Mile of String... 2007!

After experimenting further with my string installation in my laundry utility room, and after a rather luke-warm reception of the idea in the last group meeting, I decided to change my idea a little... To be more precise, I decided to change the location for my installation. Group members generally agreed that the public participation element of Duchamp's original Mile of String added to its interest, and that my re-creation would be more effective if it were in a more public space. I also took in to account the fact that the final outcome of our project is to involve a presentation, and simply showing photos of the installation in my utility room would not be all that exciting... I therefore came to the conclusion that the most effective method of conveying the experience of the Mile of String would be to make the actual installation my presentation. I would install the string in the Casket Space, where the presentation is to be held! I proceeded to buy large amounts of string, got hold of a staple gun and went to college earlier this evening after classes had finished, and set up the string in the Casket Space with the help of my assistant...
I documented the process from start to finish on my digital camera, and below are the images in order from the earliest to the final result...














































I also made a short film of moving through the string, as the photos do not convey the 3D sense of the structure as well as moving image does... Here it is:

Mile of String!

Continuing my research online, I came across this work of Duchamp's, named Mile of String...



The website I was looking at explained the following:
Above: "Mile of String" - 1942. In 1942, Andre Breton organised a retrospective exhibition of Surrealist art in New York: First Papers of Surrealism. Duchamp created this installation for it – a gigantic web called the Mile of String. He and Breton furthermore arranged for a number of children to play ball in the room thereby making it very difficult for the guests to see the paintings.

I really loved the idea of "contributing" to an exhibition of painting by making it impossible to navigate around the gallery and actually see the work! Though it seems like a negative contribution, seeing as the exhibition was one of Surrealist art, it was in fact highly appropriate, creating an extremely surreal atmosphere!

I think I would like to try and re-create the Mile of String idea in a different context...

I researched the Mile of String in more depth and discovered that the idea was re-done for an installation in Selfridges in March to coincide with the Surrealism exhibition at the V&A this year. Here are the images I found:








The website (dezeen.com - a design magazine website) included the following text on the installation:

March 30th, 2007

Fashion Architecture Taste (FAT) have sent us images of 1.51 Miles of String, a temporary shop within Selfridges department store in London.

The “pop-up” project is part of a series of installations at Selfridges to coincide with the exhibition Surreal Things: Surrealism and Design, which opened at the V&A museum earlier this week.

Sam Jacob of FAT explains the project: “This is not a shop, or rather it’s not quite a shop. It reworks Marcel Duchamps ‘Mile of String’ exhibition design for the 1942 ‘First Papers of Surrealism’ exhibition in New York.

“Here, the length of string is determined by the distance between Selfridges and the V&A, respectively the Museum and partner for the Surrealism and design exhibition. This as-the-crow-flies measurement has been threaded around the space to create a web like installation.

“The 1.51 miles have been tangled, hooped and slung to form a very different kind of space, a grotto of geography.”


The significance of 1.51 miles being the distance between Selfridges and the V&A is a neat and effective idea, I think...
I've been considering what I would like to express with my re-creation of the Mile of String... will it be a mile, for one thing?
I decided I would like to install the string somewhere in my flat, and started to consider my washing machine, and the love/hate relationship I've had with it over the passed year with its intermittent soaking of my clothes when it was meant to be drying them and such... My washing machine lives in a tiny utility room and has, in fact finally been fixed as of Monday this week, and I have been thinking that installing the string in the utility room (making it impossible to open and use the now in-perfect-working-order machine) might be an amusing and suitably surreal idea... I have been experimenting rigging up the string and will be photographing it to create a series of surreal photographs!

Biography... Marcel Duchamp

To begin my research, I took a look at the Grove Art Online entry on Duchamp...

Duchamp, (Henri-Robert-) Marcel

(b Blainville, Normandy, 28 July 1887; d Neuilly-sur-Seine, 2 Oct 1968).

