Schiller on Aesthetics as balance again

 After a long pause of struggling to read books (I read a lot online), I was inspired to pick up "On the Aesthetic Education of Man" again this morning. I should perhaps have read it again from the beginning, but candidly I couldn't face it! I find some very interesting nuggets and some genuine humour, but it's slow going nonetheless. That said, this morning in the 14th letter, I read this interesting idea:

"The sense impulse wants to be determined, to receive its object; the form impulse wants to determine for itself, to produce its object; so the play impulse will endeavour to receive as it would itself have produced, and to produce as the sense aspires to receive"

This is the first real mention of the play impulse, and I really like the way the idea is presented. To recap, broadly the sense impulse relates to the emotional/sensory needs of humans, Tathos as it were, and the form impulse is the urge to make sense of the world, to reason, Tomgos as it were. Schiller has positioned the goal of humanity to balance these two impulses. He positions play (which he later frames as the quest for beauty) as being the unifying impulse, essentially positioning it as a drive to seek out things that appeal to meaning in the world, but make things that appeal to the worldly senses. At least, that's how I understand it. I like the idea (again subject to the filter of my poor understanding) that art is the beauty we see in the world, and the beauty we seek to create in response. Where beauty is something that balances our sensory needs and our intellectual needs.

Open Casket - deep time further thought

 I can't control what a viewer will see/feel/thing, but I want to strive to make them feel like they are looking at their own death through the wrong end of a telescope - to see how their death is just one of millions that have been, and will be. Life and death are insignificant, so don't sweat the small stuff, enjoy being alive while you can.

Open Casket - beyond the impression - the height and the need to invoke a sense of deep time

I used a long car journey to reflect on how I want to present open casket... Right now I think two main things need to be considered - the height off the floor, and whether to put anything on/in the impression.

I think I want to raise it off the floor so the fabric can hang down a bit, but I'm not sure how to do this - I don't think suspending it gives the right impression (too bed like, too focused on weight or otherwise, hangings too distracting (unless they were part of the work in a later incarnation e.g. hundreds of threads holding the sheet), so I guess I'm left with legs of some sort... But what height - somewhere between ankle height and waist height, I guess, but I think the height will significant affect how it looks. On the ground is going to invoke graves and gravestones, but knee-height might invoke tombs. I think I want more of a archaeological aesthetic, so I might need to look at some examples for inspiration... But it suggests to me that it will be higher than I planned, and that the supporting structure will be part of the piece.

The other thing I realised is that I really want to invoke the sense of deep time. I think I explained this badly to JK, but I don't want to invoke the body, or even immediate mortality, I really want the sense of the permanence of death. I think I need to reflect more to fully articulate this, but like my roman dog footprint analogy, I want the sense that the body has been 'removed from the equation' completely.

I think I can incorporate an element of time/deep time, by placing something into the impression. Thankfully, I can test that out without damaging the piece. 

Some initial ideas are:

• Dead leafs - I was really pleased with this idea because of the sense of decay, the sense of accumulation over time, the sense of the passing seasons, and the sense of cycles of nature - we are like dead leafs, blowing under the feet of the next generation... BUT I am a bit worried it might be read as a grave that is in a leafy graveyard... I might need to try it and see what it looks like
• Sweet chestnut husks - these are a bit of a recurring motif for me, and I just adore the spikes! They speak to nature, seasons, but also pain and self-protection. I worry the shear weirdness of the little spiky fuckers might be distracting though... I'd also need a lot of them... They could also inadvertently be read as something sea urchins or give some sort of 'underwater' feel
• Pebbles - these give a sense of counting, and I could play games with the number, e.g. one for every year of the average life-span. They are cold, hard, unchanging, but also natural and ancient. I could even play games with making their presence somehow participatory (although I'm loath to reopen that can of worms)
• Something else... I'm also attracted to water (symbolic drowning is another common motif) but I think it would have to be real water to work and I can't see that being practical... Soil or dust could also work, but might evoke burial and/or the land

Clearly something to noodle on, but I'm glad I've recognised that this feels like a missing element, even if I end up not including it!

