How to do work and entertain kids when babysitting!!

Wednesday night.. loads of work to do and the issue of needing to get some money- so came up with the idea of doing something that would get the kids involved.....How to entertain when babysitting!

Susan Hiller exhibition- Tate Britain

Such a good exhibiton, after Lara's, 'You have to go' to Anne-Sophie's, 'It is awesome', and the two of them talking about it I figured I had to see it for myself. Unsure what sort of work to really expect I found alot of it was 'graphicsi'. I really liked 'Auras: Homage to marcel Duchamp 2008.' This was a large piece of digital stills, lots of colour and a face on each. The way the colour blended seemed to make the piece somewhat dreamy and with blurs of colour this obscured the identity of many of the faces adding a sense of mystery to the piece, it really was rather intriguing. PSI girls was another piece I loved. This showed imagery about girls with kinetic powers synchrinised in 5 large screens. The size of the screens I feel made the piece even more impressive. With different coloured filters in each projection it immerses you in coloured lights and adds a range of physical sensations to your experience (I really did like this piece!!) Another piece I found particularly brilliant was 'Midnight, Baker Street'. Here prints are enlarged from hand worked photobooth images. With black writing on three faces and an orange background my mind suddenly flipped to contextual studies 'think about context, why this colour why this size??'  bla bla bla, and yet it made me see the piece in a totally different light and think about why the artist had done this like this, perhaps she positioned the faces awkwardly to add mystery, I am not sure but the piece made me think which I liked. This was also the case in lots of other of her pieces and I think this is why I enjoyed the exhibition so much from the 'Monument' piece which for me highlighted Hiller's clear interest in Lost and forgotten , to the 'Magic lantern' piece which made me feel rather dizzy. Walking away I thought, her work is intellegent, different, interesting and I loved it- GO!

Zebra

An idea I had from playing around with collage in my 5 minite a day book. However after some feedback I think perhaps painting the zebra white and then projecting the stripes on to the zebra in the dark and then using shadow could be more effective than this piece... we will see... lots to do!!

Rashomon, 1950

Here through flashback, we are shown every account indirectly through the woodcutter and priest, of a rape and the murder of a samurai warrior through the eyes of five witnesses. The issue I have with this film is its repetitive nature, there appears triangles being formed by the three central characters in various scenes, this I thought was clever and whenever a triangle was broken, it signalled a negative shift in fortune. Yet the repetitive music although suited the retelling of the story it got boring after a while, yes it did highlight the depth of the narrative, yet I feel music could have been used more effectively with like 'une femme est une femme,' silences at key points.
Throughout the film we are constantly shown close ups of characters faces and expression and this is used as an essential vehicle in order to show emotion and I feel allows us to really identify with how the characters are feeling and helps us guess who is guilty of the crime. Kurosawa is clever in that he gives us no obvious reason to trust on witness over the other throughout the trial, this therefore makes it interesting for us to deduce what actually happened.
My problem with this film is the amount of multiple viewpoints although it may on the one hand make it interesting, it becomes rather repetitive and this is not helped with the repetitve music.

Sherlock Jnr, 1924

In this it instantly became obvious how meticulous Keaton was when editing the film, the film is exceptionally crafted. Unlike some of the previous films shown Sherlock Jnr shows a clear narrative, yet I feel this makes it less experimental. Despite Keaton's creativity as an artist I can see how many people are unable to connect with the film. Keaton shows subtilty in every decicion he makes and therefore his experimentation is just more humble, yet for many this could translate into bordom. Never the less, the key thing I took away from this film was the idea of how a soundtrack can influenece how you see the film, being a silent movie it really did highlight the relationship between sound and cinema and I can now see if you were to see the film with different soundtracks, this would give you different perspectives, which would change the experience of the film completly.

Fellini Satyricon, 1969 was the opposite to this film in that there was not a clear narrative and structure which for me made it difficult to understand. I found this film rather boring as I was unable to make sense of it, this was not helped with subtitles which I feel perhaps seriously impoverished my experience of the film, as my eyes were drawn to the bottom of the screen rather than the centre visuals. Fellini was very interested in the content and nature of dreams and the subconscious and this is where I was in this film.. perhaps this was what he was trying to create, confusion? If so, the film was successful.

Womans heart beats faster than a mans

Ask the group.. break it down

Get to the track.. needs work... Not sure the quality of the photo!!.. Its a start!

In an effort to clean out the fridge

What order to eat my fridge?

Having eaten out of date chicken in a sandwich last week, the weekends job was to sort the fridge out. Chuck out whats old, out of date and make sure that I know what is going out of date in the hope that it won't happen again.

peacock/peabrain/peahead

Empty packaging and peacocks... vanity, tyring to put all these thoughts together is the answer to the problem, communicating this is the solution. The first image is what I originally came up with, go around town, photograph vein men, which proved pretty entertaining and then I worked on manipulating them and playing arounf with the concept of empty packaging. Yet having had he crit I realised this idea wasn't really communicating in the way I wanted, peacocks are pretty, vein and empty characters. From the crit I liked the idea that they are like a lindt santa, pretty on the outside, but hollow inside. You look at them and think wow, and then bite in and are somewhat disappointed in that they are hollow. I thought this would work perfectly, yet technically I couldn't create it. Therefore I worked on the idea that they are pretty and empty and and played around with the shadow, the idea that a shadow is pretty but empty. Im not sure about it.... the idea needs more time!