cherrydoesliveart

2008-11-16T19:53:00.002Z

eek, it's been such a long time
well i've done lots in the last year, check out my installation project "Jean's Houses" on my website - http://www.cherrytruluck.co.uk/jean/jeanshouses.html and also the "Calling Home" project on the activelayers website - http://www.activelayers.net - We formed activelayers after "The Old Hotel" so that James, Suzon, Liz and I could keep collaborating on our internet performances.

I have some new projects in the offing, will try to blog more often in future!

cx

2007-09-07T15:32:00.000Z

its a whole new world...

hooooooray! the old hotel is done and dusted. Part 3 is officially the final chapter.

I have to start a new diary now as I hadn't planned anything beyond 5th September, except my little trip to Seville next weekend (whoopee!).

Am so relieved and pleased. We had a little technical hitch, which meant the on-site audience didnt see as much of the webcam as i would have liked, but apart from that it was great. Carolyn did a wonderful job as Fee on site - "concentrated and totally believable" was one of the many positive comments on her performance. Suzon, James and Liz ran the on-line performance very smoothly - with top marks to Liz for some especially beautiful drawing. Mark - who helped me direct the on-site bit was an absolute dream from start to finish, keeping me calm and helping carolyn to really push her performance to a level i couldn't have managed on my own.

On-line, we broke the record for Upstage, with 35 audience members. They were logging in from dubai, USA, spain, australia, new zealand, england, poland, the netherlands and belgium!

On-site we had a lovely time, we were at capacity with 20 people and the wine was flowing, thanks to our accomplished compere Gareth.

thanks to all who took part, audience, performers, and every other kind of support. I pulled in so many favours for this show - I hope you all know how grateful I am - Suzon, James, Liz, Carolyn, Gareth, Lizzie, Jack, Witek, Steve, Philly, David and Jane, Mark W, Mark S, my Dad, Helen, Vicky, Karla, Doug, Vedran, Beni and Selwyn.

2007-08-02T11:42:00.000Z

ugh

no site, no actor, no time, rapidly running out of ideas and optimism.

ho hum

i might just leave the country

2007-07-31T22:38:00.000Z

another long gap in my blogging, i'm getting very lax. well, i suppose the research paper was a good excuse - congratulations VLP bods on getting those done!

just the final show in september to go!

its the final push now and it looks like it might be uphill all the way. I still don't have confirmation on my site (hopefully part of an art/performance festival in an old timber yard in peckham) and i've lost my actor, not a great start - but we will prevail!

I would like to make this one much more simple and contemplative, leaving the audience more room to make their mark. I wish i had time to explore some more software and stuff - would really like to do something with the Nintendo Wii, it's my latest nerdy obsession. But I will have to work with what i know for september or else there will just be too many unknowns. Still, I think the simplicity of upstage has its own appeal and i like that it riles the techno-junkies with its general clunkiness. Just need to work on the graphics and not trying to do too much.

hmmm... then there is the documentation space in college. i really want it to be something interesting - am excited about the possibilities, but need to think hard about what i want to represent of myself since most people who see it won't see my show.

2007-07-07T11:32:00.000Z

WOOOO WE DID IT

Well, 'the old hotel part II' went without hitch (almost). I am so relieved. we had a power cut on site just before the show, then the webcam wasn't working, but it all came good with seconds to spare. Suzon, James and Liz did their bit online very smoothly, they kept to the time limit and worked all the elements on stage as if it was the easiest thing in the world (this was the first time we had got through the script with a technical failure!). Jonny (on site) interacted with both the webcam and the projected image and confidently drew the onsite audience into the weird world we had created on upstage, whilst also grounding in the site (the work was site-specific). I couldnt have asked for more.

Of course there were so many things i could have improved on - the presentation on site, the amount of rehearsal jonny was able to have with proper working webcam (none!), parts of the script etc etc.. would also have been great to have someone experienced to help me direct the show (in particular to help jonny with improvisation and interaction - i did my best but he pretty much had to work it out on his own - what do i know about acting? Saying that though, I think he did an amazing job, but would have been less stressful for him with proper direction.) HOWEVER time, money and friendly directors with nothing better to do were not on my side, so I think we did pretty well. Was very exciting to be back on the building site, not knowing from one day to the next which rooms would have floors, ceilings, windows etc. The guys were still working on site this morning and had to down tools for half an hour so the show would be audible! Fun fun.

Will try to write a more objective analysis when i have a bit more distance and will also give a link to the film of the show which will be uploaded to my website shortly. In the meantime, here's some pics of rehearsals.

2007-06-27T11:32:00.000Z

PLEASE COME TO THIS SHOW!

Saturday is virtually sold out, but if you can possibly make it on wednesday thursday or friday nights please do! it's a great show, talented bunch of students and i am really proud of the design.

2007-05-18T08:43:00.000Z

collaborating and writing

the rehearsals for 'the old hotel' are getting very exciting, although at the moment we are still devising rather than really rehearsing. We have decided to have just one actor in the site, telling stories one-on-one to audience members, whilst the performers online act as ghosts or memories for those stories. We are focussing one story in particular which was devised by Jonny during the perforamnce at 'Sitelines210407', which was about a relationship which focussed around visits to seedy old hotels and eventually deteriorated. jonny made the story really interesting by talking about the hotel rooms as if they were a character - perhaps his lover - in the story.

suzon has been producing some fantastic graphics which allow us to do some really exciting stuff wth the webcam, with the 'subject' in different positions in relation to the camera, coming up close, moving further away disappearing behind 'walls' and re-appearing in windows. During the performance, the camera will be on the actor and he (and the on-site audience) will be able to respond to the online performance as it will be projected onto a wall in the site. We need to work out how what the actor is saying will be fed into upstage, as there is no sound element with the webcam bit.

my paper is well underway, a couple of thousand words to go. I feel like it is a bit muddled and less coherent than last time, so am looking forward to getting to the end so i can go back through and organise it better. Although I felt very restricted by last time's 5000 word limit - and even make a habit of compaining that 10,000 is too short (what a geek) - am finding it tough to expand without waffling, having packed what i felt were my most important ideas into the smaller word count for last time. Have tried re-structuring and hope when i read back through it will be ok... hmmm...

2007-05-10T12:29:00.000Z

moving on

so, the next stage of 'the old hotel'...

i have started collaborating with artists Suzon Fuks and James Cunningham (www.igneous.org.au) who are based in Australia and Liz Bryce, based in New Zealand. We are meeting regularly in online stage software Upstage (http://upstage.org.nz) to devise a performance for the Upstage performance festival 070707. The piece will be based around the threads of stories that began to be told at 'Sitelines210407'. The online element of the performance will be projected back into the 'real' space of the old hotel, like a ghost of the building and a live performance will take place in the space with two actors simultaneously with the online performance. The performance in the space will be feed back into the online performance by means of webcam.

We have been trying out different ways of using still and moving (animated/webcam) imagery in upstage, its all pretty exciting. I have had a tutorial with Vicki Smith from Avatar Body Collision (http://www.avatarbodycollision.org/) on using the webcam. Here's some screen grabs from my experiments with it:

2007-04-27T14:06:00.000Z

its all over... for now at least

phew, what an adventure. Having spent all of saturday saying to myself "i'm never doing this again. No really Cherry, never do this again, don't do it to yourself!" I have spent the time since saying "that was great, let's do it again".

It was nerve-racking and incredibly hard work, but we pulled it off and "the old hotel" went without a hitch (more or less) - although that's not to say i would do exactly the same again - so many interesting problems and ideas raised... where to start...?

First, the performers. They did their jobs perfectly. It was really interesting to see the difference in the two pairs (Rich and Jonny (A&B) and Ming and Mel (B&C)), as they had rehearsed separately and gone about it in two completely different ways. Rich and Jonny had worked very quickly, getting through the entire text once or twice in every rehearsal. They came off the book later in the week, but had gone much deeper into the thoughts behind the words and how they might use/subvert these. Because of this they were able to be very flexible with audience intervention and general presence/noise. Mel and Ming, on the other hand, worked through each scene much more slowly and thoroughly and focussed on accuracy rather than flexibility. The result on their side was a quieter more crafted approach to the scenes, which seemed to draw the audiences just as effectively as Rich and Jonny's energetic approach. I hope I will be able to work with Mel and Jonny for the next stage of this project too, so we can keep building on what we have rather than starting from scratch again (Rich and Ming will be working on their own performances in July).

The audience. Something you can never quite predict. How interesting to see how people's reactions changed over the course of the night. At first people listened intently, but by the 4th installment (there were 15 'scenes' spread across 90mins with 3-4 minute gaps between each), they started to realise that their full attention was neither necessary nor expected and began to drift off into groups, just catching bits here and there. Some parts went completely unnoticed - just a conversation amongst the crowd, others had people shushing and straining to hear. One thing that was common to every part was that as soon as a 'performance' was recognised, the audience drew back to a 'respectful' distance - and then complained that they couldn't hear!!! One brave audience member asked me if she could ask the performers questions, I said 'of course' and she walked straight into the middle of a conversation between rich and jonny. What was really wonderful about this was that not only were the performers able to answer some of her questions, but then other audience members asked her what information she had gleaned from them - so a lovely organic process of gossip/rumour was begun.

The space. Well just look at the pics on the website, absolutely amazing. with the layout of the old rooms still marked on the floors and the crumbly bricks...mmmmm... It was really exciting at the beginning of the evening when some students turned up outside the site; I asked if they were there for the exhibition and they told me they used to live in the old hotel! So I invited them up and they looked around the space, tracing out the positions of their old rooms etc. It was exactly what the piece was all about. The performers watched them closely! Sadly they couldn't be convinced to stay for the performance.

