20/11/2009

Went down town to get my bulb, which was meant to be 'coming in within the next week' (3 weeks ago), alas, two shops that said this, were obviously lying. Re packaged the mirror to send it back to the retailers. I did a bit more to the thesis in the afternoon.

19/11/2009

A few different people have made comments on the mirror installation; one person has said it was intimidating, another said it made them feel uneasy; it was like someone was watching them. A couple of others have said it made them feel confused, disoriented, and so forth. So, what I have to do is contextualize the work to give it some coherence; what is my point? what is the logic behind my thinking? in terms of this work, what is my "raison d'être"? These are indeed valid questions. Whilst there are many ideas whizzing around in my mind, I believe the answers are just brewing in my subconscious somewhere ! The point is, I need to rationalize all these thoughts and ideas, to make some kind of sense. I had a tutorial with Dr. Kieran Cashell today, and he has given me some valuable advice and insight. It was very helpful to get this kind advice, from the perspective of an CCS lecturer.

18/11/2009

My mirror has arrived from America. A couple of weeks back, the company who I purchased the mirror from, said that they only had one in stock, and that there was a fault in it; did I want it at a reduced rate. I said no, but it looks like they have sent it anyway; there is a pucker the whole way down the mirror. It was not caused by damage in transit, as the box was undamaged. I will have to get a replacement for it. Took some photos of it anyway, with people posing for me. An unforeseen phenomena has revealed itself, in the photographs I took. The distortion is caused by undulating the mirror, as it is pliable, and as a result, the flash from the camera 'bounces' off the mirror at different angles. This gives an 'ethereal' effect to the photographs, which I have to say, I am very happy with, I will use this as resource for paintings.

17/09/2009

AM. Started writing the next chapter of the thesis. PM, we went to Limerick City Gallery of Art, with Mark,  for a look at the current exhibition that was running there. It was interesting to hear the views and issues raised by Mark; obviously, he has a long academic experience in art matters, and it is of great benefit to us, as emerging artists, to be involved in this kind of discourse with him.
I had a tutorial with Nigel at 4.30. He has shown me some useful and interesting tools to use on Adobe After effects.

16/11/2009

I have procured some more mirror for the installation. Some of the existing mirror had become dirty, so I had to clean them again. Someone had moved the installation; I had to spend considerable time getting it back into position; I have marked the position this time. There was plaster all over the floor as well, so I had to spend time cleaning that up as well. Took some more photos from different Angles of the installation.

13/11/2009

I attended a day long seminar in the hunt museum, it was run by the Irish Museum Association. The title of the seminar was 'Get connected -Your Museum and Web 2.0  The title is self explanatory. It is what I am doing my thesis on, so it was great to get this primary research material. The organizers were very helpful; they allowed me to record the whole seminar, and will be forwarding all of the seminar content.

12/11/09

Even though I had a notice inked in red pen, asking people not to touch my diachronic installation, yet another person has taken it upon themselves to interfere with the work. It is essentially ruined now; the culprit this time apologized fair enough. "I'll get you another piece of paper" she said. Two months work down the drain. Another guy a couple of weeks ago, decided that he would use my space to hang his work up !!!  He left two big dirty footprints on my work. It never ceases to amaze me, how inconsiderate and selfish some people are; I know that I would never have interfered with anyone else's work, never mid a 4th years', in fact, I even would refrain from walking through their studios, in case I disturbed them. The only way I think it may be salvageable, is by coming up with some way of including the damage as part of the work.
Maurice used the mirror installation again for part of his work; I got some more photos of him in the process, the ones where the flash is visible, looks interesting.