A Qr.....What?

"A QR Code is a matrix code (or two-dimensional bar code) created by Japanese corporation Denso-Wave in 1994. The "QR" is derived from "Quick Response", as the creator intended the code to allow its contents to be decoded at high speed. QR Codes are common in Japan where they are currently the most popular type of two dimensional code....

QR Codes storing addresses and URLs may appear in magazines, on signs, buses, business cards or just about any object that a user might need information about. A user having a camera phone equipped with the correct reader software can scan the image of the QR Code causing the phone's browser to launch and redirect to the website embedded in the code"

So why did i just tell you all of that? well as you can tell from the above post QR Codes are mainly being used for advertising and commercial uses,  but i feel they have a potential use in the art world and this usage has been largely unexplored. Some institutions have been adopting them lately, mainly museums as a way to make the learning process a fun one. So what do you do? well after downloading a free app or android on your iPhone or smart phone, mainly called bar code/ bar code scanner or similar you then go around scanning these bar codes much like you would take a photograph. As a act is is quite rewarding and i feel that it has a certain amount of interactivity and participation which is something i am for within my work.

Thinking of introducing Qr codes into my work as a possible way of exhibition, but if all you need is a phone and a code do you really need to be inside a gallery at all, I'm not saying that this technology will make galleries a thing of the past- far from it but i do think there is potential to explore the use of these new technologies 

Screen Printing the codes

The Qr codes are the work, i see no reason why the QR codes cannot be the actual work, with this as my aim i have been screen printing the Qr codes, and i will display them as screen prints are often displayed within exhibitions- within a frame- i feel that this is yet another use of the frame as a prop - my attempt to almost guide the viewers attention, of being literal in my representation of art within the gallery. By actually screen printing the Qr codes i am making them my own work and this is where i feel my work has made a huge turning point, instead of being very anti art gallery or art space as i have been in the past and throughout most of this final project i am now starting to come to the realisation that it is not the gallery space that i am against but the way that people are when they look at a piece of work, its very introverted and its that nature of looking and viewing without making literal connections to the work that i have been trying to get away from. It is my aim that by using QR codes i can create an interaction and a talking point.

Year book in print

I have a housemate who is also on Graphic design and she visited the printers where our yearbook is being printed to day and i was really lucky that they just so happened to be printing our book and she was able to get a few photographs of it- so thank you Emma

The proof we didn't actually get to see

So today i found out that the Graphics boys sent to book to print without showing it to any of the tutors or myself. I really don't know why they have done this as over the past few days i have spent a lot of time in their studio making sure everything was ready and every body was happy with the content so not to show us it before it went to print was unprofessional of them. After i found out i went to speak to them about this as i knew Cheryl wanted to see it and i was under the impression that she had to sign it off before it went to print in the first place. So after taking to them i found out that the reason they hadn't shown us the proof was because they felt that we would only try and make more amendments and they didn't have time for that at this late stage and with deadlines looming. I don't think this is a valid reason i feel that this was their was of making sure that they didn't have to have a meeting with my tutors as for some reason they have taken changes we have made to their original concept personally. Even with all of these setback they are really happy with the book and i have to say from what i have seen so far, so am I.

Here are a few images of the proof i was able to get off the boys,

The Context of my work has changed.....

At the beginning of this project i aimed to explore street art and its realm within the art world, and undertaking this within my practice however through the methods i have used the connotations have changed. I feel that my work questions the actual gallery environment and the way in which work is displayed and  the spaces in which it is displayed. I still feel that working within a street environment and not having studio based work for exhibition is an area that I'm interested in working in, but the sticking point that i have with working on street art based work is that i only want it to exist on the street, and not at any point to be put in a galley in any way. And their lies my major problem it isn't really possible to only have work shown in this way as how do you show that your work exists in that space- by recording it and by doing this the work ultimately ends up as documentation. Its a photograph of a piece or its a recording of the event  or you put that work in the gallery and it changes the work and it becomes gallery based. The use of 'props' within my work i.e miniature plinths and small gold frames and the uses of miniature throughout my work act as a reaction to the galley space- Ive used these in work to portray to the viewer that what they are looking at is in fact art- its a very literal way to do this however as my work is meant to be playful i feel that it can handle the sometimes Corney connotations that go along with it.

alternate ending

Taking the last two frames of my Q R code video and embedding the actual code for the link, i feel is a nice way to close the loop- i could use this code in multiple ways including a business card. i think it has the potential to be used in many different ways and i am quite keen to find a few.