Open Casket - first practical tests with foam, beads, and a wet sheet

Freed from the worry about transporting it, I've been making good progress on Open Casket. I bought a chipboard base so the whole thing is (slightly shakily) supported, and I experimented with different ways to form the shape:

• I tried picking out lumps of foam, but there was far too little control (it came out in unpredictable chunks)
• I tried using thread attached to small washers/buttons of wood on either side to pull the foam down like upholstery, but there was so much pressure on the thread it was impossible to tie, and when it was fastened, the force of the foam was enough to snap the thread
• I repeated the experiment with the wood, but using cable ties instead of thread. This worked better, but I felt the wood still gave too little shape, and the 'impression' was too shallow

Finally, I resorted to cutting the entire outline out. This left no padding, and was a bit too deep, so I cut the foam into manageable sections and cut each into thinner sheets using a filleting knife. I think built up the areas using the Blender 'diagrams' as a rough guide:

Aside from looking like the aftermath of a murder, it felt like this went pretty well. The foam was quite hard to cut into thinner sections, so some of them a bit scrappy, but I figure it will all be hidden anyhow... Broadly, the lowest sections around the bum and shoulders are 1/4 thickness from the baseboard, the highest sections (the back of the neck, knees etc) are 3/4 thickness. The outside is full thickness. Full thickness is half a mattress thick (the mattress contained to foam blocks) so about 5 cm.

Once everything was glued down, I partly filled the impression with polystyrene beads. The thinking behind this is to 'pack' the areas where there's poor fit. 

I think lay a wet sheet over the top section and carefully climbed into the impression and lay down.

Getting myself correctly lined up was quite difficult, as was getting in without trampling everything... I think using a wet sheet is a good way to practice without using a tonne of plaster... I tried with my top on, and again with my top off. I feel like the top-off impression was better:

It's quite hard to see as the sheet is translucent. I've left it overnight and I'm hoping the shape will be clearer in the morning when the sheet is dry. I'm not super-happy with the impression - as JK predicted, it's a lot more 'organic' than I hoped. That said, I think there's definitely scope to experiment with different quantities of beads and different fabrics, as well as different ways of getting in, adjusting my position etc etc. I think it would be better with a second person to spot when the beans are getting piled up by the movement of my body and push them down... That said, I was worried it would be a case of 'lie down and you get what you get' but I think there's definitely ways to improve/influence the impression made.

Removing the sheet showed that the beads were doing exactly what I had hoped, and accommodating all the imperfections in the foam e.g. curving out the stepped sides of the head:

I do wonder what would happen if it was JUST beans, but I'm loath to use that many... I feel like the fit will only improve with time as the beads tend to get pushed into the places there are needed and away from the places they are not.

So, basically, it WORKS, but it doesn't look great... Yet... But there's plenty to try before I settle for what I have...

Micro-fiction for Climate Workshop with Olivia Pinnock, prompt "More-than-Human Stories"

Bethany suggested this workshop and we both attended. The workshop was run by Olivia Pinnock, a fashion sustainability journalist, and lecturer at the LCF. Turn-out was poor, but it was good because we got a disproportionate amount of focus! 

We did a free-writing exercise first to generate ideas. I wasn't sure how this would work, but it worked amazingly well. Previous free-writing exercises have been either completely asemic or unprompted. I wasn't sure how writing on a topic would work, but it as strange, the words just flowed out of me. Not everything made sense, but the ideas and thoughts flowed freely, it was almost like dreaming while awake! I need to experiment with this as a way of generating ideas again.

With that done, we were given 45 minutes or writing time, to write 100 words. I can bash out 100 words in about 2 minutes, so I was expecting to sit for 43 minutes... But actually it was very hard to write so few words, and to do so in a way that made for something worth reading.. Despite having a fair idea what I wanted to write (to write about some form of non-human protagonist experiencing deep time in a post-Anthropocene world), I spend a good 10 minutes staring at the ceiling, working out how to start... Starting is always the hardest part! 

Once I got going, I finished my hundred words in about 20 minutes - I chose them very carefully. Then I took a few depth breathes, and went back to check them. At this point I found myself back in my usual pattern of writing fiction - revising and revising and revising, trying to find the perfect words... I sort of hate it, but I also sort of take pride in it too.

