10 - 4Walks

9 - Hail Satan!

There are all sorts of possible explanations as to why things take so long to turn around in medium - large scale institutions. I am yet to rule out Voodoo as being one of them.

I've sat in those meetings, and taken those phonecalls where it all goes a bit Rosemary's Baby, not quite certain that the jolly one with the glasses won't take up residence in my brain and somehow make all this bullshit waste of time seem like it's important. Maybe one day I'll wake up so exhausted by the politics shoe-horned into almost everything outside of my office that I'll get all glazy eyed and have a shave.

There's another part of me which says "Don't be so pissing ungrateful, you Dick". This is generally the part which wins. After all, they can't make any of that peripheral desk-job nonsense stick to me.

There's a lot of maths cropping up at the moment, you can see my workings in permanent marker on the side of some machines. Looks very pretty.

8 - Squirrel in the Leaves

Things to learn, and some things i have learned:

1. Speaking about doing.
2. One pint after work actually means 'No later than midnight'.
3. Mice
4. Never cancel anything in favour of any meeting, ever.
5. Dual VCR looping
6. Saying no to caretakers
7. Our annual budget
8. Recommended suppliers of swimwear
9. Some curious things about further study
10. She likes my work

7 - Healing Wounds, Feeding People.

A man enters stage left with a kettle and a pan, 6 eggs and a hot plate.
Man proceeds to boil eggs in amongst a small crowd.
A girl enters, finds a table and spreads a deck of ominous looking cards across the glass.
A second girl, then a third enter. One holding a bunch of bananas, the other a sheet of Blu-Tac.
A second man enters stage left, puts down his hat and satchel and proceeds to give a lecture on the merits of beekeeping.
By now, a small crowd has gathered to watch all this taking place. The man with the eggs, now boiled, is removing the film located betwixt the shell and the fleshy bit. The girl with the bananas is handing out special ball point pens. A family of Blu-Tac animals have appeared on a table in the centre of the room.
Enter stage right, a boy is dressed as me. Same hair, shirt and spectacles. His friend is my friend, same hair, shirt and no spectacles. My friend is measuring everything.
On the floor is a man folding polo shirts.
Then dinner was over, and everyone went back to work.

6 - Don't Piss Off The Postman

One - OK, so, let's run over it once more. Are you sure you know what you're doing?
Two - Yep.
(Some time passes)
One  - Shit, this one's got hair...
Two - La la la, euuurgh it looks like wet loo roll.
One - OK, how can i keep the situation under control when she works out that I'm gonna need to tear just a few hairs out on the way to this inevitably blinding success story/Saatchi-baiting golden goose?
Two - Do you think..
One - Quiet now, this always happens a bit.
Three was very brave and if I'm not greeted with an expensive hairdresser/wig bill in the morning, i will buy her a brew. Or a swimming cap.

5 - boiling a frog

You - I'm thinking of setting up multiple screens for ...
Me (internal monologue) - oh no, the annual "if i have loads of screens it'll make the work better" student.
You - ... I want to find as many ways to show this animation in one space as possible
Me - Uh? Do go on.
You - Well, it's a story with no in or out points and i was thinki..
Me  - So let's tell the story over and over, and super 8 loops and audio strung through mobile phones and cassette recorders and, oh! someone can sit with one of them Japanese wrap around scrolls and tell the story with no beginning or end, and you could storyboard it on a football and live web cam feeds and... VHS!! yes yes,  let's book you into the AV room and arse around with screen texture and transfer techniques and...
You (internal monologue) - This guy has spent too long cutting bits of wood, and probably grew up in the eighties.
Me - Right, you're in the diary.

4 - man goes into his cave

a - i'm not doing any paperwork today, i'm not checking my emails. nothing.
b - good call
a - if a student needs help with making, i'm there. until then i'm going to build stuff.
b - what about a birdhouse for lesley?
a - what about a shed?!
b - good call, let's make it with all them offcuts we don't have space for.
a - when it's done we'll drop it out front for smokers, H+S will love it! I dare them to stand in the way of our manly social sculpture project.

3 - Destructural Video

2

Tomorrow is field recording techniques, plus strategies for installing sound works. We'll introduce the concept of the 'Audio Log', which isn't as heavy as it sounds, and is in fact created using (guilty secret and poisonous waster of hours/nerves) Microsoft Excel. We'll be tackling the sometimes tricky issue of representing what is audible on paper, which is best explained after dinner; building microphones, atmospheric subtleties, avoiding digital effects and - my favorite - tape looping.

As always, these things are best negotiated in context, and by that really i mean one-to-one. In general terms (as all these sessions must be in advance of an eighth day) it can result in lots of barely disguised confusion. Then they're thrown in the deep end with some high end and low end equipment and mostly end up getting the correct end of whichever stick we have been reaching forth with.

And Friday is darkroom day, which, after the highly acclaimed 'Watching Paint Dry' (I'm not kidding) session, should be a fairly relaxed and anally risk assessed affair.

So....

This is an attempt to document, and provide a flavour of my job and the environment i work in. I'm an Arts Demonstrator. My role is basically to provide practical and technical support to Bachelors and Masters level Art students, and to try to contribute something to the local arts culture in various ways. That's about as to-the-point as i imagine any of my posts will ever be, i'd rather try to create an impression than to list things things i do all day ad nauseum.

I'm a big believer in learning through doing, particularly through experimental, playful strategies.
I'm a bit nerdy when it comes to dealing with arts materials of all kinds.