The text. I was really pleased with how the performers brought the text to life and made their own stories out of it. I hope the text will be the vehicle for developing the stories further in my collaborative work for 070707 Upstage festival (see news and events on my website). This time, however, I want to expand the text to include imagery as well as words, and perhaps use my website as a 'script' so it can be constantly in flux rather than a static object.

Enough for now. More retrospective thoughts when I come back from my camping trip and am all relaxed!

2007-04-17T13:29:00.000Z

oh, it's such a hard life

rehearsals for 'the old hotel' (my performance piece for the sitelines exhibition) began last friday with a picnic on the south bank and a session of gossip in waterloo station. Mel and Ming are working as a pair - so i saw them for a long session on friday - and Rich and Jonny met with me on sunday. i am really excited about the way its all going. the dynamic in each of the pairs is completely different, it's really interesting what can happen with one text. was also fun to see how people on the south bank (see pic of jonny and rich below with woman watching in background) and in waterloo station, reacted to what we were doing. Mel and Ming rehearsed with me on site last night and i will be doing the same with rich and jonny tonight. Its exhausting, but the beautiful weather helps to keep everyone's spirits up.

i love my actors, they are all wonderful. I am, of course, terrified about saturday night, but at least i know that they will put everything they can into it, i just hope i can support the hard work they are doing - it's tough when you are not an actor yourself.

in the meantime, i've put more stuff on the website, and will do so again on thursday or friday. and here are some pics from our first rehearsals:

2007-04-11T20:38:00.000Z

i wish someone would write me letters like this!

“You seem the same as always, and being you, hate every minute of it. Don’t! Learn to say ‘Fuck You!’ to the world once in a while. You have every right to. Just stop thinking, worrying, looking over your shoulder, wondering, doubting, fearing, hurting, hoping for some easy way out, struggling, gasping, confusing, itching, scratching, mumbling, bumbling, grumbling, humbling, stumbling, rumbling, rambling, gambling, tumbling, scumbling, scrambling, hitching, hatching, bitching, moaning, groaning, honing, boning, horse-shitting, hair-splitting, nit-picking, piss-trickling, nose-sticking, ass-gouging, eyeball-poking, finger-pointing, alleyway-sneaking, long waiting, small stepping, evil-eying, back-scratching, searching, perching, besmirching, grinding grinding grinding away at yourself. Stop it and just DO.

From your description, and from what I know of your previous work and your ability, the work you are doing sounds very good. ‘Drawings—clear, clear-cut but crazy like machines, larger, bolder, real nonsense.’ That sounds wonderful—real nonsense. Do more. More nonsensical more crazy more machines, more breasts, penises, cunts, whatever—make them abound with nonsense. Try and tickle something inside you, your ‘weird humor.’ You belong in the most secret part of you. Don’t worry about cool, make your own uncool. Make your own, your own world. If you fear, make it work for you—draw and paint your fear and anxiety. And stop worrying about big, deep things such as ‘to decide on a purpose and way of life, a consistent approach to even some impossible end or even as imagined end.’ You must practice being stupid, dumb, unthinking, empty. Then you will be able to DO! I have much confidence in you and even though you are tormenting yourself, the work you do is very good. Try to do some BAD work. The worst you can think of and see what happens but mainly relax and let everything go to hell. You are not responsible for the world—you are only responsible for your work, so do it. And don’t think that your work has to conform to any idea or flavor. It can be anything you want it to be. But if life would be easier for you if you stopped working then stop. Don’t punish yourself. However, I think that it is so deeply engrained in you that it would be easier to DO.”

—letter from Sol Lewitt to Eva Hesse, c. 1964/1965 when she was living in Kettwig, Germany, with her marriage failing and creative spirit debilitated

2007-04-03T12:27:00.000Z

at last

the website is up: www.cherrytruluck.co.uk/sitelines.html
still a few technical glitches to iron out and lots of info to add, but it's there, there are a few things to look at and after the easter weekend there will be a few more!

I have finished writing the text for my performance piece and now just have 10 days or so whilst the actors learn their lines. rehearsals begin the week before the exhibition. Was really worried as writing it has been a really stressful experience and i was too scared to show it to anyone before i gave it to the actors, but have had a really encouraging e-mail from Ming, which has cheered me up no end and got me all excited about it again.

Now am beginning to look at my research paper again. Am going to post my last draft on my website and would appreciate any comments etc. Have been looking recently at ways that people create web-based performances outside of the framework of 'art' or 'theatre' - such as www.justin.tv, as well as ways in which the internet is used in conjunction with other technologies to create a more interactive/physical experience of cyber-performance - e.g. http://www.diggriver.com - a community news site which texts stories to your mobile and flash mob actions - http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2228162337. All suggestions welcome.

Finally have been building these crazy little models for a bit of pocket money (last paid job before i become a full-time scrounger). They are so cute, had to post a picture:

2007-03-28T15:30:00.000Z

sitelines

its full steam ahead on this exhibition, i have four actors and am really excited about it. the piece has become very site specific - the site itself is fantastic. there's been loads of issues to deal with in terms of organising the exhibition, but i think it is working itself out. I plan to get the website up and running this weekend: www.cherrytruluck.co.uk

Its been a stressful term as far as available money and time are concerned and i am really sorry that i haven't been able to support everyone else's work, but from now on I will be much better. I have taken a whacking great loan out (which i will no doubt regret later!) and from now until September will only be working one day a week except for the odd little bit of freelance work. Other than that i will be fully committed to the course and will be around a lot more. In September I will win the lottery and set up a grant-giving fund for poor MA students!

see you all at the TBW private view on Friday night.

2007-02-28T20:40:00.000Z

by the way...

have been working on my own project too... at last have managed to find some time - unfortunately it meant quitting my main job, so now am stony broke and have to move out of my very convenient house-sitting arrangement in ladbroke grove. so back to brighton and those hideous train fares, eek.

so i'm doing this 'show' at the end of march in a building site in hammersmith. i'm really excited about it. it's going to be at about the same time as the interim show and will link to the website i am building for that (i'm not going to be physically present at the interim show, but my website will go live at the same time - am using it more as a deadline than an actual show). Anyway, the one in hammersmith... it's going to be a group exhibition with two painters and maybe a video artist, so i don't want to do a very theatre-y performance thing. So its going to be quiet a subtle intervention-type thing and i'm going to use bluetooth and mobile phones to continue this idea about fragments of stories and dream/memory spaces. the exhibition is a one-night only thing, which suits me, so am just waiting for a definite date and then i will let you know.

in the meantime am trying to organise a seminar from these people - please check them out: http://www.avatarbodycollision.org/ and http://www.creative-catalyst.com/

2007-02-27T23:54:00.000Z

two storm wood and other ventures

wow, i haven't blogged for ages, how lax of me. Actually, i haven't even written a thank you letter to my grandad for my christmas present, that's how busy i've been! I've gone straight to the bottom of his favourite grandchildren list. Am going to write a grovelly letter, just as soon as i've finished this blog... hmmm... not sure if my priorities are quite right there...

so thanks for the huge support for the play! only kidding, i know how it is - i've been equally crap in supporting VLP in general recently. Anyway, it went ok. Bit weird, we got a new director 4 days before opening (long political story) and half my set got scrapped, so although it looked ok, it didn't really make any sense. My friends who came to see it assured me this didn't matter, that they thought it looked cool anyway and that they probably wouldn't have been that influenced by the design concept anyway, which made me realise just how futile my job is! Hours of obsessing over how to achieve my vision of oversize children's play-blocks which doubled as packing boxes were clearly well spent, and my genuine horror of creating a black box space with a single 'dramatic' focal point was realised. But such is life, these things happen. Overall the play - which, by the way, was genuinely a really wonderful piece of writing - was well received and got a pretty decent write up in the Daily Mail. Lets just hope it transfers somewhere and i get to redesign it.

pictures:

2007-01-30T13:30:00.000Z

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

everthing is 300 miles per hour at the moment, my (very organised but very annoying) calendar on my phone beeps at me every 5 minutes to tell me i should be somewhere else. But its great (except for the lack of sleep). Am loving working with Shotgun, have made the scary decision to have quite a minimal set, which is great if it works, but otherwise looks like i didn't do much work. There's some nice graphics going on and a big black tree, but otherwise its just giant building blocks and a seventies sofa. Am not going to show you any design images before the show - as i hope you'll all come and see it, but here's the flyer, to give you a taster:

my own work is on the back burner, but ever-present in the recesses of my mind... thinking lots about text and layers and stories... anyway, not enough to tell you about at the moment. exciting news of the day is that (through Shotgun) I went to meet a young theatre designer called David Farley (http://www.clarevidalhall.co.uk/clients/david_farley/cv.htm) this morning. He went through my designs with me and we chatted about his work, it was really fun. Nice to see someone actually surviving quite reasonably in this field (he has a studio in Fitzrovia - lovely)! I should have googled him before my visit, but my phone didn't bleep me early enough and i ran out of time, but have checked him out since, he has done some nice stuff, check out this interview with him - http://www.sheffieldtheatres.co.uk/education/productions/macbeth/setdesign.shtml - mmm, I do like a bit of Louise Bourgeois.

2006-12-27T18:24:00.000Z

collaborative response etc.

