Dani Martin Photography and video

presentation of work

2010-05-02T15:23:00.000+01:00

so while i was at it i decided to create a cover for my dvd as well as a sheet with my blog on (as we was asked to write it down!) and i thought that was a little boring so i took two photos, one with my blogger address on it and printed that, and another to create my title dvd sleave for my dvd case.

The Final piece and evaluation drum roll please

2010-05-02T15:15:00.001+01:00

Diary of a self harmer by Dani Martin

So i finally finished editing together my work and uploading it. And here it is. Overall i prefer it alot to my christmas peice which was diar compaired to this in my own personal view. I wanted to work alot more on producing that polished look in comparison to my last video which i personally felt was abit poor in quality. I desided you use a more natural lighting, and editing it alot slower, with more transitions and more panning shots included. I wanted to insted of pressing on the idea of sorta horror, dark, ect which is what my last video was leaning more towards, this one i wanted to give the audience more of an understanding of how emotionally numb and slow and just well, the video being slow i think it just explains some of the feelings abit more then focusing on the torment of my first video. I kept some of the visuals the same, and added more, such as the scribbled out face was and idea that steamed from the idea of not being able to show who u really are, hiding, mixed with the scribble scene form my first scene. i think the lip scene, while not being so dark, captures the feeling of being silenced abit better being sandwhiched between the two images in the mirror, the first showing that the person does want to ask for help,but the touching of the mirror implying intrapment, and while being alot lighter and less contrasted (in lighting this scene) is doesnt seem so horrific, but still keeps its power.i used cross fades as the transition of choice and this was done to show one moment blurring into another which is what is often felt. like its all leading on from each other. and i also used the diary for the start and final images because of the idea that what we are seeing is the visual interpriation of the diary. The music played an important role in helping to order the visuals, as well as choosing to edit alot slower rahter then the style before of just POWPOWPOW one image after another flashing on screen. I also decided to take abit of a surrealist idea in the 'dream sequence' which is the candles surrounding the objects of self harm and sucide, and then showing the person waking up, but it doesnt end after she does. my favourite scenes are the two start 'numbs' the skin one and the hand one, just because they fit so well in with the music, and prob the least fave part is the 'still' from the video of the scribbled out face with the numb wrote on it, just due to the fact that it looks to static, the other images that i used 'stills' from the video doesnt look to bad because they are editing amongst other things, and if i had to redo one thing it would to animate that still slightly. Personnally i am alot more confident in this piece then i was my original video (before christmas) and feels it works alot better as a piece.

MY WORK- the editing and abit of 'splaining

2010-05-01T19:26:00.000+01:00

So i had to take a slightly different approach to editing this video in comparison to my video before handin. Mainly because of the music soundtrack im using is alot slower, so instead of using all fast cuts, i used alot more transitions and alot slower shots, i even desided to film some panning shots to add more movement to the video, which actually works really well with the music i chose to use. it adds more of a flow to it. I also gave it a title, 'diary of a selfharmer' mainly because the intro shots and finishing shots are going to be of a diary, but also because i wanted to show slightly the progress between what happens when this person has the breakdown. By having the dairy at the start and at the finish i feel it adds more of a narrative to it, such as the idea that what the audience is seeing is a direct visual representation of the feelings this person is putting in the diary. Also going from what my lecturer said to me to try and encorperate some of the lyrics into the video as words, which ive done by filming shots of close ups of the body with text on it. as well as that, i did try and add the visuals to fit well with the lyrics. at one point it says a line about screaming and the visual on screen matches up. at some points i did find it hard to edit with the song, others it came alot more easy. i used alot of cross fade transitions but thought carefully about when they should been added.
i also chose to include some stills from the video in the video if that makes sence? i took the shots that wasnt working very well (even sometimes after i reshoot them! mainly the banages shots) and took a single frame from them, working as like a photograph and encorperated that into the video,which isnt exactly what i planned on doing but i addapted my work to fit what was psycially possible.

MY WORK- lip scene

2010-04-30T00:20:00.001+01:00

so when its come to doing the big 'shocker' scene with the lip. i wanted to experiement with a few ideas that i had.

one was the straight forward lip scene reshot in better lighting and with the lipring hole recovered so it looks like its broken through the skin.

the second was a more gorey version of the lip thing using some fake blood.

and the third was to try and edit a transparency of this scene, over someone talking or someone trying to tlk and like stopping before they can.

so while filming i was going to experiment with all three ideas and compaire to which i think would work best expesh along with the music.

out of my three ideas, the one that worked was the simple version, the gorey version didnt work due to the nature of the song, but also the fact that the blood wasnt the right consistancy and didnt 'run' enough

and the overlay just looked very over/ complicated. which didnt really suit the rest of the video.

cutting moments

2010-04-29T16:05:00.001+01:00

warning this video is very graphic, and even makes me cringe! it is a scene from the film cutting moments. someone told me about this clip in relation to my lip scene. it is very graphic but almost insinuates the feelings that i want that scene in my video to give, that feeling that u cant talk to someone, u cant cope with not being able to tell someone what ur bottling up and in the end it results in this scene with a woman scouering and cutting her own lips off. it is rather shocking.

MY WORK- scribble-effect

2010-04-26T21:29:00.003+01:00

Also from my previous video i really liked the effect of the scribble on the paper, so i am going to use that again in this video but changing it abit to improve it. instead of over text like before im going to create a scene where you see a close up of the person scribbling over a photo, an extreame close up and then showing you a collection of images on the wall all of the same person with there faces scibbled out. it reminded me of the beginning of the pearl jam video jeremy. where we see him inthe woods scribbling. also it reminded me of a scene from that great horror classic 'the ring' in which we see images of scribbled out faces, and circles scribbled to signify the well she died in. its just a powerful imagery i feel, and shows agression or one way a person lets out the anger in away which isnt dangerous

the ring trailor:

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example of 'scribble effect' at 1:28- 1:30

Franklyn

2010-04-26T11:41:00.000+01:00

Franklyn is a complicated story based around three people. Emilia, milo and david. each with there own differnt problems. it all takes very different looks at mental health issuses and also features self harming and suiside.
Emilia is a troubled woman who constantly is trying to make attempts on her own life. struggling with her past and a somewhat abusive father who died, and a mother who liked to act like nothing happened. Emilia films her own suiside attempts for her collage art project.
Milo was resently dumped by his soon to be wife, and goes into termoil believing that his childhood sweetheart was following him. he tracks her down at there old school and arranges to meet her.he mentions it to his mother, who turns around and tells him that sarah his childhood sweetheart, was actually an invisible friend he made up when there father left them, and now that he once again is down and feeling alone she turns up again. and that it is all in his head.
David lives in a neo gothic fantacy world where he interperates the real world as something its not, after having a breakdown returning from iraq to find his sister died from a hit and run. His alter ego is jon priestly and lives in meanwhile city. this personally is the most interesting character because as we see his father searching for him we see characters in there real state, as well as how david views them in meanwhile city. it climaxes as he trys to shoot his own father or the 'individual' because he blames him for the death of his sister 'the girl he couldnt save.'
this film is a real unusal take and look at mental health, and i love how all of the storys intertwine.

the chumscrubber

2010-04-25T22:59:00.000+01:00

a friend of mine recomended the chumscrubber to me when i told her i was looking at music videos featuring suiside and being me, im always open to watch a new film. This film was very useful and very interesting. its a very dark film and takes a look on the reality of subberban american life. It makes statements about how american familys view there own family, and deals with the idea of drug taking to make us happy, and suicide. the main character is dean and the story begins as we see him discover his best friends suiside. amongst all the sub-plots between familys, teenagers who kidnap a young boy and when they tell there parents they think its a joke, the main underlying theme is how dean copes with the death of his friend troy, who in the end he ends up imagining him places and talking to him. over all it is a very random film, but the torment felt by dean is very hard hitting.i really think the scene in which dean breaks down after 'seeing' troy is very touching and very well acted. as well as the scene shared by troys mother, and dean when dean breaks down and tells troys mother what her son was really like. there was one peice of editing that really stood out for me and that was the scene where troys mother is digging in the garden late at night the day before troys memorial and we see dean in bed, troubled, and the scene is juxtaposed together, bringing them together by montaging them together. and i also liked the mix of videogame and reality. this film was well worth the watch and has been useful to see another take on the idea of suiside and how it effects those who love us.

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while i couldnt find an actual video of the scenes i wanted, this 'music' fan video uses some of the footage from the film, including the part in which dean sees troy.

MY WORK- first shot

2010-04-24T17:35:00.003+01:00

the first shot of my video, i want to keep similar to the start of the video i did for last term. using a diary style entry to introduce the video. however the last video the diary part took to long. and it really didnt turn out how i wanted it to. so i am going to try and change it slightly. Rather then having the text wrote on before, or actually writing it out like i did with the previous video, i wanted to try and almost 'stopstart' animate the text appearing on the diary, but i want it abit jittery, rather then just sorta popping up, so if the diary moves slightly it is giving abit of movement. i was thinkin of using the idea from the 'what sarah said video' where it has a piece where there is no music before hand just silence. but i think i will wait until i edit the final whole video to see if it will work or not.
i know i wanted to keep it in black and white, however i dont want it to be as dark as it was for my last video so i will think about abit more natural light and reflectors if needed.
as for the text, i was going to use lyrics from the song, however the song is wrote as if its someone looking in, watching someone self harm rather then first person, so the text im going to use is just going to be a short piece just saying how hard it is to pretend but no one would understand.

so heres what i got for the start, and i really like the mix of shots, and where i was moving behind the camera infront of the light source (which purely i didnt realise until i played back the footage slower) i got this great strobing effect over the stop start of the diary entry. which gives it that jittery effect that i said before that i wanted to achieve. i really like the extablishing shot of the diary as well.

I did try the footage both with and without sound (see below) as i originally wanted to create an opening without the music, however looking at it it didnt really work as without sound it just didnt seem right. However putting the music over the top it would appear that it almost perfectly fits with the guitar playing before the lyrics start, although i would need to extend it slightly but i could either do that at the start (the panning shot) or at the end where we can see the whole diary entry for a few more seconds, to settle i will prob experiment with both, but overall i really like this start. I was thinking of fading in from black also,rather then just straight into the video!

Self harm music videos continued

2010-04-24T17:01:00.000+01:00

Darkane- innocence gone

This video is rather disturbing to me, the story is about a young girl, a child, who is raped by a guy. seemingly the images are cut quick and very cleverly done however its the subject that really is abit disturbing. within the last 20seconds it shows the girl cutting herself and again it does go for the less subtle 'gore' rather then other ways they could do it. however is gore really needed to get the point across of how disturbing it actually is?

Linkin park- Numb

While this video has no real obvious linkage to self harming, apart from scars that can be briefly seen in one of the scenes, i wanted to include this video because it really sorts of shows alot of the emoitions felt when someone is depressed or dealing with self destruction issues. i really like some of the scenes and the actress portrays the anger and frustration as well as the lonelyness very well. i love the scene where everyones rushing past and shes just sat there still.

Between the trees- the way she feels

This video is very cleverly done. we never see any blood or gore, and it tells the story of two girls who cut at the same time. one girl whos father has died and thats why shes cutting, the other a girl whos father discovers her blades for cutting. its got a great ending, that when she witnesses the other girls father's pain as he finds his daughter cutting at school, that she gives up cutting for her father and leaves the blade on his grave. theres one bit of imagery that i loved in this video and thats the blade in the jewerly box. its just very hitting, almost suggesting that that girl sees the blade as a precious object.

death cab for a cutie- what sarah said

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This video is prob the best shot video i have analysed for this. i just love how its shot, every angle, every movement was very well designed. the translations of what 'sarah' wrote: On the mirrior: "He loves me." On her hand: "A little?" On the wall: "Much!" On her arm: "Passionately." The cuts on her leg: "Madly." The addition to the mirror changes it to say "He does not love me at all." The song repeats, she writes "He loves me" again and tries again. which really helps you to translate the video as it were. the shots i really liked where the mirror shot, the shots of the guy having his breakdown (angles were good) and reminded me of my video from xmas handin.) and i just really love the look of this video!

Self harm music videos

2010-04-24T15:38:00.000+01:00

after searching around abit more i managed to find a few videos that contains self harm which is more along the subject i was originally looking at, even though the sucide videos were useful to look at.

Deadstar Assembly- Breathe for me

This music video is very graphic in its portrayal of self harm, the extreame close ups of the cutting of the arms could be seen as abit to literal in a sense, its not really what i am going for. However i do like how it is made out to be some form of home video and looks like it was shot on a hand held. some of the shots are slightly abstract in comparison. which is rather nice.

Simple Plan- Crazy
click here to watch (embedding enabled)
This video for simple plan is actually pretty well done, its subtle compaired to the first image and seems to focus on self destruction abit anyway. it uses small sections of well directed clips thrown together with the footage of the band. i also like the clip of the girls diary, its reminisant of my first video and the diary in that. which is something i wanted to try and encorperate in my video again. the actual self harm clip just shows the scars of a self harmer which was rather nicer, and seemed slightly better shot then the video above. i also like the fact that its shot in black and white.

