Merry Christmas

Sound

So a little more about my sound art foray.

Before I start, I need to name the project. Please feel free to leave comments or tweet me with your ideas ( @noblueskies ). Currently running around my mind is some variation of Welcome to.... or Greetings from.... but all ideas are welcome. The individual tapes have names but they are pretty uninspiring and intentionally so, no need for the entire project to be like that.

So some background on what I learnt when creating the “Picture” side.
(If you've not read my previous post about this you may need to http://noblueskies.blogspot.com/2010/12/secrets.html)

I found that I was both extremely aware of every sound it was picking up and yet feeling very exposed and impotent. Not wanting to get any trace of myself on the recording meant I could say nothing, nor move and not be too near to the recording device just in case I made an inadvertent noise. I'm still not sure why I didn't want to get any of me on the tape, mostly I think it is for purely personal reasons as I can't stand to hear myself. But after listening to my first recording I realise that apparently this extends as far as occasional noises, not just speech. 

When I got to Virginia Water that first day I found it was very busy so I placed myself a little off the beaten track with my recorder on a stump and me on a nearby log. I wanted to avoid having anyone too near me, in case they tried to talk to me and I wanted to record the wide variety of noises not just people chatting. Unfortunately I seemed to become a little bit of an attraction for kids and dogs as I sat there watching the world go by. I got so irrationally pissed off that there was all this really loud close noise, but really it was exactly what I wanted and I was just responding to a loss of control that I hadn't foreseen.

However I then got caught up with this family that after messing about right near me, with their children almost crawling over me to stay on the logs (being unable to say anything as the tape was on). Then one of the adults starting shouting about the boy and that he was going to pee his pants, over and over. There's freaking out about loss of control and there's 10 mins of irrelevant and in my mind (rightly or wrongly) crude and overpowering conversation. At this point I stopped the tape and attempted to start from the beginning again, I'd been going for all of 15 mins.

However I decided that I would try to record while I walked around (not realising quite how much I would cringe listening to it back, hearing myself). I rationalised that as it was autumn hearing someone walk through the leaves would be appropriate. It probably was but not for this. Listening to it back I realised that while appropriate to the season it wasn't appropriate to a “picture” side of a postcard.

The picture is taken in one place, as such the recording should be a stretch of time in the same place, not moving through a number of pictures. So I resolved to return another day, relocate myself and record for the entire time, no matter what happened. In the end I picked a well known view (well worth a postcard) at Virginia Water Lake. There are still some things to work out but it was a lot better.

Pictures in this post were all taken that day. Though none are of where the recording took place I still felt that 1 it was a really nice day photo wise and I should show off and 2. you all deserve some visual relief when reading my writing. 

 

If you like my photography you might want to follow me on Flickr if you have an account.

http://www.flickr.com/noblueskies

Secrets

I think I have been really blessed, since leaving University I haven't experienced any long term artists blocks. I know that for many of my peers they find they find times of utter inability to produce new work. I've not really encountered that as yet. Maybe it is because the obsession with postcards is only becoming more pronounced just when I thought it would fizzle out. From just producing my paintings and the occasional drawing I have found myself producing more and more drawings recently, devising installations and finding ideas for secret projects that are potentially all  postcard related.

As many of you might have noticed on Twitter or Facebook I have been talking about secret plans again. This time last year when I was talking about secrets it was the elephant I was creating, this year I have currently 4 secret projects. I actually had to write them all down so I could remember them all!

However unlike the elephant none of my secret projects this year are dependant on an outside company so, if I wanted I could just reveal all. However for many of them they are in early stages.

But I promised to reveal one this week on Twitter, and I stick by my promises. So here's a few hints about them, in reverse order:

Secret project 4 is printmaking based. Currently nothing really at a finished state. Still many in the way of assumptions about materials and processes to get what I want. So not a lot to show but if things continue to go well there will be something to talk about in a few weeks.

