Filming the advert

In preparation for when the children came over I cleared some room in my living room so they could use the scrap. First I got them to make everything for the film. This was extremely difficult as I had not anticipated they might get bored or not want to co-operate. Amelia made her fairy wings perfectly which were beautiful and Harry took charge in making a castle in the garden from a blind and material I got from the scrapstore. After this the children became quite uncooperative and didn't want to be filmed doing what I asked. They wanted to make their own things and if I work with children again I will certainly consider this. I got most of what I wanted to film but when the children got tired I didn't want to make them do anymore. As I was supervising them I could not spend enough time with the camera so the focus and position is not how i wanted, if I do this again I will definitely have someone else to help me. I was also hoping for Harry to read the poem so I could use this over what I filmed but he didn't want to. I have an opportunity to see them again tomorrow and Monday so I could try again then. If he really doesn't want to I will have to consider sub-titles or finding someone else to do it which will be disappointing as Harry has a very cheeky characteristic voice.

Editing

Here I edited my Jungle theme background in Photoshop. After colouring it in using the paint bucket I experimented with different filters, there were two I liked. These were paint daubs and neon glow, but I decided to leave it as it was as the filters didn't enhance the image that much. As this was a background I decided to animate it slightly I thought the easiest option would be to make the parrot move a little. To start this I cut around the parrot with the polygonal lasso and copy and cut this, I then pasted it into a new document. I had to draw in the missing background using the paintbrush in Photoshop. I then started manipulating the parrot in a separate document on Photoshop and each time I animated the image slightly I saved it so I would have a succession of movements I could then paste onto the original image and use the animation window to animate the image.
I reduced the size of the animation and saved in 'save for web and devices' to convert it into a 'gif' file. I then opened in Final Cut Pro so I could export it as an actual film and upload it to blogger.

Scrapstore Visit

Today I visited the Scrapstore and got some things I needed. I planned to make a spaceship with the children so I found a barrel and some silver paper and items. I also found a plastic dome they could use for a space suit and loads of materials and items to play with.
I also met with John pedlington and gave him a brief update of my progress. I told him my plan of action and what I needed to get from the scrapstore. We also arranged a date for our next meeting which would be in November.

Permissions

Letter to Mr and Mrs Cottle

Dear Mr and Mrs Cottle
If this date suits you I should wish to film your children on the 22nd.
Many thanks
Kate


This is the reply I got.

Hi Kate,
Yes this date is fine thanks for taking them for the day. I hope all goes well I gave Adam my phone number to give you in case you need anything.
Good Luck,
Andrew.

Creating my animation

To create the animated background I used the animation window in Photoshop. I chose the image I wanted to use and saved it twice. I opened the image in Photoshop and multiplied the slides in the animation window so I could copy the image I changed slightly onto the image. I decided to change the hue as this changed the look of the image and made the stars almost sparkle which I liked. I changed the hue by 5% each time and copied and pasted this onto each slide in the animation window. This slightly changed the colour of the image each time and after getting to the desired effect I chose which layers would be seen on each image of the animation. This is the final animation.

Email from school

as a group we thought it would be a good idea to visit a playpod in action. After writing to a primary school this is the reply we had.

-----Original Message-----
From: School Cabot Primary [mailto:cabot.p@bristol.gov.uk]
Sent: Thu 9/23/2010 10:33 AM
To: Jo Sanders
Subject: Re: Fwd: Collaboration with Bath College students,



Hi Jo,

we would be very interested in the project.

Would you like to come in and meet with the deputy head, Tom Burton to get something started. He is out of class Mon, Tues and Weds.

Things we would need to discuss would be which year group you would like to work with, the focus of the art, permission slips for filming and dates.

I have copied him in to the email and he will call you next week.

Hope that Sian had a great summer travelling and is looking forward to her course.

Best Wishes
Richard Riordan.

I think it would benefit me to see how children play to think of techniques to get my children involved as I am using two children who are friends of the family. I have chosen this because I feel it will be easier to communicate with children you already have a familiarity to and this will come across in the project.

Summary of artists work

Noble and Websters work is made from rubbish taken from the streets of London, they transform it into works of art which surprise the human mind. Their method of re-using is similar to that of Christo and Jeanne Claud's artwork although they have slightly different meanings. Noble and Webster got inspiration from the Egyptian themes of mummification and sculpture and this in a way links to how Christo and Jeanne Claud have used wrapping in their sculptures like how the Egyptians wrapped the dead to preserve them. In some ways the sculptures are similar in the materials used, Christo and Jeanne Claud use the landscape and use materials to wrap it or they re-use materials to make a statement. This is similar to how Noble and Webster re-use rubbish they have found and collected. Julie Starks's works of art re-create the natural world using natural materials, some of her work is created by children as opposed to Noble and Webster who create it themselves. Jeff Pigott and Julia Warin have done a lot of community projects working with children similar to Julie Starks although the 'Insectabike' was a huge projects compared with Starks's 'Seeds'. They both reuse materials but the 'Insectabike' was very unnatural and not organic like the seed's project. The colours and tones are very different. Jeff Pigott created his spaceship work of art with the help of children, he also only used recycled materials and makes a statement similar to the way he made a statement using the shopping bags to create a huge wall of shopping bags. This statement was to raise awareness of how many bags are used where as Christo and Jeanne Claud liked to made political statements. Their work was environmental, interactive, and collaborative, they used a lot of materials and made a huge statement where as Pigott made smaller but equally important statements.

