Art418 | Exploring Installation

The piece that I chose :

 I had the initial ideas to base this practice around audience interactions and expected sounds - primarily sounds caused by movement of scrunched up paper that is being repurposed from a previous lesson (See ART240 | Practice installation).

It was this lesson that sparked my curiosity towards the use of sound, emphasising curiosity towards how people approach art.

Thoughts:

Is it just rubbish on the floor? Does the paper become part of the piece? How do they blend? .. and do they need to blend/ join? Is it enticing ENOUGH? What other materials could be used? Does the paper spread too far?.. And should it be contained?.. What and where are the boundaries? 

Testing boundaries. I used a plinth ( turned sideways) to create a border, containing the paper. Although this technically worked, I found that it was limiting, making the work look squished. 

After deciding to move my work to be more central to the studio, I was met with the process of moving each individual piece of scrunched, scrap paper. To avoid picking up extra dust/ dirt with a brush, I began kicking the paper along the floor. This was sort of fun, although it felt shamefully unprofessional. 

Following a few seconds of kicking paper alone, and enjoying doing so, my friends joined in. This practice installation reinforced my confidence in this idea after seeing that it is possible to have people interact with this task, without instruction or being asked. There must be something about unbreakable items lying down that it enticing.

Moving the plinth to the middle of the room helped me confirm the thought of installing work above waist height. Any lower felt awkward, and overly distorted certain curves of the pot. 

Observation: The plinth isn’t something that I’ll use in the final exhibition. The presentation comes off too formal for my childish topic whilst limiting the work that I can include. I had concerns for the safety of the ceramic works too, due to height and instability of the plinth it would have been easy to knock it over. 

Continuing to kick the paper across the room, it ended up surrounding the base of the plinth following an unspoken agreement/ plan. Spreading the paper around like this reduced the overall volume, meaning there was less to walk through. Overall, a less inviting visual effect that limited the sound that could be produced too. 

Finally, I sprinkled a handful of coloured paper over the pot, hoping some of the pieces would land in or around the top of the plinth.. They did not. Out of frustration I ended up purposefully placing a few to look coincidental.. They did not!! 

From this practice session, I’ve decided to follow my initial ideas to explore audience interaction. Next time I will control the experiment of how to efficiently spread out the content in front of the ‘main’ display. 

I also decided that tiny scraps of paper are a complete pain to work with and do not see myself doing this again in the near future.