During unit two of this course I have recorded numerous hours of HD footage, and already created a library of polished clips from that material so far – 143 to be accurate all of these clips could be sold individually as stock footage. My other idea is teaching, I would like to find an opportunity to teach art theory, first I have enrolled on a course to get my TEFL (teaching English as a foreign language) I can use teaching English as a stable income for a while when I am travelling a building my database of video and searching for other teaching opportunities. I always find it difficult to talk about a profession in art, not even sure if I want one, for me my artwork is something that I use to give meaning and a sense of purpose to my life, there is little financial motivation in what I make. I however I have the motivation to seek new situations and contexts to explore my work, I would like to apply for some art festivals and residencies, I am also actively seeking collaborators as I feel the interface I have designed could serve as a premise for some interesting collaborations, thus I am inviting some potential collaborators to the show, (already have confirmations from an animator studying at RCA, a performance artist/ P.H.D student and a high profile sound designer) and I will be presenting my work as a prototype or a spring board from which to base a collaboration of some capacity.
I feel both excited and nervous about having my open-ended work on display in a rudimentary form amid some pieces which are highly resolved and precisely executed.
I am still very much looking forward to spending time in the exhibition space during our show and defining the strands of interrelation that must exist between some works, works that on the surface seem vastly different. I am thus looking forward to few more interesting discussions with my peers before we are done.
The bottom line is that I feel proud of the work I have in this exhibition and proud to have been part of this course.