Bibliography

Bibliography

Primary sources
Email to Jeff Pigott
Lecture about Christo and Jeanne Claud

Secondary sources
http://www.gagosian.com/artists/tim-noble-and-sue-webster/
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/noble_webster.htm
http://www.britishmuseum.org/the_museum/museum_in_london/london_exhibition_archive/statuephilia/noble_and_webster.aspx

http://www.juliestarks.com/

http://www.artspark.net/
http://jeff-art.artspark.net/indexart.html
http://www.artspark.net/projects.html

http://www.christojeanneclaude.net/

Tim Noble and Sue Webster

Tim Noble and Sue Webster are artists based in England whose work is collected by Charles Saatchi. They are associated with the post-YBA generation of artists. They live and work together in east London where they collect rubbish from the streets and transform it into shadow sculpture. When a light is directed on the pile an image that is totally un-expected is shown on the wall, typically the image is of them. The art of creating a shadow sing projection is usually referred to as transformative art, it echoes the idea of perceptual psychology, a form of evaluation used for psychological patients, they are familiar with this form and I believe using this technique they challenge and surprise the human mind. They have also taken transformative art further after being inspired by an Egyptian collection of art. They have created sculptures made from mummified creatures into silhouettes of their faces when a light is shone over them, their use of animals echoes our Egyptian predecessors who believed that gods could take the form of animals such as cats or dogs, these were mummified and sold to pilgrims who would then use these as offerings to the Gods, I find it intriguing how they were inspired by the Egyptians use of animals, mummification and sculpture and managed to combine these to create the dark yet witty works of art. Noble and Webster have developed their own cult of personality and an entirely original and different style of art, their self portraits have been made from garbage, dead animals and in the form of Neanderthals. Their work also includes large electric drawings of tattoo ideology and ‘bling’ logos.
I think their use of reusing materials to create artwork is very similar to my project where I reused materials to help children create art. I particularly like the use of materials to create shadow. I think the colour of this art is very monotone and does not stand out much; the shape of the artwork and the shadow it creates is the eye-catching part of this artwork. Their work relates to re-using of materials which is similar to my project as it focuses on creating new things from old. I used a creative method to reuse scrap in similar way which they did.

Backgrounds

In this lesson I chose to create my jungle themed background. I found some images to help me and was really interested in the artist Henri Rousseau. I printed off his images and began to draw my own interpretation of his artwork.






These are some of the images I was looking at and this is what I came up with. I used Coral Painter and Photoshop to colour in the image.

Julie Starks

Julie Starks creates artwork that reflects her fascination with ecosystems, sustainability and the fragile nature of this world. Much of her work is looking closely at the small worlds which surround us, sometimes to microscopic detail emphasising structure and detail in a beautiful way, her work shows texture and pattern and explores a reality of looking at things in a different way. Julie uses a variety of materials most of which are organic and natural, such as wood, metal, willow and others. She uses these materials to create sculptures and artworks. Her photography records the circle of life embarked upon by plant structures and surfaces, and is a constant inspiration for other artwork. Julie works for exhibitions, to private commission and deliver creative projects within community environments.
Julie has worked with a diverse range of client groups such as Greenpeace, the National Trust, Westonbirt Arboretum, Bath International Music Festival and Womad Festival as well as many other youth and community groups across the UK. One of the community projects Julie has done is called 'seeds'. It involved residency at the National Trust Gardens at Barrington Court, working with inner city schools from Bristol, to produce sculptures inspired by the gardens using seeds and clay. I liked the innovation of this project and the simplistic theme. I think the outcome was very organic and educational for the children.
Another community project was residency at the National Trust Gardens at Dyrham Park, Bath, this involved working with inner city schools from Bristol to produce sculptures inspired by the gardens using scrap materials.
My favourite project Julie did was the ‘Insectabike’ project for the recycled sculpture workshop at Bath children's festival, they used scrap materials to create a huge insect themed bike. This was similar to my project encouraging children to manipulate scrap. The outcome was very bright and colourful and had very interesting textures. The shape was very bold and eye-catching creating interesting shapes and ideas. I like how they used a variety of materials in an innovative way, I have used similar techniques to re-use materials.
Another project which involved the community was part of the London Road Carnival in Bath where she worked with Batheaston Primary school to produce costumes to lead the procession.