CONGRATULATIONS to you all on a mammoth effort. I was so impressed by Eleven:Fifty-seven (by the way why was it called that?). It was beautiful, truly, The little room and the dangly chairs and the trees... and the PUPPETS, which were sooo fantastic. The costumes were great, nice and subtle but lovely, and very in tune with the overall design. All in all, you never would have guessed there were so many people involved, the design was very coherent.
I thought Magda's role was wonderful and tied the whole thing together, she was also very good at shepherding us all around - although perhaps this didn't need to be quite so military at times!? The projections looked really professional, my only criticism is that perhaps they were sometimes used unnecessarily (or maybe it was just that the content was too obvious?). There was a lot going on in a pretty short time period and it did cross my mind that some of it was there just because members of the group had the relevant skill-sets, but nonetheless, it didn't seem disjointed or confusing. it goes without saying that the actors were great, and I particularly enjoyed it when they managed to get the audience moving without having to herd us, this was a lot to do with the lighting as well, which was very good. I wasn't always completely taken in by the text - but i think this was mostly improvised, perhaps just needed more rehearsal time (i know this was limited). thought the most powerful bit was mr north's moment of quiet at his mothers grave. particularly loved the (very eerie) child puppet with spooky twins controlling it!
I'm only being critical because it wouldn't be very useful for me to just flatter you all, but I really did thoroughly enjoy the show and am looking forward to seeing what everyone does next!

2006-12-13T14:15:00.000Z

so much to think about at the moment.
first of all the play at richmond, which (although doug hated it!) went really well. It was definitely my most conventional set to date, but that said it was probably about as unconventional as that play could cope with. Kirstie and I got loads of positive responses about the design and an exciting offer of potential work to look at which i'm thrilled about.
secondly, my own stuff. am thinking about a few themes at the moment which came out of my workshop. i was really inspired by rich's suggestions on my blog and have started thinking about random meetings between strangers and conflicts between the drama of theatre and everyday life. I have also been looking more at the way people present themselves and tell their own stories through the internet. i've become a real myspace addict in the process. i had a really interesting conversation with my friend mel about how long someone could continue to 'live' in cyberspace after they had died for real, assuming no-one knew...
i'm also organising a site for my next mini-project and i am so excited about it. don't want to give the game away so am not going to give too many details, but lots of possibilities for projection and playing with scale again... now to bring all this together much more coherently than i managed last time!
finally i have been working on my paper which is becoming much more focussed and looking at myspace as a kind of theatre and perhaps this idea of virtual life and death. am really getting back into theatre after a while in the wilderness. it's just a name after all and doesn't mean my work has to be restricted... i think i've been disallowing myself to have fun and that is officially going to stop right now!

2006-11-21T14:31:00.000Z

Just to clarify, a response to rich's comment:

Hi rich, just read your comment on my blog – then re-read my blog.
I realised it sounded like I was complaining about your ‘puppet show’, which I didn‘t intend at all. Just wanted you to know that! In actual fact I found it fascinating how much everyone got into it, and was particularly intrigued by the interaction with the model, which I had only thought of as a stationary thing previously. Even though this playful interaction made me feel really quite awkward at the moment when it came up against a painful memory, I think this was possibly the most valuable moment of the whole workshop because it was the point where the personal element was exposed for me.
If the whole experience had been really easy and fun for me I wouldn’t have got anything out of it and I am thrilled (and a little bemused!) by the fact that everyone else found their own way-in to the project as well!
I think I’ll stick this on my blog to clarify things
See you thursday
cherry

2006-11-20T07:29:00.000Z

workshop

phew its over! so many issues and interesting bits 'n' bobs raised by it, what a worthwhile experience. hmmm... where to start, probably with the whole thing of me framing it as a 'workshop', which I did for my own comfort really (so i didn't have to call it a show). What I hadn't really considered was that the word workshop automatically assumes a higher level of interaction than i had imagined. i had thought of it as a workshop for ME, not everybody. But that's not to say that I didn't enjoy the level of involvement that actually occurred, although in the end i felt a bit jealous and protective over 'my' drawing, hmmm... that's interesting too...

It's taken me a few days to be able to really think about it rationally because it all became rather personal, which i hadn't altogether expected. There was one particular point when Ming re-wrote one of my own memories and handed it to me and it was a really nasty memory so it was quite hard to keep drawing with everyone watching and rich's puppet show going on behind me. I've had a couple of comments from those of you who made it to the workshop (thanks by the way, I was amazed by the turn-out!). I find it really odd when people say it was 'good', I can't imagine thinking about it qualitatively like that, I can only think about the list of things I got out of it. These comments (not all 'good', also 'f***ing odd' and 'very you') have rather taken me by surprise and made me realise just how selfish i was in the planning of the workshop - I hadn't expected anyone else to get anything out of it!! So, looking forward to getting feedback from all the VLP people soon, thank you all for coming and thank you to the wonderful Ming who kept it all moving and was generally amazing. Here's some pics:

2006-11-13T17:53:00.000Z

oh and by the way...

i went to see 'blue on blue' at the latchmere (theatre pub in battersea - i think its also called theatre 503). It was put together by The Shotgun Theatre Company, one of whom is Tom Hardy who used to be a student at the drama school where I work. So I went with the director of the drama school and some of the students.

it was really good, which was so lovely because, to be honest, i wasn't expecting much. I know tom's a decent actor, I've seen him on tv in a few things, but i didn't know what he'd be like as a director. So nice to be pleasantly surprised. It was written by Tom's father - Chips Hardy and was a really dark comedy about 2 guys with all kinds of psychological problems who become involved in various ways with a hungarian nurse, leading to a kind of examination of their rather sick co-dependant relationship. What a terrible description. Anyway, i think this one is sold out, but if Shotgun do anything else, would recommend trying to catch it.

2006-11-13T07:54:00.000Z

thought for the day...

a man who can understand Buddha and has an intuition of the heaven and hell of humanity ought not to live in a world ruled by 'common sense' and democracy and bourgeois standards. It is only from cowardice that he lives in it; and if its dimensions are too cramping for him and the bourgeois parlour too confined, he lays it at the wolf's door, and refuses to see that the wolf is as often as not the best part of him. All that is wild in himself he calls wolf and considers it wicked and dangerous and the bugbear of all decent life.

steppenwolf - hermann hesse

2006-11-08T13:53:00.000Z

workshop update

please keep those train stories coming, i'm getting together great collection, but not enough yet.

here's a pic (not a very good one) of the memory-space model i am building for my workshop, am getting quite excited about it now...

2006-11-06T19:47:00.000Z

bad theatre, good food

i went down to salisbury at the weekend to see my mum and go to the theatre. salisbury doesn't have a lot going for it unless you're a japanese tourist, but the theatre is the one reason i still go back occasionally. For a provincial theatre, it does some pretty cool stuff, I remember particularly an amazing production of the Bacchae by Kneehigh Theatre Company. However this weekend it let me down! We went to see 'A Woman of No Importance' and even setting aside some unfortunate blips that couldn't be helped (lines fluffed, bits of set falling down), it was really crappy. They tried to throw in some bits of experimental dance stuff, which (even if the actors hadn't looked like they would rather take off their clothes than do them) seemed so completely out of place in the middle of a classic Oscar Wilde comedy. This was compounded by the, frankly bizarre, set design, which just couldn't make up its mind if its was 'period' or something completely different and ended up being just messy. the costumes were very nice but dull. Altogether it was really confused and rather disappointing. The saving grace was that a couple of the actors were really really good. Don't have any pictures to prove my point, could only find the poster image on the net - perhaps they're embarassed!

On the upside i had a very english pub meal of fish and chips and bread & butter pudding in the village pub on sunday and put on about 3 stone in one sitting. yum yum yum.

2006-11-04T11:50:00.000Z

I HAVE REJOINED SOCIETY

i have finally got a computer! hooray! no more sneaking onto Alan's when he's not looking or blogging at work when i should be drawing...no actually, i'm sure i'll still do that. am also very excited to discover that it seems that the wifi on the train from brighton is free (it says for a limited time - but doesn't say how long), i'm a bit suspicious but i'm not going to complain.

the preparations for my workshop are going well and i am actually beginning to look forward to it. thanks to those who have sent me train stories, keep them coming - there's no limit on how many you send!!

have been reading 'naked lunch' by william burroughs, it has completely blown my mind, i don't really know what to say about it, i am simultaneously revolted and overawed by it. am fascinated by this episode about 'senders' and 'factualists', which is all about use and abuse of technology:

"Artists will confuse sending with creation. They will camp around screeching "A new medium!" until their rating drops off..."

made me feel very small and stupid for a while... i think that's probably a good thing.

2006-10-27T16:06:00.000Z

trains trains trains

its been a long time since i blogged, so lots to catch up on...

well, i've booked the film and video room for a workshop on 16th november. i was putting it off but finally thought of a way of progressing my work that i could actually achieve in the time and space available. i'm getting increasingly frustrated at my own inability to perform in my own work and the limitations that puts on what i can actually do, but on the other hand i don't want it to become too 'theatre'. I know it must seem strange to those who do perform, but really it is an inability - i was shy as a child and its taken twenty years to get over that in social situations, i don't really have that kind of time here!

so what am i doing? well, i've become really interested in the way i produce work and the people who influence me, as well as the subject matter/site of the work itself, so i'm going to produce a sort of drawing which will be an amalgamation of visual information about the site and stories and memories about train journeys which i have been collecting. I want the whole thing to be directed or curated by another person (hopefully an actor doug knows, who - like my dead person on the train - is an elderly gentleman).

i don't want to say any more because i am looking forward to getting everyone's reactions and don't want to prejudice them too much!

work sucks, i am trying to plan the most efficient route for my final escape from architecture. if only there wasn't that horrid issue of money...!

looking forward to having simon vicenzi as my tutor, he came to talk to us last year and his work really struck a chord with me.

