Drum Media Ad

Today I made 2 more blogs - one collectiveritual.blogspot.com to show case the collection of things i find and the other synchronizedtraveling.blogspot.com which is what i'm using to direct people to the steps that I want them to take for the project - I'm going to post the following ad:

Bored? Synchronized Traveling allows you to see your city in a new light, rediscover your neighborhood and travel with friends when you’re far apart and without a passport.

Go to synchronizedtraveling.blogspot.com

in the hope of getting a few people that I don't know doing it aswell.

I worked on the photobook today and its looking ok - I'm keen to get it done and publised asap to see if it's somethig that i want to persue -

Doing the photo book thing today - it's quite easy to use - need to have a think about the text that i want accompanying it - mmmm procrastinating

uggh

dig site!

Have finally finished photshopping the pics of the found objects - I'm now looking at how they are going to go together in the publication - I think I might need to go to the library to check out some of the layouts that they have - I've not sure how much text i need to have in the book - if it should be more or a visual guide - or should it be an explanation of whats gone on - I want to combine the site photos as well as my diagrams as well as the photos of the objects etc etc etc - i was looking at drawings of objects - for tomorrow - deciding the layout - doing a shawow drawing pic (ah la tool rack shadow thing).......

It's the last week of school holidays - I have been working heaps - unfortunately at my other jobs and not my art - I have slowly worked through all the objects that i dug up at dads - I've cleaned them all up, bagged them and tagged them there is about 45 in total, i took photos of the objects after they were cleaned but the lighting wasn't the best on a lot of them so I have to do them again today- my computer has been running painfully slow, so that's putting a damper on things - but I think after disk clean ups etc its working better.

As I've been working on cleaning and labeling the objects I've been increasingly concerned about how i want to ultimately present the works in the end - I was looking on the Internet and found that you could get photo books published that you do your own layout etc and they print and bind it for you - I was thinking that this would be a great way to show all the different groups of objects - and their relationship to each other - TARGET PHOTOBOOKS I had a look at a few sites that offer this service but the target one was pretty good price wise - and i can go and pick it up at Broadway which saves $$$ for PnH. I was also thinking to make a CD rom to go with it with basically the same info in the book - probably done in flash - As for the physical lay out - I've been looking at storage devices and I keep on coming back to the idea of a entomologist kit with the dividers - I would love the idea of big plan drawers made of rich mahogany - i think i have to work with my budget and my time limitations. I keep on thinking of that guy at the MCA who got homeless peoples signs and displayed them on a big table and under a big glass box - bringing it back to the museum theme of collections. and such and such

Holidays

Its been a busy week - I went to dads house - my childhood home and did a small archeological dig in the back yard - cataloging what and where i found objects. It was based on an idea i saw when i was at the TATE modern where the artist Mark Dion organised a dig on the banks of the Thames catalouging what he found:

The exhibition organized these objects according to location in a large mahogany cabinet, alongside photographs of the beachcombers and tidal flow charts, classifying them loosely according to type (such as bones, glassware, pottery, metal objects), in seemingly unhistorical and largely unexplained arrangements: antique items were shown alongside contemporary items, ephemera and detritus were next to objects of value. At all stages, the artist and his assistants took on the role of actors in a form of public theatre, inviting all onlookers to question their own ideas about archaeology, scientific classification, relationships, and knowledge of the past.

http://edu.warhol.org/app_dion.html

I took some photos at dads as i was excavating - but today I want to clean, re-photograph and catalouge the objects and work in the studio tomorrow looking at the best way to display them - at the moment I'm thinking in small cardboard boxes that are devided up - one for each strata location?

I guess what had sparked this investigation into the past as a path to memory was sparked when i read a book on Christian Boltanski by Lynn Grumpet - I wrote the following passage in my diary when I read it but forgot about it till Alice (whom I share a studio with) borrowed the book and marked the same passage for me.

- its in relation to a box of old family photographs (not his family though) that he found and was looking at ways of investigating the family delvign into their lives but as he went on he "Realised that these images were only a witness to a collective ritual - they didn't teach us anything about the family....but sent us back into our own past"

Synchronized Traveling! Flickr and Facebook

I set up a Flickr acc http://www.flickr.com/photos/tammiecastles/ which shows photos of my work but also some projects that I'm working on;

Synchronized Traveling

In my honours year I’m exploring the idea of the evidence of a collective experience. Through this I’m trying to organize a series of interactive ‘invitations’ for you all to participate in. The first one is based on an idea I found in the book “The Lonely Planets Guide to Experimental Travel” which is also based on an idea of LATOUREX Laboratory of experimental tourism. It’s a way to travel the same path as someone without doing it together and to experience your surrounds in an unusual way.

APPARATUS: Notebook and camera.

METHOD: Participants travel around their chosen locations using a 10 stage set of common directions. Participants will take photographs and write notes to record their experiences at each stage. Where the directions don’t match your environment, improvise.

THE INSTRUCTIONS ARE AS FOLLOWS:

At each stage write a note and take a photo of what you see.

1. The first stage is your starting point
2. Walk in any direction for 50 paces and look up
3. Continue walking in the same direction till you can go left.
4. Go left and keep walking till you see somewhere to sit
5. Walk in any direction till you see something that looks like a 2 or 7
6. Carry on walking in the same direction till you see something that looks out of place
7. Walk 100 paces in any direction
8. Keep walking till you see something red
9. Turn 180 degrees and walk till you see an interesting architectural feature
10. Walk home but keep your eyes out for something shiny


you can check out the face book group to see some of the other photos have put up and you can do you yourself! http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=166341500264 I think that this will take you too the site! or just search the groups for Synchronized travelling

the start of things

So i have never blogged before - but i thought that it would be a good way for me to keep my thoughts in order for my drawing honours project at the National Art School in sydney.

Through my last year in my BA i was looking at how memories can be triggered from a small scrap of paper - a movie ticket, a receipt and then I looked at how images can inspire different memories from each person - so someone looking at a horse might think of their first pony ride, another may think of a horse statue they have at home another the book Black Beauty. This year I started off this way but then I found that I was interested in the collective experience of objects. As I looked into the brain, into memory etc I was amazed with all the different levels of memory that there was, memory that stores things for a 10 of a second, memory that we use and access continually – ie the memory of how to speak. It was a subject that was way to deep for me to investigate on any substantial level in my honors year. However while investigating I become drawn to these categories – and how we categorize memory. In the stairwell exhibit I had a piece “ I keep my receipts for tax purposes” I asked the viewer to select a date of significance to them and stamp it on two pieces of paper one when into the show and the other into the pocket or wallet of the viewer – it represented the idea of the evidence of a common experience, so I’m taking the show down today and will use the tickets that people left and organize them into some sort of system – not sure exactly what sort of system – but a system none the less