Jeff Pigott and Julia Warin

I wrote to Jeff Pigott to find out more about the space mission project, I thought maybe it could help me when doing my space theme with the children.
This is the email I wrote to him.

Dear Mr Pigott,
I am a student at Bath College completing a recycling project very similar to your Space Mission Project.
I would appreciate if you could give me some information on who got involved in this and how, and whether it was successful and some tips on doing this myself.
Thanks very much,
Katherine Howes.

This is the reply I received.

Hi Kate, Thanks for getting in touch.

The rocket project was a commission by Bradford-on-Avon town council to celebrate the anniversary of the moon landings. It was to be a centre piece for their display at the West Wilts Show. It was made by 3 artists - myself, Julia Warin and Keith Wright and with some help from others. It took about a month to build and is based on a children's climbing frame which we were given for free. The legs and struts are cardboard tubes and the main rocket is clad in thin mdf and then dressed with scrap materials. The hatchway is the lid of a wheelie bin! The point of the rocket is an Ikea lampshade on an exercise ball.

Making something like this would not have been possible as a community or group project without a lot of co-ordination and management. The whole rocket comes apart so that it can be stored. Do you want to buy it????

Hope that helps. If you want to know more, then send me some specific questions. And best of luck with your project.

Regards, Jeff

From this I realised I would need to make a very small scale rocket ship and look for materials such as cardboard tubes and silver paper.

This is information retrieved about the rocketship from the website:
Rocket
Height - 4.6 metres
Base width - 3 metres
Materials – Recycled metal, cardboard, paint, paper, found objects, wood, imagination.
Astronauts – 2 m and 1.4m tall
Materials: recycled wood, tents, pillows, paint tins and found materials.
Artists/tech - Julia Warin, Jeff Pigott, Keith Wright, Holly Pigott, Karen Pigott
Brief – to create a spectacular object to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the moon landings as a centrepiece for a marquee at a County Show.
Research – NASA rocket and moon lander images, footage and recollections.
Collected designs, imagery and music circa 1969. Sci fi, fantasy and comic book imagery.
Construction method - Wallace and Grommit, in ”A Grand Day Out". The deconstructivism of Ikea. Looking at collected, found and leftover materials on the studio floor.

This particular project is very relevant to my project and I took a lot of information from this to help me in my project, for example I took some inspiration from the materials they built their spaceship from and tried to find similar items when looking for materials to build my spaceship. The spaceship they build was very tall and streamlined. It had very futuristic colours and complicated detail to give the impression of sophisticated technology. As I am working with younger children they will not be able to create a vessel as detailed but they have the basics to create something outer-worldly.



Julia Warin worked with young teenage girls at the girls group run by Barnardo's, this was called the mural project. Over 10 weeks they worked with collage, paint, drawing and words to create the elements, which went into the finished mural panels for Barnardo's offices. Looking at colour combinations, words of popular songs, retro 60s and 70s graphics, textiles & design elements and considering positive, active images of girls, they generated a mass of material. All this was then combined to create the final piece, reflecting the bubbly excitement of the group and the diverse identities and interests of the girls. The final piece had lots of interesting colours and tones. The shape was fairly basic but combined with the tones made an interesting piece.



Together with another artist Jean Edminston, Pigott and Warin created a project called Journeys to the edge, this was to explore the urge to visit the sea. They created a collection of photographs, paintings, ceramics and sculpture to present the artifacts and objects found on their creative journey. I enjoyed looking at the collection, which told a story of 'Journey'. There were different textures, which gave you an idea of the places they visited, and the variety of colours show a variety of areas.






Another project Warin and Pigott were involved in was commissioned by ‘Envolve’, also involved was Keith Wright. This project was commissioned to highlight issues around waste and recycling during national waste month. The sculptures are situated in a shop window in Bath to be seen by the public, it encourages us to think twice about what we buy, consume and throw away.





Pigott, accompanied by artist Shelley Wilson ran three public art workshops in a shopping center in Boscombe. To promote waste knowledge customers were given a 'bag for life' in exchange for the typical carrier bags which get thrown away and take a vey long time to decompose. Instead the customers were encouraged to create a quilt square from the carrier bag and use an 80-year-old sewing machine to combine them. Most people found this extremely enjoyable. The resulting wall hanging 'please use this bag!' made of 286 squares of plastic carrier bag was displayed as part of the PLASTIC! Exhibition at the Russel-cotes art gallery and museum, this artwork was very bright and bold and could be seen from far away and was eye-catching, I believe this was done on purpose to raise awareness of the issues of plastic bags. Jeff also worked at Kings-park primary school with over 100 students to create a second wall now hanging on the wall of the school. There were also workshops at the neighborhood nursery, where children under 5 played with scrap and coloured gel to create stained glass type artwork. The outcomes were very creative and similar to the project I did encouraging children to manipulate and create things with scrap.