2006-09-19T21:08:00.000Z

new term, new ideas

my blogging activity has been a little slow recently because i didn't think anyone was reading, but doug assures me that he, at least is keeping up-to-date, so here goes...

having spent loads of time reading and scribbling over the summer, i feel like my practical and theory work has come back together again, which is really exciting. In fact, it has merged so much it gets hard to talk about the two separately, but to clarify i will try...

theory - my working heading (which needs some serious editing - more of a description at the moment) is "investigating the construction of cyberspace as a virtual reality through the performance of the journey". I know it doesn't sound like it, but i have spent the last few days on a major mission to narrow down my field(s) of interest to get to this! But there it is, I've planned out my certificate stage hand-in and am trying to get it written before term starts so i have the whole term to edit and re-edit and to lay it out beautifully! I've split the cyber-journey down into five areas of discussion: preparing to leave (home, anticipation, desire, preparation), departure (crossing boundaries, delegation to cyber agency), moving/travelling (navigation, motion, vehicle), anticipating arrival (negotiating the process of arrival, separation from the cyber-body), arrival (destination, ending). Central to the whole thing (at the moment) is an idea I am working on about the nature of cyber-space as an extension of self (cyber-self?), so the whole cyber-journey as a construction of space-self. hmmm... need to think this through some more, I have time though - for a change. What a relief not to be doing things at the last minute.

practice - had a break-through over the summer, found an old notebook where i had drafted a methodology of my practice for an application form. It was great because I have felt so lost about what it is that I DO, now that I am not doing architecture. But reading this thing, I realised that the whole reason I am tring to get out of architecture is that I never really did architecture in the first place and that there is nothing wrong with the way i work, just the context I was working in. So following this methodology, I have found a site in Brighton that I love and am in the process of documenting and researching it. I am planning to use this as a virtual site for a workshop performance in November. I will build onto it, a collage of 'real' and virtual forms. I don't want to say too much more right now because I am still formulating it in my head, but here is a picture of the site:

ok, that's it for now. See you soon Doug and anyone else who might be reading...

2006-08-16T08:17:00.000Z

heating in august

oh, i love english weather, it really keeps you on your toes. on monday i walked into work in a t-shirt and jeans, then yesterday evening we were so cold we put the heating on!

i hope everyone's preparations for the show are going well. If you need any help, please just let me know. I am doing my best to ensure I am free for the whole week leading up to the show, so i can be on hand as general dogsbody...

have been doing a lot of reading recently, since i came up with a (perhaps a little too ambitious) plan to finish half my paper before term starts in september, so i can focus on my practical work when doug and jordan are more available to me. Anyway, its going well so far. I'm still at the stage of reading around the subject where everything you read makes you realise just how little you know about it, but I am sure I will break through in a couple of weeks and then i can start writing. Have been reading this text by Deleuze and Guattari called A Thousand Plateaus which is scarily brilliant, how do people get that clever? The whole thing is written in this structure like hypertext, so you can dip in and out, the order is not rigid. And it seems to cover everything, psychology, philosophy, politics etc etc. I hope one day I can go back to it and think - 'Oh, it's not that clever'. Right now it makes me feel very small and stupid and gives me a headache after every few paragraphs - in fact I've got one now just thinking about it!

What else have I been reading?... Donna Haraway - A Cyborg Manifesto (which was strangely far less impressive than i had expected - i think so many of her ideas, which were radical when she wrote them, have been absorbed into popular culture - so they don't seem shocking now), Marcus Novak - Liquid Architectures, can't remember other names right now - don't have the books to hand, but lots of interesting stuff about cyberspace as a military enterprise and then a place for fun, and about rhizomes and hallucination and representation etc....

I have become such a nerd!

2006-07-03T14:55:00.000Z

moving on...

I have just got in from the airport after a great weekend in seville, i'm feeling totally relaxed now (although i'm sure one day in the office will put paid to that!). So I am starting to look forward and have only just realised how soon the interim show is! No matter, would like to use it to try out ways of using the sounds I have been recording, I have been thinking about various possibilities since Diana brought it up at the progress meeting last week. I wonder if its too late to get a space for the show?

Anyway, we went to see an exhibition called "One of Many - Origins and Variants" by Allen Ruppersberg and the Andalucian Centre for Contemporary Art, I found it really inspiring - isn't it strange how, without any deliberate planning, you can so often find something in other people's work which relates to your own? He has done a whole series of pieces where he has recorded fragments of conversations on postcards and displayed them with related photos, there was also a room full of canvasses covered in writing which seemed to be a story written from everyday life. But the bit that grabbed me the most was his 'singing posters':
Inspired by a 1959 recording of Beat poet Ginsberg’s epic poem Howl, Ruppersberg transcribed the words phonetically on to some 200 bright posters and interspersed them with adverts. The effect is such that, to read the words, you must sound them out - otherwise they are difficult to decipher. (www.24hourmuseum.org.uk)

2006-06-13T22:04:00.000Z

just for the record my blogging activity has temporarily moved to http://mypage.cooeey.com/fromtheretohere
this is just for the duration of my collaborative project, please have a look

2006-05-25T22:23:00.000Z

must sleep

the last couple of weeks have been manic, research proposal, presentation, application for centre for drawing, my job, my other job, oh and my other job... and it doesnt look like letting up in the very near future. But I'd be lying if i said i didnt like it like this, the pressure is really good for me as long as it doesnt go on indefinitely.

i'm really excited (and also a little nervous) about getting on with my collaborative project. We got three weeks in the end, but mostly based in the postgraduate research room (don't ask me where that is) and Avis Newman's office. Only the last two days are in the centre for drawing, but moving around is no bad thing, since the whole thing is about the journey.

I'm also really excited about some possible progress in my own research. We had an old friend round for drinks and late-night poker (!) yesterday and he was telling me about recent developments in the world of cyberspace - his brother is a programmer. Apparently the latest thing in M.U.D.s (Multi-user dungeons) is that people are trading in real money, buying virtual property - houses, cars, space ships, works of art etc. Supposedly there's something like £1billion dollars currently invested in virtual property. Of course, this means there's all kinds of new dilemmas about ownership and fraud etc. Anyway, ed and i figured this all sounded kind of fun, so we are going to try and get on the virtual property ladder! Watch this space...

Real work is quite exciting too. In the new office, building work is almost complete and it looks great. We got delivery of our lovely new IMacs and have spent several hours just stroking them and saying "oh but its just so beautiful". We have a couple of great projects on the go already (including a refurbishment of an amazing Art Deco house in central London) and more in the offing. Work on the next play at Richmond (Midsummer Nights Dream) has also started. There's a lot to do, but it's so nice to be able to have a break from using my head! Kirstie and I pretty much finished the design work over the holidays, so I'm just making donkeys heads and walls and fairy costumes (dungarees!) etc.

Finally, thanks to everyone who presented last week. It was a fascinating day - no, really! It was really interesting to see how Amitesh's research has progressed and I am intrigued by the way his research translates into his pratical ideas - can't wait to see it. Lushan blew my mind (almost literally!) with her intensive research and I really hope she can pull everything together for the interim show because her ideas are so lovely. Karen, wow, what a performance - i learnt so much and enjoyed every minute. I am always fascinated to see how different Kirstie's approach is to my own, because we so often see things in a similar way. I love the way her research is so personal.

ok enough, i'm going to bed

2006-04-29T21:39:00.000Z

long time no blog

congratulations to karen and amitesh, i really enjoyed your workshop. It's really exciting that everyone's work is starting to take off, a great way to start the new term.

karen's performance drew you in one minute, letting you really get into it, then the next minute spat you back on the outside and made you really aware of your role as a viewer (voyeur?). I didnt get bored once! i loved the bacchus mask bit, the lead-in really stressed me out (in a good way!) with the projections and that noise like an aeroplane taking off, and the contrast was really strange - in that it almost made sense that karen should suddenly come out with a cow's head on! I didn't get the Bacchus thing (having missed the explanation), maybe it might have occurred to me later, but it didn't really matter. If we all interpreted everything in exactly the same way it would be very boring. I couldn't make out a lot of the words in the readings from the psychology text books, not sure if this is because of sound quality or my deaf ear, but I got the general idea and liked the balance of the different levels of interaction with the projections and the audience. The scale and simplicity of the projections were great, although I was a bit distracted by the green haze, but that's probably just me being anal. Overall, I was really impressed by how much had been achieved and really enjoyed it, I was particularly inspired by how pared down and clear it all seemed. If you guys feel like you don't really know what you're doing, you did a bloody good job of concealing it!

Will fill you guys in on my own work next time... when I've done some

2006-03-28T15:26:00.000Z

exploding head

i have been trying all day to write my research proposal and so far I have written the following:

Performing Virtual Space
Performativity of non-physical architecture
-journey, domestic space (public/private - window, door etc.), language (text), imagery, culture

But none the less, I do feel like I am getting somewhere. What with the crit and chatting to drawing students about my work, trying to explain my model (the bits of which are stuck on my wall at home) to ed's dad (my new landlord - owner of said wall) and now writing this proposal, I have found it rather necessary recently to be able to talk concisely about my ideas. This has forced me to narrow it down a bit, or at least to identify which bits are the most interesting. I have noticed how my work often goes in cycles, which i have always enjoyed because it means i can keep adding to it, improving it. Anyway, I seem to have come back to this thing about performativity, but in terms of this virtual space rather than real space. So I'm going to frame my research proposal in the same way in September (well similar), i.e. examining the performative impact of virtual space through the zones of language, domesticity etc (as listed above).

