Mladen Stilinovć was born in Belgrade, Serbia in 1947, he dropped out of high school and started his adventure of Easter European counter cultural art. Whilst looking through Stilinović’s work ‘Artist at Work’ 1878, it was very similar to what I was working towards with the staying in a certain location and sequence of time. He created ‘Artist at Work’ for artist that don’t feel creating work for capitalism. Stilinović mainly works around politics in art. He worked with experimental film from 1969-1976, his work include photographs, paintings, collages, films etc.
I needed a change of location so after a group discussion, I decided to go outside and head to a local rugby field nearby with my brother. I didn’t know which direction I wanted to take but I saw a few bubbles around. It made me think of how ironic it is that everyone else is doing physical activities whilst most of us are just sitting and watching; going with the idea of laziness. With each photo, the camera lens gets wider and you see the whole field and it shows how isolated and lonely he is. This wasn’t intentional on my part but after much thought it made me think of how downtime can be enjoyable by ourselves.
After our discussion, Dieneke suggested using a lamp to show the different timestamps so that you would be able to tell the time difference. For this, I used my lamp as the main focus for this sequence; although I’m not sure if it did its job. During the photo-taking time, I tried to find different areas to set up my tripod, but I found the same spot the easiest to capture the same 2 spots. Finding the right focus area was quite stressful because if the camera wasn’t focused on the window, where a lot of light was coming from, the image would be overexposed and you couldn’t see the image clearly or too dark. Some adjustments had to be made in order for the sequence to work, but I think I did okay considering I either had to switch between auto and manual settings.
We were asked to pick between ‘care and the good work’ or ‘in praise of laziness’, I’ve decided to go with ‘in praise of laziness’. My concept was simply doing nothing as time goes by.
I set up my tripod and camera, placed it at a spot I stay most in which is my room. I wanted to capture time without capturing time which leads to the idea of the sun telling us the time which was used back in 3500 BCE. The sunset was at 5:53 pm, and I wanted to capture it slowly turning into the night every 10-20 minutes with each photograph, as I carelessly waste time.
During the practice, I learned that it was almost impossible to start with the smallest item which was a lip balm, and it was much easier when we started with biggest to smallest. Since we started with the biggest object, it gave space and much more support than a small cylinder shaped lip balm. The most useless and hardest object to stack was the bouncy egg. There wasn’t any flat surface on the egg so it couldn’t stand on its own, so we took time to find solutions which was putting it into a small bucket that hung onto the skateboard; although you can’t see it.
After getting our materials, we started to work on our first trial. The clock is punctured through the A4 foam board, a circle cut out big enough for the pot of paint then attached a fern with tape around the hand of the clock. We came to realise that the plant/leaf has to be very light otherwise the hand of the clock will not move; another issue we encountered was that the plant needs to be at a certain part of the hand, towards the tip is too heavy but centre holds enough weight. If the plant is too long, it can get caught up on the edge of the foam board resulting in not being able to pick itself back up.
The substance we thought would last longer or would not absorb into the board was oil paint, however the paint is too thick and the plant cannot carry that much weight to go around in a full cycle. We tried acrylic paint and used abit of water so that it the paint wouldn’t be too thick.
in order for the plant to be able to pick up the paint/ink we had to cut off some pieces
After some time, we found that the pots of paint were useless since the plant can’t pick uo the paint and spread it across the board so we resorted to using a eye dropper to place the paint onto the board and hope the plant would spread it across. During our discussions with our lecturers they suggested we extend and explore our ideas and how we could take our project further, how to utilise our clocks in a different way, how to work with time.
The following week, we discussed what other surfaces we could use. We thought of seasons and how to incorporate that into our work. We used the inside of the clock and placed down a whole bottle of play blue sand. As the plant attached to the hand, it will create a raked design, and can be erased with a simple shake of the clock.
a time-lapse of the leaf raking against the sand
There were parts of the clocks that were going to be thrown away and we didn’t want it go to waste, so we tried to somehow include it into our work. Our plan was the using the glass part of the clock, pour water into it and if the sun was shining that day, it would shine through the glass and the water would reflect onto the sand to resemble the beach. When we poured water into the clock whilst it was hung, water started to lean towards one side causing it to be unbalanced and water leaking out of the small holes we had to drill. Alongside that issue, some parts weren’t glued causing small cracks on the side and water spilling out. If we hung it too high, the reflection of the water couldn’t shine through, but if it was too low, you wouldn’t be able to see the effect we were trying to achieve, therefore we scratched the idea.
