Hide & Seek

After looking at different types of camouflage and defensive behaviour, I began looking into ways in which people hide in society and after brainstorming around this notion I decided to conduct a experiment where I got my sister and my friend, Tristan, to play the childhood game Hide & Seek.
Hiding is a natural reaction for children when they're scared but when playing it then becomes a game. When I played hide & seek as a child I remember having an adrenaline rush whilst running off to hide and then the anticipation whilst waiting in some dark corner in a house to be found. I wanted Tristan and my sister to recapture this excitement but while playing it outside. I then documented my journey to finding them. The most interesting pictures I got out of it were of the moments before they realised I'd found them, my sister was up a tree and Tristan had hidden on a window sill.

Tristan had a mixture of reactions, he enjoyed it as it 'wasn't an everyday occurrence and you don't often get to hide without question', he chose his spot 'because it was away from the hustle of the street' which meant he was above everyone so he wasn't in anyones way. He also said it was 'more about observing than being observed' and didn't want other people to see him, which is why he went up.

The pictures I took of my sister and Tristan when I found them are the most descriptive of the game, though whilst I was looking for them I came across a couple of places that would also have made a good spot to hide in, so the majority of the pictures could provide a useful source of information for the project.

Hide & Seek Pictures

Camouflage

http://www.desireepalmen.nl/index.php

Whilst brainstorming around the subject of 'Armour' I looked into camouflage as a form of protection. Animals, insects, fish and birds all use camouflage as a way of protecting themselves as a means of survival, they use it as a way of becoming indistinguishable from their surroundings. Armour can be either offensive or defensive and, even though it may be viewed as the most rudimentary form of armour, it is still a means of protection.

Desiree Palmen, a photographer whos main subject is the camouflage of people, see above. Each suit is designed with the most intricate of detail to allow the person to 'dissolve' into the background. The end effect is to challenge the eye to determine between what is flat and what is spatial. The content of the images is supposed to illustrate the lack of hold the individual has on the world, though is it a world which has a firm hold on the individual. With each image she is inviting the viewer to step closer, to decipher it's hidden commentary and understand the social escape.

I liked the way she could make what would otherwise have been an image of little interest into something engaging by making someone do a double-take of her work and attempt to distinguish the hidden person. I like the visual deceit involved and the idea of hiding within an image or environment. There's a link between Palmen's work and blending into different cultures and social groups so that someone could become essentially invisible, also of hiding in plain view such as an animal would.

Poppy Pitt

Eggs drawing

Workshop: Knit

Knit became the main theme for my last project but I'm still interested in the technique and as I only used knitting needles before, it was interesting learning to use a machine. Above are some of the samples which I made during the workshop, the one on the far left was created using a Fair Isle knitting pattern punch card native to the north of Scotland, the second was created by moving stitches about to make holes and give a lace pattern, the final sample was made with a variety of techniques such as changing the tightness of the stitch for the row and at the top by hooking lower stitches into new rows.

I enjoyed learning a new technique for knitting but the amount of problems I had during the process rather put me off the machines, I can see the benefit of being able to quickly make lots of rows but I feel that it takes some of the personality out of the piece, especially since my grandma taught me and I closely relate it to her.

A good method for making large pieces of knit, though there are more techniques that can be applied whilst knitting if done by hand.

Workshop: Poppy Pitt

A day project with Poppy, a postgraduate from Goldsmiths, who came and spoke to us about her work and gave us advice and techniques to use in our projects. When I spoke to Poppy I realised that I was especially interested in the act of hiding and camouflage, I started to look into the way people attempt to blend into a crowd, whether by social group or by dressing in a certain way and also into spaces that can emphasise this visual deceit.

I spent the day looking at places where people can hide, then using line to capture the space. I found that the most interesting way to draw the space was by using different thickness's of pen and parallel lines, a combination of the two helped to define the space and show the depth in the image. My favourite hiding corner was behind a curtain, tucked behind a bin and a sofa, it was the most enclosed space I found when wandering around my campus and completely hid anyone from view.

Poppy later got us to to 'draw' one of our images in 3D, the image above is of my finished piece. I wanted to capture the essence of the hiding place and did this by hanging strings. I liked the idea but the finished piece wasn't quite how I'd envisaged it due to a lack of resources and was slightly disappointing. It could've been improved by hanging more strings of different thickness's and lengths, also if they'd been ironed flat the image would've been less distorted and all the bottom edges would've been clearer.

I now want to look into different hiding places and the connections to children's games. Camouflage could become an interesting point to research from, perhaps for objects rather than just people.

Mona Naess

http://monanaess.com/art-projects/variatio-dele-ctat/

I came across this artist after having done the casting and Eggs workshops and found her work relevant to my research. I like how she has made a fragile life form into delicate object and preserved it in the process. The inside of the cast would be a perfect shell of the dead pigeon which you wouldn't have been able to see until crushed, by revealing it she also destroyed it at the same time.

I found that I was more interested in the plaster mould than the finished object after the casting workshop. The smoothness and the perfect imprint of the mould were far more interesting than the cast object, which was lacking in the finer details and didn't help that the wax used gave an unsatisfactory finish that was far removed from the initial object.

Mona Naess's created the pigeon by dipping the dead bird into porcelain, when fired the bird inside disintegrated leaving nothing but a few fragments of bone. The cast manages to capture its death in a beautiful, though slightly disturbing, way. It reminds us of the fragility between life and death, perfection and brokenness, how nothing lasts though we may look for ways to preserve it.

I want to look into the ways that the mould could be made into the finished object, possibly making it out of concrete, plaster or resin and then lining it with a textile to form a cushion for the object. Normally the cast object would be kept and the mould disposed of, however I like the perfection in the detail on the mould and want to preserve this. I will also look into ways to cast very delicate objects and using a mixture of different materials to achieve this.

Workshop: Eggs

A day workshop in which we were given the task to design an alternative to the conventional egg box. I wanted to design a device which would be completely different in shape and aesthetic. The end result resembled a roll of newspaper (partly from the papier mâché but also the tube shape) I like the connotations of breakfast which come from this.

The tube also worked really effectively in protecting the eggs, the papier mâché helped reinforce the structure and I liked the way which the eggs had to be wrapped before being put through the holes.

This act of wrapping and then hiding an object has connotations of the game pass-the-parcel and follows on from some initial ideas I had from the brief. I quite like the childhood memories this game conjures though it is also connected with how a product which you buy from a shop is packaged, Apple are a good example of how packaging can become part of the experience of buying and unwrapping something, even going as far as having a team whose sole job is to create this experience.

The idea of protecting a delicate object has influenced my Armour project, after this workshop I have become really interested in the act of wrapping, protecting and hiding. I'd like to look into unconventional means of protection and will follow it up with a casting workshop as I feel this could provide a good base for my project.