Grated soap experiment.

I took my grated soap to Hot Spur today to film it with a different background, something more subtle. It is good to use soap in such unusual way. Ways people would never even think about when they think about soap. I want the audience not to automatically realise that it is soap so i played around with with and first grated it and then put in it the microwave. I am playing around with things at the moment and try to find something that totally excites me. This at the minute is not fully exciting me.
One thing I got from the footage is that I love the idea of people not even knowing that it is soap. The background is such a contrast to the soap which is so clean, white and fresh compared to the ground is so dirty, old and has a lot of history.

Soap Experiment.

I am trying to use soap in very unusual ways, in the case I grated a bar of soap and put it in the microwave. The little stands of soap expanded but did not stick together which is really cool. I have has the grated soap in a jar for a while and I was really unsure about what to do with it. I have got more and more interested in video so I decided to film an action shot of the soap. My project is on making the ordinary extraordinary and when you think about a bar of soap you think still, white and boring and this film is the total opposite. I will be going to Hotspur tomorrow as i do not like the purple back ground and hotspur have many unusual walls to film this against. I filmed this by pouring the soap on to a fan and tomorrow I may just throw the soap in all different ways. I am experiment a lot to see what looks best.

Karla Black

Since seeing Karla Blacks work I have been hugely inspired. The way the materials are being used just for the way it looks, feels and smells. Karla Black says she does not use these materials for any other reason other than for its substance, So it does not link to feminism or cleanness, purely just because it is always different in each city and it will all be made different. 

What I am interested in with Karla Blacks work is how she uses something so mundane and something we use every day and make it so special. Nigel was telling me to make my soap sculptures into a fantasy landscape and I feel this was maybe too literal and when I look at Karla Blacks work, it is magical. The sculptures are almost like magical landscape, as the colour just floats. The pieces look little floating magical land found in the clouds.  The colour is so important in Karla Blacks work as if the colours were too bright harsh pink it would look completely different and tell a completely different story. With my soap sculptures, that is taking something so every day, making it special, and showing people something new, not many people have seen what happens when you put soap in a microwave. Karla Black uses materials such as bath bombs, toothpaste and face creams, which are all everyday objects, but she turns them into something you would never think these boring objects could be. I love the idea of turning something so dull and every day and making it something so special and something you will never forget as I did with Karla Blacks work.

One thing i have been thinking a lot about is if I want my final piece to be a video.

I want the magical aspect, and I feel it would come across better in a video.

Daniel Wurtzel

I just came across this truly magical piece of work, it is so magical to watch and it really reminds me of the video I watched with the floating clouds of bubbles. I know this is yet another idea but the idea of free-floating objects, wind, and air i am going to stick with. This links in with the first couple of objects that I collected with the Laughing gas. I can look into making a floating cloud. I am excited by this idea and am so motivated to experiment with this. What I like about this is how it pulls you in and cannot take your eyes off it. The lighting is very important in this work and the material. It is so light it move in amazing ways. It is so sensational and seductive. One thing I liked about the soap is how unpredictable it was, you would never know what shape it would turn into, and this is the same thing. I t will make so many different shapes, some good and some not so good. The piece of material almost reminds me of a cloud in the sky as it just floats around and the same as you could watch a cloud for hours you can do the same with this floating piece of material. 

In this work, it is making something so ordinary and dull into something truly amazing and magical. Therefore, this is one thing I can do to link into Manchester I can find something as dull as rubbish and turn it in to something people will love and will want to watch for hours. I like the idea of my work constantly changing.

I am very excited about this and will starting experimenting as soon as possible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP3fYcCtPRQ

Tutorials

Today I had my Tutorial with Nigel; it did not go as well as I hoped. The problem with my work and the way I work is that I do not know how to control my ideas and I get bored of one idea very quickly. Although all my ideas are very different in my opinion they all link, some not in an obvious way, but that is only because they look very different. For example the Laughing gas and the soap in the microwave, I got from one idea to the other by being more interested in the gases in the canisters more than the actual silver object. I became very interested in the idea of creating a bubble that will never pop and when you place a bar of soap in to a microwave, it expands and bubbles. Therefore, they look so different but clearly link. I am worried people will not see this and think my mind is just jumping all around the place.

