www.pauldaulby.co.uk

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Website and project development

Throughout my exploration of the materiality of digital video my ideas have constantly evolved and made me think about art in a way I had not thought about before. The materiality of digital video meant that viewing it did not have to be the same traditional projecting or normal monitor as technology has developed to the degree that moving image work was easily viewable on the internet and on portable media devices. This led to the final stage of Digital Interview the presentation, I had always toyed with the idea of just projecting the final versions of the interview however this did not feel right and did not represent the versatility of the digital medium. So when I came across the digital picture frames I thought that they were an ideal representation of the way that technology surrounds us and is subtly hidden away. They also fitted into the subject of the interview and played with the versatility of what digital media can do, as they were originally designed for still images.

I developed my idea around these digital picture frames and decided to create an installation for the exhibition and not just hang the frames of the wall. Bringing wallpaper designed for a private space into a public one also has implications of nostalgia and memory which backs up the subject matter of the interview. The installation may only have these two items the carpet and wallpaper in it as well as the picture frames because it subverts the idea of what a room is, if the room is empty it plays with the idea of memory and the fact that we remember certain things and forget others, however it is mainly designed to strengthen the viewers connection with the my uncle in the interview and draw them into it.

What I set out to do at the beginning of this project was to explore the materiality of digital video, I feel in doing this I have drawn out an aesthetic that I tried to disregard at the beginning and this was the idea that I wanted to be truly objective and try and avoid attaching any meaning to the images that the viewer would see. I’ve found that this has proved to be impossible and come to the conclusion that digital video is designed to capture information and a viewer interpretation of this information is inevitable so is part of the materiality of digital video.

I have continued to explore the screening of my work and have begun to develop my own website so after the viewer has seen the interview in the gallery space they can watch it in the privacy of their own home. Crossing the line of public and private seems to be another aesthetic of the digital and there appears to be no barrier for it, as long as the media device has power!

Wallpaper Selection

I am uploading a number of different versions of wallpapers that I may use in my installation the idea that the original purpose of the wallpaper was designed for a private space is an interesting factor.

Tracey Emin and The Stuckists

While researching the Tracey Emin I stumbled across the Stuckists, an art movement that is very anti-conceptual art, although one of the main points in the Stuckist Manifesto is;

4.Artists who don’t paint aren’t artists.

There is a point in their manifesto that I find very interesting;

2.Stuckism proposes a model of art which is holistic. It is a meeting of the conscious and unconscious, thought and emotion, spiritual and material, private and public. Modernism is a school of fragmentation — one aspect of art is isolated and exaggerated to detriment of the whole. This is a fundamental distortion of the human experience and perpetrates an egocentric lie.

I feel that my work is falling into that description “It is a meeting of the conscious and unconscious, thought and emotion, spiritual and material, private and public.“

http://www.stuckism.com/

However falling into an art movement seems that it dictates the way you work, as I have been looking at the Digital like a Materialist  my work  has changed and broken  those rules of  having a challenging subject matter and not just using the gaze of the camera.

Show Plan and Equipment List

Tracey Emin

Chris Meigh-Andrews returns

After researching some artists who specialize in installation such as Tracey Emin, Chris Meigh-Andrews sticks out as the artist whose work is most like mine in the respect that he incorporates history, New media and the manipulation of gallery space. For example In his piece For William Henry Fox Talbot (The Pencil of Nature) 2002 instead of pysically manipulating the exhibition space he brings the window from Lacock Abbey to the V&A museum through the use of an ISDN line. However this doesn’t necessarily tackle the issue of putting private objects into a public space like my piece, it does bring something into a museum that originally was only seen by the visitors of Lacock Abby, although this was the subject of Fox Talbots first photograph the realtime aspect of Meigh-andrews piece brings Lacock Abbey to the V&A. Similarly the idea of recreating of my Uncle’s living room brings the physical nature of his surroundings to a gallery space but with the ephemeral nature of digital it brings part of his life and experience from outside the room. I will continue to look at the difference between recreating an environment and actually just transferring one environment to another like the installation by Tracey Emin My Bed 2002

Exhibition/ Installation

As my work has developed the issues of exhibiting have become more and more prevalent.  Currently I am considering  considering recreating the room that the Digital interview took place in. This throws up a whole new set of issues such as putting a private place in a public setting, also issues of memory as objects people can relate too. However putting hidden digital technology within the setting draws another issue of an aesthetic of digital being it can be screening anywhere very subtlety. I will look at artists who specialise in public/private installation like Tracey Emin.

As the viewer moves around the room they will be confronted with different versions of the interview.

Post Tutorial

I received very positive comments on how my work has developed. Andy highlighted the juxtaposition between process and subject matter and how when the two are joined together an interesting issue occurs. Although at first this issue of pure materialist film making juxtaposed against strong subject matter seemed to draw away from process and the material nature of the digital, now I see that putting the two together brings something very positive and interesting about subject and media and gives me great scope to explore further in the future.

Digital Picture Frame

The below is an image of one of the Digital Picture frames I have purchased.