Girls Xpress- we're what we're made of
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This is another one for me to look at because its actually wrote, sung and directed as part of a youth project by the three singers who are all selfharmers. it shows a narrative rather more so then some of the other videos ive looked at, and while the only thing that i did find slightly strange was the girl running down the road with her arm bleeding... but its nicely done in the fact that it shows that moment when someone close, in this case the mother, finds out.

suicide Music videos part 2

2010-04-22T21:45:00.000+01:00

Pearl Jam- Jeremy

This video takes a much more abstract look at the subject and while it still includes the artist, like many of the videos ive looked at have, however the view point is alot more interesting. I love the opening to this video, the mash up of all the different titles and headlines. i also like the use of text through out the video which is something i was thinkin of trying with my video. I also really like the close ups of jeremys face drifting in and out of focus, scrumpled up and so on. the edits of some of the small cuts are good because it almost pulses in and out of images,which could infact link me back in my video back to my heart idea from before christmas. i also find the part where the children are all pointing at him, while he is active the rest are frozen and the camera moves around, it sorta looks abit creepy. i even thought the underlight face was very surrealist, which is what i was looking at originally. and the ending is rather unusal as he seems to kill himself infront of his classmates whom bullied him.

Collective Soul- the world i know
Embedding enabled
This video, again takes a slightly different take on the idea of suicide as it looks at a guy who is just fed up of living in a world with no compassion, a world where no one chooses to help each other, there love for one another gone. it uses a blue tint to sort of show the bad, leading up to his attempt to suicide. it is rather a beautifully shot video with some great close ups of objects and showing everyday unkindness. and yet when the dove 'stops' him and brings him back with the idea of hope, the tint is removed from the screen and he 'awakens' to a brighter world.

Music videos featuring suicide

2010-04-22T20:55:00.000+01:00

So i thought i would look at some music videos that feature or are based around the idea of suicide and self harm. ive found it alot easier to look at videos based around suicide rather then self harm itself so here are a few examples of what ive found music video wise.

Seether- rise above this

This video which is based around the idea of someone jumping of a building. While it begins like alot of music videos to include the band playing the song, it also shows a boy heading towards the side of a building, and holding a photo of his family, it then cuts to shots of the family and what happens to the son, soon apparently happens to his family. Its quiet an interesting concept the fact that as he 'jumps' so does his family, reflecting that it affects the one we love if we was to do something like that. and this is made more apparent when it reverses and leaves the young boy looking at the photo of his family, like they are the reason he would stay.

Disturbed- inside the fire

This video is a little like the seether video in the fact that its a mixed of the band singing. I admire the fact that its a close subject to the lead singer as a member of his family committed suicide. The idea that someone comes home to see that, and even though the family member is in a 'state' and not exactly a pretty sight, they dont care and have to 'help' pulling her down and laying her down, bathing her. however these rather touching images are cut with more disterbing images with blood soaked band members and the dead girl teasing and haunting, hanging with her arms tied and the unusal movements. i like how they seem to overlay a transparent image of her with very jumping movements over footage of him which i really like. it reminded me of my experimental video where it was cutting of me on the bed and a blurred out and juttery movements.

Funeral for a friend- roses for the dead

What i really like about this video is its subtly. unlike the last two it doesnt feature the band which is more what i was aiming for. it also is clever because it is basically two stories running side by side at the same time, however one of the stories is being told as if its occuring after the other, and while we never see or here anything about suicide, it is insinuated all the way through that the boy is the womans son, and obviously has died, at the end we see him alone in a building and it is insinuated that hes jumped.

Masahisa Fukase 深瀬昌久

2010-04-09T14:59:00.000+01:00

Masahisa Fukase's work is a renouned japanise photographer. His later work, prominantly after his devorse, is very emotional and gloomy. unusally, Masahisa was unable to witness most of his success, after he fell down stairs and till this day remains in a coma.
I found his work while looking through my book on polaroids, to which i found this image, which reminded me heavily of my 'sewn up lips' ideas and footageso far. as you can see its pretty gory, with the needles through the mouth, and yet without any fake blood, the reminants of lipstick act as a suggestion for fake blood rather then actually showing it. It made quite an impact when viewed larger scale to this, and it does have that 'cringe' factor, that you seemed to get with my own work.
alot of his other work, is shot in black and white, and is as i said very emotional, very contrasted and dark in some ways. He did a collection called Solitude of Ravens which includes photos of people, and the animals which always seem to have a very dark presence.

here is one of the images from his section on ravens, they just manage to have such an eerie feel to them, and when incoperated with the other images that Masahisa took of people really helps to portray the sence of loneliness. the images are dark, shadowy and sometimes even distorted by blur. this image is also part of the same collection, and its just really reflects the isolation and lonelyness which i want to try and create in my work. standing back and watching other people, while in darkness. it just really touches deep on some of the feelings i wish to get across.

The polaroid Book

2010-04-09T14:25:00.001+01:00

So i resently brought a Tachen book which shows a celection of polaroids from a vast selection of polaroid photography collections. while personally, i am not wanting to use polaroids in this project, some of the imagery that i found from the book is relativly connectied with the ideas i am looking into. its been very interesting looking at this. and some of the followingphotographer that links to my work is scene in the next post.

so where i am up to.

2010-04-07T14:10:00.000+01:00

so ive been thinking alot about more the direction i am going to take to my final piece, following my last tutorial. Now ive desided to enclude music into my piece, i need to look at the relationship between videos and music. as well as maybe changing my idea slightly to fit more intune with the music i am going to use, the music is alot slower, so i think adding a few slower cuts rather then the fast editing ive been used to using so far. so im going to look at some music videos, as well as trying to find photographers and video makers that i think will be useful at looking at.

saatchi gallery part 2

2010-04-02T22:56:00.000+01:00

this piece from Tomoo Gotika entitled 'divorce' its very emotional and the use of obstracted faces makes it appeal to this project. its a very large painting, and the use of contrast and shading is very inspiring.

this painting by Jia Aili is two canvases. its avery deep and dramatic paiting using subtle lighting. again its on the very large scale, and if you can see it the glossy effect reflected the lighting from the gallery which wasnt so good. however i still found it a very powerful image of a child in a lake wearing a gas mask.
i like the use of colours in this work, very subtle and yet very emotive.

there were two video pieces in the gallery, this one was an animation on loop, and while it had no relation to my ideas i thought i would take this image to show the layout of the video peices. they were shown on a flatscreen plasma tv, the wires forming a thin black collum from the tv to the floor where the other electrionics (plugs ect) is hidden by a white boxed encasing.

the second video piece was a piece by matthew day jackson entitled metamophosis which was a collection of images of a what appears to be a wax skull, in different colours and in different states of abstraction, constantly playing on a loop. it was rather interesting to watch.

saatchi gallery part 1

2010-04-02T00:01:00.000+01:00

ok so yesterday i went to the saatchi gallery in london and i found it really good, there were some photographic pieces, and two video instillations, however i also found it interesting to look at the wider range of art there, and even the presentation of some of the works.i managed to photograph some of the peices i found interesting to look at.

examples like the image to the left, a painting as part of there 'empire strikes back' indian based art exhibition. i like the way the painting is liked with a box full of items to go along with the painting, but also that the painting is 'defaced' in some way. the image has, on perpose, have been covered by paint.

This piece, was one of the photographic pieces that stood out for me. it is a large print, and from afar it looks like a painting, an abstract peice in which a mess of colours and such but when u look closer you realise that its actually a photograph of a tip or waste desposal dump. i found it very hard hitting, and the title of 'the world is not enough' just shows the length of consumerism in the world at the moment.

a very bad quality of a close up. Sadly the print was covered by what looked like perspex. obviously this is good for protecting the print but it did create very bad reflections onto the image from the bright lighting in the gallery space.

This piece of artwork i also found very interesting for my work looking towards feeling of hiding something, hiding identity. These are all vinal record covers that are painted over with white paint apart from specific features depending on the cover, letters, hair, eyes, clothing, are all selected. as a whole it looks like a very impressing peice and the repetition adds to the vastness.

This piece was prob the one that stood out to me the most. The artist had been working on this project since 2004 and has documented thedeaths of soliders in afaginistan. each had a sketch and writen information about the person, and was pinned to the wall. the different colour paper used, reflected the colour of the persons skin and if the persons photo couldnt be found or was unidentified, they were left blank. it had an exampleof her working mephods. the shear scale of this work is what took me by supprise, as well as the effect it had on the audience. it also gave me an idea for a project on documenting people in a similar way.

experimentation with a few ideas

2010-03-18T01:33:00.000Z

i created a short video from a few ideas i had, to try and get the ball rolling. seen here:

its no where near a polished look. but i really like the ending to this, the blurred face came out better then i expected. i also like the sped up and how it distorts the movements adding to it. the final clip of the sped up blurred face is my fave part. i could experiment more with blurring of the camera. the rest came out ok, but im not sure about the editing. while the fast looks good im unsure it would fit with the music. the shots itself i would like to change. i found it hard to stay within the frame im on the edge for some shots, because i couldnt see what was on the cam. while the other thing i would comment on is the lighting. its not as contrasty as i would like. other all it was a good experience and leads me to develop more on this idea.

Helmar Lerski

2010-03-16T19:30:00.000Z

I was lookin at more surrealist photographers and i found the work of Helmar Lerski in the book 'photography and cinema' by david campany. while his work is more expressionism, the lighting reminded me much more of surrealism. Lerski's photos are portaits of people but they are in very surrealist light, while my aim is not to show the face, it will be good for when i want to do shots of just body parts. some are more normal images while others, the lighting makes the images appear more unique and different.

Jan Svankmajer

2010-03-16T17:42:00.000Z

After wanting to look back into surrealism, and also asking for an artists name on the facebook group, i was lead to the work of surrealist movie maker Jan Svankmajer.Svankmajer has gained a reputation over several decades for his distinctive use of stop-motion technique, and his ability to make surreal, nightmarish and yet somehow funny pictures. He is still making films in Prague at the time of writing.
Svankmajer's trademarks include very exaggerated sounds, often creating a very strange effect in all eating scenes. He often uses very sped-up sequences when people walk and interact. His movies often involve inanimate objects coming alive and being brought to life through stop-motion. Food is a favourite subject and medium. Stop-motion features in most of his work, though his feature films also include live action to varying degrees. i looked into his work and found some of them very interesting, some not revlivent but it is still good. i enjoyed watching the short, dark/light/dark which has no real narrative. what i did like was some of the facial expressions on the face of the head. (see below)

Also i enjoyed the second part of Svankmajer's Dimensions of Dialogue which is weird, but good, i just think its the expressions in his work that makes it all that much better, that and the odditys of what is going on. i like the first dialogue on this clip with the male and female and how they work together but end up distroying each other.

soundscape.

2010-03-16T16:46:00.000Z

ive been really thinking about what kinda sound i could use on my video. my initial idea was to use a narration, as an undertone with hints of background noise but the problem i had was what text to use. i had an idea of looking through my previous research into the feelings associated with being a self harmer but i drew abit of a blank. so i reavaluated it and asked around with my friends, and found out that one of my friends writes and sings/plays/records his own music and one of his original songs 'pretty thing' is about watching someone u love self harm, and while the idea was for the person to hide who they are and whats happening to them, it seemed like a good collabiration that the person may think they are hiding it, but when truth be told, someone else can see right through that mask, which gave me the idea to change the ending of the video slightly, so as to add abit of narrative behind the peice that at the end the girl or the person is seen or walked in on, and that whatever was hiding there face, disappears. and that person, sees the 'real' her. the lyrics to the song are below as well as the video of the music i will use. And ive also asked him if i could have written permission to use it, as well as if i want to enter it into film comps or festivals so i can provided i give credit, which of course i will.

[Verse one]

You're such a pretty thing
I dunno why you do this
You make men beg and scream
But you still carry emptiness

[Bridge]

You feel so numb
So numb
So numb

[Verse two]

I've seen you with mud in your hair
I've seen you with razorblades
Curled up in despair
With dry blood on your face
You feel so numb
So numb
So numb

[Chorus]

And I
Just don't have a clue
You sit there and cry
And still I don't know what to do. . .
Coz youre numb

[Verse three]

You scream out loud you need help
But you're on the waiting list
Torn up by mental health
You decide to slice your wrists

[Bridge]

You feel so numb
So numb
So numb

[Chorus]

And I don't know
I just don't have a clue
You sit there and cry
And I don't know what to do. . .
Coz youre numb

written by Dion McVey

Oleg Dou

2010-03-12T16:48:00.000Z

Dous work consists of heavily manipulated portraits.Oleg Dou's work develops and pushes to the limit the idea of a body, evoked by the surrealists, as an object of subversions, distortions and other mutations that undermine its integrity. he distroys the photos to create almost 'maniquin' looks to his models. the only part which gives away that it is a photograph is the eyes.

he states:

"I was born in Moscow on the 19th of August in 1983. My mother was a painter, and I grew up spending a lot of time among artists — although I was not particularly interested in their activities.I felt an urge toward the arts and creation some time ago when I was working as a designer, and I began seriously studying design. That’s how I “bumped into” photography."