I am still battling with this architecture thing, which must be very dull for you all, but am starting to come to some conclusions about that too. I think I have spent far too much time worrying about it being a safety blanket, whilst at the same time feeling rather lost as I didnt feel i had a 'medium' through which to express my ideas. I realise now that although architecture, as a career, is definitely a safety blanket, I always felt like I could take it into more interesting places outside of the confines of that career. So whilst I don't want to restrict myself to just doing architectural stuff, I am not going to avoid it either. This makes me feel much happier, because I was feeling like the performance element of my work was really forced and unnatural, but by taking this approach I think (hope!) it will just happen.

2006-03-17T01:19:00.000Z

look at me

oooh check me out, posting two days in a row.

spent the afternoon helping lushan with her workshop. whilst i am perfectly happy to do this, i am slightly confused about the what the workshops are really all about. Are they supposed to be a showcase of our individual work or a learning experience for the group? If its the former, then lushan's is very successful, we had a lot of fun rehearsing it with her and i think it will be great when it all comes together tomorrow night. However, I thought that Kirstie's was more what I was expecting, as it gave me an opportunity to learn something myself, whilst also getting to understand more about her project. What a pity Doug wasnt able to attend it.

anyway, this evening i went to the drawing show at Trinity Buoy Wharf with Karen. Was really just interested in one person's work (although it was all great - always love Doris and Mat Cahill's stuff)- Emily Speed, who was in my crit with me . Our work seems to have so much in common it almost seems silly we are not working together. So we are - as of tonight. Hooray. we are putting together a proposal for the centre for drawing (next deadline is in may), so we will hopefully have some time there next term. Doug was keen i did a bit more of this collaborating business, so i am. can't wait. watch this space.

sorry no pics this time.

2006-03-16T00:35:00.000Z

dickens and dreams

wow what a day. tara arts, tate britain, sleep centre, first night at Richmond Drama School. whew.

always interesting to see how other people work, although tara arts don't really have anything in common with my work. Nonetheless, enjoyed seeing them, liked the chairs! Thanks Doug for organising.

Gothic Nightmares - amazing. Has really got me thinking about fantasy and fairy-tales, the virtual in terms of our imagination not just the internet. This was much closer to what i think of as fairy tale than the LePage thing. Need to read something clever on the subject of fairy-tale, any suggestions welcome!

Sleep centre - fascinating (well done Kirstie and thanks!). Ok so the guy was a bit of a prick, but I learnt something, a few things actually!

Nicholas Nickleby - well what can i say? the design-work was fantastic and the acting was not bad. No, seriously, I was thrilled with how it looked. Working with Kirstie is a dream, we both understand each others ideas completely and it makes the job so much easier and therefore more fun. So many positive comments about set and costume (especially costume, which came together so well) and I loved the way it worked together. Kirstie mentioned ed's painting which we used as the basis for the colour scheme, so i will use that as an excuse to show off his brilliant work (ok so i'm biased, but it is good!):

2006-03-10T19:30:00.000Z

smile

i am so happy with the way my crit went, i felt like i did my work justice because i planned what to say and present etc., so all the questions/comments etc, were really relevant and helpful. I need to have a big think about it all before i decide on the next step, but i think the crit came at exactly the right time. Apart from everything else, i find the pressure of the crit is great for forcing you to get your thoughts in order about your work.

Things that were discussed:
Possibility of recreating the model as a virtual space
Am I really looking at 'space' (i.e. is this my 'medium') or am i using it as a safety blanket because I find it easy to understand/talk about?
Building models and fantasies as a method of control/empowerment
'Sims' and chatbots
The insularity of working at the hypersurface, is this interaction with the virtual something that can happen in anything other than an intimate environment - i.e. one person and their computer/imagination.
Why I don't perform myself...
Alter-egos, role-play and disguises
fantasy and fairytale - how important is this to my work?
Possibility of making a 'model' of my mind-space, in terms of rooms and furniture - let people in!
Dystopia and Utopia

Am really excited to get on with it now.

2006-03-04T22:36:00.000Z

two ticks on my list

day one of the get-in was successfully completed. stage is built, table built, costumes sorted, stage painted (first coat), backboards painted, wobbly stage blocks secured... More info about Nicholas Nickleby on previous post

but most excitingly, my little experiment is complete! I have to say I was pretty amazed by the speed at which the whole thing descended into anarchy (helped along by one participant in particular)! Terrifying stuff really since i said they should think of their characters as alter-egos, exploring parts of themselves they normally keep hidden. We had an alcoholic by the end of session 1, a nymphomaniac, a rapist, a man with a midlife crisis (played by a girl in her thirties), and a psychic! I have to say it backed up doug's whole everything is sex and death theory, since they were all either having sex or trying to blow each other up. Anyway, here's some pics:

2006-03-03T18:48:00.000Z

here goes...

manic week ahead, i have stage 1 of the get-in for the show at richmond this weekend, as well as my own 'experiment' which i am really looking forward to (although i'm kind of nervous as well). At last count i have 5 actors who have definitely said yes and one maybe. Fortunately, with this format, I can afford to be flexible. More about that after the weekend...

Just wanted to give you all the details for the show at richmond which is running 15th - 18th March, with (as always) some fantastic design work by me and kirstie. Its been great fun doing this one (Nicholas Nickleby adapted from the Dickens novel by David Edgar), Kirstie has been indulging her love of victoriana and I have been fiddling with the layout of a traditional theatre space. I hope what we will end up with is a really contemporary look constructed from elements of traditional victorian design. Anyway, hope you will all be able to make it...

2006-02-26T22:04:00.000Z

model pics update

2006-02-23T19:45:00.000Z

eek

today was so helpful and but has also left me really confused. I totally agree that i am detaching myself from my work and being a bit of a snob about the people who inhabit this virtual world I have been looking at, but on the other hand, doug's suggestion that i tell steve that i am the 'wandering minstrel' is totally unfeasible (although i understand why the suggestion was made) because I have to keep up a professional relationship with him. On the other hand, what am I doing on this course if I am not going to really invest myself into it fully? And can i do this if i am still doing what is, effectively, my safety option, by working in architecture part-time? I do have to earn a living and there are people depending on me - but is that going to dictate my work forever? am i an artist or a designer? does it matter? AAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!

well my model fell apart on the way home, so i'm not going to fix it, i am going to reconstruct it in a different way... let's just see what happens.

2006-02-17T23:40:00.000Z

still going!

am feeling really motivated at the moment, which is so great, have been waiting for this to kick in and am so relieved. Have been working on this model - although its not really a model, because its really an end in its own right, rather than a design tool. Not quite sure what it is, but i felt the need to somehow make real the spaces i have been moving through virtually... Also have been thinking about this film i started, and this whole liveness thing, am not quite sure where its going next but its definitely heading somewhere!

I loved the Simon Vincenzi talk, I thought he was fascinating, I wish i could climb inside his head for a day. I think it was that that really kicked off this sudden motivation. hmmmm...

The Andersen Project, on the other hand, i was rather disappointed by. I thought the imagery was a bit crappy, the use of space pretty unexciting and the content not particularly gripping, although it was semi-interesting to learn about hans christian andersen, having been a huge childhood fan. i cannot deny however that LePage's performance was very good indeed. would love to know if i missed the point somehow... Also the subtitles kept missing their cues which was really annoying!

2006-02-13T19:05:00.000Z

at last...

I am DOING rather than just thinking. A rather tentative beginning, but a beginning none the less and now i feel ready to take on the world! Having spent a few days sketching and pretending that was work, I finally went out this morning with ed to bishops park in fulham and did some filming. I haven't finished yet, but i wanted to see how far we'd get using as a script the print-out of the events in the 'kingdom of the candles' on this forum i mentioned before. So ed very kindly took on the role of my alter-ego - the idea of putting myself in front of the camera was just too much when it came to it - in fact i found it quite interesting as i realised that a lot of ed was invested in the construction of the 'wandering minstrel'. So, as in the forum, he entered the 'kingdom' (park) with relative ease and having failed to attract any attention at the gate house, he went to investigate a side gate. The Bishops Palace in the park is currently undergoing refurbishment, so the only other people around in the grounds were builders, who ignored us completely, so ed wrote a note to the queen (following the 'script') and posted it (well, he threw it over the gate), then he went to sit in a tree and wait for a response. Surprise, surprise, none came...

Next i want to look a bit closer at this idea of alter-ego, but I don't want to make this a piece of self-exploration... anyway will continue to build this 3d map of the kingdom of the candles and might look at some element of costume and see if i can do a bit more filming before i give the camera back on thursday

what a relief to be working at last!

2006-02-06T15:46:00.000Z

nearly nearly

i am still feeling a little bit frustrated, but i think i have almost broken through it. I have started to construct a language for a kind of online performance, in the forum I mentioned last time. Unfortunately I used so many links that the administrators closed down the thread (conversation) I was 'performing' in. Obviously that made me really popular with the other people using the same thread. But, fortunately, I printed out my performance before that happened (and some of the reactions to it). I even have an online admirer! But I decided to take a break from that forum, partly because I have a life and these things take serious time commitment and partly because they were threatening security checks on all new members after the 1st thread got closed down - i don't want these strange people knowing my true identity!