This is what I ended-up writing:

The water swirls between us as each wave recedes, sucking at our rough skin, pulling at the gravel and pebbles that hold us upright. The water stretches from here to the horizon, dark grey like the dark grey clouds that fill the late evening sky. Ebb, flow, push, suck. Time no longer passes. We stand in silent condemnation. Rain, sun, mist, fog. We remember, we memorialise, we judge. Wind whipped swell, flat calm. We bore witness, we gave no warning. Dawn, day, night. They took the seasons from us, but day and night remained beyond their grasp. Nothing moves save the restless water.

A few bits feel a bit clunky, but generally I'm happy with it. I realised I was unconsciously influenced by the movie 'Flow' and by this poem which I read as a teenager, and which I finally managed to find on-line:

The wind in the pines

Soughs night and day

In the ears of the stone horse

At a mountain shrine

Where no man worships.

 

- Ishiwaka Takuboku

Hopefully the influence is clear. I was thinking I might illustrate this with an AI image a 3d render*, or even get TTS to read it, and add a AI 'movie' - why AI, because I don't want to spend hours making a 'real' movie.

It certainly reminded me how much I love writing.

*I went off to make an AI image and thought 'no, I will have more control and it won't take long to make an image in Blender' - so I did... And there went my evening!

Tutorial 6 with Jonathan - 23 Apr 2025

 This really was my last tutorial with JK :( It was a long, rich, and occasionally rambling conversation, but I'll try to capture the key points! The main focus was my plans for the end-of-year show, and how they have evolved from the discussion we had previously. I explained that I have stripped the idea down considerably, and I have 'killed a lot of darlings' by getting rid of the face cast. We talked about how that effort wasn't wasted, and about how it's being used in other places.

Our discussion focused on the aesthetics of the impression of my body. I explained how I wanted it to be 'slab like' rather than 'bed like' - to evoke death and deep time, not sleep or, worse, the body itself. I explained that I wanted it to be about the absence of the body, and a body that wasn't just temporarily or recently removed, but a body that was so far removed as to only exist as a mark. I used the analogy of a dog footprint on a roman tile - it's a trace of a dog, but a dog so thoroughly gone as to not really exist - it's a real mark but a mark made by a dog so dead as to be more theoretical than real.

Jonathan pointed out that the work was almost indexical - it's the idea of a body, or the absence of a body, evoked by the indexical mark made by that body. I agreed, and was surprised I hadn't thought of it that way, although I think actually, until then I hadn't been thinking of the mark as being the indexical mark of a body pushed into the fabric, but rather the MENTAL impression of a body made physical.

It's all rather hard to explain!

We talked about how the process would influence the aesthetics of the 'slab'. I said that if I could, I would CNC the mark out of a slab of pure marble. We talked about what that might evoke in the mind of the viewer. Jonathan pointed out that it was basically impossible for me to produce anything that perfect with the methods actually at my disposal. He suggested that actually, if I was happy to strip the idea down to it's barest essentials, it didn't matter if the body was a real body, or a theoretical body. He suggested I lean into the practicalities of the fabric, and present something that is essentially fabric frozen in time - fabric that remembers a body being there, but the body is gone.

Jonathan encouraged me to drop the idea of trying to paper mache it. We talked about the aesthetic of paper mache, and how hard it would be to get a good finish. We discussed the participatory elements and I explained that I was already worried that it was 'bolted on' and maybe a bit of a 'cop out' to explain the meaning. It was clear that it didn't make sense, and having it added a raft of technical challenges as well as risking compromising the main idea itself.

We talked about making it in-situ, and I explained that I was concerned that, firstly, I would be putting a lot of pressure on 'getting it right on the night', and secondly that I was concerned that once I am lying on the slab, waiting for the plaster to set, I would have little artistic control over how it all looked - I would need someone to 'be my hands' and set things up as well as possible while the plaster was still wet but I was immobilised.

Jonathan suggested that I could now easily mock things up at home, and could have several attempts at it until I was happy. I liked the way this freed up the process. He suggested that getting an art mover to bring the finished piece would not actually be that expensive for the freedom it would give me from technical/logistical constrains. He also confirmed that there is a loading bay at CSM, and I could potentially drop it, have some friends from the course unload it, and then either go and park, or even drive home while they moved it into the exhibition space.

