I have created a workflow for my Free Project: Existential Crisis. This has all the stages of my production and given the short time scale (2 weeks) I will be working on each stage and blogging this as I go along.
Please find the link here: Existential Crisis: Neo Dada Film
I have created a Milanote board to explore my initial ideas for my project a little further thinking about what I would like to research and explore throughout the work. Here I am considering work that will inform my work and I am hoping push the boundaries of my ideas.
I added my about me writing by copying and pasting into a text box on the About Page on my Wix website. I checked that my fonts were consistent - I used Monserrat font for the titles and the text.
Today we were creating our Contact page to begin with. So I went to my menu and to Contact Page and then clicked on the add button and chose a contact form which I customized the Input fields to match my website design
I now added my social media links I wanted to add these to my footer so they appear on every page, I clicked on the 'Add' button and then social and then I chose a social bar. I put this in place then deleted the ones that I was not using and added blogger and the link to this and the link to Linkedin. I then saved and previewed these to check they were working.
I added a gallery to my portfolio page ready for final project - I will adjust this once my project is completed
The next project for class should follow the brief for The Free Project - this should be a very exciting undertaking as it allows me to explore ideas and mediums outside what I would normally create. On first thoughts I am tempted to create a performance piece and use sound for this piece. I would need to ensure here I have a very strong concept as this will need to really push the boundaries creatively. I started to think about performance sound that I have enjoyed and one of these was Pippi Lotti Rist. Her videos explore the the feminine, gender, the body and sensuality. IO lay on the gallery floor of The Hayward Gallery and her film engulfed you as you lay there; 'Down on the floor there is a projection of a woman's body. The camera homes in, turning as it delves into her lipsticked mouth. Unexpectedly, the next thing we see – just for a second – is the woman's puckered anus' (Searle, 2011)
Rists' images merge together and flow and you as the viewer become part of the performance this interactive and overwhelming feeling is something that I would love to be able to do on a large scale, obviously we are rather confined here to something a little bit smaller scale. I can't necessarily have people lying on cushions in a gallery like Rist; 'Up on the mezzanine, I lounged on body-shaped cushions, pairs of stuffed jeans and headless upholstered torsos, plumping them up in vaguely orgiastic piles. It was soothing to lie there, amid a labyrinth of diaphanous curtains' (Searle, 2011) so perhaps I need to think how else I can engage the viewer in the performance. In terms of concept for performance I do want to really do want to look to something that is different and so this time I do think I would like to perhaps move away from gender and womanhood and into something perhaps more existential. Something more about life and death and the nature of existence as lately I have been reading Nietzsche again and Zizek and the important questions of life need to be addressed within art. This reminds me of the neo expressionism of David Bowie...
This artwork was used for the Outside album however I like the idea of neo expressionism used within the film/performance work as this might express ideas of existence and following in Burroughs and Bowie's footsteps using the cut up techniques to really start to explore ideas could be interesting as a starting point, perhaps the resulting work will be a dithyramb of some beauty. Burroughs technique involved; 'The cutup is a mechanical method of juxtaposition in which Burroughs literally cuts up passages of prose by himself and other writers and then pastes them back together at random. This literary version of the collage technique is also supplemented by literary use of other media. Burroughs transcribes taped cutups (several tapes spliced into each other), film cutups (montage), and mixed media experiments (results of combining tapes with television, movies, or actual events).' ( Burroughs Cut Ups 2001) I like this as this technique was not confined to just words but to film and sound. This is something I would like to explore as recently I had stared to consider the moving image and how I might use this within my work, I had ideas of layers of days upon each other and this existence and the repetitive nature of life. Below is Burrough's film that does use a series of cut up clips to create an Avant Garde film which does use repetitive sound and movement and has its roots in Dada and Surrealism; 'It almost has the same air as a drug trip or a severe fever dream. Even the most esoteric of film students would have trouble arguing that this does' (Kahn, 2022)
"The Cut Ups," (1966) William S. Burroughs
The idea that it is almost like a fevered dream does appeal as I do think my own best ideas come in the night in a fevered dream! The Dadist and Surrealists were keen on the unconscious and using this as a source of inspiration and with rise of Freud and Jung and psychoanalysis this method exploration in art is still used to today and many artists look to their unconcious for inspiration. Like automatic writing perhaps almost this could be an 'automatic film'
Here I am just exploring ideas and thoughts in my next post I will start to bring together final ideas that I would like to develop for this small project.