So now I am starting to bring these experiences into real space and time. First I am trying to construct my own 3d mind-map of the 'kingdom of the candles' and the events that happened there. Second, I am going to reconstruct some of these events in the 'real world'. I am hoping to be able to create something which I can look at as a finished piece quite soon, so that I can move on - I feel I need to do this but i know that the concept is only at an intermediary stage, so i want to get it done a.s.a.p.

Am feeling very refreshed after spending the weekend in Spain with my brother and am keen to get on. Am just a bit annoyed to find so many interesting things on our schedule over the next couple of weeks when I am working, I suppose that was inevitable. I have to be quite restrained, as I now have so many things on the boil, each of which could take up 7 days a week if I let them.

2006-01-26T17:12:00.000Z

what exactly am i trying to do here?

have been doing lot of soul-searching recently! I think i have been trying to achieve too much and in the process am not really doing much at all. I keep jumping from one idea too another, i get bored really easily. Then I had a big chat with ed and another with a good friend and they both said 'why are you so keen to completely abandon architecture?' and it made me realise that i have been having this big reaction against anything architectural, to the extent that i have pared my work right back to an entirely text-based environment. So I need to re-introduce some kind of real space and act on the reason I like performance - because the body activates the space. I still want to keep working with this idea of real and virtual and constructed identities, but i need to create some kind of hypersurface (an interactive zone between the real and virtual).

I have also realised that I am being... not lazy exactly... but quite unproductive. I am thinking constantly (its driving me mad!) but whilst i am already quite clear about the why and the how, I am still completely clueless about the 'what'. So I have thought about how I work best and decided I need to create some kind of brief for myself with some specific deadlines. Even if it changes loads I need to make a decision now about what my final thing is going to be and what intermediate work I am going to produce.

So my plan of action is as follows:

1. Complete the exercise i have begun - performing in virtual (fantasy) space as my alter ego 'wandering minstrel'
follow link: http://community.channel4.com/groupee/forums/a/tpc/f/4960006333/m/2260043983/p/13
AND work out why i decided (without any forethought) to be a man when I constructed my alter-ego!

2. Roughly plan my final piece (Sept 2007) and schedule of events/deadlines leading up to it

3. Plan first stage piece (July 2006) as a performance in its own right, but also as a stepping stone to next year

4. Build stuff around/in which to create a series of small performances (this term) which will test my ideas for the first stage performance.

5. Plan workshop to help fill the gaps in my knowledge (i.e. directing/acting) as well as further things I do know about

Ed says I am obsessive compulsive because i plan too much... he's probably right, but i'd have a nervous breakdown if i didnt!

2006-01-16T15:24:00.000Z

embracing my inner nerd

I have really started to immerse myself in this cyber-culture stuff now, but it seems like the more i find out, the less i know! I have joined up to this cyber city game -type thing. It describes itself as follows:

CyberSphere is an RPG MOO set in a dark American future. Your virtual journey begins in New Carthage, the denizens of which range from the benign eccentric to the malicious psychotic. Shadowed alleys conceal dark secrets, and gleaming towers of urban wealth hide fantastic conspiracies.

Past the skeletal buildings of the anarchic New Carthage outskirts, beyond its armoured city wall, a vast Wasteland of post-apocalyptic Hell awaits the truly brave. Its glowing sands crawl with the horrific mutant champions of natural selection, and are stained with the blood of the weak.

Delta-winged shuttles crisscross the scarred planet as reconstruction continues under the control of emergent superpowers in a new world order: megacorporations and crime syndicates. Bangkok harbors shadowy black markets of cybernetic technology, while orbital colonies turn serenely on axes of money, power, and privelage.

As the physical landscape still smoulders from the ravages of global wars and environmental disasters, an alternate reality glows brightly in the worldwide matrix network. Deckers and console jockeys swim the depths of this data sea, knights rendered in chrome on battlefields formed in the cognitive nonspace of a collective consciousness.

The pulse-pounding excitement of our virtual world is but a keystroke away.

NOTE: Cybersphere's creators would like to caution you that its violent realism and graphic nature may not be appropriate for all audiences.

Sounds exciting doesn't it? hmmmm.....

It is completely text based so I am having arguments with myself about the importance of visual media in terms of understanding and imagining space. I also have an aching brain from trying to learn all the text commands so i can actually communicate with people, interact with objects, move through space and (perhaps most importantly) kill people.

New terms I have learnt:
MUD - Multi-User Dungeon (the originally online roleplaying game environment - based on dungeons and dragons)
MOO - MUD - Object Orientated - usually less of a game and more of a community (i think)
IC - in character
OOC - out of character

I am also trying to work out how to apply for membership of an entirely different cyber-community called MediaMOO, which was set up in the nineties at a university in america. The spaces within the MOO relate to the university itself and it acts as a forum for dicussion of media and visual arts. How come all this stuff has been going on so long and yet i have never heard of it before?

On the one hand, am feeling quite technical, on the other hand have spent 5 hours trying to burn a DVD today and am still having trouble.

2006-01-12T19:21:00.000Z

bits and bobs

Kirstie and Karen presented their research proposals today, so I thought I'd write a bit about them in terms of feedback and for the benefit of those who missed them.

Kirstie is looking at the aesthetics of the image, although it was really much broader than that, but I got the impression she was most interested in the concept of aesthetics, in terms of use of colour and interpretation of the image through colour. I thought it was really interesting when she talked about social perception of colour and psychological effects of it. She has been reading Barthes, amongst others, and I enjoyed the discussion about how we perform ourselves through our choice of clothes and colours. I was a bit confused, to begin with, about how it related to her practical work (insomnia etc.) but she explained that rather than being a method of justifying or triggering her practical work, she will be re-introducing it to her practical work as a kind of technical element. I.e. she will be looking more closely at her own use of colour within her work on insomnia. I really liked her choice of images and wished we had more time to find out more about her thoughts on each one, I know she wanted to put text with them initially, but I don't think it suffered at all by this omission.

Karen's research is about the stilletto. Her presentation was really structured and well performed. She discussed the stilletto as a fetishistic object, referencing Freud (the mother's penis thing), Judith Butler (gender and performativity) and others (OK I should have taken notes), and questioning our understanding of femininity and how the stilletto comes into this. She explained that she will be using the stilletto as a start point in her practical work to trigger as series of investigations into fetishism. The discussion at the end was really interesting and has really set me thinking about images of women in popular culture and how I (as a woman) respond to them.

Overall a fascinating morning, thank you very much

I just want to throw in a few things from my own reading, as I really getting into this virtual theatre thing. I have so many things in my head, I can't put them all down, so will pop in a few annotated images instead:

Paul Sermon's Telematic Dreaming

The projection (onto a bed) is the artist who is watching the performance from another room and can therefore interact with the audience (the person on the bed) creating this surreal contact between the virtual and the real

Masaki Fujihata's Beyond Pages

The book and the door are projections, you can interact with both by using a pen which turns the pages of the book. On the pages are images and text. 'Beyond the pages' are sound and visual effects, you can turn the lamp on and off by touching a light switch with the pen, listen to running water by touching an image of a pond, write on the steamed-up surface of a glass of water and open the door to reveal a small child who laughs and runs away

Interior of Fresh H2O EXPO (Fresh Water Pavilion), 1997, The Netherlands, Nox Architects

"no distinction between horizontal and vertical, between floors, walls and ceilings...the building and the exhibition have fused: a simulated geyser erupts, water splatters, projections fall directly on to the building and its visitors" (Virtual theatres by Gabriella Giannachi)

2006-01-10T00:00:00.000Z

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Hope you all had a great Christmas and New Year. I spent Christmas with my parents and my little brother, Laurie. It was, as usual, not half as relaxing as it should be. My mum planned a series of vast feasts starting on Christmas Eve and running through until the day after boxing day. She then proceeded to catch the mother of all colds and i had to do all the cooking... I needed a week to recover after all of that. Fortunately, she had a miraculous recovery the day before New Years Eve, so I escaped to London and after a lovely New Years Eve with a few friends in our flat, Ed and I spent the whole of the next week watching films and eating chocolate whilst tucked up under a duvet on the sofa.

I am so glad to have had a break though, I really feel ready to take on the new term now. I had a chance to really get my teeth into my individual project research. I have been reading all about computer arts and the internet as a virtual space for performance. I read 'Internet Art' by Rachel Greene as a kind of introduction and I am about halfway through 'Virtual Theatres' by Gabriella Giannachi, which is fascinating - I would recommend it to anyone. It is all making me think really hard about how I define theatre and what the difference is between theatre and performance art. So far, and this is something that often happens to me, the more I find out about current and recent practice in this field, the longer my list of what I don't like/want to do. I am still struggling to find what I do want to do. I feel like the research is about a finished/end product, whereas I am practically right at the beginning and am feeling a bit nervous about what happens in the middle. I know that I have to just get started and do something... anything really, I just have to start doing. But I always find this bit rather terrifying.

OK, see you all soon

2005-12-17T13:53:00.000Z

Well, that went alright...!

I'm very proud of us, I think we all learned so much from this experience, I have to admit I wasn't overly confident about it before hand, but i was hopeful and i was really pleased with the results. Kirstie's got some great photos on her blog, so I am just going to post some of the photos chris took along the journey (as part of his performance).

This collaborative project has really made me question what, specifically, it is that I love about theatre/performance. I find it interesting that as soon as the actors arrived I kind of backed out. Still not sure if that was lack of interest or lack of nerves...

I really enjoyed doing all the graphic stuff for the website etc, but i know that just doing that kind of thing is not enough for me. I felt a bit like that was all I could really offer on this project. Anyway, lots to think about.