"I worked hard to create my own style and technique. The main tool is computer photo-manipulation and a mix of several photos. I’ve already created several art projects and showed them in a few countries, including France, Belgium and the USA." "Creation brings me enormous pleasure. I am stubborn, ambitious and optimistic by nature; I like being different — and my work, I hope, reflects these features of my character."

His work is stunning to kool at, and almost removes all identity from the person, leaving only the eyes, the 'window into the soul' free from manipulation.

untitled image

2010-03-07T15:01:00.000Z

i found this image while serching blogs, it came under a blog with '30 amazing images' the only thing i now about this image is who its by Nirrimi Hakanson and i discovered herwebsite here, however this is the only image that seems relivent to what i am trying to do, and seems to be an odd one out from her other portraits of women for being more i dunno 'emotional?'

I like the way in which her pose removes her identity, and how the lack of clothing also helps to remove the idenity, and yet we see more about what is going through the persons mind by the collection of notes, snippets of what this person feels emotionally.

skin putty experiments

2010-03-04T10:33:00.000Z

so after the failure of the liquid latex i looked into other ways that you can create fake skin and i found that smithy makes a fake skin putty which is a more solid way to build up the impression of fake skin. so i perchased some and here i am experimenting to see if it would get the right effect on the skin. i found this alot more messy as it wasnt as plyable as i wanted, it was a very waxy like substance and sticky, good for applyin to the face, but also ment it got everywhere. it also means that not being made from a rubbery substance it would easily be broken through. it also was a very good colour match for mine without any foundation being added, a bonus when foundation costs so much!

i only used a little of the face putty but it was very effective and did look more real then the latex. it was rather hard to get it smooth but with abit of time i think it would give a more clean effect, while just being done quickly here it appears like scar tissue abit. just because it was not smooth and funny enough fits in with the scars ive got at the moment from spots :\

Fake skin experiments part 2!

2010-03-03T23:08:00.000Z

So after the first exeriment with liquid latex was abit of a fail, the fail being that it wasnt thick enough and so it wouldnt peal off of the flat serface i was drying it on. so i reset some more, let it dry. then i was seeing if it would work.
i tried to get another makeup timelapse but it runs abit fast, as im using a different webcam to do it. but i thought id include it anyway

.

(images captured from the video so they are abit crap quality) so this experiment had its ups and downs. using my foundation to cover it it didnt have much different to my skin tone, while using the eyelash glue ment it was suitable for my skin. once placed on the skin and leaving to dry it didnt look to bad, from afar it looked like there was nothing there while u could tell more close up that it was fake. but then i could of adjusted the distance between the camera and the shot or maybe even adjusted the lighting to help. however the big desider was the experimentation to see if the needle would go through this thicker layer, and while i increased the surface area so that hopefully it wouldnt pull the skin off of my face. however it did work a little better, but sadly the needle wasnt sharp enough to break through it and it ripped off my skin, and tbh i dont want to put a different 'sharper' needle in my mouth. so i guess using liquid

isnt exactly going to work out.

so where do i go from here?!
well there was one other alternative to try and sort this out for the use in my video and thats the use of skin putty and just slightly filling up the hole, it would prob work abit better because i will only need a little bit, however i still dont know if it would work with the needle coming through the skin. but its worth a try.

Fake skin experiments

2010-03-03T22:09:00.002Z

so far i tried to create a very small patch of fake skin using the liquid latex. i did try this, however the small serface area of the fake skin did not allow for the latex to break but to break the seal with the skin at one side insted. the colour match using my foundation was good and would not be to bad on camera but another of my worrys is the edges of the area of fake skin, so saying that i have left to dry two more peices of fake skin, one marginally bigger then the last piece, and another rather a bit bigger. i also made them thinner by only applying one layer of latex to see if that would make it easier to break through. i think i also will also video these experiments most likely just on webcam to see how they go.

abit of a fail really, the latex was to thin to peal off of the surface, so i am resetting some more, however i have also looked into the idea of face putty, which i may get just because i think if i can cover the hole with that, it will look better but also be easier.

Kumi Yamashita

2010-03-03T21:36:00.000Z

Kumi Yamashita has a very unusal talent, and could be seen as an instillation artist, she uses shapes made from wood or metal that when the light is just right, cast shadows of people. Its a strage thing to look at but it is a wonder. after all there is a shadow of a human standing, sitting ect, but no one is actually there. The interesting bit is that without the lighting being perfect there would be no perfectly formed figure waiting there. Its very unusal. the most unusal ones being the sulptures made from text and letters that some how magically forms into a persons face or full figure. As i have been looking at surrealist films and photographers like to play with shadows and contrasts, one film that stands out of its shadows is Nosferatu the german expressionist vampire film. Maybe i could also work in some play on shadows or even just using it as another way of deforming the figure, the person.

No Face

2010-03-03T21:13:00.000Z

Doing this idea and thinking of ways to hide something, hide urself, hide who u truely are just makes me think of a character from Anime Classic Spirited away, an odd spirit who takes an interest in Chihiro. Seeing No-Face standing outside in the rain, Chihiro takes pity on the creature and lets him into the bathhouse to take shelter from the storm. At first, he appears to be a strange, demure, cloaked, masked wraith who seems mute other than his breathing and urging grunts. Seen as polite, calm, and quiet at first. This soon changes as he seems to feed off of the people he encounters, and once seeing how the staff of the 'spirit' bathhouse respond to him producing gold, he becomes consumed with greed and gluttony. However once fed with a medican ball (and alot of pukeing) he seems to return back to his calm state and in turn, stays in the bathhouse as a helper. While slightly out of the ordinary and from the style and approach i am taking, the fact that he is a creature that has no face, no persona of his own, and seems to feed on how everyone else is, everyones emotions and even takes on the voice of one of the staff members he seems to eat. hes almost a blank canvus, empty, just a shell and this is what made me want to discuss this as part of my reserch. His character appearence is also very interesting. He is almost ghosty and only regains substance when he feeds off of other people.he has no voice until he takes that of another, and the blank white face, and black cloak even starts to change as he grows with greed.

Rebecca Belmore

2010-03-03T20:58:00.000Z

Belmore is a canadian performance and instillation artist, her work focuses on a range of subjects from history,voice and voicelessness, place and indentity. while her work is interesting, expesherly her video instillations such as fountains (added at the bottom) and while she looks at indenity, she looks at it from an angle that i do not really wish to persue. its mainly looking into her own historical identity rather then my idea of sort of hiding urself and who u really are deep inside. the reason i looked at her was a section of stills from some of her performances and instillations looked like they could relate however personally this isnt a direction i would like to take my work. the only really thing that i liked was the fountain and how the water was used to distort the video and such. expesh as the video was projected onto a water screen (a moving waterfall) that made it more interesting to me. I found a good artical about her fountain piece on Conundrumonline.

Mark Jenkins

2010-03-03T18:52:00.000Z

Mark Jenkins is a street artist best known for his street instillations using everyday objects such as packaging and tape. His work is not just street based but his work is shown in galleries all over the world. His street work can be split into different stages or catagories:

Tape Men (2003--)
Jenkins first street series in which casts made from his body using clear packing tape were installed in city streets in Rio de Janeiro and later Washington DC.

Storker Project (2005--)
In this ongoing project tape babies are "dropped" in various outdoor environments in different cities as part of a "species propagation movement." To date there have been over 100 babies installed.

Embed Series (2006--)
In this series, Jenkins dresses his life size tape casts in clothing to create realistic sculptures which he installs in various positions in urban environments—stuck into traffic cones, trash bags, cans, etc. He documents the reaction of the people who pass by them with video. The most watched of these videos features a figure sculpture positioned to create an illusion that it is sticking its head into a wall.

Meterpops (2005)
The Meterpop installation involved putting transparent lollipop heads onto parking meters in Washington DC on Independence Avenue (outside the Department of Energy).

Traffic-Go-Round (2007)
The "traffic-go-round" project converted a traffic circle (Thomas Circle, Washington DC) into a merry-go-round using horses made of tape mounted on the lampposts around the circle. The horses were faced the opposite flow of traffic to create for riders the illusion that the horses were moving past them.

Jesus 2.0 (2006)
Jesus 2.0 was a collaboration between Mark Jenkins and the Graffiti Research Lab. Two clear tape sculptures of a child in crucifixion position were fitted with LED Throwies and then installed on a lampposts in New York City.

alot of his work involves people who have there faces covered or hidden or dont even have them, as well as that but the ghostly presence of his celeotape men and women are really interesting takes, it shows no identity at all and distorts and makes the audience form a new view on who or what they might be.

Chris Dunlop

2010-03-03T18:28:00.000Z

Chris dunlop is a fashion, editiorial and music photographer. The main reason i wanted to look at him was a photo collection that he did for the band Funeral For a Friend. These images for the album casually dressed was based on the work of Rene Magritte (see previous post on him.) I wanted to include these because they show how his idea of people with this 'cloth' bag over there head would translate from painting to photography. I think they are very powerful images, and while they dont really have the same 'naturalistic' poses as Magrittes paintings they in there own right have a surrealist feel by not really embrasing the avaerage scenes and being placed in the middle of a corn feild.They also have abit of a weird mixture of colours. the last image seen here has very saturated and popping colours while the middle image seems rather paler and destaturated apart from the red dress which seemingly pops out.

Zdzislaw bekzinski

2010-03-03T18:14:00.000Z

Bekzinski is a renouned polish painter and photographer. His paintings and drawing are gothic fantacy and are often focusing on representing surrealist worlds. His work is both visually stunning and really is rather eerie and almost frightening in places. it all revolves around worlds filled with creepy looking demons and creatures that look like they should be in a tim burton movie. However supposidly this was a vast contrast to the person Bekzinzki was because he was seen as a vastly happy man. His photography has the edge of surrealism seen in his other mediums of work. The dark and dreamly black and white contrasty photos often shows portraits but in a way that you never see the whole person, cut off and unusally framed photos. He also uses a play on shadows, sometime to the point of obstructing a whole face. One of a woman leaving the frame reminds me ALOT of meshes of the afternoon that can be seen in a pervious post. Its very interesting and this idea of closely or oddly cropping to get just a section of a person revealed is something i have been thinking of including in my video.

Rene Magritte

2010-03-03T17:56:00.000Z

while he is a painter, Rene Magritte was a very famouse belgium surrealist artist. within his work, his intended goal was to challenge observers' preconditioned perceptions of reality and force viewers to become hypersensitive to their surroundings. His work often toys with basing work on an object (such as a pipe or an apple) and making them realistic in a sence, but adding the statement that because it is only a painting of an apple it is not infact an apple. The work that relates most to the idea i am looking at, 'hiding who you are' are a series of paintings he did of people who had cloth bags over there heads, even though they are seemingly in natural posing positions, or that they are unaware of the fact that there faces are concealed. There is also one of his more famous paintings of a man in a suit and bowler hat, hoewever he has no face, his face is seemingly missing. and another where the buisnessmans face has been concealed by an apple seemingly floating infront of his face. This is the sort of thing i would like to look at more,and explore how other artists, photographers and video makers hide the identity of modals, or deform the identity of a person.

down with the sickness

2010-03-03T15:04:00.000Z

only resently have i relieased the similarity with the lyrics to disterbed 'down with the sickness' and how its like some of the discriptions ive heard about just one min being fine and then all of a sudden it changes and your something else, you dont feel like urself. although the video to this song is the band just singing i found this video where the lyrics are plastered across a video intime with the song.

redoing lip scene

2010-03-02T15:10:00.001Z

one of the main problem from the first shot of the lip scene was the fact that because i was using my lip ring, the hole was already in the skin and seemed to make it appear to fake, however i am going to experiment creating fake skin and seeing if it will look real, but also be able to be broke through with the needle to give the effect we want for it. i found a website tutorial on using liquid latex to create a thin layer of fake skin actually for creating a needle through skin look for halloween/horror effects.

which i have here:

fake stitches and scars

i have also perchased some liquid latex to try and practice to see if it is possible to make it look effective.
im trying with a small area of liquid latex, and although it seems abit thick as long as i can adhear it securely to my actual skin it will be easy to break through, providing it does look real once the foundation has been added and the latex is added to my skin.

plans and story board

2010-03-02T14:58:00.000Z

so far ive really just been brainstorming ideas of what im going to do and in all honesty all the ideas ive had have been for video, so after much thought i think im going to focus on just the one medium. The idea is to focus on imagery and the sound to accompany it. I want it to appear so that in all the images that the face is covered, distorted, or only parts of the face showing. ive been working on the kind of imagery ive wanted to include and brainstormed and even worked on a little storyboard style thing which i will upload soon. for the sound i want to create an atmosphere, as well as maybe having a narration, if i was to do a narration but with the voice to be distorted, and just as annonamous as the face.Also i will be looking into re shooting my lip scene from my last video.

MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON- video

2010-02-21T16:01:00.000Z

We watched part of this short film in a lecture and one part of it really hit hard, there is a woman dressed fully in all black, when she turns around, she has no face, only a mirror in the place. This video is early experimental film and i really like the use of repetition and cloning of the main character in the video. it is a non-narrative work, it has been identified as a key example of the trance film, in which a protagonist appears in a dreamlike state, and where the camera conveys his or her subjective focus. this does relate back to when i was looking at Dali's work, surrealists often use dream like states or dreams as a basis of there work! it makes u spend a long time trying to work out what exactly is going on throughout the film which i like the idea of. though in all honesty the sound in this i found distracting in some sections.

Cindy Sherman - photography

2010-02-21T15:44:00.000Z

when ever i think of this idea of being someone else it reminds me of Cindy Shermans work. In her work, they are all self portraits of herself, however it's not how all is seen, she dresses up as almost different characters, different personas. She doesnt view her images as self portraits, even if they are all of her,
she states: "I feel I'm anonymous in my work. When I look at the pictures, I never see myself; they aren't self-portraits. Sometimes I disappear."

Her images are often wide in the subjects she becomes, but some of her more famous shots are from her Untitled Film Stills where she plays different kinds of actresses playing parts, if that makes any sence. In most of the photos she becomes unrecogniseable, she really doesnt look like the same person.

The idea of being able to look at a photo of yourself and not bein able to see yourself in it, it really hits to the feeling im trying to get across. some people who have depression or self harm can look into the mirror and not see themselves, it isnt who they think they are. Its like they are an empty shell. How they feel, they put on a brave face and hide whats really happening.

The Basis of my body of work

2010-02-21T15:17:00.000Z

The idea about what i want to develop to move on from did come from some of the reserch and a photo shoot i did before. The idea is that person is trying to hide who they are, hiding what they're going through, hide the scars. They dont want to show everyone the real them. they hide under layers of barriers that stop people getting to close. I want to experiment using some of the techniques that i tried before. and i also want this to be the basis for my next video, again i want to go down a more symbolic approach rather then obvious and i want to focus on the idea of not having a face of the face u do have is not who u really are. its hard to explain where im coming from but once i start to work on the ideas and such do some test shots then i think it will be more obvious to see what i mean.

Video feedback and thoughts

2010-02-21T15:05:00.000Z

after a good session on tutorial day, and i had a chance to discuss my video. I personally wasnt happy with it, but the feedback i got from it was good. (i havent uploaded it because of problems with its size and youtube but ill see if i can sort that) the main crit on it was the lack of sound. which i know was a big part as i couldnt think of what i wanted to do. most of the feedback was that there was some really powerful shots in it. i personally felt the video was to slow, and when we watched it back in almost double time it came across better to me. i could rework it to be more like how i wanted but part of me thinks that i wont gain anything from doing that. i also really have an idea that i want to continue on from using the style of my last film, but inproving on it, maybe focusing more on the edits and sound once the bulk of it is shot. i do want to try and encorperate one of the shots from this last film, the lip shot, and reshoot it to see if i can improve it, and make it apart of my new video. Thinking alot after my last post i would love to focus more on video for this, as well as still experimenting with the ideas of photography.

hay

2010-02-17T20:50:00.001Z

so i know ive been abit slack so far as to my blogging since the deadline. there is two reasons for this:

the first being that i have been struggling to see where this project is taking me. im finding it hard to work out what i want to do next let alone if it is on the same subject, because while i ended up with some good photos at the end, i really was not happy with the video side of things. i think partly is because of a confidence lack. partly because my heart really wasnt in it. i was shooting for the sake of shooting, which really isnt good because i do enjoy doing video work. i may concentrate on photography for my negotiated project more then video but part of me still wants to experiment abit with it. i just think i needed to spend alot of time thinking about what i want to achieve.

More photos

2010-01-19T18:55:00.001Z

Here i had an idea based on one of the pieces of 'diary' entrys i recieved from one of my friends. the piece in question:

'its like the person that everyone else can see isn't me. They look upon me and see someone confident, mature. They have no idea that inside im a wreck. The only time you see the real me is when i have an episode (a breakdown) and then only i am there.'

It inspired me to do a sequence of selfportraits based on the idea that there are almost 3 steps to this process. The beguining, the confident person. Stage two the breakdown and stage three is the person that not everyone gets to see the wreck of a person. the part that everyone has deep inside that doesnt really want to show. I shot the images in black and white and used a flash gun off camera slightly to one side, i used a tripod and shutter release. I really like this set of photographs and how you can see similaritys and differences between the first and last photos and its obviously you can see the different emoitions, from the confident to the sadness and simplicity of the pose of the last image. i think the photos suit being b/w and i could work on extending this idea again.

More photos

2010-01-19T18:31:00.000Z

Here i took the idea of scarring and desided to play abit with it. Though tbh i dont have alot of scars myself that are clearly visible it is the beguinning of somthing that i can develop on and try and organise taking photos of people with scars. I also thought it would be interesting to add an element of text to this also, i was reminded of one of the entrys from the books to which one of the women with the eating disorder tells that she remembers moments not by the memory but by how much she weighed at the time. so i thought of trying to encorperate the idea of adding an almost like 'time stamp' to the scars. i edited the images to include this time stamp and here is what i came up with:

Even here we can see an almost like narrative coming out. i do like this idea and i also like the idea of the 'time stamp' however i am not sure about the font i used but this could be worked on and improved.

More photo experimentation

2010-01-19T18:15:00.002Z

I wanted to see if i could some how encorperate text into my work. I decided to try an encorperate it onto body parts rather then trying to layer it over an image so the text then actually becomes part of the photograph. I decided to use descritption and write it on, before taking the photos. I also upped the exposure to the photos to create a more grunge style effect to the photos and here are some of the results:

i really like these photos an the mixture of text and skin, as well the photos almost seem to tell a story in some sence. this could be something i develope upon. to set apart stages of a breakdown and use this idea of text and skin to tell the steps of the break down. i also really like the idea of the use of high contrast and the look it gives the photos, almost as if it was shot on a toy camera that sorta effect.
However in comparison to the heartfelt text images by adam knott these are nothing. Maybe instead of writing on the body for the photos maybe trying to write ontop of the images afterwards. i would have to focus on the sculpting of the text but its worth an experiment.

The Golden Age of Grotesque

2010-01-19T18:03:00.001Z

I have reserched into the manson album artwork that reminded me of the style i was achieving in my last post. Here are examples of the album art:

As we can see it is a similar technique as the subject is blured but not to the point of unrecognisable proportions. I found out the photographer and concept designer for this album was Gottfried Helnwein, an austrain born photographer, artist and performance artist. He has a wide collection of work, most stand out for me is his work entitled Head of a child, where he focuses on the innocence of a child but not in the happy happy way we are used to, instead he focuses on the wounded, the scared and the frightened child. He focuses on the phsycial and emotional scarring. Some of his photos are truely horrific and it is obvious that his focus is on fear and the emotional and psycical embodyment of what it is that is terrifying. after all who else could turn Manson into a horrific mickey mouse? here are a few more of his work on the more fearful and terrorfying side to his work, he seems to have tendencys to hyper realism and has a fasination with nazis (in his most contriversial work) :

a piece of text from a documentory about His work stated this which i found is a great discription of his work and also shows how it links to mine: 'He confronts us with the dark sides of human nature. Silently but mercilessly he uses the fate of the innocent child to bring before our eyes the human capacity for suffering, making the beholder a passive, and indeed active, accomplice to injury and abuse.' From "HELNWEIN - THE SILENCE OF INNOCENCE"

Photo expermentation

2010-01-19T18:00:00.001Z

I wanted to play on the idea of the emotions being mixed up and the feeling of the need to self harm hitting like a tornado. I decided i wanted to try and create images that may appear a little abstract, portraits that use movement to blur and mix the images. I decided to experment like this. I ended up with some weird but some good images. I made sure when shooting i had a slower shutter speed then needed to try and give some movement back to the images rather then freezing them. However the lighting is rather orange so i colour corrected slightly, one didnt turn out so orange because i tried to compensate for it by bouncing more natural light in. here are a few examples:

However the lighting still appeared very offputting to me so i decided to try the photos in black and white, i changed them over and upped the contrast slightly because they are a little under exposed and pale and i am rather more pleased with the results i got from changing them to black and white, it seems to add to the expression of the imagery.

these photos remind me of an album cover that i remember uses the same form of style this blurred by motion style effect. The album Im thinkin of is a Marilyn Manson album entitled

The Golden Age of Grotesque

which i feel i should look into more, try and find out who was the photographer behind it.

Susan Cunningham- photographing scars

2010-01-19T17:49:00.001Z

From one of the diary texts i decided to look into to documenting scars. It was mentioned that they remain a reminder of what they have been through and what has been done. When serching i found that ALOT of links came back with forensic style photography and talking about police forensics, however i would much rather look into the art side of it, i discovered the work of susan cunningham.

http://www.inliquid.com/artist/cunningham_susan/cunningham.php

Her photos are black and white shot using anantique 4 x 5 camera and used Polaroid negatives to carry on with the theme of it being unperfect. She entitled the study revisions and just asked around for people who wanted there scars photographed. she states that it was easier thenshe thoght , people wanted to share there scars and there stories behind them. she states 'Revisions: Our scars are the proof that we are human and like it or not we always have to adapt and revise ourselves.' Here are a few examples of her work:

While she does focus on scars, i dont really like these photos overly. I think in black and white they should be more contrasted and also i think that they should be closer of the scars rather then such zoomed out, it makes it harder to distinquish the scars. I do like the way that the titles for these images are how the scars occured. which makes these image seem to have more of a story behind of just documenting them.

Text, Depression and photographs reserch

2010-01-19T17:39:00.001Z

After reading some of the 'diary' entrys i got sent. It made me want to see how other people used text in images on depression and it got me thinking how i could do the same. I looked around on amature photography websites as well as in magazines and in books, and more professional websites. I find it difficult to Find photographers and video makers to reserch, or just initially where to start off on the first step.

One of the first photos that caught my eye was one by an amature photographer under the name of 'active8' on redbubble.

http://www.redbubble.com/people/active8/art/2547428-2-why

the piece is entitled WHY... and while its more of a graphic piece rather then a photography piece but i love the use of text in this image. sadly its only a single image rather then a collection.

The photo is based around a poem and while it simple and quiet clean, it is a rather good use of text using the blank walls as canvuses to manipulate text onto as well as messing around with the texts perspective to get it to fit in with the shapes of the walls and floor.

While serching on Jpgmagazine under there online photo stories i found an interesting photo story collection by Adam Knott he called it 'Grief girl: a writers journey' And follows him as he photographed his wife as relived the terrorfiing tragity of loosing her parents at 14. Reliving this for a book it in turn sent his wife into a deep state of mental depression to which soon become the focus of his photographs. He then desided to add the extracts of his diary at the time about his worry and concerns about his wife. These images not only relate to the theme of my work but also to the idea of using text. They are all black and white photos, and all portraits of his wife doing the everyday things while sufforing. You can feel the pain of the wife while reading the pain of the husband and it also looks into the effect that depression has on the people around sufforers. i love the creative use of the text. He uses his handwriting but its in specifically placed areas, or around the body, nd even sometimes on the body. I really like the photo where hes actaully wrote on his wifes face (after the photo of course.) this is something i think i could look into, this creative use of text. The texts just adds to the high emotional elements to the photographs.

Over the last few weeks - text reserch

2010-01-19T17:37:00.002Z

over the last few weeks i have asked people i know who have or are suffering from depression, self harming issues or self destruction to write me a short almost diary like piece of text that i can look at and pull inspiration from, here are just a few snippets of what i got. Obviously they are going to remain annonamus

'Its like i am alone, no one understands me. Its like the warning signs are there that i am in trouble but they choose to ignor it. I go through it alone because i know i would be judged for who i am. This is who i am. Or at least i think it is.'

'When i hit a low point i can feel the urges start. its like theres a little voice in my head telling me im worthless and that i need to do this, its the only way to feel better. Its the only way to feel anything. I am numb. All emotions are frozen out and im in the dark.The only light to lead me out comes from the glint of a blade. When the blood pours out its just like someone opens the door and the emotions flood back in, i can feel again.'

'The scars work as a reminder of where i have been, what i have gone through but also a reminder that it still has control over me. Its like its wrote upon my skin "i have a problem" and i dont want other people to know that. I hide my scars, i do it places that people wont see, so i dont have to feel that shame that comes with someone knowing what you do and that its the only way that you can cope'

'Its like the person that everyone else can see isn't me. They look upon me and see someone confident, mature. They have no idea that inside im a wreck. The only time you see the real me is when i have an episode (a breakdown) and then only i am there. Alone, silenced to speak of my pain. Its an overwhelming feeling that leads to having to reach for the many selections of instraments i use to control myself with.'