References
Searle, A. (2011) Pipilotti rist: Big time sensuality, The Guardian. Guardian News and Media. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/sep/26/pipilotti-rist-hayward-gallery-review (Accessed: February 20, 2023).
Rutten, M. (2023) David Bowie: From popstar to neo-expressionist painter, DailyArt Magazine. Available at: https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/david-bowie-from-popstar-to-neo-expressionist-painter/ (Accessed: February 20, 2023).
William S Burroughs Cut Ups (2001) LanguageIsAVirus.com. Available at: https://www.languageisavirus.com/creative-writing-techniques/william-s-burroughs-cut-ups.php (Accessed: February 20, 2023).
Kahn, J. (2022) Watch William S. Burroughs' 1966 avant-garde movie 'The Cut Ups', Far Out Magazine. Available at: https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/watch-william-s-burroughs-1966-avant-garde-movie-the-cut-ups/ (Accessed: February 20, 2023).
The Book of Lost Things II was created because I very much enjoyed the process of creating The Book of Lost Things I. The Story of Milk in (Lost Things I) was a vibrant tale of a young woman whose life had become rather directionless until she has a very strange encounter with the church of St Jude and Matt the Monk. In the mirror story The Story of Honey (Lost Things II) Honey is just about to embark on a journey to England for his PhD studies which is on the transformational power of St Jude . The book if it was made into one would have alternate chapters of Milk and Honey and I do think that this would work very well indeed. I enjoyed the process of writing these stories and using literary devices of teh short story and comparing my work with Maupassant as this was an interesting exercise and made me really look at how I had used language with my story and how this is conveyed to the reader. If I had more time on this I would do much more analysis and research as I do think that this would prove most interesting. I will add a little more research on target market as I have placed this book for sale on Blurb and I want to test where I would find an audience for this work.
I will continue on this journey with thsi work and I do think it has 'got legs' and could certainly become a larger book. Also I would be interested in how I would develop this as a writer and turn it into a longer novel, I know that I want to find out what my charaters will do next..
After uploading the book to Blurb, I then began to set up my book on the site.
I added more space for each section and then republished. Everything is now working and This project is complete!
Book of Lost Things II: Project Plan
This is my project plan that I will be following throughout the term to ensure I keep on track with my project work.
I have already downloaded Bookwright onto my desktop and so I begin by choosing the book I would like to create, in the spirit of the chapbook I choose a trade book, 6"x 9" in standard colour with a hardcover image wrap.
The drafts can be found here...
Chapter Two: Professor Zimmerman
I also have been collecting some images to use with my story and have been collecting the picture credits to add to the end.
I have also completed an additional piece on Memory/Knowledge. I will work on the drafts further and begin adding these to Blurb.
After finalising the images and curating those that I would be using for my portfolio I then began putting this together as a collection using Photoshop
I also wrote an introduction to go with the images that I have taken and I will put this in a gallery on my website. I have chosen to use only the portrait black and white images for this through curation.
I opened Wix and went to 'Edit Site', I clicked on 'Menus and Pages' in the left-hand menu and then clciked on 'Add Page' and named it 'Urbanity Bites', the name of my portfolio. I then clicked into the page and added a title and short introduction. I added a sliding gallery and clicked on 'manage media' to upload the images that I had prepared.
Once uploaded (my upload speed is the pace of a snail!) I went into each file and ensured I had added the title and that they worked in the gallery, I reordered them to make sure I was happy with the flow of the images and then once I was completely happy with the arrangement I republished the site.