So, thanks everyone, amazing costumes, acting, directing, projecting and seeing DJ Lushan doing her thing on the decks was a real treat!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

2005-12-12T19:06:00.000Z

jingle bells jingle bells...
the performance is on friday
oh what fun it will be when its done
and we go home on holiday, hey!

feeling poetic today, it comes to me occasionally when i'm feeling pleased with myself - which i am because i just finished my soundtrack.

I thought it would be helpful if i outlined what is happening on my route on friday. Hope everyone else can blog theirs too, so we are all in the know.

1. Meeting point is black telephone box outside moorgate station, with chris inside it!
2. Performance begins when chris (tesman) receives a phonecall - we can assume from Brack - summoning him to the T-Bar
3. Chris leaves phone box in panic, tieing his tie over and over again as he can't get it right
4. As he goes through the route he takes photos on a digital camera, this idea came from chris' interpretation of tesman, he described him as desperate to achieve his 'potential', constantly working and trying to absorb/record information in order to finally become the genius he thinks is lurking inside himself somewhere, but never achieving this - in part because he is trying too hard.
5. At a point on the route where the commercial area abruptly ends and we find ourselves in the arty/crumbly area of shoreditch, chris finds the first page of lovborg's manuscript, unbuttons his jacket and hides it in an inside pocket then rebuttons his jacket. throughout the rest of the route, he keeps finding more pages and hiding them in his jacket, rebuttoning his jacket in a different way each time. The actions become more manic as he gets closer to his destination
6. On reaching the T-Bar he checks the manuscript is hidden, takes a deep breath and enters the bar

I am quite looking forward to friday now, the actors are all great and seem to be responding really well to the information we have given them.

I have got some books out for my independent project about internet art etc. I am so excited about this now, I really feel that using the internet as my 'site' is a perfect way of examining all the theoretical issues I have been looking at, to do with performativity and image consumption etc.

2005-12-06T15:02:00.000Z

what day is it?

the weekend rather passed me by, i was in the theatre in richmond with kirstie, finishing off the costumes and neatening up the set (mostly my own mess from the last production). Yesterday afternoon, we went back to distribute costumes and watch a run-through of the first half to make sure everyone was wearing the right stuff, then, this morning, i went back again for the second half. The projections are working, although the projector seems to be making the images rather dark, so i may have to have fiddle with it when the technician is not looking. The costumes look great (thanks kirstie!), especially under the lights. I am in a pretty good mood now that it is all coming together, although i only managed 4 hours sleep again last night.

Am a bit confused about what we are supposed to have done in terms of our soundtrack for the collaborative project, but it can't hurt to keep working on it, especially since i have some time and a mac booked. Am really feeling the pain of working on p.c. at home. I actually dread turning it on, I'm just waiting for it to crash all the time! I was right at the end of putting together the images for the website (for the collaborative project) last night at about 1am, when the whole thing froze. I had to start two images from scratch. I know i should have saved them earlier, but still - the stupid machine shouldnt have died on me either!

I am really pleased with the character karen and amitesh have extracted from the text of hedda gabler for chris (the actor who is performing my route in the collaborative project). It suits the character of my soundtrack perfectly and has confirmed my choice of a song by ed's brother's band for inclusion the soundtrack. The song is called 'why so shy', i won't try to describe it because you can listen to it on their website: www.dakarrally.org I think it contains just the kind of balance of naivety and cynicism that my character will have. I am finding it increasingly strange that I am basically asking Chris to act in the role of himself - as interpreted by me.

my tasks for this evening are to read hedda gabler (have borrowed from karen), work on the business plan for this company i am setting up with my friend and put together the program for under milkwood... phew! better get on with it then...

2005-12-01T11:21:00.000Z

yawn

hello all. i think that blogging when half asleep is probably not the best (or most interesting) way of doing things, but half-asleepness is a fairly constant state for me at the moment, so i am going to blog anyway!
i am so busy right now i have pretty much lost any objectivity about either rhe collaborative project or the one at richmond. I am just trying to get everything done now, but it all seems to be coming together so i not stressed about it, just tired. I feel bad that i can't devote myself to the collaborative project as much as everyone else, its that thing about buses and everything happening at once...

the richmond projection sequence is almost there, i am currently rendering some little animations for it and then i am going to put it all together in flash later. I am quite pleased with it, have done some rather fun images. Kirstie's costumes sound amazing, we will be finishing them off together on saturday. Dress rehearsal is on wednesday, so ed will photograph it all then and i will post some photos here.

collaborative project is kind of my second priority right now but i hope to be able to swap that around by the middle of next week. I have to finish richmond stuff by monday anyway, but there are bound to be a couple of last minute changes. I am going to put together and print the maps this evening, so we can put them up in the foyer tomorrow. Then I will read Hedda Gabler over the weekend (I promise!). I hope i am not holding anyone else up - i am trying to get stuff done if it affects other people.

ok, enough rambling...

2005-11-27T19:03:00.000Z

de la warr

diana and i went down to bexhill-on-sea to see the performance stuff that was on this weekend - it was great. There was an exhibition as well as a series of live performances and the standard was so high, we were amazed that they had managed to produce such a quantity of really good things without having to be in london. some of it was site-specific, which was really intersting both for my own work and the collaborative project. Check out what was on: http://www.dlwp.com, the daria martin piece was beautiful, a film in the building itself, referencing the history of performance in the pavilion as well as seaside industry and looking at a mother/daughter relationship. it was focussed on a young girl who abseils inside the spiral staircase of the pavilion. I can't really describe it but it was wonderful. There was also a great performance created by Geraldine Pilgrim (who worked with the BA students at Wimbledon) with loads of little scenes around the building based on ghosts that supposedly haunt it (check out diana's blog for more details as i think she will have loads to say about this one). Geraldine Pilgrim is doing another performance piece in Soho in December which we should all check out. There was loads of other great stuff, but if need my dinner now so am going to move on to my thoughts on the collaborative project so i can wrap this up and get cooking...

I think we are really getting somewhere with the collaborative piece, i am quite excited about it now. I am reading the text (Hedda Gabler) and looking forward to see what karen is going to do with it. I am still quite interested in the gender roles within the text and the possibility of subverting these through careful casting. I am really glad that the routes to the main venue were interesting to everyone, I thing they all have great possibilities. I am also really excited about the main space at T-Bar, they are being so unbelievably accomodating - we are so lucky! I am going to work on creating this teaser image tomorrow to get people interested. I loved the woodgrain graphic of the boy on the bicycle with the chicken that they had at the bar and am thinking about how we could make some kind of visual (graphical) link. The stuff at De La Warr today has got me thinking hard about the spaces we are using, hopefully i will have lots to say on the matter when we next meet...

2005-11-21T19:30:00.000Z

from richmond to shoreditch (via wales)

i am going to richmond tomorrow to watch a "stagger-through" of under milkwood, i have been putting together groups of images for the projections and am full of ideas of how to animate them, of course i am still no expert on the software i need to do this, but hey, we've got 2 1/2 weeks! i hope everyone will come and watch the play, it is a lot of fun. the acting we probably be fairly dire (i am dreading the welsh accents) since it's their first proper show this year, but the set and costumes will be amazing - naturally! It will be at the Studio Theatre on Parkshot in Richmond on 8th,9th and 10th December and will cost £5. Kirstie and I got going on the costumes at the weekend, it is great that she is so good at getting on with things, I am such a procrastinator (is that a word? it looks funny written down). I want to tell you all about the things we have been doing, but it wouldn't mean much without have the script in front of you, so its best if you just come and see!

on wednesday, I am going to head over to bethnal green and start checking out spaces for the collaborative project. I am thinking of asking in furniture shops if we can set up little rooms within rooms to stop off at en-route. I am also going to look for two-dimensional images that the actors can interact with in a 3-dimensional way (does that make sense? - i'll take my camera so i can explan better afterwards). Would love to have comments on this before i go.

I think we need a name - any ideas? We must start advertising it too...

2005-11-18T18:24:00.000Z

part time post

so, as you know, i have made the switch from full-time to part-time mode. i feel like i need to justify this a little, because i don't want you (other vizlang bods) to feel like i'm letting you down at all. i still want to be really involved in the course and love the dynamic we have finally created within the group - I don't want that to change. I will still be coming in as much as i can, but i need to have more time to a) earn enough money to pay my rent and b) keep my career moving so that when i finish the course i still have options open to me. I also felt that, partly because of my other commitments, i have not been able to contribute to the course as fully as would like - or to get as much out of it. i was so excited to be coming onto this course and am thrilled by what we have achieved so far, but i need more me-time to be able to keep up that level of enthusiasm.

i feel so relieved to have lifted the lid on all the pressure that was building up, i feel like i can be much more pro-active now. having more than one thing on the go keeps my brain active too (i have the concentration span of a woodlouse).

so i hope you all understand, i will still be coming in all the time and my work schedule is pretty flexible so you can call or e-mail me any time and i will be all yours!

2005-11-16T03:00:00.000Z

pcs vs. macs and other conflicts

i have finally found an advantage to having a PC - I can't seem to edit the font or colour of the text in my blog on a mac. i'm sure there is a way, but don't tell me, this is the first time i have actually been happy to have a PC since giving up the i-mac i had at work in august. i have been pining ever since.

the collaborative project finally seems to be moving, although I am still not sure where to exactly! I am concerned about time and feel like i have so much on my plate at the moment, but i can't afford to drop anything. i feel a bit like whilst i'm getting everything done, i am not giving myself time to enjoy it. why is london so expensive?!

i have to do some reading, theory is my thing, my strong point, and i haven't really got into it much so far. I have started reading the Merleaux Ponty text on phenomenology, which is really heavy, but it's good to feel those cogs whirring in my brain! when we get into our individual projects i think i need to really focus on applying this academic stuff to my work as i still feel like the two things are a bit detached. I love the way diana is working between the two and plan to follow her example!