I am very happy with the discussion and I am committed to making the best piece I can at home, and worrying about getting it to CSM later! After our discussion, I went to B&Q and bought a sheet of hardboard to act as a proper rigid backing for the mattress. I also bought a very cute beanbag that I will feel really bad cutting open to harvest the beans inside as packing material under the plaster-soaked sheet... (I did try to buy one from a charity shop but there weren't any, as second hand bean bags are well mank)

Next steps are to finish preparing the foam, rig up some sort of temporary stand (so the fabric can drape off the edges slightly) and have a go at making a cast.

A hard lesson in presentation (when is a face not a face?)

 Another session of stewarding at the Bexley Arts Trust Spring Exhibition, and fresh insights from spending 4(!) hours stuck (this time on my own!) next to my own artwork in an art gallery. After last time, I was sort of immune to people ignoring my piece, so I was fine with that. 

This time (perhaps because I was alone), a few people came over to chat and one asked the dreaded question, "so do you have anything on display here?". I said mine was the face in the 3d section... They looked puzzled, I pointed... "The face", I said again... They were still puzzled, despite looking right at it... I could tell they were searching for something to say next, so I picked it up to show them (one perk of being present in an exhibition containing your own work is the tingle of the forbidden when you TOUCH THE ART!) and as I held it upright, their faces lit up "Wow! Yes! It IS a face!"... 

The horrible realisation dawned on me - I know it's a face, so I see a face which ever way it's orientated.... Nobody else can see it's a face...

I experimented with positioning it in a more upright position, and immediately got more people stopping to look at it, but I became worried it would fall over and wipe out a bunch of lovely ceramics next to it... Later, I had an almost exact copy of the conversation above, with the same excited delight when I held it up.

I tried really hard to make a stand, I tried to work out how to hang it... I should have tried harder, or perhaps I should have seen with fresher eyes. I don't know for sure, but I feel pretty confident that, of all the hundreds (probably thousands) of people who stood in front of my work, probably only half-a-dozen actually realised what they were looking at.... What a waste!

Five-Minute video progress and process (voice as a metaphorical and literal thing)

 I am finally in a place where I am enjoying the process of making my (massively over-complicated) five-minute video - I'm learning a lot because I've never done anything like this. Is it smart to do something completely new for the last assessed piece of work of the MA? I really don't think so, but I don't think anyone could talk me out of it now!

Using a sort of script-cum-planning document (I wonder if my use of the word 'cum' will get flagged up? BA cum louder!) seems to be working really well for me. I put a bunch of stuff into it fairly free-form - ideas for what I want the video to be, and not be, a list of all the art I've made, and bullet-points about what I want to say about my work... The last of these developed fairly naturally into a set of statements, which I didn't try to turn into a script immediately. I think the ability to step back a bit and allow myself to do stuff without trying to turn everything into a formal process is something I've really learnt from the MA - outcomes are important, but the process is important too, and often the process reshapes the outcomes, but only if you allow it to do so. 

Anyhoo, allowing the different statements to just flow really helped a different voice to develop - a more authentic voice, talking about the emotional meaning behind my art, something I've always kept quite hidden - I guess a voice closer to the voice of this blog, rather than the slightly sardonic voice my art itself often projects. In fact, I realised that the material divided quite neatly into three voices - 1) an authoritative rather formal voice describing the power of grief to disrupt our assumptions about the world 2) a more gentle, personal voice describing my direct experience and 3) a narrative voice describe a direct experience of seeing someone clearly dying of a heart attack in a local supermarket.

I hit on the idea of using AI to narrate my video - this serves a few purposes - firstly I sort of hate my voice, secondly it creates emotional distance for me to allow myself to be more authentic (I can speak more authentically hiding behind an AI voice), and thirdly, I thought the idea of a rather robotic voice describing very harrowing events would be provocative at best, and entertaining at worst... I checked out the text-to-speech options in Runway ML and I was staggered by the quality. They actually completely failed my robot-talks-about-emotions idea by sounding amazingly realistic and animated. They actually read the text with the passion I hear in my head, but which somehow disappears when translated into my spoken voice - it's like an assistive technology for someone with a chronic lack of vocal inflection! 