With the remaining empty clocks, we needed to come up with ways it could be interactive and simple. 2 white clocks were filled with white sand and acted as a sound at the beach. The backs of the clocks were glued to the other, and twine wrapped around and hung up to the ceiling. It was done in a way the sand would move around inside the clock and create noise; like a yo-yo.
moves by the second
moves by the minute
spring
autumn
Reflection
During the past 2 weeks I was excited to do something different that used regular household items to create a machine to create art. If we were given more time, I would’ve liked to experiment more with the water reflection, and how we could’ve done it differently, and using different surface materials that wouldn’t absorb the liquid so easily. I am satisfied with the outcome and our idea surrounding time, sound and nature.
During our first group meeting we each came up with ways we could make art using a machine that runs on its own. We all wanted to use aspects we work well in which included painting and photography. Our first idea were to use balloons and paint to create splashes on a canvas; that grew into using a a device that runs on its own which was a fan, it will direct the splashes and create new and interesting patterns and designs. Upon further inspection, we realised that a few groups also wrote down using a fan and balloons, leading us to finding new ways and materials.
During our meeting we talked about vibration and motion; and we thought of using a speaker to create small or huge vibrations. However, we thought of how we would have to get a huge speaker in order for an object to bounce up and down and create art. With the limited time and money we had to scrap the idea. In our discussions, we came across using seeds as apart of our machine, it helped us generate the idea of incorporating plants and nature. This step made us think of time and the use of clocks by replacing the hands of the clocks with branches/leaves to create art. Paint was going to be filled into small pots so the plant could pick it up and spread across the canvas to make marks and designs. We came to realise that we needed to use the second hand for our results to come out quicker.
These are a few of the photos that were taken but aren’t apart of my final work. During the last 2 weeks of this brief I was just under the weather and didn’t have any inspiration or motivation to go out and wander around but I was able to get a few photos that I actually liked.
The photos I’ve decided to use are a combination of my coin toss and walking around the city. The idea initially was old and abandoned buildings in Central Auckland, however the buildings are either demolished or in a restricted area, so I thought of going for buildings that looked “historic”. I actually wanted all of my photo in black and white but I thought about my pinhole photos and thought back to how more light enters, the photo becomes over exposed; I thought I could have a few of mine over saturated since 3 were already in black and white, I could have the rest over saturated to show the difference between colours and how they become opposites of each other. Dieneke suggested that I use a different type of paper instead of the printer paper, so I used the tracing paper in all of them and it made the photos come out sharp.
I felt like I could’ve thought about my ideas a bit more and be more clear of what I wanted to photograph and present; not coming to school was a set back for me and caused me to rush my work. Although I’m not used to taking pictures of buildings, it did make me come out of my comfort zone and have a broader mindset.
For the first task, we were asked to let a coin toss decide our next move, whether it was to turn right, left, cross, or not to cross. From this exercise, I thought I wouldn’t find any place interesting since I’ve explored a majority of the city beforehand, however, through the coin flip I’ve found a few places I haven’t thought of going to. During the start I found myself going around in circles at Albert Park.
For the creation of this piece, it was done by a can of Pringles. After I poured the plaster into the can, the lid was left so I carefully angled and bender the lid so it created an imprint in the plaster.
However, I shouldn’t have done that because when it was time to remove the can and lid, it was a struggle. I was going to just leave the lid in the plaster but it bothered me too much so I had to take it out which resolved into a piece breaking off in order for the lid to come off
The idea for this was a piece of Glad Wrap I brought randomly. I wanted to incorporate another piece of material since a glob of plaster isn’t very interesting.
When the plaster was on the Glad Wrap, I had to quickly wrap up the sides before it went everywhere and held onto it for a few minutes until it was able to stand on its own without plaster going everywhere. Before the plaster started to set, I cut up a piece of metal wire and created a shape with it then stabbing it into the plaster.
When I had to create another piece, Ryder suggested that I created something similar so all of them somehow connect with one another.
Beforehand, I hand some metal wire that sprung up and I wanted to use that as part of my work. I also had some rope that I intended to use. I grabbed a ripped up t-shirt and taped the sides around the bucket, placed the rope how I wanted it to look then poured in the plaster.
When pouring I realised there wasn’t enough plaster therefore I made more but by the time the plaster was ready, the first batch already hardened. I proceeded to pour the plaster in but it didn’t fill on top of the first batch, but made the t-shirt fall down and the plaster started spreading towards the bottom of the bucket. Before fully setting I cut off the part of the metal wire that was springy and placed that onto the plaster.
A piece that I forgot to take pictures of is the one of bowl which was done using the bottom of a bucket and Glad Wrap. Compared to my other work, this one is oddly light.
