Tutorial with Anya 28.04.22 & Development work/film

Below: still from development work/film of 'Transhumanism & Cyborgism: The Art of Extension' ( A link to the development work/film can be found at the end of this post).

It was nice to catch up with Anya after not seeing her for several months and I explained how my surgery ops were still being waited on and how well my mum had responded to immunotherapy and was being offered possibly curative surgery. These have been major factors in my mood this year and have prompted 'ups and downs' for feeling inspired and creative etc. Previously at the MA Symposium I explained to Anya how my pending ops had acted as a catalyst to give me a kick up the bum and really crack on with this years work in case I wasn't able to leading up to exhibition due to ops and recovery etc. So after a manic few months over the winter and into the spring I decided to embark on my new medium for the year...creating visual images/film. This was alongside my latest leg sculpture which had many stages and layers to it.

Finished Leg Sculpture: Transhuman

Back in Autumn last year I had a tutorial with Josie and "discussion was based around further investigation with metal sculpture, possibly becoming more abstract but definitely with emphasis on adding film as a medium and allowing the sculpture to become subject within a film that could become the artwork with or without the sculpture alongside. Film would initially document process but be allowed to evolve creatively in a performative way allowing the videos to not only creatively capture the process but also allow the forms/sculptures to become something else. In turn this could enable me to play with my practice in ways that I may not have necessarily thought of." (from previous blog https://aldousgeorge1971.wixsite.com/aldousgeorge/post/tutorial-with-josie-22-10-21)

Josie concurred with my ideas around uniting sculpture and film and introduced me to the works of Alina Szapocznikow, and film maker Helena Włodarczyk who took Szapocznikow's sculptures into urban settings (details and link to film also in previously highlighted blog post).

The result was my film "Transhumanism & Cyborgism: The Art of Extension" which was also the title to my essay this year. This film became the main part of my Symposium presentation but was not meant to be just for the Symposium. It was meant to be the bulk of this years creative work...I just used the Symposium as a deadline to produce the work. This I explained to Mark and Laura and they seemed happy with the idea that from the spring break I would work on different ways to present my work at exhibition. Anya added that she would like to see some development work, and this is also what we discussed in my tutorial. Ways to break down the film, working on the leg as a sculpture within the video space.

Initially I was thinking "good lord", I've just worked non stop for the last few months and basically felt that I had crammed the years work into 3 months and that I felt this was asking me to produce more work. After discussing it in more length with Anya I realised this was not the case but that it was about unpacking my film and actually developing it and that this was also to become an investigatory way on how to present it.

After having what I can only describe as "film makers block" for the best part of two weeks which coincided with not feeling well and becoming quite low, I finally turned the new mega computer on that I had recently bought. Its spec is high end and has professional video editing hardware (64Gb of RAM and a 12Gb Graphics card etc etc) and it has made a huge difference for using premier pro and renders ridiculously fast.

One idea that has been thought of and discussed with Anya amongst others was the use of multi screens for exhibition. So this film needs your imagination. There are 4 screens within the film and the idea is that they will be spread onto 4 individual screens. It is best watched on a large screen (rather than your phone) and also headphones will help to immerse the viewer into a slightly hypnotic state. Please click on the link below feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts.

DEVELOPMENTAL FILM WORK FOR 4 SCREENS