This is about as technical as i have ever been, now i just have to find a way of uploading the alternate ending to the same video URL without the code changing ...........

It doesn't look like much

I couldn't help myself, i just had to go in to uni today to see if it would work, by cutting a zig zag incision in to the edges i had marked out i was able to get the figurine out with ease, the incision closes back up again well so thus far it is all looking positive- i won't be able to cast them in resin until Monday but fingers crossed it will all work out as planned

A bit on the thin side

Spoke to Andy and Don- Ceramics technicians, about my fears about the amount of silicone being too thin to make accurate casts from and they agreed that it was too thin a coating and would be far too messy to try and use them to cast from as they were. So we came up with a new way, making small cylindrical tubes with a clay bottom that the figurines will sit in 

and then pouring a slightly hardened silicone mix in. Once set i should have a better more solid mold to cast from.

So that's that done, again i have to let it set overnight before i can see if they will be solid enough to cast from. Which is a bit of a shame as when i began this i thought it would be quite a simple way of getting a vast number of resin figurines quite quickly, but nothing ever turns out to be simple. It will mean that i won't have them to show at my final crit on Monday but i am hoping to start casting Monday afternoon so i will know by then whether this week in casting has been a wasted effort or not

This week i have mostly.......

The yearbook is in its final stages and now its just the final details that are being somewhat laboriously raked over, i understand that this is an important process and getting the yearbook the perfect is important however i feel a little like a go between- almost stuck between getting the book how the students envisioned it, in a way that makes the tutors happy and keeps the graphics boys from biting my head off.

After getting the final copy mock up from the boys last Friday i proof read it myself and made amendments on spelling, type mistakes (Beverly's page had the first two lines from Laurens page) image problems (when i had supplied amended images from students that hadn't been changed) Profile photographs changes ( when one students image was in place of another's ( Collette on Gina's page) and when the test shots where still in place of the actual profile image ( Collete's page )
After doing this i had a meeting with Cheryl to go over any other changes and amendments to the book - The Graphics boys were also insisting on copy to be written by Cheryl for the 'Work in public page' as an introduction- (and this is where i felt like a go between) The boys felt like they weren't being heard by Cheryl on why this was an integral part of the book and Cheryl's attitude was that the page was self- explanatory - and me? well i understood where they were both coming from,
- the work in public page is self explanatory- it's work in public and has a list of the public events in the right bottom corner
- in order for this page to fit in with the other pages it needed some kind of copy as all of the other pages had it and if this page didn't - it wouldn't flow as well as the rest of the book did.

Quite a small sticking point which i feel got a little out of hand mainly due to the fact that the graphics boys and Cheryl don't seem to be communicating very well, which is odd because i seem to be getting daily emails and messages from them. In the end the problem was resolved by the actual showing of the book to Cheryl - who hadn't seen this final version the boys seem to be getting a little mixed up to as who their client is and need to be showing this stuff to Cheryl as she is ultimately the person who need to sign the book off before it goes to print.

