Perception at its best

These past couple of months have been fun and I hope all you bloggians have enjoyed my little titbits of information and nuisance. If I had to break it down into one theme from all these different posts it would definitely be perception.

Creating my own map and this going on an adventure:
https://creativevsinsanity.wordpress.com/2014/10/31/insert-pirate-growl-and-squawking-bird-here/

Atmosphere and how it defines our look on reality:
https://creativevsinsanity.wordpress.com/2014/10/31/a-forgotten-date/

Friendly faces and how we can perceive family:
https://creativevsinsanity.wordpress.com/2014/08/22/image-project-a-family-portrait/

Getting lost in an area where we think we know our surroundings until you take the time to intentionally get lost:
https://creativevsinsanity.wordpress.com/2014/10/31/ever-gotten-lost-in-your-own-neighbourhood/

And finally, being able to step into a world that is not our own and explore what the true meaning of ‘a bugs life’ really is:
https://creativevsinsanity.wordpress.com/2014/10/31/bugs-grubs-and-where-to-find-them/

So, for me, this really has been a journey of perception.

From Stelarc to Richard Hamilton, how we look at reality and perception changes day to day. We may not see ‘practical art’ in museums and art gallery’s everyday but we do experience it in our every day perception.

Whether it be in our surroundings, the nature around us or even the smile on our families faces, art is everywhere all we have to do is look to find it.

I hope that by viewing this blog you have perhaps taken a different understanding of your own personal universe and delved into the unknown.

A Forgotten Date

If you watched the short clip … and I hope you did otherwise the rest of this post will make no sense … you’ll notice the atmosphere is pretty tense for the first half and then harmonised at the end when all is well.

To set up the anniversary date I used low lighting via lamp and a small intimate table with fine china placed on it to recognise the importance and romantic inclinations of the location.

The space was small once again because of intimacy and the sound portrays the old Charlie Chaplin black and white era and through this all the emotion was carried out with facial expressions and body imagery.

It was a lot of fun to create and massive thanks to my sister who put up with playing two characters and all that make-up!

*insert pirate growl and squawking bird here

Make a map!

That was the exercise! Make a map, any map – just as long as it communicates directions.

My initial response you ask?

TREASURE MAP!

Pirate maps are the best maps ever created, not only do they look cool but generally they led to some kind of wealth at the end of the journey – unlike those pesky rainbows that never live up to expectations.

Feel free to try and use it, I don’t really have any treasure though so at the end you’ll probably only find a Pokémon card.

Ever gotten lost in your own neighbourhood?

When looking at these two collages for the first time, your reaction should be something along the lines of “Oh! What a jumbles!” and you are indeed right!

I was given an adventure for a project. Create a paper aeroplane throw it, go in the direction it landed and then at each new road first turn left, then right at the next corner, go down two more streets turn left again and then after 100 more meters turn around and start again on a different route.

These photos are a mass collection of each new corner or street that I took. Personally it was just an excuse to get lost in an area that I thought I knew well, until I got lost trying to find my way home.

For example I had no idea that there were a small bunch of shops a couple of streets over than my house! Also that practically every second owner of homes had a dog, most were friendly … some were not.

I recommend it to all you readers out there, go get lost in your own neighbourhood, have a small adventure! At the very least your bum and thighs will thankyou for all that non-sequential exercise you did along the way!

Bugs, Grubs and where to find them

When given the assignment of going and looking into a part of my house that I have never seen before, I figured why go and give myself a pre-emptive hay fever attack from what I’m sure would be dust bunny heaven, when instead I can go and explore what nature has provided me – the small over grown forest that is my backyard!

I potted around for a bit, wading through the vast majority of waist high grass – and I came to one of my old ‘projects’, a blue pot with a lovely bunch of flowers that had sprung up in welcome of spring.

A little grub and bug heaven if you will. It has everything – pink flowers for the view, leaves when they feel like a snack and lots of cover to avoid birds.

Personally I think any bug would be happy to live here!

…

I must find the lawn mower for all that grass!

A Soundscape

How would you best describe a colour to a person who was blind?

Would it be by feeling? Sensation? Sound?

I decided to take on the colour ‘Blue’. In doing so I asked some friends and family what they associate the colour blue with. Here are some of their answers:
The Sky,
The Ocean,
Fish tank bubbles,
Feeling cold – like the chill from the wind
etc.

So when I finally managed to acquire a few of these sounds, the colour blue sounded a little like this …

Unfortunately when I tried to upload a mp3 or mp4 the file was not accepted, however after a little fiddling I went to Youtube for help, so here it is …

It may all just sound like a jumble of mixed placed sounds, but when you break it down and you really think about the visual image these sounds give you, the colour blue starts to appear in the images you imagine.

