Author: Michael

This post shows my development and thoughts behind work seen in previous posts as well as my final developments in lens based practices. 

Earlier in the week we had a meeting to discuss our work. In that meeting I was able to finally grab hold of my next steps forward in regards to my final post.

Though I feel that I have once again missed the brief, the work I have accomplished still shows the curious bond between time and work. 

To further exemplify this idea I took to my backyard and created the following works.

Thanks for lookin! 🙂

Work is a daily occurrence for most of the general population. It can be a privilege for some but a nightmare for others. John Vea had grown up in Herne Bay where the younger population was exposed to factory work early on. “you kids should only experience this for a moment – don’t be here for a life like me”, is an exhibition that focuses on the relationship between working conditions of labour and how long mundane hours in these conditions can affect workers

Vea portrays long monotonous tasks, carried out by factory workers on a daily basis. By creating the true atmosphere of a potato chip plant, he allows the viewer to put themselves in the shoes of a factory worker. The exhibition is situated in a darkened room, with big plastic flaps on the walls, and a roller conveyor with potatoes being moved around. Occasionally Al Jazeera would appear on television. The slow and ongoing process of this gives us insight to the dull realities of factory work. 

For laborer’s in these positions, the illusion of time is long stretched, where each day becomes repetitious and down time becomes respite instead of relaxation. The luxury of a break is taken away and replaced by a time loop of work vs sleep

After a chat about my previous work I have got a hold of some new ideas involving the removal of time from an act of labor. Previously I did this by layering multiple images over another.

I had the idea that instead of layering the images I cut them into segments. I will arrange these segments starting from the first frame to the final frame of the recording. I will also arrange them a second time but this time each frame will be pulled randomly from the recordings. 

Hopefully the outcome of this experiment creates the idea that once time is removed from our work the actions that lead us to our goal contradict one another and leave said goal unfinished. To live a life of timeless work is to live a life unfinished. 

If that makes any sense ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Tasked with capturing labor in a single image, I set out to do exactly that. I sat at my desk with camera equipment strung from one end to the other, I pondered what style of lens allows me to properly capture the entire action that goes into an act of labor. My sights landed on a fisheye lens my grandfather handed down to me. This type of lens provides a very wide angle as well as a sphere-like distortion over the image. I feel that this distortion helps convey the feeling of oneness, instead of seeing the action as separate smaller actions I instead see it as one larger conglomerate of actions.

I took this lens with me on walks and to small cleaning jobs my partner does. I set the camera up on a tripod and periodically took photos of her working. After taking the photos I brought them into photoshop and stitched them together.

Today we tried our hands at stacking. We gathered objects in our spaces and preceded to stack them in a zoom call. many people brought large cumbersome items to stack, instead I opted for a more table top and uniform approach. using dice allowed me to work in the small space where my computer is. the different shapes used in my stacking grew challenging over time as my stack got higher. Eventually my towers grow wobbly and topple.

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1. The Chili
   Though the act of eating a bowl of chili isn’t tiresome in any way, but it is repetitive. spoon to mouth and back down again, again and again and again. this labor is not paid by cash or goods but instead the feeling of a full tummy.

2. The Money
when reading through the brief I took notice to the ideas surrounding what comes after the labor and for most that is money. i decided to document this transaction through a simple looping gif.

3. The Nail
In this animation I focused more on the action of labor. I slowly hammer a nail into a piece of wood, then I removed the nail. When creating this I thought about how the road to most goals are made of winding dead-end streets. we make progress just to get rid of it and back track, refinement after refinement until we reach a desired outcome.

Bellow are my sequences of stills.

Today we started the new brief. We were tasked to simply pull ideas from first half of the brief and display them via lens based media. I read through the brief and developed some thoughts around work and down time. Thinking about the relationship that we have with the tools we use. When a tool is being used it is most often in sight at all times, so i thought how would a tool use up its down time. 

I wanted to apply personification to my parents lawnmower. My original idea was to have a lawn mower on a lawn chair, unfortunately we don’t own a lawn chair. Instead I pulled out the sunnys, some strawberries and a glass of wine.

What a lucky lawn mower.

My idea is hard to explain and I don’t cover it in the video. If I were to perform this piece, What I feel would be displayed is the curious bond between an instrument and its player. Take that relationship and make it aggressive and physical. Wrestling with a machine just to get it to work and continuing to play it till it’s no longer playable. The bond between an instrument and its player is rarely seen in such a view. This view to me is what is alien

 An order of filament arrived today which is great news! What’s not so good is that it’s a plastic I have no idea how to print with. Regardless, With a belly full of gusto and a need for progress I tried printing the mount for my rubber slapper, this did not go well. Pile after pile of plastic spaghetti I slowly saw progress but instead of refining my prints slowly I chose a faster method. Taking one of my semi functional prints and shoving various shims and adhesives into it left me with a serviceable and surprisingly sturdy part.

Thinking back to the idea of a “slapping” I thought of making a more heavy duty version. With this I will hopefully be able to play a PVC Xylophone. Instead of a plastic paddle this new design will have a full rubber slapper! 

Designs are as follows.

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