Nobuyoshi Araki

2010-01-19T17:32:00.000Z

Nobuyoshi Araki known sometimes as simply 'Araki' is a japanise photographer and video maker. his work often controversal and often very pornographic. However the images ive been looking at is his photos of bondage. He uses ropes to tie up women and position. It shows how powerless they are and degrades them, It may not make sence why i would look at his work, but it is to go along with the feeling that self harm is about control and that it is the thing controling you. Like in the photos, there are ropes binding the subjects, they are almost like puppets and are helpless.

Jpg- agnese sironi

2010-01-19T16:41:00.000Z

Agnese sironi is a amature photographer from italy. While browsing on JPG i came across a series of three images entitled CUTTING. These relate obviously to self harm. they are really powerful images and she has used a projector to project slits an cuts onto the body of a model. these photos are really gritty, and dark. the main light source is the projector and is shot on a Analogic 1600 asa cameraa which adds to the grittyness of the images. The projections look very realistic and gorey to some extent:

Photography- sebastian sabal-bruce

2010-01-19T15:47:00.001Z

sebastian sabal-bruce is a photographer who isnt really all that well known, however his work is stunning. He focuses on portraits but he states 'i am a "mind translator".For me the camera is a machine that converts the inner world into image format. Im always trying to materialize sensations, thoughts or dreams into scenes.' which made me think back to how surrealism is often dream like. But really what caught my eye is that some of his portraits seem to show women in a 'state' almost as if something terrible has happen. His work is very cinematic and to some extent reminds me of the work of gregory crewdson, however the use of lighting is more naturalistic even though it manages to appear cinematic. One in particular really caught my eye(the first image) and a few other examples of his work:

Vilem Reichmann - surrealist photography

2010-01-19T15:35:00.000Z

Czech Photography Vilem Reichmann was a black and white still photographer. His photos he are most famous for are still lifes based around Brno. His work is seen as surrealist documentry. Snapping photos of generally naturally occuring surrealism. what like most is the feel of the photographs in general, they seem to be very eerie and with this feeling of almost unease about them, they are also highly contrasted for photographs, some would seem overexposed. Here are a few examples of his work:

Photos- Nan goldin

2010-01-19T15:05:00.002Z

I wanted to try out the nan goldin approach to her self portraits using mirrors and reflections. I unfortunatly dont have means of creating contact sheets as i dont have the software on the laptop i am using so i will show the best images and upload them when i get the chance. I created these images using controled lighting (with aid of a lamp) and using a tripod and wireless shutter release i managed to take a few images.
The first image is alright. I dont really like the effect the flash had on the photo. While the reflection is clear, the bringht spot on the mirror rim, and the hair to the left of the image puts a downer on this image for me.

This image, compaired to the first i used a spot lamp off to the left and avoided using flash. this i feel is more like her work and style compaired to the original.

However then i decided to play around with the focus point and depth of feild as well as using nataural lighting rather then artifical lighting. This is prob my favourite from exeperimenting on the Nan Goldin self portrait style. It just seems to fit right and alsmost has an unease with it that i cant seem to understand.

Sewn up mouth - film

2010-01-18T20:29:00.000Z

I also worked out a way using a leather thong style of thread (its more solid and will hold place) and theatrical glue i can create the effect that my lips have been sewn together. I experimented with this, mixed it with the eye footage and shot some footage and edited it together to create this effect:

I used a different camera for alot of these shots which needed a file conversion, which caused the lines on the tape (which i am not happy about!) some of the shots are better then others. i love the sewn lips effect, however the diary shot i am not to happy about, and maybe quicken some of the cuts. but it gives you the kind of effect that i am looking for.

beating heart? -film

2010-01-18T19:53:00.000Z

the idea of a beating heart at the end of the film would finish it off very well. almost to say, once the numbness has gone (the ice heart) the person starts to feel again (the beating heart.) My friend who suggested it to me is an electronics student and said by attaching a muscle toner like this:

it would contract the heart muscles and it would appear to be beating. However the wires would be in full view of the camera which im not sure if i would like.As well i have searched around and its really difficult and expencive to get ahold of these muscle toners needed. Maybe there is away of using final cut or after effects to create a beating effect. I also saw a piece of work by a past students on one of the open days (i am a tour guide), i dont know who it was by however it used an editing technique in which they encorperated sound and a very quick edit between extreame close up and a medium shot, and it just had this feel of a heart beat, which i could experiment with if i cant find an effect that works on an editing software.

Frozen Heart - Film

2010-01-18T19:37:00.001Z

I managed to get ahold of lambs hearts so i am able to do this idea, however i will want to experiment to makesure i get it right. I got software that allows me to plug my camera into my laptop and shoot using controls on my camera, this program also uses my d40 to take time lapse photos at regular intervals.

The big freeze!

First i wanted to see how the professionals do it:

Quite different from what thought i found that , after organs are removed from a donor, they are packed in a special solution and kept on ice. But they can't be frozen because of the damage that ice crystals would do to the cells. Without freezing, the shelf life of these organs can be as little as four hours for a heart. Parts of the heart such as valves have been said to be frozen in liquid nitrogen.

This is only of organ donation. but the fact that butchers freeze the organs the same way they do the flesh, it really doesnt help my research.

To start off though i decided to Freeze a set of keys to see how they would freeze. This worked kinda well. The ice block came out well, i filled a tupper wear box half way and then froze that, to allow the keys to be central in the iceblock, however the thickness and the unpurity of the water caused it to be cloudy which isnt the effect that i wanted.
I desided to try it again and this time i reserched online to which i found a text on achieveing clear icecubes, which said the water should be boiled, left to cool, reboiled, cooled, reboiled and filtered to get the most clarity in the ice. Which i tried. This did help the clarity of the water. So i decided to set up a mini 'studio.'
I did experiment with the lighting for the ice, however i lost the photos on my old laptop that was stolen. However i did decide to backlight the ice.
So using a chair and a lamp, i created a backlit scene with a white sheet, and set up the camera and the laptop. I set it up to take photos at 5min intervals.
i did encounter a few problems when shooting them, first of, i set it to autofocus before shooting but as the ice begun to melt the area it was focusing on melted so it couldnt autofocus properly, so for the main one i shall focus it and then let it melt with out the focus changing.
the other problem was that the battery run out half way through, so next time i will actually sit with it, and replace the battery with my spare when it runs out so that it will continue to shoot. Practice shots before the battery run out: Just a few

Also my friend said to me that using a muscle toner it would be maybe possible to make the heart appear to beat again? maybe i could look into this.

Ideas for film development.

2010-01-18T18:26:00.000Z

I love films with quick edits, and i think the film im planning with benifit it. it reflects the quick paced attitude of the 'breakdown.' I also plan on encorperating symbolism into my work as well as more obvious shots. i want to mix them up and play with the sound to go with it. i want to cause the audience to feel like they are going through it too. I have a few ideas of more symbolic representations. I know one of the feelings mentioned alot to me with self harm is Numbness, feeling like cutting is the only way to feel something, anything. So to symbolise this i was thinking of filming a lamb/pigs heart in ice and time lapsing it. I also had an idea of trying to create a look of lips sewn shut. I have read that it makes you feel like you are silenced, like you can not talk about your feelings and emoitions and bottling it up is what causes it. its like wanting to scream but not being able to. I have a few other ideas on which i want to play around on but i want to experiment with these first.

Film Practical- 20second clip

2010-01-18T17:49:00.002Z

Leading on from looking at the work of Dali i desided to create a small clip. Here it is an extreame close up of an eye, often used in dali's work. I desided to work upon a quote that i found on a selfharming website by a suffourer stateing 'Self harming is almost like Jekyll and Hyde. One minute your fine, the next your uncontrolable. It's like there is a beast with in you.' Sadly i cant find a link back to the original post. Here is the video i created:

i filmed it in a few takes, with obviously the last take being with white out contact lenses. The text was added at the last min and while i like it, i still think it could be better. Originally the second eye wasnt ment to be watery, but because of troubles putting the lenses in... however i think i prefer it now as it looks like crying and i like the way the makeup has run. I like the close up nicely tho i had to slightly adjust the second clip to match up with the first so that it is consistant. I also cut up the first clip using the razor and then sped up and slowed down sections of the eye movement which i also like because it still looks seemless. I would change the text. its plain and boring and now that its done i think it distracts. I wasnt really sure what to do with sound. it is something i will have to look into more. I also turned the footage b/w when it was originally shot in colour.

Film- surrealism and dali

2010-01-18T17:33:00.000Z

I wanted to delve more into surrealism in film. I like the idea of a dream like state that surrealist films and art lends it self to. I also like the use of highly contrasted black and white and the fact that the films often involve 'shock' tactics. It was always an idea of mine to look toward surrealist films for this film, mainly because of the trance like state that one ends up in while having a breakdown, but also because surrealism is a passion of mine. I also thought i could look to the photography as well. As a genre it has strict rules and regulations, orginating out of the DADA art movement. A personal favourite of mine is Dali. His work is just stunning, and while he was later rejected by the movement for being to mainstream, his paintings, films and even his life in general has always interested me.

so of course when looking into surrealist films i wanted to look at Un chien andalou by Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali.

Un Chien Andalou is a statement about how film can express the subconcious. It is rather shocking and reflects an obsession with death and lust. It is a silent film with no dialoge but the use of chapters. And takes a light hearted approuch with the music. It almost contradicts the scenes which are being played.

Dali often uses the representation of the eye in his work. here we see a womans eye cut open by a razor in the opening sequence.

Eyes feature highly in the dream sequence dali designed for Hitchcocks 'spellbound' as well as in alot of his paintings.

I also found a link to a good article on Dali and his work in film and other mediums as well as looking at what the surrealist movement thought of him.

http://www.studio-international.co.uk/reports/dali.asp

Kozuke Okahara- self-mutilation in Japan

2010-01-18T16:33:00.000Z

Kozuke Okahara is a documentry photographer from Japan. He classes his work under the theme of "Ibasyo” which refers in Japanese, to “the physical and emotional space in which people exist” which includes work in Dufur, illegal activites such as drug activity in collumbia as well as the collection that is most relevent to me- self mutilation in japan. His photos focus on girls in different areas of Japan that mutilate there own bodies or have to deal with mental illness. They are shot in black and white and often feature the girls in situations in relation to what is wrong. The images are Black and white and are accompanied by the stories of the girls in the photos.

Examples of Okaharas work:

The first image caption:

Kaori, 23 years old, relaxes in her room. She rolls bandage to stop bleeding after she cut her arm.

Image two caption:

Akane, 26 years old, has been suffering depression and self-injury for over 4 years.

Image three caption:

Japan, 2008 Sayuri, 22 years old, who has been suffering from self-injury, driving a car at night. She just quit her job since her condition became really bad and could not continue to work normally. Sayuri had experiences of sexual abuses in her childhood and that triggered self-injury.

As you can see Okahara uses a mix of styles, form frame within a frame, to portraits, to more extreame images ( one of a woman collapesed from an over dose, and a few photographs focused on the wounds.

Nan Goldin

2010-01-18T16:08:00.001Z

I thought i should look more into the work of nan goldin. After reading what she wrote in the book. I thought it would be good to reserch more of her work. Her work often looks into the groups on the outskirt of society. Alot of her work focuses on drug addicts, violent relationships, as well as auto-biographical photographs documenting her surroundings and her self portraits focusing on pinical moments. . The main themes of her early pictures are love, gender, domesticity, and sexuality; these frames are usually shot with natural and avalible lighting. She has documented women looking in mirrors, girls in bathrooms, drag queens, sexual acts, and the culture of obsession and dependency. The images are viewed like a private journal made public. This relates back to my idea at looking at diary entrys. I like the idea of almost contrasting the symbolism im planning for my video work by using almost like a documentry approach to the photos. it is something that i can experiment with.

Examples of her work:

While her self portraits are not as 'gritty' as her other photographs, which sometimes have a far more obscene subjects. It is the link between her self-destruction and portraits of herself. Mirrors play a big part in her self portraits, or reflections in general as she uses windows to sometimes. It makes me think back to what one of the other entrys in the book, mentioned it to be painful to look in the mirror at there own reflection, maybe that is a way in which she shows her pain. Using avalible lighting makes it appear more natural and there are no overly garish colours. She often is just wearing black, or underwear, almost as if to detach her indenity, all we have is her face and surroundings.

Inspiration from the book

2010-01-18T12:56:00.000Z

There are a few really stand out points in this book.

The visuals of Cristy. C. Roads (post 2) who used her illistrations to help put across what she was feeling. I loved the sketch she drew of someone sewing together herown heart. its just very symbolic. Not only is the heart often used to symbolise emotions, love, hate but it also represents the life force. This is the sort of symbolism i wish to use in my video work.

The piece of text that Inga M.Muscio uses at the beguinning of her passage.