So when your next outside, close your eyes and ‘see’ if you can view the world in the colour of your minds eye.

“Image Project” – A Family Portrait

So it turned out that the previous Collage I posted was just a warm up for this freaky picture.
I decided to use some of the women of my family this time around. Starting with a picture of myself from my first day of kindergarten. I then added my gran, my nan, my mum, my sister and because she is also female … my cat.

This is mostly based off of Richard Hamilton’s photo “Study for a fashion plate – 1969”:

For the background I worked with the colour palette of the Hat from my kindergarten image.
For the bloggians out there viewing this photo, don’t look too closely, you might burn your eye balls 😀

SO MUCH COLOUR!

Well it was the 90’s, back then that hat was a fashion do!

 

 

Arthur Conan Doyle vs His Creation (A Collage)

Hello Bloggians!
We were given an assignment to make a wacked out photo in class — think Picasso — so instead of just grabbing some random photos off the internet I decided to add a theme.

In the photo is Arthur Conan Doyle himself as well as Robert Downey Jr, Benedict Cumberbatch and Michael Caine all in there feature Sherlock roles.

Can you see who is who?

Critical Analysis = BLECH!

Ok bloggers! Wow it has come to the final piece of ‘exploring creative arts’, and just for all you crazy kids out there it is (I have to admit) the coolest piece yet!

So quick recap:
Did a presentation on Sustainability during this semester and then the teachers were all “It’s awesome … make it better” (this is a couple of weeks later by the way and it was part of an assessment so all was cool). Now I had originally done my sustainability project on solar panels … I know, snooze fest right?! … So my first thought was “how the hell am I going to spruce this up??” Then it hit me! The week previous we had watched these gruesomely awesome vids of this guy ‘Stelarc’ (look him up if you have never heard of him … especially the thing about the ear) who as part of his art exhibit would hang by his skin from hooks as a display of Sustainability for the body, and it just so happened that a friend of mine was into doing the exact same thing. Now I had always questioned how someone could put their body through that amount of turmoil, was it a medical thing? A fetish thing? A crazy in the head, psycho nuts kind of a thing? I had no clue! So I took the one option that was available to me … I asked! (With a camera on in the background) And, o boy, did I learn some heavy stuff. Lauren (that’s the lady) went into some depth about why, where, how and even showed me a couple of her hooks – they are seriously sharp! – She took me through some history and explained her reasons behind doing this crazy form of art.

Now obviously the Sustainability project itself got way more interesting, going from boring old solar panels that are so last season, to this art form of the body and how different people look at what makes ‘art’ – don’t get me wrong, I am sure there are plenty of folks out there who think solar panels are the coolest! I personally find people shoving hooks into their backs to hang by their skin just a tinsy bit more fascinating – Also I did end up with a wicked documentary instead of another PowerPoint presentation, which has lately become my go-to project of choice. All in all, I learnt a massive amount of what defines art and how what we view can also be classified in to the same field.

A brilliant end to the semester, with some gore to fill in the cracks between the madness.

Stop. Listen.

Last week, if you had of tried to talk to me about ‘Fluxes’ or Yoko Ono’s ‘Pamplemousse’ I would have thought one of two things. Either you were trying to convey that you were choking and having a stroke at the same time, or, I would have thought you were practising your baby speaking skills. After all what else could those two words possible mean?

After a week of intense schooling however, I have finally come to learn what these two words actually entail and I must admit that I have come to love them both, and find them equally interesting and artistic.

When reading ‘Fluxes’ poems and stories, you can almost hear the author speaking, taking a breath, pausing to allow a certain element of the poetic words to sink in. Now generally speaking when a piece of writing is engaging enough these components are essential, but sometimes the story can be about nothing and go nowhere; as is the case with ‘Lecture On Nothing‘ by John Cage that was printed in ‘Incontri Musicali’ – August 1959, but there is a certain beauty to the words anyway.

So after enjoying this style of writing so very much, I decided to try writing my own.

This is what I came up with …

Stop                    ,                    Listen                    ,                    No really                  just listen                    .                    Do you hear that?                                        Musical isn’t it                    .                         It does not matter where you are                    ,                    be it a city with bass notes                     ,                  a country town with harmonic chords                    ,                    or a forest and bush land full of high treble bird calls                    .                    It is musical                    .                    This world is musical                    .                    It’s just          a lot of the time                    people don’t stop to listen                    .

Ok so that was my first go. It wasn’t much I know, but I hope that at the very least it did two things, the first being that it made sense, the second that it made you pause and listen. Even for just a moment. Sometimes we forget the small things and it’s healthy to just …

Stop

and

Listen.

 

 

 

References:

Cage; J, 1959. Lecture On Nothing. Incontri Musicali.

Ono; Y, 1964. Pamplemousse. L’OEIL DU POETE