Measurements pt 2

We were asked in this brief to reconsider what exactly we had done in the first week of this project and to take it further explore more options. So I decided to make a video which I have never done properly before so I think that I have made some mistakes with the process but I'm fairly happy with what I have produced for a first attempt. I used a video camera and tripod top shoot the scenes and I edited it using adobe premiere pro which I found difficult to use and also it seemed to be very temper mental. But after awhile i got the hang of it. I couldn't really figure out how to put sounds into it so its all silent. I would have prefered it to have sound but I guess I#ll just have to learn and try again.

So here it is in Black and white first:
https://vimeo.com/42397420


Then Colour:
https://vimeo.com/42397933

Measurements

 Measurements was all about measuring something on or about your body in an unusual way. So I wanted to do something with eyes. So I decided to start with surface area and how many eyes it would take to cover you're whole body. I discover that eyes are usually 24 to 26mm wide.

But after awhile of doing this I decided that I didn't like this idea very much and I decided to try something else. So I used instead what is in a persons eye. What I wanted to measure was how much eye liquid it would take to weight the same as my own weight. So I converted my weight into litres and it ended up as 54 litres. So I decided to find something that resembled an eyeball in someway. I used balloons. So I filled each balloon with about a litre of liquid and then piled them all up on top of each other. I really wanted to get across the weighty-ness of the water in the balloons I wanted you to see them being dragged down.

 With all the balloons together I didn't feel that there was enough drag. So I decided to suspend them. Using some white material and rope I suspended about half of my weight. i did't want to do the whole amount because I felt that the material and rope were not strong enough to hold the dead weight.

After some discussion I saw that the material and rope didn't really work together with the balloons and so concluded that these would be better suited to be held in a see through plastic type of material. Also the rope stands out too much so a translucent rope or string would work better but I ran out if time and was unable to take this piece to its next stage.

Doll

For this one week project we had to create a doll of ourselves but it couldn't be exactly a doll. We had to make something that something to do with our personality traits or with a passed experience.

The week before this project we had done things on the figure and I had made a kind of body. I enjoyed this process so I thought I would try it out here again and see if I could go any further then just sewing up a type of body.

So I started off making different limbs and body parts and I wanted to make them look tied up in a manner so I decided to put wire around each part.

I think that the wire looked interesting on the fabric along with the noticeable thread lines. While I was making each part I was also photocopying the limbs. It transformed the parts in away. It gave the fabric a new texture and greater depth because of the shadow that it cast on the outside of the fabric so I liked how that turned out.

Next I set about attaching the pieces together with thick wire. I turned the wire into coils and attached them to the body with more thread.

For awhile I was unsure what to actually do with the the photocopies of each limb until I started making a collage out of the shapes then I saw that I turned them into a sort of spider/crab type of creature.

So I layered then with a layer of paper and then pleated the legs of the creatures so that they would stand out a bit. Some of them took on the appearance of hands also. I then suspended these from the ceiling so that you could see them turning and withness each angle.

Another thing which I did at the start of this project was to try out different things with wire. Originally I had wanted to make a figure from wire but decided it would be better to just incorporate the wire in a different way. So I started making different coils and shapes with the wire. I really like the coiled shaped so I had to try and use the shape somehow.

Also the crab creatures made sort of interesting puppets. So from start to finish I thought that it was interesting that I went from 3d to 3d to 3d again in order to get a kind of final idea as such.

Figure

 This piece was following on from what I was doing with the wax babies. Sadly once made I couldn't really figure out what to do with them so I started thinking of what other ways I could remake/remodel the human body.

 My first idea was to stick with the transparency that the wax dolls gave me. I initially liked this idea of translucency/see-through material to make the body from or an aspect if the body.

 So I started off with a whole load of cling film. Which I wrapped around different limbs to make the actual body shapes. I found that the cling film by itself was far too stiff feeling. I didn't like it as a whole. So I introduced a skin coloured material to bring it back again to the human aspect.

 Unlike before I only made rough estimates of the size of any limbs and body parts. I attached the pieces together quite crudely. I didn't try to hide the fact that it was sewn together, I wanted the viewer to note this fact. I choose to make the body look wounded and not really what you would normally associate with a body. For instance its lack of a head or left arm. Its almost inhuman but the likeness id still there in some ways as I think that any viewer would easily pick up that it is in fact a human figure.

Another thing I wanted to take advantage of is the structure-less body. So like the boneless aspect. Going again back to the babies in the womb, transparent and boneless. I used toy stuffing to stuff the cling film/fabric body I think it worked well. I choose to leave it on the floor because I thought that it went along with the sense of a wounded body best.

So in a four week project at the start of sculpture I made a mould of a toy baby. Our brief was on the human body and recreating it in some way. I went on to make a range of wax babies. I liked how they turned out but I didn't really know what to do with them. I originally wanted to put them into a massive tank of jelly and have them positioned in the jelly in different ways. But unfortunately I couldn't find any tank that wasn't really expansive to buy to use. So I was left with all these wax babies without really knowing what to do with them.

 I used uncoloured wax to make these only pouring in a bit at a time then I added different coloured pigments to change the colour of the wax.

 I mixed the colours at first then I decided that I would like to see what would happen if I didn't mix the colour in. It had a strange effect on the colour.

 So I ended up with multi-coloured babies. I thought that they looked very interesting.

 Its annoying that I was unsure what to do with them in the end. I just had them all set up together on a white piece of paper.

 It would have also been cool to see what I could do with changing their form. As the wax was hardening on the inside the forms remained malleable. So I could have changed the position of arms, legs, head etc... Even squish some of them.

 I really liked the way that they turned out I made ten in all. I was disappointed with the fact that I couldn't come up with anything better to do with them then just leaving them lying flat on a table, even if I had found someway to suspend them it would have been better