Christo and Jeanne Claude

Christo and Jeanne Claude are married artists who created environmental interactional collaborative and interactive works of art. Their works were credited to Christo until 1994 when the outdoor works and large artworks were credited to both. Their work is extremely visually impressive and controversial as a result of its size. In 1961 they covered barrels at the Port of Cologne which was their first collaboration, this was associated with post-war economics, the wrapping could symbolise protection and preservation as you often wrap things you want to look after, showing oil needs to be used carefully. The barrels themselves gave a very strong message as they looked very cold and foreboding.
In 1962 the couple tackled their first major project. Without consent of the authorities the artists made a statement against the Berlin wall blocking a street with oil barrels, this was named the Iron Curtain. This took 240 oil barrels and 8 hours to complete. It was extremely eye-catching because in my opinion it was extremely ugly. This sent the message very well and gave the effect desired. The 'Iron Curtain' was very tactile and had a cold hard effect because of the colours and textures.
Christo and Jeanne Claude wrapped the coast of Little Bay in Sydney, Australia at the end of 1969. This required 130 workers who devoted 17,000 hours work. The project required 9,5600 m2 of synthetic fabric and 56 km of rope. The effect was stunning and I was awestruck seeing this. There was a very vulnerable yet unforgiving feel when looking at this as the texture of the fabric juxtaposed with the harsh rocks and underlying landscape beneath.
Jeanne-Claude and Christo began preparations for Running Fence in 1972, a fabric fence, made from steel posts and steel cables, running through the landscape and leading into the sea. The fence was planned to be 5.5 meters high and 40 kilometers long. In terms of permission 59 families of ranchers needed to be convinced and they needed permission from the authorities. At the end of 1973 the path was marked for the fence with wooden stakes and three years later the work began. In September 1976 the work was completed, 200,000 metres squared of nylon fabric were used, 2050 steel posts and 145km of steel cable. Although the fence crossed roads and paths room was left for cars and livestock, this defined the fence interestingly as not a fence, as it doesn't enclose an area or prohibit entry. The fence itself was beautiful, it somehow fitted into its surroundings while at the same time making a statement without disturbing it's environment. It used its surroundings to stand out in contrast of colour, shape and tone. The colour was dull but stood out against the organic landscape surrounding it, the shape was curved when the wind blew and the lines created seemed to go on forever. It adapted to its surroundings reacting to light and weather. Its ever-changing state creates suspicion and wonder making you want to follow it. It follows the curves of the landscape being tense and taut but free flowing at the same time. No visible evidence of the fence existed when taken down after 14 days making it a legendary memory; this is my favourite interactive project giving a strong message and a beautiful intriguing addition to the landscape around it.
Jeanne-Claude and Christo experienced and lived through epic landmarks of History. They found it important to involve art in history and politics to highlight current affairs shown in the wrapping of the Reichstag. 10 years after the construction of the Berlin wall they conceived the idea of wrapping the Reichstag, which as the former seat of the democratic German Parliament. It had become a symbol of a country and city divided. They did not receive the permission they needed for 24 years. With the work of 90 professional climbers and 120 installation workers the project was complete and when taken down all the materials were recycled.
For all of time fabric has been used in all aspects of life, from birth to death wrapping is used by all mankind. When a baby is born it is wrapped to preserve, protect and give warmth. Wrapping can also be used to preserve food or wrap a present to provide excitement, Christo and Jeanne Claude took a meaning from fabric and interpreted it in an inspiring and original way. They not only took the subject of fabric but the meaning of it too, they came up with a way of symbolising issues in a way everyone can relate to.
They will have had many meetings with authorities, planners, councilors and politicians to seek permission for their projects. This is as important as the actual artwork. Peaceful pursuasion, explaining and negotiating makes it politicl, resolving differences through dialogue not warfare.
Like my project they

Creating Backgrounds

To accompany my film I wanted to create some backgrounds showing where the children were when they used scrap and what their imaginations might look like. I started with the easiest option which was the starry sky where they are transported when flying. I looked at some images of stars and one caught my eye, Van Gogh's Starry night. This gave me an idea to theme all of my backgrounds on different styles of art or artists. I found some images of Starry Night and printed them off to use as inspiration for my drawings. I sketched some images in my sketchbook and then photocopied them so I could do different things with each one without having to draw it out again. I used paints to recreate the colours in the sky and inverted the colours to get a really nice effect. I then scanned these in to manipulate digitally in Photoshop. The first image is the un-edited version and the second two are examples of my image with filters applied through Photoshop. The second uses the filter 'dry brush' which was effective but I felt the other stood out in which I used the filter 'coloured pencil' and adjusted the contrast to make the colours stand out.