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)