Something out of nothing is effectively a printed archive, expressive of an appreciation for the overlooked, in hope that even today; perhaps you can get something for nothing. Based on a collection of observations within a local environment, the work seeks to extend the significance of these chance visual encounters beyond their fleeting nature. The book is divided into two halves (something and nothing) and can be read from either side. Something In a culture of visual competition where only the outspoken are heard above the cacophony of invitations, our opportunities for chance encounters with the silent are few. Forced to negotiate the myriad signs, messages and visual statements we are surrounded with, navigating our visual environment becomes an editorial process of selection and rejection for which the majority of our vision must be muted.Culturally inoculated against the trivial, our appreciation for unspoken voices and hidden stories has steadily deteriorated. Receptive only to that which can justify its relevance to us, we are now largely immune to the banal and have no time to discover meaning where it is unexpected.In documenting the quiet daily observations, chance arrangements and surprise perspectives that usually go unnoticed; our eyes are afforded a refreshing relief from the crowded glut of visual communication. These under-whelming insights into the value of coincidence can be met subjectively and hold a pragmatic honesty free of authorship and ideology. Nothing In a society of signs and cultural connotation, the distinction between visual and verbal communication is ambiguous. With text and image so awkward to disentangle, we are encouraged to surrender our deconstruction and allow cultural messages to wash over us as giddy indissoluble cocktails.The ability of language to undergo coding through particular aesthetic treatment has spawned a wealth of words which exist almost solely as support to visual messages. Extracted from their cultural context, the slogans and buzz words of consumer culture become curiously bald and their meanings quickly disintegrate.In society’s acceptance to skim read itself, the meaning of language and appreciation for its full potential has become a neglected area. We seem to have little or no expectation of language to provide value outside of conventional communication. Nothing comes for free.‘Nothing’ is based on a collection of fragmented language appropriated from the dialect of consumer culture and public address. Stripped of their visual embellishment, found excerpts from our daily environment shed their cultural connotations and stand bare for our reassessment in isolation.
This was an exercise we did in small groups again, This was after taking over the first floor with the 'Line of destiny' and a colour seminar with Fred that must of eaten away at our retinas!
Here's some of the experimental work on how colour impacts on colour.
Colour Theory: All the group had to bring in 10 found objects relating to the colourof the object we'd already been given in our goodie bag/folderat the startof the year I had a bog brush of all things but that's not important, the colour was, an it was BLUE. We were put into groups (all blues together, yellows, reds etc you get the point!) and had to arrange the different objects into order. (Light to dark, different saturations and hues.)
This took quite a while considering how easy it sounds, we soon ended up with a few catergories and objects being moved time and time again here's our group first attempt.
Yeah you guessed it, second go!
Then we thought we would just take up a little more of level 1(the graphic design floor) and do one long gradient of blues. This looked impressive all the objects bunched up together and started getting interest from other groups/students passing by.
And then...
We went crazy, I've done a photo montage as it would of taken over my blog in pictures! This was brilliant how everyone was in their groups collecting info and then suddenly I heard this voice 'we should connect our objects on the end of your line' The line of destiny was born it took over the first floor and went into our studio!
Thought I'd see what utube had to offer as a starting point after I found the little gem on colour theory. I wasn't holding my breathe but there's some interesting idea's on the question out there, here's a few I thought were interesting.
What is Graphic Design/Critical Studies
This is a project by Chris Clarke. 'Inside, outside.' www.chris-clarke.co.uk
Recognizing community as a cohesion of construct based on traditions within the language of us and them, inside and outside opens up the possibility to understand community in terms of a non cohesive diversity of people actively constructing a contingent picture of themselves as the same, to serve as one protective group. It seems this construct of community provides an excuse for solidarity rather then bringing people together in social action.
The idea that ideal communities are built upon relationships that require being in the same place at the same time is denied by the complexities of contemporary urban life and the need to extend outside of small independent units. City life encounters diversity and conflict as well as commonality; where small social groupings do exist they tend not to relate beyond themselves and engage with dwellers whom they stay strangers. It therefore becomes increasingly difficult to mediate a decentralized equality where social relations can form and community’s can develop.
Residential areas embody the opposing differences of city life within one street. Residents encounter each other daily, often remaining strangers and yet acknowledging their contiguity in living and the contributions each makes to the others lives.
Inside/outside sought to represent a collective way of perceiving a shared space; representative not only of how residents observe there passing world outside there windows, but also how they present a view of there personal spaces to those in there shared community.
The project took place over a two week period in May with the residents of Gathorne Road Bristol. As a resident of Gathorne road, with little communication with my neighbours, its eclectic residents and sporadic housing demonstrated the variation and richness present within city communities, and verified a concentration of communal pretense.
In the interest of common unity Inside/outside asked residents to take part in photographing a moment through their window and passing the camera to a neighbour, in a process that encouraged conversation between residents. The aim was to collate these fragments of time removed from the relentless flow of moments that connect the street and form people’s lives.
Using the disposable camera and pack to mediate conversation between remote neighbours, the camera was passed in order along the street. To avoid the camera staying dormant, participants were asked to pass the camera along in succession, missing out residents who did not wish to participate.
In an attempt to breakdown the imposed barriers presented to us through communal spaces, inside/outside asked for contributions of the street from a stranger who passes it daily. Over a two week period in May 2008 the Postman local to Gathorne Road Bristol was given a disposable camera and asked to record the street the best he could during his thirty minute shift up and down.
The photographs captured a truthful remark on communal façade, displaying best the authentic rather then an imagined construct of stereotype and visual representation.
The collection of photographs was displayed in public locations along the street, accessible to everyone and united in how residents perceive there shared local environment. The images were collated into a postcard series and given to the residents that participated in the hope they might find there way into living rooms of residents in other towns and cities.