Secret project 3 is photo based and very undefined. What it's relationship is to postcards is unclear right now. It probably won't get looked at further till some of the others are established or finished. Also since I currently have a photo project on the go this may be a long time secret.

Secret project 2 is a collaborative piece and online. It will only get going if I actually get on with some work for it a quit being a freeloader.

Today however it is Secret Project 1 that I will reveal.

I wanted to spend a bit more time on this project before I revealed what it was all about, however I think that I will not be able to do any more work on it until the spring/summer so I will talk about it now.

Secret Project 1 is a foray into the world of sound art. This is an area I know very little about, but it is also a project that has been planned for about a year and thought about probably for longer. It is also a project that will not easily be described here on the blog as it is very lo-tech and intentionally not image based. Some of you may have heard me talk about it previously but it's been a while and I now have a better understanding of what it is and why I am doing it.

Most simply it can be described as sound based postcards on cassette tapes. It came about one day while I was thinking about the Internet and the digital revolution, realising that like many things cassette tapes were going the way of the dinosaur and that saddened me. I can of course see the need for things to progress (as many of you may know I embrace and love new technology) but the first music I ever bought was on cassette and I continued to buy cassette tapes well into the 90's when CD's were at their height. I am also a fan of owning a hard copy of things. While technology like MP3 and the Kindle are great, there is no substitute for owning an actual CD, DVD or book. There is just something psychologically right about being able to touch your possessions rather than see them in a digital and disembodied form on your computer.

The digital conversion of letters and postcards is also progressing. Letters certainly are being replaced more and more with email. Even postcards have their e-counterpart. With social networking these days you need only update your twitter and facebook statuses with an image taken then and there on your iPhone and uploaded with a message. It's quite a bit easier and faster than buying a card and stamp for all your friends and family and writing a message 100 times. I hope this doesn't kill the postcard, it seems so impersonal compared to the postcard (which is if you think about it a fairly impersonal or at least open way of communication anyway) and as I said it's really nice to own a physical thing.

Finally the physical similarities between postcards and cassette tapes were not lost on me. In fact this was probably one of the prime reasons I started thinking about tapes as a medium. Both have two sides, and while postcards have a clearly defined picture and reverse there was no reason that the definition couldn't be enforced by me on the tapes.

It was really hard to find blank cassette tapes! But the other month at the tail end of the autumn after 6 months or so of aborted attempts I finally made it out and recorded the “picture” side of the postcassette. Then I had to go back the next week to rerecord. (The whole recording really requires its own blog post, to explore the event and give more depth to the project so that will have to wait for another day). While out I made notes about what the message side should read and then later when I got home recorded the message side using an open source text to speech editor. I did not want my voice on the recording and wanted something with as mechanical a sound as I could. I am still interested in subverting postcards you know! What better way than keeping the two sided quality but removing the easy visual clues and personal nature. Now if people want to imagine being at this place they have to use the text, speech and sounds and try to guess what that place looks like.

Unfortunately it does also mean that this an image light entry. Just the one below of the first cassette in, I hope, many.

Snow!

To celebrate the snow here are a selection of my favourite snow pictures from last years Perambulation Project. More photos/info here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/noblueskies/sets/72157622935946910/ and here: http://noblueskies.blogspot.com/2010/11/perambulating-my-thoughts-on.html

Further Perambulating Thoughts (Which might be becoming circular)

About halfway in to my perambulation project I was still considering ways to show this project. Back then I was unsure how it would turn out and struggling to think of unique and innovative ways to show the results. While I like many of the photos a lot there are just as many that I am indifferent to or I don't think are really very good. There are also not in everyone's eyes Fine Art, In fact I would say that in my mind without the context of my postcard work and reasons for undertaking the project in the first place they would not be Fine Art. However this could be said of many things and is in fact a completely different, huge and highly contentious issue.

Back when I started I didn't think I wanted to show the entire project on gallery walls. There are a lot of images to show! I can't even think about the price in framing them all (and I would have to show them all), let alone find a space that could show all 300 odd. Maybe I could just show a few of the better ones but that then impinges on the truth I have created of these works and project and that upsets me.