'I hurt myself today
To see if i still feel
I focus on the pain
The only thing that's real'

Trent Reznor via Johny Cash
This text is extreamly fitting to me looking into self harming and matches up with alot of what i have read about it. This text is hard hitting and straight to the point. People who have a self destructive personality often talks about feeling numb and not being able to feel anything until they get this release. which somehow i want to try and portray in my work also. Maybe symbolically in my work.

I also really loved the 'wellfair' diagram that cella star Bonfire talked about and presented in the book. it shows some insight into the feelings that trigger off her feelings.

Finally i cant talk about inspiration without talking about nan Goldin. Her short but informative insight and some of her work in the book makes me want to look more into her work which i think i will do next.

Live through this- Art as Prayer (16)

2010-01-18T12:39:00.000Z

This is the interesting story of Kate Bornstein. Born a boy, she had the urges to want to be a girl from a very young out. This feeling, lead to her to beguin to cut herself, to release the feelings, to heal the numbness, to feel something, anything for just a second. She also learnt to starve herself. She turned to drugs when the slashing and starving stopped working. She wanted answers and turned to religion serching for one that could explain the feelings and help her to understand to urges to become a woman. Finally finding scientology who states that we are not male or female but a genderless spiritual being. This was seen as a good start, but they wanted him to remale a male rather then follow his dreams to become a woman. Because of the inabitity to speak about feelings he turned to drawing his feelings and desires. This lead him to a greater understanding of himself/herself. Kate lives as neither man or woman, after leaving scientology she views herself as spiritually intuned by her artwork.

Live through this- self portraits (15)

2010-01-18T12:20:00.000Z

Nan Goldin One of the great photographers of all time. Here is a collection of her photos. accompanied by a short peice of text to describe what is happening. the photos speak volumes.

'My work has been about making a record of my life that no one can revise. i photograph myself in times of trouble or change in order to find the ground to stand on in the change. You get displaced, and then taking self-portraits becomes a way of hanging onto yourself.' - Nan Golding.

Live through this- No more crying (14)

2010-01-18T12:05:00.000Z

Bell hooks is a successful writer focusing on gender and race. Her story tells of a tormented upbringing, with a family that did not understand her. Often called crazy or weak for her emotional outcries, discussing the effects of truma and how it is seen in modern times. it also talks about how faith brings her comfort and how her grandfather said it was ok to 'mourn.' she talks about 'soul murder' where people just get brushed away for being whom they are. She talks about how children are taught to supress emotions which leaves them numb, this often leads to the feeling of wanting death or wanting, needing to feels something, anything.

live through this- cello speak: exploring new languages for madness (14)

2010-01-18T11:49:00.000Z

Here tells the story of cello player, vocalist and song writer Bonfire Madigan. It speaks of her 'hippy' mother and her mental illness which whenever bonfire tried to talk to anyone about, she was silenced. It also tells us that she herself had a darkness and suisidal thoughts which lead her to want to find a creative outlook, a voice in which she could say all those things which wasnt ment to be dicussed. At school she discovered the cello which soon was to become her voice. She talked about hearing voices and how she avoided telling anyone because it would mean being judged and having a lable put on it, or being commited. She also talks about a 'wellness plan' that she has set out which states the negative feelings she may feel and what to do when they happen. instead of sercoming to it she allows it to be there, but as if to say to herself i can see why ur there, but i wont let u win. This has allowed her to express her feelings without being overwhelmed and sucumming to them.

live through this- rewriting the script (13)

2010-01-18T11:26:00.000Z

Here is the story of writer director and playwrite Carolyn Gage. It speaks of her history, her childhood, watching her father beat her mother and the memories of him sexually abusing his own daughter. It tells of her making complex storys from her dolls, often reflecting her own life and storys, but not those of a normal little girl of tea parties and catwalks. It talks about a complicated 'ordinary life' to which she was on a self destruction mode, she lost her job, her marriage and left her church. She came out as a lesbian and her hatred of men grew. She turned to writing plays, based around her own life experiences, often looking into homophobia, and being persicuted for something. she claimes this is what stopped her from self harm and trying to kill herself in her darkest hour, where she had lost everything. She was inspired by activist Ida wells-barnett talking bout selling your self only to the dearest of offers.

Live through this- weight watcher (12)

2010-01-18T11:03:00.000Z

The layout is interested. each part of performance artist stephanie howell's life in this text is written under the title of what she weighed at the time. as an overweight child, she was bullied and teased by kids. even her family wasnt particually nice about her weight. it goes on to discuss how going to a weight loss group begun her obsession with loosing weight and the scales. she would not eat, exercise heavily and force herself to sweat alot during by wearing alot of layers. she became obessed on starving and then bingeing. she cant remeber important things that happened but she can remember her weight as they happened. its the extreams of an eating disorder. She talks about how becoming an actress and landing a part in which she plays a stripper and had to basically walk around dance and sing in a bra and skirt, and the reaction of the other actors, director and the audience made her realise that her fat wasnt such a bad thing. she used this as a basis of writing and later she begun to create a personal performance which was based around her weight and how people perseve weight.

Live through this- the artful art of the role of the art in the ugly art of survival (11)

2010-01-18T10:40:00.000Z

Cleverly done this looks at comic book illistartator Diane DiMassa but actually in a comic strip. the comic its self is all over the place and suggests that her life is the same. it shows us her in theropy and how it startered her drawing. it also shows us that she tried to kill herself, and had a drug problem, and was also bi-polar. she had a vast mix of problems. her work is very expressive but its a shame that she doesnt go into more detail. its almost as if shes dodging the facts by trying to be comical.

Live through this- Rappin' my wounds (10)

2010-01-18T10:26:00.001Z

Here we read about toni blackman a hip-hop artist. The story is touching. its about her relationship with a man who is both psycically and mentally abusing her. he messes with her mind, making love with her and then saying he doesnt want her, he punches her, and yet she lets him because she is deeply in love with him and he 'touches her soul.' its a sadly common story. its almost a form of self punishment,she is twisted into believing tht this is her fault. this is what she deserves. we read that everytime she confronts him nothing changes and till she realises that she deserves better and that she is just punishing herself.

Thoughts so far

2010-01-16T18:26:00.000Z

Reading this book is very much inspiring my work. Some more then others, but still all something i can take from. I have had a few ideas from some of the peices written in the book. its important for me to draw from as many places that i can for inspiration on the experiences people have with self destruction. for now i will continue to read these entrys. its also inspiring me to look into other texts, maybe looking back at the idea of using diary entrys. Or maybe just a text of people looking back at experiences they have had like the book itself. after all from the past we learn.

Live through this- Friends as heroes (9)

2010-01-15T01:33:00.000Z

Silas Howard was a tormented child, from a mixed up family, she was sexually active at a very young age and turned to booze also at a young age which later lead to her turning to cocain and heavy drugs use. It is also about the friendship she shared with two girls she met on her travels and turned into a long lasting friendship. We hear how it wasnt till Silas went to a AA meeting and became clean from substance abuse, that she and her friends begun to create, writing music and later to write and direct a film.

live through this- double trouble in the love art lab: our breast cancer experiments (8)

2010-01-15T01:09:00.000Z

Here we look at the unusal Elizabeth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle. it follows there journey falling inlove, and deciding to create a 7 year art project called the love art lab in which they wanted to exhibit love to rid the world of some of its hatred. When the story takes a devistating turn of events when annie found a lump. she was confirmed to have breast cancer a year into the project. and to stay positive they decided to take the cancer as a project in there art lab. the first peice created was a two-woman performace piece called 'exposed: experiments in love, sex and death' in which they look back on there experiences in starting a new relationship as well as looking into the feelings that they felt over the experiences with cancer.They also did a 'chemo fashion show' in which they took photos of themselves in different clothes often comically during annies chemo sessions which lasted 4 months. The most unusal of there work, hair erotica came about when they desided to cut there hair as annies had started to fall out and got there photographer friend to photograph it. it was very erotic and they wanted to show that death can be erotic, it almost looks as if it is part of a fetish. as a whole they some how manage to show the love between us and almost make annies cancer into art.

live through this- she's lost control again (and how alice learnt to drive) (7)

2010-01-15T00:45:00.000Z

The piece beguins by talking about a work that writer nicole blackman wrote about a girl with an eating disorder, a character study almost. She did not herself suffer with it, but soon women were no longer feeling connected to the peice in a good light, but negatively looking it as a goal to look for, to achieve controlled self-destruction. She was over whelmed by the responce she got from readers, she had hundreds of girls and boys contacting them, most of them on the brink, self harmers, eating disorders, alchol abuse. And tried as best she could to help these people, answering every cry for help she recieved and how much she had learnt about these people and methods of coping and the links between self destruction. She also talks about a girl who wrote to her called 'alice' who seeked for help and how she talked her through the experience of letting these feelings drive her, and instead driving herself into what she wants to achieve in a positive mannor.

live through this- Slash n burn (6)

2010-01-15T00:11:00.000Z

to start this piece beguins with a rather good peice of text which is really fitting with what i am looking into:
'I hurt myself today
To see if i still feel
I focus on the pain
The only thing that's real' Trent Reznor via Johny Cash
This section is about Inga M.Muscio An author. she talks about the impact that death had on her life, and not being able to say goodbye, first she talks about the death of her brother, and then moves onto the death of her father which resulted on her mum setting up a new family with her newly outted gf. how this had pushed her and her brother apart, and how she had regretted not getting close to him before his tragic death and how this sent her in a downward spiral in not eating and sleeping, not to die but because she felt nothing more then loss. How she soon turned to cutting after an accident with a broken glass started a fastination with cutting into the numbness and watching the different stages of healing. she talks about burning herself and the lengths she went through to hide this from people, and how now after stopping the scars are a reminder of the healing process she had to go through.

Live throught this- total disaster: sketching sanity (5)

2010-01-14T23:45:00.000Z

Artist Fly uses her art to express her inner most feelings, this started when she suffered a nervous breakdown to which she turned to her sketchbooks. She describes how she felt during her breakdown, as almost an out of body experience to which her body and her mind were disconnected. and her drawings would be a away of bringing back together herself. She talks about her self portraits she did during this time, and how it helped her, but now she cant even bear to look at some of them. She also talks about the difficulty she had to look at herself in the mirror, it was a frightening concept. Her work almost copies the idea that she has different emotions alot of the times and that she could switch easily between depression and euphoria because her work is so diverse, looking at the work collectively it doesnt look like it could be from the same artist which is really unusual.

Live through this- a little hell breaks loose (4)

2010-01-14T23:26:00.001Z

poet and spoken word preformer Patricia Smith talks about her relationship with her parents, how her mother wanted her to act as something she wasn't, how she clung to the father she loved even though he was hardly the catholic role model her mother wanted, and how her fathers murder affected her. she talks about how her father encoraged her writing, and how she used his death to fuel her her passion for writing.

live through this- fighting fire with acid rain: a story of coming down (3)

2010-01-14T23:01:00.002Z

This piece is by illistrator Cristy c.Road whom uses her unique, almost comic book style to tell her story.Her story tells of a cocaine abuse, an addiction the the thrill, and not wanting to feel the emoitions seeping back in she would snort more when she feel she was on a come down, it affected her views on life an relationships, meaningless sex with strangers gave her a connection that she needed to feel, and how she one day realised that she didn't want to die with that numbness given to her by her addiction and how she wanted to focus on her work. While the text is highly descriptive of her come down and the emoitions seeping back in, it was the imagery which hit me more. The drawing she used to accompany the description of her turn around was herself, pulling out her heart from her chest and sewing it back together, which really symbolised and helped to visually show all the emotions she stated she went through, and this is something that i want to focus on, expeshilly in my video work, this short piece based around self harm but using visual symbolism rather than obvious gore.

live through this - lady lazarus: uncoupleting suicide and poetry (2)

2009-12-12T02:30:00.001Z

Daphne Gottlieb- Autor and poet.
here, while the story is more jumbled in its timeline,(and writen beautifully might i add) the basics of her story lean around being a writer and sufforing from depression, and the decision to take anti-depressents even though they could stop the creative flow and loose her ability to write. About how growing up she was advised against it as a child because her writing was to dark. How she grew up, and how she came to chose to try medication for her depression, how it made her feel and how she is now starting to write again after coming over the slump caused by the medication to begin to write again. From what i can tell, her writing seems very interesting and its something i should look into abit more. i did fine a website with an interview with the writer herself which can be read here, which also includes a few examples of her poetry.