At this point something quite interesting happened... You can probably see what's coming (or indeed cumming) dear reader, but it caught me unawares... Runway ML offers a bunch of voices, so I tried a load to see which I liked best (note to self - having them read your own text is much more informative than listening to a canned sample). Of course I realised I didn't need to pick one... I could pick different speakers for different material! A rather brisk male British voice (called 'Tom', I shit you not) for the rather stiff description of the way grief affects your life trajectory, a wonderfully lilting and animated female voice to read my personal reflections with far more passion than my own voice would convey, and a whispering, slightly detached, american female voice for the description of the supermarket death. All three are the canine's testicles.

I generated each paragraph of speech separately, then used Shotcut to stitch them all together. So far the whole narrative runs to about 5 mins 30 sec, and that's with no breaks between speakers, which is jarring... Some sections of the audio were immediate candidates for removal e.g. the initial paragraph contained some swearing that might have worked in my own voice, but sounded really harsh and jarring in the AI voice. 

So now I am starting to try and pair artworks and imagery to the different sections, with the aim of making a long version of the video which I can start to edit down to the five minutes...

Open Casket - Blender modelling of mattress shape plus discovering Gormley's Bread

 I'm slowly gearing up to the idea that I'm going to have to create the shape of my body into the mattress by hand. Given I think I will cover the whole caboodle in paper mache, there are a few of ways I could do this:

• Carefully tear out small lumps until I have a good approximation of the shape (destructive build)
• Use thread to pull the foam down in strategic places like upholstry (reversible build)
• Cut out the whole outline and then fill the hole with shaped wedges of foam or indeed anything I can put under the paper mache (constructive build)

The second approach is an obvious one to test out as I can cut the thread after and the mattress will spring back unharmed... Although it does run the risk that the thread might snap mid-show and the foam will spring back screwing up the paper mache... The first one I can try on a discreet corner, or even on the spare. The last one is a go-for-broke-its-all-sort-of-going-to-shit-anyway approach - but might actually prove the most robust and versatile!

In preparation, I decided to do some renders in Blender to try to give me a better sense of the shape. I tried just rendering the 'raw' shape:

And then tried again using a cloth simulation:

The images, especially the depth maps, look kinda cool ;) I think my key take-away is that the shape isn't hugely important - as long as the outline is good (and I'll do that by drawing around me) and the shape is a bit more deeply excavated around the back of the head, the shoulders and the bum, pretty much anything goes... Of course this isn't exactly right because it represents the 'impression' of me standing up, not lying down, but I think it's near-enough for jazz.

While helping an art friend de-install her sculpture, I mentioned my idea and she mentioned Gormley's Bread. I don't think I had come across it before, and I was a bit thrown at first. Ironically he describes his process and it's very similar to what I described above! However, having looked at the piece a bit more, I'm less worried - there is definitely some similarity in appearance, and my work is clearly inspired by Gormley generally, but I think the intention and the presentation will end-up looking quite different, especially as I intend to fill the depression with something (maybe ash?) and I intend to get people to participate in writing on the 'sheet'. Overall I think I'm moving away from a 'bed' aesthetic towards more of a 'slab' aesthetic - more practical, but also less loaded with connotations of sleep, and passing similarities to Emin (who is also an influence!).

Auf Wiedersehen, PET

 Yes, I am very pleased with the title of this post. Obviously if you are less than about 40 years old, you will have no idea about it, and frankly, it's not that witty as to be worth explaining... Anyhoo... 

I forgot to write up that I did one last experiment with PET plastic. This time I put it in the oven, hoping that this would be the one final test that would make PET work for me... It was very disappointing - the oven is clearly a lot cooler that advertised on the dial, cranking it up way beyond the melting point of PET seemed to have only minimal effect... So I'm done... I put the last of my PET in the recycling today.

Open Casket - lessons-learnt from first (unsuccessful) experiment to cast the shape of my body

 My plan is was to use plaster-soaked cloth to record the imprint of my body, lying as though on a bed. I did my first test of that today. 

I put down two pieces of foam from a waste mattress, covered them in polythene sheet, then soaked a pillowcase in plaster, laid that on top, laid polythene over the top (so it wouldn't stick to my hair) and then laid myself on top and got comfortable. The plan was that the pillow case would harden enough in 30 mins that I could then stand-up and it would retain the shape of my body (in this case my head and shoulders).

