Our Monday Workshop task on 23rd March was to ‘push a material or process to it’s breaking point’ – to be interpreted as we wished, and to report back to the studio at 3pm for a group crit.
As my FMP is, at this stage, looking to be a process involving film – I wanted to make use of my camera, and of course incorporate myself, in London somehow. I decided to turn the camera on and see what happened as I walked, and it came pretty clear in my mind that I would film from my perspective, until my camera battery ran out, or the memory card reached maximum storage capacity. For about a minute into filming I felt unsure what I would do beyond that, or where I would go that day. As I was walking home from college I decided to just continue walking between the two locations until I ran out of time and would have to be back in the studio, of course, whilst still filming/ documenting the whole process.
The walk itself takes approximately one hour; I’ve done it quite a lot of times before, so I know the way very well, and enjoy the various points of interest as I essentially walk the route of the overground line that runs between college and my house – the canal, a wildlife reserve, green spaces, high streets, housing estates, industrial estates, etc. I’m regularly passing people, and traffic on this walk, and yet there are plenty of moments I feel peace.
My camera has a feature (which I’m yet to establish how to turn off) whereby it stops filming after 10 – 15 minutes; so it was necessary for me to keep restarting the recordings. By the time I had finished – after walking home, then to college, then back home again – I had recorded fourteen videos of my journey/s.
I also decided to note down snippets of overheard conversations as I walked, writing odd statements here and there, along with the location at which I heard them said, into the Notes app on my phone. I wasn’t sure what I would do with them exactly – but I enjoy this method of documentation and so stuck with it (somewhat annoyingly, I only considered it after having already completed the first journey home).
When I reached home for the final time pre-3pm, it was by then 2:30pm – in fact it was exactly 2:30pm and takes just a little longer than thirty minutes to get to college from my house on public transport, so I was risking being a tad late, but my excuse is – art. As I was approaching my front door – my camera battery finally cut out (not a bad review on the Canon camera’s battery life then) after approximately three hours of filming. I went hurried back to college with my SD card reader at the ready, but still not entirely sure what, or how, I would be showcasing my efforts for the crit. I decided to simply discuss what I had done and show the thumbnails of each video clip (…after sorting them into folders organised into each journey).
Comments from my peers and tutor during the crit included praise for my dedication to the idea, and considerations on how I might present what I had done – would I use the videos in the created work, the quotes, etc.
Honestly – I felt a little delirious after, and my feet were aching – which is a reminder to wear comfortable, sensible, shoes when out walking for long periods of time. The weather had been lovely, warm sunshine all day; had it not I might’ve chosen a different approach to the brief, or reached a quicker ‘breaking point’. In all I really enjoyed the day’s activity, and had a vague idea in mind to map my journey out. When I returned home (by public transport), I firstly took my shoes off, and made a cup of tea; then opened Maps on my MacBook and screenshotted the view of roads between may house and college, before printing the screenshot onto A3 paper. I thought about simply drawing my walking route onto the map, however, wanted to keep the actual locations of where I live and go to college from appearing in my work. I put A3 tracing paper over the printed map, on top of a light board, and began by drawing my route out. This took two attempts before I finally made every correct turn on the page. I was pleased with how it looked – aesthetically simple black line between two x’s on a page. It feels as though it’s clearly a route having been mapped out, but of course lacks any details of place, or how long it may have taken. Owing to all the highly drawn turns, I think it can be interpreted as a long journey, but I really like the anonymity of the piece.
Wanting to push the idea slightly further, I decided to trace over the map again, this time in its entirety. I did so on a new piece of A3 tracing paper, before highlighting my own route using a red fine-liner pen. I really had fun tracing the map, and like the aesthetic of simple black ink on a page (particularly when white paper is placed below the tracing paper). I was less keen on the red line, perhaps because it felt a little hidden amongst the rest of the map, and as much as I like the aesthetic and enjoyed the process – I feel the full map detracts from my journey, which to me felt the most important aspect of the day’s work.
I had one final idea to map out the overheard conversations I had noted down on my route, and so I placed another, new piece of A3 tracing paper over the original printed map, and the black route line I had drawn, to then add speech bubbles containing the overheard quotes. I first of all wrote each journey’s quotes onto separate pieces of tracing paper, before combining them onto one single sheet, but decided to write quotes from the first journey in blue, and the second journey’s quotes in red. I like the contrast between the simple colours on the page, but that the colours are otherwise unexplained. I think having the different colours helps the page to feel less crowded, and keeps my eye a bit more entertained than if only black ink had been used for each aspect of the work.
Out of the three final pieces, which I scanned to my computer, my favourite two are the single, black line route, and the route with the speech-bubble quotes. I will definitely be keeping this form of location documentation in mind as I continue with my FMP.