Live through this - long, long thoughts (1)

2009-12-12T02:03:00.000Z

Carol Queen - writer, editor, guest speaker and co-founder and executive director of 'the sex centre'
Carol's story tells about her life growing up and how she had taught herself that her first sexual experience would change her life, how it would be amazing and take her out of the small town she grew up in. However it speaks about how she used to write about getting out and getting away from there, writing her inner most secrets in a journal which she hid. It then speaks of her first sexual experience, when she lost her virginity. And how while she thought she knew everything she needed to know about sex. she didnt. and she realised just how little she did know. Following this experience she realised that they didnt use a condom, and she couldnt get to a doctors to take the morning after pill. She realised that the one thing she thought would make her life so much better could actually be the one thing to tear her life apart if she had become a teenage mum. From this, feeling that she had no where to turn, no one to talk to, and a life that surely would be ruined if she had had a child at such a young age and in a small town like that, that she contemplated suicide. She got to the point of working out the details of how, and how likely it was to work. Till it come to the point of writing the letter. And this is what stopped her, sitting down and just writing, writing about all that had happened to her, pouring her heart into this book, for as long as she sat there writing she couldnt be jumping out of her window. Now, she looks back and sees that yes her first time did change her life, because it lead her to learn more about sex and how as humans we see it, and it also lead her into writing, which is now her biggest success to date.

just to inform you...

2009-12-12T01:45:00.000Z

I havn't really had time over the last few days to post anything on here. My laptop got stolen from my home on the 9th. while i had the majority of my work backed up, it means its hard for me to have access to a computer for the last few days. Thanks to my lovely friend helen lending me her old laptop (which i am on now!) i can once again beguin to continue with my work. This break of 2 days without my laptop has really forced me into reading abit more, so i decided to start to write up my notes on the book that inspired this change in direction. 'Live through this.' So this is what will be in the following posts :) thanks for your patience and also for the help of a lovely friend.

plan of action!

2009-12-08T04:40:00.000Z

Ok so my ideas for photography and video are both similar and different, so from now on my posts will be named for which one the reaserch is more about. For video i will start to look more at Surrealism and surrealist films and even avent-garde cinema, as well as photography and art in that style, while with the photography i will still basically follow suit by focusing on reserching artists i feel express feelings and my ideas for this almost text based project.

Ideas for Photos

2009-12-08T04:24:00.000Z

Ok so recently i have been focusing on how to use video and what kind of style i would want for a video and to be honest i have found it a little hard to think how to encorperate photography into this project without being to samey to my video. So i had a brain wave after my last video of using a diary entry to base my photographs on, and exploring the idea of having it follow along a narrative of what happens during a breakdown. I also like the idea of breaking down the text and encorperating it as a title/discription to the peice of work to help reinforce the story behind it. I also could look into how a persons perception changes while during a breakdown. so maybe pairing up two images together? One of what is really happening, and one of what it feels like is happening. It is something for me to think about anyway, and develop.

My own work.

2009-12-08T04:17:00.002Z

From looking at the movement in the two previous posts, Ive made a very short video, which isnt by any means finished, or even worked on alot. The idea behind it was focusing on a line from a diary extract that i wrote when there was alot of bad stuff going on in my life. While i do tend to bottle things in, i never feel like i can tell people my inner most feelings. Im to protected. However i do write things down, letters, notes to myself. No one ever has read them. But im looking to it for inspiration. And the line is that 'I feel like there is a beast within me' I worked upon the idea that when you self harm, or get the feeling to do it, its like a trigger switches inside you and you just find it hard to control yourself. its linked very close with paranoya. You feel like everyone is against you and no one cares. You become worried that people who love you, dont. And you feel that everyone around you hates you as much as you hate yourself. So keeping this in mind i wanted to focus on the eye, as if watching or being watched. I also wanted to try out speeding up the video footage to add a different effect. To represent the 'beast' within, i wanted to use my white out contact lenses. It makes a more obvious change to the exteria however when the feelings take over, its not always that obvious. So this is what i came up with:

i decided to make this film black and white, mainly because the people i have looked at so far have shot in black and white, and i think it adds to the abstractness of it, I am not really happy with the text, and dont think that text in this kind of video is a good idea, maybe i should just give the audience the chance to make up there own mind. I know there is no sound. But that is my next step really, to work on the sound, edit out the text i think as well. Also while the lighting is good, i really want more contrast to my video so maybe look into how to use filters and effects to get a much darker look? In here i cut up the eye movement and sped up parts, as well as leaving others the same. I like the effect but i think with the eye movement its a little more tricky to tell because the eye moves so fast anyway. Maybe next i could also experiment with the sped up style with full body movement. This is just a snipet of the idea i have to come for my video. i like the representation within the imagery and for some reason it reminds me slightly of a Dali's film Un Chein Andalou, in which we see what looks like a woman, in extreame close up getting her eye razored out. Maybe i could look into surrealism? it seems to be following the kind of style that i am looking at, representation and symbolism, high contrasts, black and white, even shock values to some extent.

Where i am getting my inspiration from

2009-12-08T04:13:00.000Z

Mainly i am pulling from my own experiences here, and when it comes to subject matter ive also been talking to friends who i know suffer from Depression, Skitzophrenia, as well as people i have known to have self harm.Ive also spoken to someone who has had a drinking problem. but i will also be posting my notes i wrote on the book 'live through this.' and even reserching to get a more broad idea of what to think and to try and explain the emotions and feelings people have when they are self destructive

Silent hill Movement

2009-12-08T02:36:00.000Z

while looking at the saw editing techniques the movement in that reminded me so much of the movement of the Nurses scene in the silent hill film.

i again also managed to find abit from behind the scenes to give me an idea what was shot, and what was finally realeased on the screens.

While the film is horror and its not really what i want to focus on, again like the movement created by the editing i love the movement of the 'nurses' i also love the style of them. Appearing to be bandaged from head to toe, and while in the context of the film it is obviously done to create a weird effect, it could be used in my work to help create the feelings brought on by a 'break down' or an episode of the want to self harm. The feeling of being completely covered from head to toe, cacooned if you were, suppressed by your feelings and your need to self harm. The movement is reflective almost of a self struggle and jittery-ness almost reflects the feelings that your fighting a battle within yourself.

Saw Editing

2009-12-08T02:26:00.000Z

Something i also liked about the saw films was one of the editing techniques that was reoccurring. While i don't want to keep going on about the films, this technique is something that i think i will want to try out in my work. The idea is just over exagerated movements spead up really fast. Ive found a few of the examples i noticed in the films as well as a video how how they created one of the traps which i thought was interesting because it just goes to show how much effort went into making it look realistic. But i also managed to find a video about the editing on the cube trap which is (partly) which i wanted to look at. (it does have the sped up peices but only very quickly.)
While i couldnt find the clip i wanted (a car chase scene) i did find a few examples of the style i am thinking of:

the amanda trap (saw 1) i cant embed into this but here is a link to it:
The reverse bear trap
the technique im talking about is around the 1.40 mark

or the razor wire trap:
Pauls test
that starts around the 2.06 mark

or for a short clip in the Cube test:
Strahm survives
The making of the cube trap:

The editing of the Cube trap:

SAW (including spoilers! haha)

2009-12-08T01:14:00.001Z

While many see 'SAW' or the 'SAW franchise' (seems though we are up to number 7 in the making) as a gore fest of un-needed and uncalled for violence, Many people wont look past the graphic nature to the main plot behind it, which is what intreages me the most. While it does take a long while for the story to come out, the basic plot and the story behind the lead character helps the audience to understand the mind of the serial killer 'JIGSAW' however to some extent John Kramer is not a killer.

While Saw one begins and remains shot 90% in one room, a bathroom, we soon learn that it is not all what it seems when the two 'victims' back story and what exactly they have done to deserve this, to play the game. While in the end we find out it all is the plan of a single man, who reveals himself in a very shocking twist at the end of the movie, Later on we realise that this isnt just the sick and twisted game of a madman, but a cold and harsh way of dealing with the idea that the world around us has gone to shit, and he is offering his victims a chance to write there wrongs.

To understand the mind of John Kramer you will need to understand abit about his past:

Married to Jill Tuck, In flashbacks through out the 5th and 6th film we learn that Johns problems begun with the death of his baby Gideon while his wife was pregnant and working at a drugs clinic by drug addict Cecil and later we find out amanda young. After the death of his son, John closed himself off from his wife and soon found himself devorsed. . After this turn of events, John found himself trapped by his own complacency, until he was diagnosed with inoperable cancer. Extremely bitter over his wasted life, John began observing the lives of others and became even more depressed as he saw those around him wasting the gift of life that he had just been denied. After surviving a suicide attempt, John was reborn. The idea that the only way for someone to change is for them to change themselves. He designed a test for Cecil and decided to use the rest of his existence to design more of these "tests" as a form of "rehabilitation" that would change the world "one person at a time". These tests where on the premise that the victims would have to endure a pain, a suffering, a loss, or even (in saw 4) learn the act of forgiveness and moving on. John was soon given the name JIGSAW so named because he removed a puzzle-piece-shaped chunk of flesh from those who do not escape his traps. John himself states that this name was given to him by the media, and that the cut piece of flesh was meant to represent that these victims were each missing something, what he called the "survival instinct".

The tests: brutal which are often ironically symbolic representations of the problems in the victim's life and require them to undergo severe physical or psychological torture to escape. For example in SAW4 a man who raped and video recorded him doing it (and got off scott free from the law) had to gouge out his own eyes or else his limbs would be torn from there sockets.

To continue his work, he enlists the help of his only surviver to date Amanda. And via flash backs we learn that Detective Hoffman is enlisted into helping Jigsaw after he manages to create a copycat killing in JIGSAWS style to murder the guy who raped and killed his sister.

The point, that i well, love about this film is infact the logic behind it, the idea of forcing these victims into taking charge of changing there own lives, by sacraficing something else.

The machinery used in the 'tests' remind me very much of the DIANA THORNEY CROFT photo of the woman in the headset, infact JIGSAWS first apprentice Amanda servived a very similar trap seen here in a trailor:

Not only does the imagery of the traps, the feeling of restraint, the darkness and almost evilness of the whole feel of this film intreges me. But the idea that these people are getting 'salvation' from hurting themselves also links into the idea of self harm that i am looking into. Some people do selfharm because they feel it saves them from this dark place, from this world where nothing seems right and your scared of your own mind, where deep down you know that this feeling wont leave unless you do it, unless you hurt yourself.

I was lucky enough to go to a 12-hour screening of the saw films in marathon at the cinema delux in town, not only did this help me by reinforcing the overlays in narrative and the high use of flash backs and elipse plots, but it also made me think about the great effort the team must of gone into, not only to have such an interesting plot, but to create JIGSAWS world inside them movies.

Diana ThorneyCroft

2009-12-08T00:27:00.002Z

Known for making artwork that hovers on the edge of public acceptance, Thorneycroft has pursued subject matter that often challenges her viewing audience. Since 1989, when she began to work in the medium of photography, she has exhibited various bodies of work Canada, the United States, Edinburgh, Helsinki, Moscow, Tokyo, Sydney, Vienna and Belgrade and at the Carpenter Centre for Visual Arts at Harvard University. While her work 'The body, its lesson in camouflage' is somewhat a distorted and somewhat twisted take on reality its darkness, its feeling of constraint, the very high contrast, the twisted shapes, the bodys restrained, restricted. Its dark and yet it makes you want to look deeper into the work. It focuses on sexuality and also on anxietys. its almost like a dark play unfolding before your eyes. Her use of lighting plays gently and contrasts the high black. I must say i do love black and white photography which features high contrasts. Its just the difference between the darkest shadows and the white light. As if you are drawn from the darkness, but it is still there, watching. some of her photos she shoots her subjects under water, almost if to distort this person, others she uses masks on. Her work really is inspiring. The feelings it makes me feel as an audience is something i want to portray in my work. Its almost abstract in a sence.

These final two images really stand out for me. The first being the wire or barbed wire on her arms, the skin is contorted under it and looks really effective. The second is just full on, almost torture. It reminds me slightly of one of the 'game' set ups in the film saw.

Evergon

2009-12-08T00:11:00.000Z

Evergon, photographer, abandoned his birth name at the beginning of his professional career. Famous for his use of an extensive range of traditional and innovative photographic techniques. These range from exploration of long-neglected historical printing techniques through his pioneering use of colour photocopying, Polaroid photography and holography. Evergon focuses more on the process and exploration of the imagination an imagery used rather then just documenting. Through his staging of models and exotic props or by means of collaged images, Evergon has creates work resembling more the traditions of European painting than the conventions of photography.
Supprisingly Evergon as a person is alot different from what i imagened. I watched this video on him:
Profile of an artist- Evergon which i got to see how contrasting he is to what i imagened just by seeing his work. I like his use of symbolism in his work, and im also intreaged by his use of a HUGE (room sized) polaroid camera! His work often uses animals and human mix, and his work is very Controversial expesherly his work with high levels of bondage. However, this is what i like about his work. The intensitity and the feeling of being trapped. The sercumming to something, such as to be bound. Sadly it is hard to find imagery of his online without paying the £30 odd for his cataloge. However i do love from what i have seen of his work. Maybe i could look into the feeling of being tied down.