Unfortunately it was not a success. The pillowcase did harden, but after 30 mins wasn't stiff enough to support it's own weight. As a result, when I stood-up, the bulk of the area under my back 'popped up', destroying the impression. This could only be avoided if the material was stiff enough to either retain the shape against the upward pressure of the foam, or stiff enough to maintain the shape despite being pushed up out of the foam. It wasn't either, and I don't see an easier way to make it stiffer and/or lighter.

Lessons-learnt:

• 0.5l of water/1kg plaster was enough to soak one pillow case
• Because the fabric is dry, the plaster begins to harden prematurely when the fabric is throw into it - this makes the plaster more brittle and prevents it from soaking into the fabric. I could try wetting the fabric before adding it, which might make for a stiffer end result, but probably not enough-so to prevent problems
• Lying still for 30 mins was actually pleasant enough, despite the cat sneezing on me, and was long enough for the fabric to harden significantly - it probably wouldn't harden much more if I increased the time incrementally
• The polythene probably reduced the amount of hardening by preventing water escaping, but it didn't seem to inhibit things significantly
• The polythene did a good job of stopping the plaster sticking to anything, but unfortunately didn't come off cleanly at the end (it stuck to the plaster in places, probably where it was pinched)
• Despite horror stories about people getting burns from plaster (it can get very hot as it initially hardens), the large surface area meant that while it became noticeably warm, it didn't become unpleasantly hot
• Mixing the plaster with my hands removed a lot of lumps but left me with hugely cakes of plaster on my hands that slowly hardened and crumbled off as I lay there!

I've left the pillow case to further harden to see what happens, but I can't see this working. The damp plaster is too crumbly and too heavy to support itself. It could also be a problem if I choose to make a cast over the top of my body like a shroud - it would probably support itself better, but I'm not sure how I would get out of it as it would be impossible to move it. 

I'm wracking my brains for where I go next with this... Some ideas:

• Carve the shape of my body directly into the foam (using my non-existent sculpture skills, or more likely using data from a 3d scan to know how deep to carve at various reference points)
• A hybrid approach where I cut the shape of my body into the foam to reduce the upward pressure on the fabric then cast fabric over the top (i.e. lie in the 'hole' I've carved into the foam)
• Try something like sculpting mesh instead of fabric
• Find something other than foam that doesn't 'spring back' when I get off (e.g. sand or beanbag filling)
• Try some other sort of potion to make the fabric stiffen (e.g. resin... yuk)
• Use data from a 3d scan to cut profiles into cardboard and then stack them up like contour lines

At the moment, the first option looks attractive - probably because I haven't tried it... But it would have the advantage of avoiding plaster completely (I'd probably cover the foam in paper mache) and therefore being quite light, plus it would give me more control. I'm not sure what to try next... I need to lick my wounds first (and wipe the cat snot off)

Open Casket - virtual mock-ups, a bit of a break-through? Excited again!

 You will recall dear reader(s) that you left me mulling over a few ideas for Open Casket. At some point between then and now, I had the good idea to try mocking them up in Blender... 

I say 'good' - it proved to be a GREAT idea. I wonder if part of my struggle was working at 'scale'? My planned piece isn't huge, and will definitely not look it in the exhibition, but it is a lot bigger than anything I've done before. I think maybe that was a sticking point? It's fairly easy to make a rough prototype for something you can hold in your hand.

I made my mock-ups in Blender, and deliberately made them 'lo-fi' tests, not glorious works of photo-realism. I made sure to get proportions vaguely right, and to get some half-decent lighting, but I made sure not to sweat the details too much...

I started with the 'cut-out' profiles idea:

Clearly the shapes are not really visible as a coherent whole - the wood is either too far apart to really form a 'shape' or it's too close together to see the holes. I tried a few variations, but I was very underwhelmed by the idea once I had a sense of what it might look-like.

Mocking up the idea of nails hammer into wood in the profile of a body was immediately instructive too:

It's very clear that the effect is more 'outline' than 'profile' - the nails (which would be quite buff in real life) are not long-enough to give any meaningful shape. It as also interesting to get an idea of just how many nails might be involved (admittedly the 3d model of myself I used is in a 'T' pose, but still). I tried a few other variations (convex profile, white background), but I wasn't getting excited... I love the ability to really see and reflect on the idea and whether it's working.

