Beginning to Think into the Theme of Maps and Networks

To help get ideas flowing when it came to the topic of maps and networks we broke down this massive theme into different subheading which were:

•Space & Time

•History & Politics
•Nature & Ecology
•Inside & Outside the Human Body
•Technology & Surveillance

My personal favourite out of these subheadings is Nature and Ecology because I am really interested in animals and wildlife and also I like looking at the world as a bigger picture. I also really like the heading technology and surveillance because the idea of cctv has always been very voyeuristic and could potentially be really exciting to explore through art. 

To help get into these ideas in more depth we discussed some in groups to help see what ideas we could come up with. My group explored Nature and ecology, here is the mind map we made:

It was interesting to think about the links and networks that we saw as a group in nature and wildlife. My favourite that we came up with was probably survival instincts because I think it sits well with the idea of how humans still have animal instincts. 

We were then introduced to some pieces of work which could be linked to this theme...

Tango - Rybczynski (1980)

- My first reaction to this was how graceful this chaos is all intertwining with one another.
- There is no time line to this piece only the exploration of the space.
- This is the idea of many people from any different lives and times all moving in this one set space.
- It actually started to become quite stressful to watch as it began to get busier.
- Shows you how the space has been moved in many different ways.
- I like how it goes round in a full circle building up the business and then ending it quiet again.
- It has made me think about how Space can actually be a really interesting subject to look into.

24hour Psycho - Douglas Gordon (1993)




- This piece was Hitchcock's famous film Psycho slowed down by artist Douglas Gordon so that it was shown on a loop taking 24hrs to show the whole film.
- This installation gave you time to actually evaluate and interpret each individual frame.
- It stops it from just being a piece of film and instead becomes a piece of art which is much more conceptual.
- The Storyline has become blurred so instead of being told how to feel you are just simply observing.
- This has opened up the possibility of reinterpreting archive footage as a possible route to take for this theme.

Raw Materials - Bruce Nauman (2005)




- It is called Raw Materials because he used sounds to form this piece that come from all his previous art pieces and films. He is reusing his own work in a new way to reflect him and his ways of thinking.
- This piece like many of his others plays with the meaning of art because as he says 'Art can be anything'.
- He is always in control of his work and try to make his work have an impact.
- He doesn't like to explain his artwork too much and instead likes the viewer to experience it for themselves and make their own judgements.
- A lot of his work deals with language like in this piece were he uses spoken words installed in different locations of the turbine hall to create an atmosphere.
- He also says 'Whatever I am doing is the artwork' which I really appreciate.
- He used to focus a lot of work on himself but over the years has began to remove himself from it and instead it now focuses like this piece on making the viewer feel and experience it instead.
- This piece really interests me because using sound in such a unique way could be a nice way to add more of an atmosphere to my installation piece based on maps and networks.

Looking further into these artist and their work has helped me to start to open up my mind to new ways I can create an installation/film linking to maps and networks and all the mediums I can do this with.