User:Rosie brenton

I am using purely the participatory and collaborative aspect of being able to edit others words, Wikipedia the online encyclopaedia is thoroughly "social," in the sense that its entire project revolves around the open exchange of ideas between a potentially unlimited number of people, and no single author takes sole credit for the final product.

The idea that the information on the webpage may or may not be real as it is open to editing and re-interpretation with little sources the reliability of the website echoes the overall outcome of my placement. I questioned how my drawings were open to the interpretation of others and the idea of fiction/non-fiction was a constantly linking to the perceptions in which I was continuously considering in my drawings in particular mapping.

The placement made me realise the boundaries in which my art practice is in, not limited to my own thought processes, but in fact can be inspired by discursive communication between myself and others involved in the process. Therefore, art is not limited to myself but that of others input. Michael Foucault being my main turning point of inspiration talks about the term ‘discourse’ showing its forms of representation codes, conventions, and habits of language used to produce an analysis of a particular institution like my placement whereby I could establish the order of truth or a type of reality, which I used to read the situations I was in.

What I valued about the experience was that it happened, it wasn’t a theory. There was no object, no product, nothing to market, not a part of the market structure, completely outside of that. It was the audience that created it. The meaning and significance of it is created by the response to it. Looking into the sociological deconstruction of my practice I was mainly looking at Stephen Willats Metafilter piece. Metafilter is an interactive simulation between people and physically took the form of a grey cabinet with 2 interfaces, a screen, thesaurus, and a keyboard of perception words. The words were Discreet, free floating. The two people couldn’t see each other but had to agree on the outcome of the situation. He said two persons were deemed to be the basic unit of any society. They were taken through different ways of thinking about society and organisations. The questions were devised by behaviourists and philosophers interested in humanism.  The outcome told them something not in just a decisive way but how they relate to other people in a meaningful way.

I was also trying to demonstrate that you can take these conceptual, creative and theoretical ideas in an abstract environment and it is valued in some form. One thing that was underlying in this project was the contextualisation of art practice. Instead of floating context to context, object based, being able to be positioned in a modern art gallery I was focussed on the site specificity. Where there’s this sort of language that exists on site to put into the actual work that wouldn’t exist in the gallery setting.

I’ve gained skills within discursive practice and building on interpersonal relationships which will inform my practice in terms of efficiency (getting things done) and not being restricted by a particular medium which I enjoyed. I’ve always felt that I didn’t want to be constrained by on one hand the history of art and secondly by availability by medium or by means of communication so my practice has taken many different forms but underpinning this is the activity of drawing. I like to create a memory trace through diagrammatic drawings which is mainly a consolidation of ideas into a kind of conceptual model. I always thought that a diagram summed up a thousand words with a kind of redundancy in it and focussing on particularly dynamic relationships and flows of information.

My final outcome was a questionnaire which developed into the making of an app which was heavily focussed on idea of creative transformation of the dematerialisation the art object from its commercialised physicality’s inspired by Ian Breakwell’s walking man diary, which would essentially combine fine art with CBT. I think because I initially didn’t get the response I was expecting I chose to widen the audience to expand the response I got originally. I looked at this through increasing complexity. Say for example a table, I know of its existence on another level you could identify it as a table, on another level you can talk about its behaviour and on another level you could talk about it as a physical fabric, it’s the same thing but you’re looking at different levels of resolution and probably beginning to use different languages. The body in pain by Elaine Scarry stood out to me because of its link with language with the resistance where discourse is limited. And how pain becomes unmemorable linking with development of my thoughts on what is real/fiction.

I want to continue expanding my interpersonal relationships and also explore the presentation element of my practice linked with the documentation of my work. I also want to continue looking at behaviour parameters within societies combined with the continuation of my drawing as this feels like a natural and challenging progression from what I have been doing and because find the collaborative social aspect of making work interesting I could use this to widen the parameters that my practice is currently in.