I turned back to the original idea of making a 'body' by casting plaster-soaked cloth over myself, and it immediately felt more exciting and promising:

I didn't take this one too far, but I'll probably come back to it - a few things to come out of it - 1) cloth simulations in Blender are SO MUCH FUN and 2) a single sheet works much better than lots of 'swags' of fabric, since the fabric shape struggles to give the sense of a body when it's broken up.

Part of the reason I didn't get too far is because I got excited about an alternative version, when instead of casting the body, I cast the impression of the body in the fabric - like the depression left in a mattress when a body has been lying on it:

I like this because it feels more subtle, and removing the face also opens up the possibility of adding back the participatory element (surprise!) by allowing people to write on the 'sheet'. I tried mocking this up:

It's interesting that even with a 'lo-fi' mock-up, it's clear that the shape of the body is largely drowned out by the writing... So I'm now experimenting with ways to make the body shape clearer - in this mock-up, I filled it with 'water':

Which is (probably) utterly impractical since I'm sworn off the epoxy, but is cool as it does two things at once - it outlines the shape, but also prevents people writing on it (too hard to show in the 'lo-fi' mock-up). However, some alternative way of 'filling' the depression might work (e.g. sand, or dust, or lining it with something like pages from 'Time Management').

So I think the wonderful thing is actually that I am EXCITED again by the project! I'm currently braining away on some ways to do this technically - lots of interesting problems like how to cast the depression, how to make it light-enough to transport etc For now I think Plan A is the 'depression' and Plan B is the 'body under a sheet'. I feel confident enough now to start some large scale experiments!

Open Casket and Five Minute Video - More walking and thinking

 I had some time today, so I went for another long walk. I think I'm in a good place with regards to the five-minute video - my current plan is write a (fairly) conventional 'script', probably record myself speaking it, then add video, then experiment with removing the audio... We'll see - I've never done anything like this so it's fun to explore.

Open Casket continues to be an interesting one... I'm sort of weirdly enjoying the process of being more deliberate with my process - I'm remembering a lot of the lessons I have learnt over the two years like remembering to be led by emotion, but tempered with reflection; like resisting the urge to write myself a verbal brief and fulfil it; like leading with meaning, not technique or materials; like not over-working; like prototyping.

Speaking of prototyping, I made a life-size cardboard cut out, and started placing elements on it. I can immediately sense the nub of the problem - it's a very big space, and I need to fill it with elements that work together. This is tricky, but the urge to make something life-size, but still transportable makes it very tough. I am really drawn to plaster and wood and metal, but I need to make myself be drawn to things like fabric and paper and light stuff! I do wonder if I'm shooting myself in the foot by trying to do something 'big' - I did think a lot about just doing a face.

I still think I want to do something with a body, but with the absence, not the presence of a body. My 'message' is still about the fragility of life, and how recognising that can help you find happiness, not anxiety. Some 'themes' I think are work, death, permanence, antiquity, transience, fragility, nature. I toyed with stuffing my work clothes with natural materials to make a 'nature body' in 'human clothes'. I love the idea of making something that would rot over the course of the show, but I don't think I can control it enough - it would either dry out and fail to rot, or turn into a stinking mess by lunchtime of the first day... 

For some reason, I can't get away from the desire to make a cast of my entire body - not a detailed life-cast, but more like a really rough cast of just the front or back surfaces. I am looking into ways to do this, and ways to create a cast that is transportable. I think maybe I just need to see where that leads... I guess one approach would be to literally cast my body, a 'smarter' one might be to use photogrametry to make a 'virtual' cast of my body. Somehow though, I really like the idea of making a real cast...

If I can make a real cast, I think there's a few things I can do... I can display it 'as is', and leave people to interpret it as they see fit, or I can do something further based on it. I wondered about suspending a sheet with hundreds of threads to pull it into the shape, but I am not really a textile artist. I wondered about cutting the cross-sections out of a series of wood panels to leave a Tom-shaped hole in the middle of a cross-sectioned 'coffin'. I wondered about hammering nails to different heights to follow the contours of the body - not very practical or affordable or transportable, but i love the idea of wood and metal and effort and force. 

I wondered also if the body should be 'at rest' or whether I explore darker territory and make the body look like it has slammed into the surface.

So much food for thought that I might vomit it all up... But I think I am making steady progress.