I added a suitable introduction at the top of the page and added an introduction as part of the portfolio. I liked the way that this looked and now I will finalise completely just by adding a button to the front portfolio page and a back to portfolio button on the top of the new page so that there is ease of movement round the site
I will test all this again once I have published other works this term.
Guy De Maupassant The Necklace (1884)
The form my writing is taking for this small project is part of a short story, a narrative written with a God's eye view. I also wrote a short essay, a little thought piece on knowledge and memory.
The short story 'brief fictional prose narrative that is shorter than a novel and that usually deals with only a few characters. The short story is usually concerned with a single effect conveyed in only one or a few significant episodes or scenes. The form encourages economy of setting, concise narrative, and the omission of a complex plot' (Short Story n.d) This is the perfect form for a chapbook and although I am writing this as half of another story I do think the first three chapters have the characteristics listed here.
I am going to look at another short story here as an example of this form and compare how this is written to my own writing. The story I have chosen is Guy de Maupassant's 'The Necklace'. It concerns a young woman who is envious of the social status of others and wished to rise through society but in this small story her chance of this ever happening is blown when she steals a necklace to wear at a ball, then loses it and so to replace it has to spend the rest of her life paying off this debt, only to discover that the necklace was not worth anything really at all. It is interesting to note that I have the book version of this and I also looked up the web version the web translation is poor by comparison so I will hand type from the book version as this is about writing well after all!
So I will compare my opening paragraph with that of Maupassant. Maupassant begins;
'She was one of those pretty and charming young girls who continue to be born from time to time, as if by a slip of fate, into a family of clerks. She has no dowry, no expectations, no means of coming across any rich or distinguished man who would understand, love, and marry her. She let herself be married to a minor civil servant in the Ministry of Education' (de Maupassant G. 2008:55)
Maupassant writes using literary realism and in my own work I will be doing the same, I want the characters and atmosphere to ring as true to life as possible.
My own first paragraph begins:
'Honey sat on his dilapidated porch, in his house in Miles City, Montana. He was just on the cusp of everything going in the right direction. His PhD thesis was going well, his Professor at the University had agreed that he could go to England, and he really wanted this, no needed this for his PhD to succeed. So why, when he sat here in his favourite pair of jeans and t-shirt with the legend Elton John did he feel like he would rather bum around Miles City with his mates for the next three years. Perhaps he was afraid that this was the point life would get too serious. He would also have to fit in with all those stuck-up English people who probably knew more than he did and even if they didn't with their posh British accent would sound like they did. Honey ruffled his slightly long wavy brown hair, he should get clean and get ready for work.' (Van-de-Velde 2023)
In Maupassant there is a concise use of language that, like poetry has said much in very few lines, we may not yet know the girl's name in Maupassant but we know she is pretty, poor, with no prospects, and is she is married, probably not happily but there it is. In my own piece, we understand that Honey is American, likes, Elton John, and bumming around but he has dreams about his PhD and going to England. I have used a much more wordy and descriptive approach which is perhaps more acceptable in a longer novel, I suspect that really I am trying to write a longer novel and really my three chapters do only just begin the story..
In Maupassant's tale, the girl is obsessed with social status and it pains her;
'Mathilde suffered ceaselessly, feeling herself intended for the delicacies and luxuries of life. She distressed at the poverty of her pension. at the bareness of the walls, at the shabby chairs, the ugly curtains. All these things. of which another woman of her rank would never even have been concious, tortured her and made her angry' (de Maupassant G. 2008:55)
Here we now know how she feels inside, we are taken into her heart and to understand her, her anger at her poor status, laid out before her every day in the home that she feels is not good enough for her. Again here the text is concise yet still manages to convey depth of feeling through use of adjectives for her house and the use of alliteration such as 'suffered ceaselessly' and the depth of her anger is strengthened by how her own house 'tortured' her with its shabby appearance.