One thing that was mentioned in the tutorials about my work is it does not seem to have a meaning and it may look good and unusual but so what if it has no meaning. This has really knocked my confidence and I am now trying to think of one. One suggestion was a fantasyland and I understand this as my soap is very cartoon like and seems very magical. However, I am a little worried that this idea has been done too much and I want to do something very fresh and new. However, this could be my mission, to bring the idea of a fantasyland back to life and I do not want my work to be at all cheesy or tacky. I also do not want to be obvious. Manchester is quite obviously not every ones fantasy land, so I need to think if I want to be a grungy fantasy which would fit well with Manchester, or I could do it as a Manchester has little innocence so I’m bringing it here with my work. This could even be done with images and photography and not so literal than the soap and bubbles.

The tutorial helped me ton down my ideas and pick out the best that I have, however it has knocked me a little but I will come back with a lot more interesting ideas. I hope that my next tutorial will go better and excites people even more.

Experiments with soap.

Today i was making some more of my water, paint and washing up liquid and when i started mixing the them, it started doing something very unusual. The more washing up liquid i used the more unusual pattern appeared. The colours are great and has a real marble effect. I really love how this was not expected it, and was pure chance.

My walk around Manchester.

Today i decided to have a deeper look around Manchester and took the free buses all around the city. It was slightly scary not knowing where I would end up and the fear of getting completely lost scared me a lot, however it was a great chance to see things I had never seen before and I would never had done that with out going on the buses. I may try this out again tomorrow and give myself a rule like every 2 stops I get off or   every time the bus turns a corner i get off, today has given me more confidence in getting out in Manchester. Today I seemed to be looking a lot at colour this was totally unintentional and i didn't realise this until I got home and looked at the photographs. The pinks look great next to the dirty greens and the shocking blue is great along side the stone. I did get and idea today while on my walk about maybe bringing my soap experiments out and photographing them on the stone and with the wood from the trees. This walk gave me a lot of inspiration as i was beginning to get stuck in a rut and doing the same things with  my soap and now I am excited to get out and photograph them in more unusual place, place you would not expext to see the soap. The reason I am enjoying doing my experiments with the soap is because i love the fact that i don't know what shape they will turn out in, the fact I have no control really excites me. I will look into different materials I can do with this as i don't want to be stuck doing the same thing with the soap.

Soap Samples.

Soap Experiment 2.

Soap Experiment.

10th April 2012

As i have been looking at bubbles, clouds and gases i have begun to try and make these 3 things however i want to create the shapes and feeling of them. With the bubble i want to make it solid so it is unable to burst and the same with the clouds. I am starting to realise that i am most interested in its shape and form more than its meaning. I want to experiment with all kinds of different materials to see what works best. I currently live with a boy doing science and i have asked him for so ideas and what can help my work. With the work i did today with the soap this was purely just an experiment, i like what happened and the shapes it made, however i want to scale to be a lot bigger and that is where science will help my work. I came up with this idea by searching on the internet and YouTube for inspiration and came across the idea of microwaving a bar of soap and i have tried it with two different kinds of soaps and also cut it and shaved it to see the different results. I now need to experiment with colour more. I did try the same kind of coloured soap one new one and one used one and the two colours are completely different which is very interesting. I also want to develop the scale and if i am unable to make the soap bigger i may look into just playing around with the collection of soaps i have and putting them together.

Flow Mill.

I am not sure if this is going to go on the Group blog or not, but ill soon see. Today in Newcastle i visited a floating building on the River Tyne that generates its own power using a tidal water wheel. The building also houses an electro acoustic musical machinery and instruments which responds to the constantly changing environment of the river. Electronic sensors pick up tunes from the last 12 hours of the tide by storing and playing river water samples. The floating boat was covered in children however i pushed through and videoed some of the water samples that the children were controlling. The videos i took was a small part of a big devise all created to create its own power. The reason i filmed it was a photograph would not really give the true vibe of the place. I really loved the green laser going through the mucky water that is creating big bubbles on its own, This got me thinking about colour and i liked how the green was very striking.I now really want to experiment more with bubble and how far i can take a bubble. This visit was something very new and interesting i have never seen anything like this before and i really enjoyed it.