Obviously I needed some way to be able to show them all. I've considered film or AV and I may indeed do this but with both I control the speed at which people view them. So with uniform speed images I only ever glance at are lingered on more than I would and images I would want to examine more closely are sped over. I could make the decision which images you should look at for longer and since it's my truth of this area I have that right, I just don't want it. Again it's a manipulation of the truth of the place and that truth is distorted enough.

However why not make a book? The viewer chooses how long to look (granted still messing with the truth of the place but at least it's not me this time), there is something nice in owning it on paper, I can write and contextualise the works. There is one stumbling block, keeping costs down. To keep costs down I will have to make the printed images small, maybe even putting four on a page. For some of the images this wouldn't bother me but there are some that I really feel need more size and space. 

Maybe the above arguments are rubbish and I won't be able to avoid imposing my own will on what photos should be viewed differently from the rest. I will also be removing the images from further afield taken because I was on holiday, Strictly looking back on them now I have to say they are not part of this project. Maybe this is also the wrong decision and I should include all images, make a point of the distortions in the “truth” and go on from there.

Frankly until I start designing it I have no idea how it will turn out. I get the feeling that strict date ordering is going to be difficult as a mix of portrait landscape is always hard. Staying within the 80 page limit is also going to be tricky, even with the removals, 4 on a page will use up 75 pages. And I will need a page/half a page for text. I have to say I am still unsure about this, even just by writing this entry I keep finding holes in my decisions, however I'm at the point where none of these questions can be answered by postulating here. Only by starting the work and seeing how it goes will I get more the information I need.

This entries pictures are 7 of MY favourite landscape orientation images from the past year.

Perambulating my thoughts on Perambulation

It has been a couple of weeks since my final photograph for my Perambulation Project and I have been reflecting on a years worth of imagery.

6th October 2010

Looking back through the blog posts I made about this project and the goals I set myself way back in my first post on this project (http://noblueskies.blogspot.com/2009/12/well-since-cardiff-i-have-hardly-gone.html). I have come to a number of conclusions.

1. Doing this as a way to improve my fitness.
   Well yes, I would say that was a success. While I won't be running any marathons I did extend the length of my walks on occasion to over 2 hours (walking from Crowthorne to Wokingham) and while on my recent holiday to Southwold walked almost non stop for many of the days, covering over 6 miles a day, 4 days in a row with no worse symptoms than stiff and achy muscles. You might say that's not much, but for me it is what I wanted and what I expected from 9 months of nothing more than short relaxed walks each day.
   
   
2. Exploring my local area.
   Well I've certainly done that, I know more about the fields and woods and other nature spots and footpaths around my area than I ever did before. I've learnt more about flora and fauna, especially with regards to butterflies and dragonflies so I can identify them for posting to Flickr. I have however left out a huge chunk with regards to the urban and suburban areas, with the simple reason being that nature interested me more and I found more things to photograph.
   
   
3. Creating a truthful representation of a place
   Now that is a tricky one. To answer that question I have to go back to my blog post of (http://noblueskies.blogspot.com/2010/02/truth-is-out-thereunder-bush-or.html). I came to the conclusion that it was impossible to give a entirely truthful representation of a place because the photographs taken and chosen are taken and chosen through the lens of my own personal experiences, knowledge and interests. They can only create my truth of an area or subject. Many of the rules I set myself were useful to maintain a truthful representation but they were still too broad, leaving me a huge range of places to visit and images to capture. I didn't realise that this broadness would harm the initial idea at first, in fact it was really only after I had spent all autumn and winter doing it and started moving to new areas because I was finding it hard and a little boring to make the same few walks every week. I also didn't want to photograph the same things day after day, the change would not be obvious and the photos become monotonous.
   
   
   On one hand I am right with that last statement and on the other I am wrong. I do think that the same image day after day would have been monotonous but as a project trying to show the truth to a place I think it would have been well, more truthful.
   