Out of the 69 houses in the street 10 households took part in the project. This publication bear’s testimony to photographs contributed reflective of the shared space of Gathorne road and highlights the communal response presented by residents.
Inside /Outside 24 page tabloid
Silk screened bronze / digital print Printed on 80gsm Cyclus offsetEdition of 1
Photographs: Residents Postman
Inside / Outside
Postcard set 25 postcards Digital print Printed on 250gsm Nautralis Edition of 10
Photographs: Residents Postman
Again Chris Clarke Project: For the public, by the public
Our local environments are too easily subject to oversight and under-evaluation. It is natural to become desensitized to our immediate surroundings once we have broadly assessed and established a sufficient understanding of them to get on with things. Parallel to our physical habitat we can map our environment in terms of shared social significance, and choose to navigate the invisible space holding the stories, identities and memories of the people who use it. The UK is saturated with regeneration schemes. Towns and Cities across the country are undergoing lavish programs of re-invention to better position themselves in the post-industrial landscape, but in doing so often ignore the strengths and ideas already present in the social communities there renovating. Unfortunately the process of municipal redevelopment rarely involves opportunities for its inhabitants’ experience of the place, the ‘invisible environment’ to inform its progression. Based on the assertion that in order to change things we must first attain a decent understanding of them, For the Public by the Public is an ongoing project seeking to reflect the relationships between people and place within communal spaces. By talking to members of a community, ideas, thoughts, stories and moments from there life can emerge and be gathered to reinterpret and re-map the area based on social memory. The community of Bedminster once thrived as the retail centre of Bristol, until in 1980, Broadmead Shopping Centre sent Bristollians flocking to the city centre for their goods. Since then Bedminster’s Identity as a vibrant are of trade has faded, and with the prospect of Broadmead’s further five hundred million pound redevelopment in 2008, may soon be forgotten entirely. Fortunately the history of Bedminster’s trade is still traceable today in its colourful local shop culture. The project sought to provide a catalyst for bringing people together to share experiences. By sourcing local signwriters, the visual language familiar and significant to the community was appropriated to reflect its own memories back to its wider self by as relevant means as possible, the language of the shop. The responses were collated into a book as a visual and textual accompany to the exhibition For the Public by the Public which took place in a discarded shop for two weeks in December 2007 on Coronation Road in Bedminster. The exhibition gives voice to a collection of memories offered by the community of Bedminster, sharing with the public the history of its ‘invisible environment’.
Shop owners of Bedminster were asked to write a message about there experiences of the local area. The messages were then exchanged between shops and placed inside the shop windows for passers to see.
Local sign writers, were asked to recreate these messages into shop signs, using the language of the shop to appropriately reflect there memories. The Signs were then placed on the discarded shops from which they came from.
The exhibition ‘For the Public by the Public’ took place in the Conway and young ‘Open’ gallery (a previously discarded shop) for two weeks in December 2007 on Coronation Road in Bedminster. The exhibition gives voice to a collection of memories offered by the community of Bedminster, sharing with the public the history of its ‘invisible environment’
A Good Visual Voice/Communicator
Chris Clarke www.chris-clarke.co.uk
Project: Public Art The notion of ‘public art’ is an awkward idea to resolve. By definition, it encompasses any artwork which is publicly accessible, typically situated in outdoor spaces. It is expected that ‘public art’ somehow exists for the public, but typically does not involve them in its making. Its record suggests that the majority of ‘public art’ is not so different from the ‘art’ which occupies the gallery spaces of the ‘art world’, and is often taken by artists as a chance simply to try out bigger and more adventurous, weather tolerant projects. This canvas, entitled ‘Public Art’, is a proposed reality check on the term from which it derives. The piece comprises a collection of marks made in, and extracted from, the public domain. Sampling from a collection of pen tester sheets found in stationers and art shops around the city of Bristol over a four month period, the composition bears true public authorship in its form, capturing directly the voices of a random cross-section of Bristolians. The result of this incidental public collaboration is a pseudo abstract-expressionist composition, essentially concerned with colour, mark and vocalisation. Both as a display of public identity and a record of the visual musings of the public unconscious, ‘Public Art’ brings value to the overlooked output of the Bristolian public, in documentation of the assumed banality of everyday public history. As part of the Southville Art’s trail weekend, a weekend dedicated over the 10 - 11th of May to promote arts and performance within the communities of Southville. The canvas was displayed at 254 Coronation road at the Conway and Young shop. Choosing to be displayed across the hallway of a previously discarded shop, the canvas occupied a space similar to the public walls of the streets. As passers trough the shop were encouraged to make markings onto a blank canvas situated opposite, the canvas asked for contributions of all ages and from a cross section of the community Throughout the weekend the canvas became a focal point for visitors of varying ages to congregate in the hallway to share messages, moments, pictures and statements. As the canvas gradually filled, participants began to use the surface as a means to communicate with others in the community, as well as a collaborative piece of ‘Public art’. The Southville canvas provides true testament to the visitors of the arts trial weekend, as the cross section of participants applied the same initiative to the markings on the pen tester pads. The Southville canvas was exhibited on a public wall on Northstreet, Southville for the duration a week. Giving voice to a collection of memories offered by the community of Southville and sharing with the public statements of there community. A2 Digitally printed canvasExhibited at the Conway and Young ‘Open’ Gallery part of the Southville Arts Trail 2008 / Exhibited publicly on Northstreet, Southville, Bristol. www.conwayandyoung.comwww.sbaweb.co.uk
Public Art16 page folded publication Digital printPrinted on 130gsm Vanilla Claire Fontaine MayaEdition of 10Exhibition publication, reproduced in the colour of pen most frequently chosen over the weekend.
