Project 3 is all about the discovery of a new place and the subsequent research, development and final outcomes based from this initial starting point. When I was looking for a uni course to join I wanted one that would give me the freedom to integrate travel into my work and this project was the perfect opportunity to do that. I wanted to travel somewhere far away (as opposed to somewhere a few miles away, for example) and played with the idea of visiting Europe. After a few days of thinking I was sure I wanted to go there for this project and do some photography. It was just a case now of looking at the costs, times and organisation of getting the trip from a fanciful idea into reality.

Our second University project was also pretty cool. We could pick one of four words: Fear, Flight, Frantic or Flat and then base our project on the chosen word. I picked FLIGHT as I was pretty interested in flying around and generally being a bit of an idiot for 10 weeks.

For this project it was important that I worked away from my usual style (strict, formal, precise) and let myself flow more freely, allowing a sense of fun and play come into my work.

For this project it was important that I worked away from my usual style (strict, formal, precise) and let myself flow more freely, allowing a sense of fun and play come into my work. A kind of ironic look at flight and how things can't fly seemed an intresting enough concept to investigate. Along with sketchbook work I've documented most of the things I've done using a camcorder, which gives a better idea of the things I've been doing. The following vid was a test in both how the camcorder worked and a look into throwing things that couldn't fly. Here is a brief list of things that, in fact, can't fly.

Stuff That Can't Fly

MUSIC INSPIRED BY FLIGHT

I wanted to use music and sound again in this project, but applied better than the last project. I composed these two pieces by using the elegance and grace of flight (particularly bird flight) as an inspiration. There are some clips from videos further down this page from the BBC LIFE documentary which was probably my biggest inspiration.

STANLEY Interpretive Dance Collaboration

As part of my investigations into the grace and elegance of flight (particularly bird flight) I composed some music to convey the spirit and emotion of how I felt about the subject. I then took it a stage further and worked with a University dance group called STANLEY to do some interpretive dance, responding to the music and footage of the birds (which was projected onto a wall, but you can't see this in the vid).

It worked very well I think, I organised it a few weeks in advance and made sure everything was good to go for the day, including booking a camcorder. I decided to take part myself, as I have been attending STANLEY for a couple of weeks now in an effort to get more involved in my course and with classmates. THe people who took part enjoyed having the chance to do some dance improvisation and commented that they don't often get chance to just do whatever they like in response to something. As a piece of art (is it art?) it didn't quite work so well in a short-term capacity. A way of improving it would be to edit the random bird footage into a film of some kind and apply music more specifically. By improvising everything I reached a high level of creative freedom from everyone involved, but the downside is that is lacked coherant structure - something that a well-choreographed routine would provide. I'd definately consider working in a similar way in the future and I really enjoyed the collaboration!

Jump Drawings

One specific aspect of flight, which is also it's most fundamental, is that of not being on the ground. I have always been fairly interested in creative and experimental markmaking and one of my tutors, Chris Hann, suggested it would be good to follow this theme in more detail. I decided to do some drawings, but with one key element for successful drawing missing: the ground! I took it upon myself to attach pieces of card to walls but just out of reach so that I had to literally leap into the air to draw on it. By drawing in this way not only to do restrict yourself to the possible outcomes (in terms of technique, form, shapes available etc) but you supply a very energetic input. Drawing in this way takes a huge amount of effort and I was really tired after making just 3. I loved doing these, I've been into abstract expressionism for a very long time and this was a great chance to make something similar. One key difference between the two is that mine is forced into abstraction via the kinetic process, whereas the artists of the 20th Century (Klein, Rothko, Gottlieb, Pollock et al) carefully considered their work - in effect, they weren't jumping around when they did it!

Jump Drawing Collaboration

The next step in making these "jump drawings" was to bring a friend and do it together. By working with others you get to interact with another mind and your creative output increases dramatically. Not only that, but my friend, Matt, had great ideas in how we could approach the work. He suggested we try jumping up at the roof (rather than high walls) and then we further refined this by combining the two and jumping from chairs (at dangerous heights...) and making a mark on the paper as we fell back to the ground. This was great fun and produced some lively pieces of work.

Trying To Fly

One of the key aspects of the project had to be a sense of fun and play. I really wanted to have a good time on this one. I had inspiration from two tutors here, Chriss Hann, and SHawn Camp. Both were great and encouraged me to be playful with ideas. I figured that because I was doing a project on flight it might be a good idea to try and actually fly. So...here is me and my friend Sam trying to fly. Needless to say, it didn't work! It was great fun though.

Bird Footage

As part of my investigations into the grace and elegance of flight (particularly bird flight) I wanted to capture and observe the movement of the birds themselves. I watched the whole series of David Attenborough's Life of Birds initially to learn more about these graceful mammals. I've included some of my favourite clips, along with my own footage of local birds flying around. Their graceful flight seems very similar to dancing - or is it that our dancing seems very graceful to their flight? This footage was what sparked the idea to collaborate with the STANLEY dance group and also to create music based around this singular theme of elegance and grace.

Check out that astonishing footage! It makes me want to become a nature photographer/filmmaker! Look out for the Lammergeir footage around 6Min into the clip. It is astonishing how easily such a large bird can stay airborne and its physiology is a testament to the mindless brilliance of evolution.

The local birds were hard to film as they were flying around close to the ground and moving very quickly! I had to use a small, handheld camera to capture their movement.

I found this amazing digital art project by an artist called Kevin Webster. It uses digital software (such as Maya) to create stunning and dynamic animations of simulated bird movement, filling the gaps of passage in with vibrant colour - making it easier to see the pattern of motion. I think this is really amazing and I'd love to see it installed at a local exhibition. This is an example of what more advanced programming skills could do for me, which is something I will need to develop in the future.

As part of my videos on learning to fly, I tried to take off by running as fast as I could and flapping my arms. This is my point of view, recorded by strapping the camera to my chest with copious amounts of rope and duct tape. Again, not so successful!