As you can tell from these photographs - quite a lot of minor adjustments were needed, thankfully when i went to the Graphics studios to talk to the boys they weren't too daunted by all of the sticky notes, and i was told that it would all be corrected by tomorrow and that they would send us the amended PDF of the book

A Qr Code film

the context of an artwork's presentation has always mattered.(part two) possible idea

Ive been thinking about HOW to exhibit my stop frame piece, and i have a lot of conflicting ideas, my initial idea of it being displayed as a piece of street art has become harder and harder for me to visualise in a  gallery/studio setting- to display the piece or to display documentation of the piece in its intended surroundings has been a hard obstacle  to overcome. As im working in miniature and want that sense of scale to come across to the viewer i want them to be close to the actual screen something which i don't feel will come across if i use a monitor or project it- so ive been thinking about the possibility of using a mobile phone or an ipod screen so that the viewer actually has to hold it in their hands. With this in my mind i have been playing around with how this would work will have have multiple hand held screens or just one? and how will that work? my latest idea is to have iphones or phones that can access applications and use them as a way to download my film, and that the viewer has to go through the motions of actually download it themselves. So instead of having the actual film in the exhibition i will have a phone and a Q R code or multiple Q R Codes and the viewer will have to  scan the code on the phone and access the film in that way. I am unsure if this is quite way i should display it but will try it out at my crit on Monday and see if it works the way in which i intend it to.

This is a Q R code, that will take you to my fmp pitch stop frame animation.

Chewing Gum

So i have applied the second coat of silicone this time adding a small amount of hardener and brushing it onto the individual figurines, its pretty much like trying to paint with chewing gum, but hopefully after leaving them overnight to set i will be able to start casting them in resin. However i am a bit hesitant as they only have a very thin layer and i am unsure just how it will work - as i have never cast anything so small before and neither has Andy so will just have to wait and find out what tomorrow brings ....

The covershot

We have been working towards the cover for a while now, getting the instillation ready has been a big group effort, inparticular Beverly, Amy, Brad and Andrew have worked so hard to get the instillation the way we have originally planned it, So this week is when the hard work pays off. We had always envisioned the instillation being set up in the studio so that the students would feel a sense of owernership over the book - our studio and the instillation everyone had helped to make. The Graphic boys now envision it differently to us, they want to shoot it in the lecture theatre- not only is this not what we had planned but the logistical problems with moving it could possibly ruin the actual piece itself as it is only held together with glue. But as we see this as a collaborative concept we met in the lecture theatre and both argued out the pro's and con's as we see then. After about an hours long disscussion we all agreed that we would go for the studio option and if we couldn't get a shot that everyone was happy with then we would use the lecture theatre which we booked out for friday as our back up plan - so we had four days to get the shot. fist task was clearing space in the studio which we did as a group, second take to get the instillation to actually stand up which only took a surprisingly small amount of fishing wire. so far so good until....
Day one
Brad and Andrew spent an entire day trying to get the shot we had disscussed and they managed to get one we were all very pleased with- i left them to carry on taking extra shots at 7:30   after emailing the graphics boys the shot we liked only to find out that they hadn't been shooting it in raw and the image resolution was not good enough to be enlarged to fit across the two cover pages.
Day Two
After waiting until it was dark outside (because a portion of the studio windows are in shot and we liked the lighting once daylight had faded) a second photoshoot took place we got the shot emailed it to the boys. job done..... or so we thought until i got home and had an email from adam saying ......'Why can't your boys shoot in raw' - erm stomach dropping time - Andrew arrived at my house at 10pm after finding out that the image wasn't usable. After getting the original images from andrew, and finding out they they were infact shot in raw and where entirely usable, we decided to just get on with it ourselves and put the image over the cover layout, send it to Adam telling them this was the one we wanted. Poor Andrew and Brad had spent ages trying to get the perfect shot and i was getting more than a little fed up with the attitude we where getting from Adam.
Day Three
Met in our studio at 10, instillation still set up from previous night, Andy (tutor from photography) Andrew, Brad, Myself, Adam, Luke and Dan- together we made a few tweeks to the set up and finally got the shot we wanted.
here are some of the hundereds of photographs that where taken,

Le pope

For my final stop frame animation as a comment on the pope now allowing contraception under strict circumstances- allowed for prostitutes but apparently not as a cure for AIDS- hmmmmmmmmmm......