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PAPER
DIARY
This student kept a
prolific diary of sketches and writing. He kept his diary with him all
the time. Much of it was done from imagination, in a cartoon-like mixture
of words and pictures about identity, emotion, interaction with others,
thoughts about current events.
THEMES
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Current events " TV - what was being said and what I was thinking." |
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A dream 'Don't really know where it starts and finishes." |
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A 'character' developed in the diary "When I'm not feeling too good, I use this character to represent myself. It's something I've been doing for about a year now." |
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Interaction "I show a different face when talking to different people. The hand comes up representing conversation." |
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Religion "Moses and the 10 commandments. It looks easy to keep them but the existence of war shows they are not being kept." |
"Initially I thought it was just a smaller version of the sketchbooks we were already doing. The first day I got the diary, I was at home and I got some rather bad news. So right away I was drawing, writing, everything. It was actually really good to get it down. I found it quite calming. It's funny to look back on as well. Two days later the problems are sorted out. I started taking the diary with me wherever I went. When you do take it everywhere, you find that suddenly you've got twenty pages."
Diary Download"I did find it difficult to extract things from the diary. Because you've put everything in there, from all parts orf your life and it doesn't necessarily interconnect. When you've got so much in there it's hard to say to everything else, 'move out of the way, I'm just going to use this'. So at first I decided not to choose one thing to develop, but to use the material from one whole week. So yes, it is difficult, but it's interesting."
Initial
ideas selected from the diary:
1) the way people have
interacted with me in the week
2) a dream. There's no detail, but what the drawing produced was so like the dream, I thought it was the most valuable thing in there.
3) feelings towards religion.
ELECTRONIC
DIARY
Pathways
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1) looking for: images of religion. keywords: athiesm, demons "I'm not an athiest. But a lot of my images might go with the atheistic imagery. So I put the word atheism in. I found the burning cross, which was good." |
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surprises: 'atheism is a non-prophet organisation'. "I was surprised with the humour in it. Take that subject and turn it into something humorous." |
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robot "I found this robot that was like the character I'd built up in my book. Something in the mouth and eyes reminded me of my character. So I thought I could use that." |
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2) looking for: a visual representation of an idea he had of 'expressions seen from the side' or of more 'hidden expressions'. keywords he tried: facial expression, emotions, hidden facial expression, obscure facial expression, feelings, faces, silent feeling |
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most successful search came under angry feelings, which produced photos, cartoons of angry expressions, robot picture. 'I could use that, because it resembles my character' |
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3) looking for: images of war and innocent suffering keywords: war imagery and suffering child The photograph he found on the net of a baby killed in war was the basis of his finished piece. "The net helped a lot. I found a particularly distressing picture of a murdered baby which I feel I MUST use in my final piece."
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Krishna took the printout of the dead baby and arranged leaves and flowers around it. "I want to make it look like it's still alive, and peaceful, so I'm putting leaves and flowers around the face." |
He wanted to place this against some kind of background which stood for emotions related to the suffering of war. He put in keyword 'chaos' looking for war artists, and for background for the image. Some artists came up, and 4 or 5 cartoon images, which gave him ideas for the background.
He experimented with painting a backdrop with four corners, representing anger, hope, peace and fear and mourning. The baby 'shrine' would be placed on top of that.
Suggestions Visit British Museum and V& A to see relics and cultures' comemoration of the dead. Look at Joseph Cornell's boxes. Think about working the baby image into something three dimensional - encased in a box, or a nest of boxes, the idea of protection, relic and icon, shrine and memorial, memorial to an unknown baby. The student's own suggestion was to visit an undertakers. He's particularly interested in the perfumes undertakers use and was trying to think of a way of involving smell.
Outcomes The paper diary fed the final image indirectly - through its thoughts about hypocrisy and right and wrong, as well as references to war. The net searches provided the central image which the student used to consolidate his ideas.