2005-11-14T12:41:00.000Z

monday morning

have just finished editing first draft of my soundscape for the collaborative project... whew... you know when you are working working working and then suddenly you realise you have reached the end? well that just happened, so i'm feeling pretty pleased with myself. it still needs some work, its not very smooth, but the structure is there.

had a pretty uneventful weekend, after making all kinds of plans, i ended up spending most of the weekend sleeping. still, i got some images and film clips together for the projections for 'under milkwood' and did some research into sites for my independent project. i'm still a bit stuck on that one, derelict buildings in london (at least ones that are likely to remain derelict for a while) are few and far between. Also - as was pointed out by the guy from www.derelictlondon.com - if i can get into them, then so can all the drug addicts, arsonists and other generally bad bad people, so its not very safe. the more i search, the more contrived it all feels, so i am planning on going for a few long walks to just see what stirs my imagination and maybe i will desert the derelict building idea altogether. of course, just as i make such a plan, the weather has turned and it's absolutely icey outside.

2005-11-10T13:51:00.000Z

busy busy busy

was planning to go to spain to sort out my little brother's dissertation this weekend, but had to cancel in the end because i just have so much to do myself!

i went over to richmond drama school yesterday (where i work as a designer) to chat with the director, david whitworth, about the next production i will be working on - under milkwood by dylan thomas. I'm quite excited about this one, although i feel more and more how limiting it is working a) in traditional theatre and b) with students and a student-scale budget. Nevertheless there is still plenty of scope to explore some of my own interests through this set-up. I have asked Kirstie to work with me and we are looking at using projections and costumes made of paper (kirstie's speciality). We will be keeping it pretty simple - for my sake as well as theirs - but i think it could be pretty effective - especially as the costumes should pick up the projections nicely. its a beautiful text, it's really just 2 hours of poetry and creates this great dreamscape with ghosts and sleepwalking and cows! I almost feel like we shouldn't intervene too much. It was written as a radio play so it's all in the text. hmmm...

college work is going fine, am writing this as i capture my interviews for the collaborative project so i can edit the soundscape. I was a bit apprehensive when i first listened to them as i felt that the actor who was my interviewer had been a bit too subtle in his imitations of the subjects and i wasn't sure if anyone would be able to notice it. However, looking at it again, I think its really interesting how he responds to each subject differently before he even begins to imitate them. So i'm thinking of editing it so that these comparisons are clearer.

have to go and do my 'real' job tomorrow, just to bring me back down to earth - its about time for VAT receipts, whoopee doo.

2005-11-08T18:24:00.000Z

aias workshop - mica

i don't know where to start, what an amazing week! I hope that some of the other workshop participants will be checking out my blog too, but for the sake of those who weren't there, here's a brief summary:
after a rather traumatic flight (well they are all traumatic for me!) I arrived just in time for the free food at the international students reception. There were students in the workshop from all over the world - America, Korea, Portugal, the Netherlands and England. We launched stright in the following morning when Annet, the workshop leader, took us over to the exhibition space in a converted station building. We spent the rest of the week creating work for an exhibition on the friday evening, on the theme of 'The Other'.
I was working mainly with Danielle Brans from AKI in the Netherlands and Abbi Jacobsen from MICA (the host school). We started out using some mapping diagrams that we had each done as a starting point for a series of performances. We mapped out various ideas in spatial terms using yellow string, filming as we went and experimenting with different view points and locations. By Thursday afternoon, we felt that whilst we'd explored some interesting ideas, something was missing to pull it all together, so we went out in search of something physical to ground the project. I had in mind a piece of furniture or something domestic, but instead we found this amazing box, perhaps a keyboard case, but slightly sinister. So, with renewed enthusiasm we began our adventure with the box. We tried to fit Danielle in it, we made a hole in the side and filmed out of it, we took it for coffee and finally it accompanied Danielle and I to a party. Our hosts, very obligingly, put on a great show - dancing in the box! Suddenly we had what we had been looking for, the film of the dance routine was projected into the arches above the exhibition space and the box had pride of place just inside the entrance and with a few minor additions (doug's ipod and some speakers) it became the source of music for the evening. Sadly ideas of a party in the dome (see photos) didn't quite materialise - maybe next time!
I have just re-read this post and it sounds rather formal and boring - that's just the effect of the english weather and the jetlag - in reality I am thrilled to have been part of the workshop, it was such an exciting week and I feel I have gained so much from it - I can't wait to get on with my own work again. I hope to stay in touch with all the other workshoppers, I would love it if we could find some way to work together again, as I thought everyone was fantastic!

2005-10-28T18:38:00.000Z

flux 28.10.05

flux costumes

2005-10-28T18:19:00.000Z

flux sucks

no it doesn't really, but wasn't sure sure if i'd get thrown off the site for publishing karen's version.

well... what can i say? I'm really glad we did it, I am even more glad its over. I have no idea how it went but to be honest, i don't think that really matters. I got a lot out of putting this thing together, I think it will make so much difference to our collaborative piece in december. had a brief chat with amitesh and karen, who are keen to do another small performance in november sometime. i think its a great idea, it will keep the ball rolling. I don't think i need to say that i won't be performing this time (my hands are still shaking as i type this) but i think i can contribute more by not being in it anyway.

the most valuable thing i am taking away from this is a better understanding of how everyone works and thinks individually and i hope we can find a better way to make that work together next time. Some of us seem to work better by just going in and doing it, whilst others (myself included) need time to take things away individually before bringing them back into a group environment. my cigarette breaks do serve a purpose - they give my brain time to catch up!

well thanks everyone, it was so worthwhile, I learnt something from everybody and feel i know you much better now.

2005-10-23T20:06:00.000Z

frieze art fair etc.
I have recovered from my over-exposure to beautiful people at last. I was a bit scared to leave the house for the first couple of days, but a trip to Asda in Clapham (seriously lacking in beautiful people) was equivalent to a week in the Priory and I am now back to my old self again.
It was all a bit bewildering wasn't it? I have never seen art displayed (and consumed) in such a soulless way. I think that is probably how I would describe most of what I saw in there - soulless. I think that is why I was drawn to the pieces with some kind of narrative, in that environment I felt like they were easier to get lost in. This is first for me - the shiny, beautiful objects are normally the ones that draw me in, I usually hate anything home-made looking. Still haven't quite digested the experience fully, but the pieces that stand out for me are the storyboard piece called "Estate", which created a narrative about the lives of the people behind a series of closed curtains and a little sculpture about a piece of bone the artist had found by the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.

My research topic is beginning to get clearer since following lengthy discussions with Doug, I am focussing on the domestic interior as a starting point and plan to try out a few ideas over the next couple of months, so watch this space...

2005-10-13T22:16:00.000Z

I'm going to keep it short this time... well, shorter

I think today's trip to waterloo was really valuable and it has made me think quite hard about my research topic again. I went to a thing at BAC this evening called 'The Space between Us'. It was all pretty obvious stuff, i was a bit disappointed. You had to follow a route round clapham that was marked out with red ribbons and various (annoyingly non-speaking) actors in red shoes or hats came and did something random like tie string around your finger. It succeeded for me only because it made me the performer, which made me distinctly uncomfortable. Anyway, it also made me realise that perhaps my research topic is already really tired. I'm trying to attack exactly the same subject they were and it was just so... boring.

i hope someone reads this soon, starting to feel a little crazy, talking to myself

p.s. in reference to my previous post - I went with starting point 1 in the end

2005-10-10T12:31:00.001Z

my first post
so we have to prepare a proposal for our research project, i am glad we are getting stuck in so soon, but it has thrown me into a bit of a quandry. i need to get on and write this thing, but i am stuck between two different starting points. One is pretty safe for me, as it is something I started to explore years ago and will involve developing on ideas that i have already started to formulate. the other is something that has really just cropped up for me in the last couple of weeks, but i think it has potential. on the other hand, they are both quite broad subjects and perhaps need narrowing down....
so let me elaborate:
starting point 1: performativity - how our social and physical environments dictate the way we act. in an effort to understand this for myself and put it in the context of "theatre", I am looking at a notion of 'acting' in three stages, the first is a base state, when we are at our most comfortable and are not put on any pretences; the second is the performance of everyday life, the show we put on for the people we pass in the street; the third is when we consciously create a performance - public speaking, acting in a play etc. obviously, there are loads of layers in between, but just for now i need to simplify.
i would begin by attempting to isolate that second stage and look at ways of shaping that subconscious performance, investigate the nature of the audience (after all we are always being watched aren't we?) and then see where it took me from there.
starting point 2: image - coming from a background of design, i am very conscious of image and graphic. i only really noticed this recently, but i think it almost verges on obsession! i buy books and cds because they have a nice front cover, i spent ages looking at all the different templates for this blog before i picked this one, i could go on.... i guess that really the significance of the image is something i have looked at in my work before without really doing so consciously, but i would like to take a more deliberate approach to it. what does it mean to think in images? is it like thinking in french? this is an image-driven society - how do we understand/interpret images?
i'm also interested in the reproduction and deconstruction of images and the relationship between the image and the written/spoken word. Can these things co-exist? hmmm

any thoughts?

cherry