Faking death

2009-12-02T23:31:00.000Z

So finding it hard for inspiration on the internet (getting mega annoyed with a load of attention seeking photos of 'emo' kids holding out there wrists covered in fake blood.) I headed to the library where i found a book entitled 'Faking death' by Penny Cousineau-Levine. while the text focuses on the art photography and imagination of canadian photographers, some of the photographers in there caught my eye. Here i thought i would post a few of the images that caught my eye and then i could look further into them, and there work.

The first that catches my eye is the work of Evergon. His work features bound people. Whats unusal and makes the distortion caused by the image, and what i really like about it is the distortion, it looks painful, and constricted. it looks trapped, feels enclosed, claustrophobic, whats unsual is that he mimics the 'scanner' effect by pushing his subject up against glass, and used the same lighting effect that you would get with a scanner. its a very different effect.

Another photographer that really shines out at me is the work of Diana Thorneycroft whos work of captured people, among a mass of greenery, dead animals, teeth, machinery, looks almost like a mix of horror and sci-fi. It again feels consticted but also gives across the feeling of domination and control. like something is controling you.

reserch problems

2009-12-02T22:42:00.000Z

i have found it really hard to find photographers who base there work on the emotions behind self harm, the main thing i can find is photos of people with scarification on there bodies from years of self harm, or overly 'gorific' amature photos of bloodied bodies. although it has made me realize that the majority of self harmers seem to cut this is not something i want to pursue in my work.

Defining self harm

2009-12-02T22:18:00.001Z

Breathing space

Self-harm results when an individual sets out on purpose to hurt or injure his/her self. Self-harming behaviour can manifest itself in different ways but involves something that hurts such as:

Cutting

Burning

Overdosing on tablets or medicines

Punching

Throwing the body against an object

Pulling out of hair or eyelashes

Scratching, picking or tearing at their skin

Inhaling or sniffing harmful substances

Swallowing objects

Inserting objects into the body

Tying ligatures around the neck, arms, or legs to restrict the flow of blood

Ingesting small amounts of toxic substances or objects to cause discomfort and damage but with no intention to die.

An individual may self-harm on a regular basis or only occasionally. It is evident that for many it is a way of coping with a specific problem and they stop once the problem is resolved. Other people self-harm for years whenever certain kinds of pressures or feelings arise, an example of this was Kelly Holmes the Olympic gold medallist who self-harmed when she was injured or when her training was not going well.

Self-harm can be seen as the opposite of suicide as it is often a way of coping with life rather than of giving up on it. However, some individuals may go on to complete suicide and often this is unintentional.

Defining self destruction.

2009-12-02T22:13:00.003Z

Self destruction is a broad subject matter and i found a few articles to help me to define it abit better:

Oregon counciling- self destructive behavior in women

We are self destructive when we use drugs in an attempt to control our emotions. There is no mind-altering drug which does not have some harmful physical effect.

Eating disorders, alcohol and drug abuse are easily recognizable self destructive behaviors. But self destructive patterns are not always so obvious, nor are their causes always easy to understand.

We are self destructive when we spend beyond our means; when we are sexual in ways that cause us to lose self respect; when we keep ourselves in personal relationships that cause us to feel inferior, abused, or taken advantage of.

We are self destructive when we neglect our bodies and do not give them rest and exercise; we are self destructive when we drive ourselves, overworking or over exercising to please others or to make ourselves feel okay.

We are self destructive when we stifle our legitimate angers; when we turn our disappointments into contempt for ourselves; when we avoid attempting our ambitions because we will not accomplish them perfectly.

We are self destructive when we make others responsible for our lives,

by blaming "them"

by an attitude of helplessness

by believing and behaving as if we have no capacity to change or to manage our own lives effectively and pleasurably.

As women we are especially vulnerable to self destructive behavior which has its roots in the sense of shame. Because we are sometimes ashamed of the simple fact of being women!

We can feel shame about our bodies

"I'm not pretty enough, or thin enough." "My body is dirty because of my sexuality."

Shame of competence

I'm stupid." "If I try I'll mess it up." "Some things I'll never be good at; I'm just a female."

Shame in relationships

"How can I expect anybody to like me, I'm such a witch!" "People think I'm foolish when I try to say anything." "Who could love me, I'm so awful?"

Shame about our own character

"Why try? " "I'm flawed." "I'm disgusting." "I'm worthless." I'm powerless."

Addictions, compulsions, all the forms of self destructive behavior have the perverse function to numb shame. When we are caught in self destructive tangles, we forget to feel badly about ourselves -- for the moment.

self destructive behaviour not just cutting

Psychologist: "Have you ever deliberately harmed yourself by cutting?"
My response: "Only when I couldn't afford a tattoo or a piercing."
Psychologist: "But that's..."

My response: "exactly the same sort of pain, it's just more socially acceptable. People don't look at you like

some sort of messed up freak.

Psychologist: "I'd never considered that."

Self destructive behaviour is more common than anyone realises. And it doesn't just take the form of cutting one's skin with a sharp blade. There are many different ways to be self destructive, some are just more obvious than others. I'm going to try and run through some of the different ways people self-destruct. Keep in mind, I'm not a psychologist, I'm just going with what I've learned from doing it myself and being there when people close to me went through it as well.

What makes some of these things difficult to detect is that some people do them for different reasons other than to be self destructive. I'm not going to go into the reasons why people become self destructive, as I think that other advice on minti well and truely covers that, I'm just pointing out some things that even my psychiatrist missed, and show how easily it can be missed or misinterpreted. There are many complex reasons as to why anyone does anything.

Live through this.

2009-12-02T21:37:00.000Z

I resently brought a book, entitled live through this which is a book about 'creativity an self-destruction' The book, is basically a collection of essays wrote by famous female artists who have struggled with self-destruction, and how they use creativity to servive abuse, incest, madness and depression, cutting, eating disorders and addiction. Its an inspiring collection of work and leads me to want to include something on self destruction in my work, the most obvious one for me is Cutting and self harm. After all i know how it feels to feel so numb that pains the only thing that can get you through it. to make you feel alive.
However i dont want to follow the obvious route. i want to focus on symbolism, and maybe insted of showing a narrative making my work more conceptual? making it almost like a weird virsion where you can see inside the mind of someone on self destruct mode? i like the idea of making the audience feeling what you feel, or giving an insight and tryin to explain feelings through imagery. im going to start by

Trying a new angle

2009-12-02T20:42:00.003Z

Resently i have got tired of limiting myself to such a small feild as the mexican day of the dead and really want to open up this project to something which i find cropping up in alot of my reserch so far, the relationship that the living have with death.

I like this idea of what it is that makes us feel alive. so like my little experiment before i thought id ask around, what is it that makes you feel alive?

here are some of the answers i recieved:

music above anything else
and when people show they care for me... thats when i feel something back... that kinda.. human connection...
when Im helping someone and they either learn or grow from my help so it doesnt happen again
Having free choices
being happy makes me feel alive. and being happy is a choice. so, I choose to live life. I choose to feel alive.
walking on Sandsend Beach. Being part of the crowd/being there when Leicester score & win
the feeling of being wanted, quite simply. :P
going outside and feeling the air i breathe, seeing the sun, and watching the rain :)
being on a tall building over looking the world
the smell cut grass, flying down hill on a bike right on the edge, A snuggle from one that cares, learning something new
when im at the gym and i feel my muscles tightening and the blood surging through my veins

The point im trying to make is that everyone has something different in there lives that makes them feel alive. being human, we morn the dead, we fear death itself and we work so hard to feel alive. Sometimes its things that hurt us that help us feel alive. Pain is one thing that keeps me alive. Do you ever feel so numb that you will do something little, like dig your nails into your hand? bite the skin on your finger? even to a point drinking a little to much, or smoking to much, people do this to get feeling back, that feeling of being human. being alive.

Dear Blogger.

2009-12-02T14:46:00.002Z

Dear blogger, im sorry i haven't been updating you alot resently, but in all honesty i feel like crap. I feel myself spirialling into something that i dont want to do but i cant help it. this is how it always begins. Something triggers it, i dont know what but from this i just end up in that place, that place i dont want to be again. All i can hear is that little voice of paranoya in my head and its turning into this peircing skreaching noise. But if thats not enough. i am alone. more alone then ive felt in a while, i dont want to be here no more but hay what can i do? waste all that money on half a degree, even if i do go home from the sounds of the phonecalls i got last night its nothing happy to go home to. but here? what do i have here? i'm doing a course surrounded by a segrigated class of people who dont even want to attempt to get to know each other. i am slipping away into a world where i am stuck. Stuck being alone, with out the confidence to continue my work or the courage to do what i want, do i just sit there, witht he constant nightmares causing my lack of sleep. i dont want to go to sleep, im scared by my own thoughts and where they come from. or do i try and change this feeling of alone, paranoid, numbness into something i can work from? something i can use to fuel my work. I know what i want to do. the one thing i always turn to when this feeling takes over. But i promised myself i would stop that. so maybe throwin myself head first into this will help.
we will have to see i guess.

What would you do if you only had 15 hours to live?

2009-11-24T18:08:00.003Z

leading on from the video Forevers not so long i tried to do abit of a survey, which i asked:
What would you do if you only had 15hours to live?'
so here are some of the answers i got:

'saying goodbye to friends and family and probably spend some time on the ice'
'i would get as drunk as possible, fall asleep and die'
'seriously telling people exactly how i feel and trying to summarise what i want people to remember to the people closest and doing something nice'
'play monopoly'
'don't know...i would first call everyone I cared about and said how much I cared for them and loved them then I would do things I would not have done before'
'take out lots of loans and spend lots of money on things ive always wanted'
'id probably cry 1st then tell the guy i love that i loved him and gather my friends together and just have fun'
'id probably do anything and everything possible to do enjoy the last bit of life i had and not look back on anything i did that day'
'perhaps eat drink and do everything I wanted to do for so long but never had the motivation'
'drugs and sex, and drink jack daniels for the last 3 hours'
'spend it with the best gf in the world'
'I have 15 hours to live? Go convince Andy Keogh to marry me (And Stearman!). Blow all my money, spend time with family..'
'Id want to find the someone who i thought had made me happiest in the world then be with them and my daughter.'

This idea reminds me of a blog style website i found called Before i die i want to...
where 2 americans have taken polaroids of everyday people and asking them, what do you want to do before you die? The Before I die I want to... project was inspired by a combination of factors: (1) the “death” of the Polaroid, (2) a psychologist’s tool called safety contracts, and (3) a passion to get people to think about (and act upon) what is really important in their lives through this simple, straight-forward question. I think this is a really clever idea. and it all makes us think about how precious life is and our own mortality. The most touching of images on that site is that they ask patients in a hospice what they want to do before they die, as well as asking the staff who deal with death on a daily basis.
a few examples from the site:

Dani Martin Photography and video

presentation of work

The Final piece and evaluation *drum roll please*

MY WORK- the editing and abit of 'splaining

MY WORK- lip scene

cutting moments

MY WORK- scribble-effect

Franklyn

the chumscrubber

MY WORK- first shot

Self harm music videos continued

Self harm music videos

suicide Music videos part 2

Music videos featuring suicide

Masahisa Fukase 深瀬 昌久

The polaroid Book

so where i am up to.

saatchi gallery part 2

saatchi gallery part 1

experimentation with a few ideas

Helmar Lerski

Jan Svankmajer

soundscape.

Oleg Dou

untitled image

skin putty experiments

Fake skin experiments part 2!

Fake skin experiments

Kumi Yamashita

No Face

Rebecca Belmore

Mark Jenkins

Chris Dunlop

Zdzislaw bekzinski

Rene Magritte

down with the sickness

redoing lip scene

plans and story board

MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON- video

Cindy Sherman - photography

The Basis of my body of work

Video feedback and thoughts

hay

More photos

More photos

More photo experimentation

The Golden Age of Grotesque

Photo expermentation

The Golden Age of Grotesque

which i feel i should look into more, try and find out who was the photographer behind it.

Susan Cunningham- photographing scars

Text, Depression and photographs reserch

Over the last few weeks - text reserch

Nobuyoshi Araki

Jpg- agnese sironi

Photography- sebastian sabal-bruce

Vilem Reichmann - surrealist photography

Photos- Nan goldin

Sewn up mouth - film

beating heart? -film

Frozen Heart - Film

Ideas for film development.

Film Practical- 20second clip

Film- surrealism and dali

Kozuke Okahara- self-mutilation in Japan

Nan Goldin

Inspiration from the book

Live through this- Art as Prayer (16)

Live through this- self portraits (15)

Live through this- No more crying (14)

live through this- cello speak: exploring new languages for madness (14)

live through this- rewriting the script (13)

Live through this- weight watcher (12)

Live through this- the artful art of the role of the art in the ugly art of survival (11)

Live through this- Rappin' my wounds (10)

Thoughts so far

Live through this- Friends as heroes (9)

live through this- double trouble in the love art lab: our breast cancer experiments (8)

live through this- she's lost control again (and how alice learnt to drive) (7)

live through this- Slash n burn (6)

The Final piece and evaluation drum roll please

Masahisa Fukase 深瀬昌久