   I think what I have done is create a representation of a place. I don't think photography can ever give a truthful representation of a place no matter how many rules and restrictions you set yourself. I think the next project as I have outlined below will give a representation of a view, I think it will be more truthful of that view than the Perambulation project was of it's place and it seems right to push the idea in that direction and see what conclusions I make from this experience.

4th October 2010

Other things I've learnt are that it is really difficult to keep these things going and find the time to go for a walk everyday. Especially when I was really busy with the elephant and most recently with my internship. Being busy has led me to have to taken walks outside of my directly local (to my home) area and have taken them nearer to work. I have also often had to shorten them to save time.

22nd October 2010

So what about the future of this and the next project.

Well I would like to create a book with the original series. I need to investigate more and see when it would cost me money to do so. But if it happens I'll let you know. Even with it's flaws in the end the Perambulation Project is still showing MY truth of the place and I do want to share that with people.

21st October 2010

I will also not be entirely giving up with my walks. I will still take them when I feel like and when I have time and I will still be taking my camera with me. One thing I have learnt is that it's really improved my photography skills just doing this project and I want to continue to get better and better. What will happen is that photographs will go up when I have them to show you, it will no longer be regular and I may not mention it. You will need to follow me on Flickr to be sure to see new ones :). I also have a few ideas for further alternative photographic and otherwise projects that will require a few walks of testing before I reveal all.

17th October 2010

Finally, as I was saying, I don't think that the idea of trying to find the truth of a place has entirely run it's course yet, as such I propose a new photographic journey!
But this time with more rules.

1. As before I will not edit the photographs in post production apart to crop and resize them for the internet.
   
2. I will have the camera set to Scenery Mode every time. I will use either cloudy or sunny white balance settings, whichever is appropriate for the weather conditions.
   
3. I will go out no matter the weather.
   
4. I will go to the same place every week and take a photograph of the same view.
   
5. I will go out weekly. I decided to make it weekly as daily seemed just unfeasible from a life point of view, especially with the increased restrictions. I also don't feel that the area I am thinking of using will change too much over the course of a week. There would certainly be things I would miss but that is still true if I went out daily.
   
6. I will go out on Saturdays at 12pm. I can bend this rule only if life conspires to upset me. If so then I must go on a walk as near to Saturday as I can and It must be at 12pm.
   
7. I will attempt to do this for a year

Additionally I may take extra midweek photos, as I can foresee interesting weather and events may occur but not hang around long enough to catch on a Saturday. But they might not end up in the project officially, at best they may act as added extra, appendix or special feature or something.

10th October 2010

Well that's it really, last thing to mention is that the photographs in this entry all come from the last few weeks of Perambulation. Including a very fluky shot of a double rainbow with caught lightning bolt.

Anyone got any questions?

19th October 2010

Greetings from Southwold

I may have left this too long before starting but here it goes.

Southwold was great, I came back with over 1000 photos and while many of them have proved to be rubbish to mediocre (and quite a few can only really be called family snaps) there were some gems. Having gone through them for multiple reasons I made a selection of interesting/well crafted ones for flickr, drew off the family and silly snaps for putting on Facebook and have a few selected as potential paintings.

Southwold itself is charming and compact. It is small but I still didn't manage to explore every street and every path in the week I was there. Life is paced at a lower gear than city life and it's greatest flaw for me was the brewery in the middle of town which is only really a flaw if you don't like the smell of brewing, yeast, hops and barley. Not much of a flaw really and hardly one I'd get rid of for the benefit the brewery must bring to a town that I imagine would otherwise rely very heavily on tourism alone.
For about 4 days out of 7 I averaged walking over 6 miles a day and indeed by the latter half of the week I was aching all over. Perversely the only thing that could stop me hurting was having a little stroll.

