physical states.

trying to come up with ways to "present" your work when the whole point of the work in question is about memories and their ethereal reality is hard work.
i don't want the series of photographs to be seperate from one another. i don't even want physical versions of them. you cannot hold memories and you cannot take any of this with you when you go. so how do you show work that tries to say this without contradicting it all?



edit: i've since come to the conclusion that the best solution is to simply project them. if i had to present these pieces to the public (which at this stage i wouldn't but let's be theoretical here) then i couldn't simply just window mount this work. memories and mind states are not tangible things and so i don't think their presentation should be either. a projection gives the images a kind of pseudo-existence - it remains as light, the way everything else is seen.

time & memory, an act of remembrance

the weather finally cleared enough to shoot more work for this project.
my idea has undertaken another slight alteration. initially i had been planning to take a number of "memories" and represent them all in the same way, but as my concept has developed this idea doesn't really fit anymore - all the images would be of the same thing. a more interesting idea would be to take one memory and show an act of remembrance connected to it. the props or objects (the coloured bottles) become triggers in a more personal way - they either mean something to you as a viewer or they do not. my main aim is to show how anything and everything, sound as well as visuals, act as triggers and it's because of these small things that "remind" us that we are able to dig things up from deep seated long term memory. i have chosen my props for specific reasons (outlined in one of my earlier blogs) but ultimately they are just subjective things.



these four images become a story arc. that foggy moment when something has clicked but you're still trying to sift through all the information you've ever withheld... the triggers then act as a focus, and a memnory is eventually formed. this can all happen within milliseconds, or if you have an appalling memory like me, it can take a very long time to fully form the memory.

i also recorded a video and am still in the editing process. the sound needs a lot of work, as does the colour correction for obvious reasons. i also intend to shoot another short scene which should hopefully help you as a viewer understand what the character is "remembering" a little better.

here is what i have so far:

time & memory diary of making 2.

these images won't be part of any final work, but i wanted to make them none the less. part of my written concept explains how backgrounds are unimportant to most memories, and detatched - the only thing that links them is the fact that the event wouldn't have occured the same in any other space or time. having the objects in a white space represents this idea of the memory being in an "in-between", a place where the memory is the sum of its parts and nothing more or less.




at the moment my work is taking the road that is inevitably going to lead to "i could do that" "that isn't art" "what is the point" comments. i hate those kind of comments. explaining "art" to anyone who uses such comments is painful. but i think this work is beginning to represent exactly what i wanted to represent. i have new ideas about memory and personal memory that i didn't have at the beginning of the project which can only be a positive thing.

p.s. credit to laura boffin's camera and time for helping me actually do these ;)

time & memory diary of making 1.

time & memory rethink.

i've really be struggling to output my ideas for the time & memory project. i have the concept but actually making things to really justify the thought is extremely difficult and i cannot get into it, especially given the short space of time we're expected to have done something.

but i have had a new idea that may just work. this isn't to say i want to scrap my original idea but it's something i feel like i need to come back to in the future, when i have much longer to get it right. it's just something feels heavily flawed.

new idea.
using objects with a plastic and industrial connotation to explore the idea that, while we think "memories" are truth, they are in fact figments of an event and details can be made up or taken away by the individual. memories are a simple product of a process, like for instance a plastic bottle. plastic bottles don't seem much like a memory from a complicated, and emotional human being but for me they represent something very simple about us. something manufactured in a natural landscape.

i want to spray paint large bottles and other found plastic objects in the colours that evoke the memory (ie in my case, orange) and place these inside a field, isolated, in the same way i did my food sculpture. it comes with a slightly different concept, but will look similar and will take me less time to make. plastic cleaning bottles also tend to have the sturdy structure and geometric shape that i am looking for.

this is probably completely stupid to start adjusting my idea right now, but my initial one just isn't working as i'd hoped.

phase 2!

sam taylor-wood / decay.

thinking through my time & memory project some more, i think using food as my "unrelated & isolated" material of representation lends itself to showing memory decay, literally through process of decay.

i was thinking of the work of sam taylor-wood and her beautiful scenes of death in organic still lifes:

still life (2001)


a little death (2002)


the distortion of time in these is probably what makes them most powerful. its a process we know comes to us all but when it's laid out for you, it seems too intimate and personal. viewing almost becomes uncomfortable.

i now want to experiment with time lapse within the scenes i am photographing. in a finished project hopefully the time lapse would compliment the still images.
memories die, in exactly the same way as organic bodies.

time & memory ; minimalism & impressionism.

i am no skilled artist and/or painter by any stretch of the imagination, but watercolours are the only medium really lending themselves to my ideas at the moment.
as contradictory as it sounds, minimalism and impressionism have become important lines of research. they both have qualities that when dissected and interweaved back together, give a good impression of what i currently believe memories to actually "look like". in a painting this ultimately gives a childlike looking expression.


1&2 show how important blue & orange (opposites) are to my childhood memory, and a detachment from my younger self.
3&4 are school memories. i found these harder to paint because of the emotional attachments i have with these moments.

key elements
minimalism; order, simplicity, geometry, structure, "a highly purified form of beauty"
minimalism can most commonly be associated with installations and white walls. this could be another route of memory representation.

impressionism; light, colour, brushwork, atmosphere, dream.
i am not so much interested in the subject matter - more the style and use. impressionist paintings can be distinctly complex in their simplicity - they are built by single brush strokes, each one integral.

my project is becoming more a study in the essence of memory, rather than the specific memories in themselves.

eternal sunshine of the spotless mind.

eternal sunshine of the spotless mind is pretty much a perfect representation of how i envisage the loss and active deletion of memory. memories are hand in hand with dreams, the dependability of a "memory" i believe is almost exactly the same as a dream. how much do you remember of your dreams?

you know when you dream you're in, for example, school. the school is probably different in your mind than it actually is in 'reality', but it's only in retrospect you notice this. only upon waking do you notice how surreal that dream really was.






these first caps are examples of "conflicting" memories and/or dreams, where elements from several places are sewn into one. surreal only in retrospect.







a visual representation of the "deletion" of memory. this is perhaps where i'm most likely headed with my own project. were these small details ever remembered, or were they really deleted?





and finally, the representation of childhood memory. it's never that detailed. it's stripped down to vivid colour and geometrics. further proof, here is the "actuality" of the film which you can compare to the previous childhood visuals.



the scene is packed with details and, just, stuff. stuff that even the human brain cannot store fully.

delusions.

gran gave these (amongst copious others) to my sister to help with our family tree. gran saved them from the landfill after my great-grandad tried to throw them out.



what interests me perhaps a strange amount is the physical condition of a photograph. some are neatly preserved inside cardboard holders. some are inside individual envelopes. some are left, brown and ripped and decaying, with tea stains and blurred faces. the physical condition of a photograph to symbolise the reliability of human cognitive processes.

the essence of memory.

As with all photography, it's usually the things that aren't in the photograph that are most interesting, and perhaps, most revealing.

When you look over childhood photographs, chances are you don't remember those moments. The only "proof" you have that they existed are unreliable human accounts, and the photograph itself. With me, I've been triggered by certain elements of a photograph to remember something else; a moment outside of the photograph. I remember the orange tent and how I hated the smell of it, but not standing beside it for a posed photograph for my dad.

This was only a fraction of a second of my short life. Why should I remember it?


What do we forget? How & why do we forget it? Where do those details go? Did we ever remember them to begin with?
Other people talk about their childhood with such clarity. People older than me. I'm only 19 and I only have these photographs and a handful of colours and shapes that reflect how this person was.