French painter, sculptor and writer. The art and ideas of Duchamp, perhaps more than those of any other 20th-century artist, have served to exemplify the range of possibilities inherent in a more conceptual approach to the art-making process. Not only is his work of historical importance—from his early experiments with Cubism to his association with Dada and Surrealism—but his conception of the ready-made decisively altered our understanding of what constitutes an object of art. Duchamp refused to accept the standards and practices of an established art system, conventions that were considered essential to attain fame and financial success: he refused to repeat himself, to develop a recognizable style or to show his work regularly. It is the more theoretical aspects implicit to both his art and life that have had the most profound impact on artists later in the century, allowing us to identify Duchamp as one of the most influential artists of the modern era.


Here are some images of Duchamp and his work.





Mona Lisa - 1919


Rotoreliefs - 1935


Bicycle Wheel - 1914


Boite-en-Valise - 1942-54


Bottle Rack - 1914

Map project continues...

I've been recording some conversations on a dictaphone, and trying to figure out how I'd like to construct my map, and what information it should include... After seeing a typographic diagram based around a circle that someone had shown as research in our group meeting on Friday, I had an idea of one way I could make my map... I wrote it on the back of a cinema ticket, which was the only thing I had to hand at the time...



It may be slightly difficult to read... The idea is that circles will represent different topics in the conversation. The remarks made on this topic (in type) will radiate from the circumference of the circle and there could be a scale on the inside of the circle (like on a clock face) representing the time elapsed in the conversation. A comment which results in a change of topic branches out to start a new circle.

Here's a rough (but still neater!) version I've started on Illustrator...



Here are some more worked into versions I've made...





I've been thinking about adding some sort of divisions inside the topic circles to represent the time elapsed during the conversation, as I originally planned in my cinema ticket sketch. I'm not sure though... I think maybe it might be better without. Here are a few research images of clock faces I've been looking at though...

Map project

Maps of all sorts can always be exciting, but I liked the idea of trying to make a map of something that doesn't usually get made into a map...
I'm not sure why, but the first thing that came to mind was conversations.
Conversations can easily be thought about visually, and I liked the idea of trying to express a conversation; map it out, using images to show the different ideas, thoughts and topics. Conversations also have a flow, and can be linear, since they elapse over a specific time period...
I thought it would be interesting to try and map out a conversation, and its progressions and random tangents in a sort of flow chart perhaps, to illustrate the passage of time as well as the ideas discussed.
So I have been researching visual ways of expressing thoughts and ideas, such as mind maps, and also some strange examples of mapped conversations which I found on Google image. I have also been trying to focus on my conversations with people, follwing how the topics progress and evolve. I have got hold of a dictaphone which I'm going to use to record some conversations over the weekend... which should be fun!!

Here are some of the images I found online...

Video...

Here's my video from our first project.
It's basically the past year of my life with my boyfriend documented in photos...
I take a lot of photos and I'm always struck by their ability to bring memories flooding back.
I thought about the past year of my life, which has ben really significant for me in that I began my relationship with my boyfriend almost exactly a year ago, which is the longest relationship I've ever been in, and I decided I wanted to try and condense all my memories of my time with him into a mintue (or so) of moving image using a very fast moving slide show. Here it is...



To make the opening shots of the orchid flower reanimating itself, or coming back to life from its shiveley dead-ness, I thought it would be best to get hold of a suitable flower, and then wait for it to wilt naturally, photographing it regularly from the same angle and lighting conditions as it did so. However, I realised that due to the time constraints of the project, there wouldn't be enough time for this... So I decided that I could speed up the "wilting" process by cooking my orchid in the oven, and as long as I photographed it regularly enough (every 3 minutes or so in a 150 degree fan oven!), a very similar effect could be achieved. I'm quite pleased with the results, but I do think if I'd individually adjusted each shot, (upping the brightness, particularly) it would look better. Here are some of the original shots of the flower...