Day one was mostly spent travelling but we were treated to a short but violent rainstorm that left behind a lovely sunset and an interesting half bow rainbow that seemed to hover just above the sea. The storm was so violent that some members of the house were expecting funnel clouds. This proved to be the standard for the week with many days starting off fine then degenerating into sunshine and showers by lunchtime and blowing itself out by the time the sun went down. This made for some lovely sunsets and some dramatic skies highly reminiscent of my paintings. It might be something about the countryside and open spaces, or the weather/climate of this part of the world, or the fact that it is so flat that lends itself to some gorgeous sunsets.

The following day it was sunny but becoming overcast and I walked north up to the pier, got some wonderful panoramic shots of the sea front and then went to see how far north I could walk before the tide came in. Of course I had forgotten how hard it is to walk on sand compared to other surfaces and got tired quickly. In the end I only went about 30 mins up the coast but this was enough to tell me that while interesting, it was too barren to make a good painting. Gave me a close up view of coastal erosion though. By the late afternoon it cleared up and I perched on the beach watching the world go by. The evening brought a walk along and up the pier and another wonderful sunset.

Further days had me walking south to Southwold Harbour, to Walberswick on multiple days and beyond into the marshes, up along the River Blyth and exploring the beaches, dunes and marsh between Southwold town and the river mouth. Highlights included Walberswick ferry, (which is a service that crosses the Blyth's mouth between the lower end of Southwold Harbour and Walberswick. The best thing about it is that it is in fact just a rowing boat run for generations by the same family.) an elusive (at least to me) Red Admiral butterfly, the many strange and fun objects on Southwold Pier including the Quantum Tunnelling Telescope, the pirate household (A house on the sea front of Southwold with it's own flagpole flying a Jolly Roger) and Walberswick itself which is a very pretty if sleepy, tiny seaside village.Probably the best, most unique and unexpected experience was on the Thursday night. Absolutely nothing to do with art nor strictly dependant on being in Southwold (and I didn't even bother to try to take any photos) but never the less I think it deserves being recorded.For many years I've been desperate to see the night sky. While at university I was living in a town far too near to Nottingham and Leicester to see anything but an orange glow at night. At home, street lights and general southern England light pollution makes it impossible to see anything beyond a handful of stars on the clearest nights. Even a recent trip to Bristol with the purpose of staying up one night and seeing the stars with a universe crazed friend gave me a better view than I have ever had before yet that too was just a handful of the brighest stars and that says something about how often I get to see the real night sky (never before in my life).
So on the 12^th it was proving to be a clear night when darkness fell and I went out with the vague hope that I would see a little more than I had ever seen before. I can't say I was expecting much, knowing that a truly clear sky is a rare commodity these days. I certainly wasn't expecting what I actually got though, STARS! Everywhere, too many for my brain to truly comprehend, it was staggering and so clear that I could even make out the Milky Way even if it was just a slight change in tone across the sky. In fact I think it was so clear that I was let down by my poor vision when dealing with light at night. There were just so many stars that I was unable to focus and take it all in. One star(/planet maybe?) was exceptionally bright, ESE and not far off the horizon. According to my sister with her binoculars it was a planet and it had moons she could see!
But you know what made it even better? Well the 12^th was apparently the best night to see this years Perseid meteor showers, Whoop! I saw about half a dozen to a dozen small shooting stars and one huge one that streaked across half the sky and literally left me breathless for a moment. I was out there for a good two hours and only came in when I grew too chilly and a bit too freaked out by the darkness and coming across unexpected people/creatures. Tell you what though, it's done nothing to sate my need to see stars, in fact I'd say it's heightened it.

So I should get back to talking about Southwold rather than hijacking this post with talk of stars.
All and all it was a very interesting place. A great variety of people, sights, habitats and weather that has given me a lot of cool photos, both from a documentary/nature perspective and from a more artistic one, either in the images themselves or in the potential paintings I can create from them. I see lots of images and paintings with beach huts, lighthouses and the ocean in my future. One part from the Victorian age, one part candy coloured playground and one part unspoilt nature with a spattering of modernity.

Photos from the Southwold set on Flickr.