In my own story, Honey is also from a poor background which is alluded to throughout by the house, furnishings and his belongings
Honey Devlin had never travelled outside the United States, actually he had never travelled really in the United States, his parents were fairly poor working in menial jobs that just made ends meet. Honey had stayed at home when he started university, and worked in the bar to pay his parents rent and to have just enough to go out occasionally. Honey realised as he pulled the old suitcase out from under the stairs that belonged to his Father that really he did not know what he should pack. After giving the suitcase a good clean, his Father must have used it back in the 70s when he was a young travelling salesman, he genuinely sold Bibles door to door, he always said it was the best job he ever had, until people stopped believing in God and started to believe more in MTV and technology. (Van-de-Velde 2023)
References
Short story (no date) Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/art/short-story (Accessed: February 14, 2023).
de Maupassant G. (2008) first published between 1877 and 1891, On Horseback and Other Stories, forward by Anthony Guise, Capuchin Classics, London
Short stories: The necklace by Guy de Maupassant (no date) East of the Web. Available at: https://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/Neck.shtml (Accessed: February 14, 2023).
The necklace (no date) enotes.com. enotes.com. Available at: https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/what-two-examples-alliteration-necklace-505935 (Accessed: February 14, 2023).
I opened Wix and I chose a template for my subject area, Photography. I liked this template as it was clean with a single image.
I then changed the text on the homepage by double clicking on the text and clicking 'edit text' and then used the dialog pop up box to change the font which i changed to Rozha One font and I used all capital bold letter for my name
I wanted to write about Mil Millington as his story are also set in a university and are aimed at the same readers that I intend to capture with my own stories
References
Millington, M. (no date) Things my girlfriend and I have argued about. Available at: http://www.thingsmygirlfriendandihavearguedabout.com/ (Accessed: February 6, 2023).
Millington, M. (2001) Things my girlfriend and I argue about, The Guardian. Guardian News and Media. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2001/apr/21/familyandrelationships1 (Accessed: February 6, 2023).
Robinson, T. (2003) Mil Millington: Things my girlfriend and I have argued about: A novel, The A.V. Club. The A.V. Club. Available at: https://www.avclub.com/mil-millington-things-my-girlfriend-and-i-have-argued-1798198231 (Accessed: February 6, 2023).
Chapter Two: Professor Zimmerman
Honey, dressed in his best smart grey flannel trousers and his favourite white shirt, stood nervously outside Professor Zimmerman's office. He resided in an annex of Bearback University that specialised in the Liberal Arts. Honey suspected that the university had hidden the professor in this back corner as they felt slightly embarrassed by his presence in the main corridors. Zimmerman was a middle-aged man of around 50 who dressed as if it were still the 1890s rather than the 2000s, he often wore a maroon worsted fitted velvet jacket with tails that flew behind him as he walked. Zimmerman had quick little steps that sometimes made him look like he was floating along the corridors with his slight frame and long mop of grey/brown hair that looked as if it had never seen a comb. Honey was wondering exactly what Zimmermann had in mind today when the door swung open and Zimmerman's voiced chimed out 'Ahh Honey Devlin, how wonderful, come in, come in' The professor threw himself behind his desk and moved a large pile of books out the way so that he could actually see Honey on the other side. 'So Mr Devlin, what marvellous ideas do you bring me today, I do hope St Jude has been treating you well'. The professor knew that St Jude was his pet subject and he had already been locating obscure documents for his thesis. 'Professor Zimmermann I wondered if I had permission to go to England to study this St Jude's church, I understand the monks there are most unusual and they have ancient documents dating back centuries, I know this trip would really get to the heart of what I want to explore here.' Zimmerman laughed, 'Yes, the monks are indeed most unusual and I have personally been speaking to Matt the Monk, to discuss the situation. I have very good news he has offered you a room in the monastery attached to the church and access to the documents you are referring to.' Honey's eys lit up, this was fantasic new, 'Well this is great, I was hoping to go as soon as possible... .. I ' Honey stammered as he was embarrassed that now he would have to discuss the financial position he was in frankly otherwise his whole plan would go terribly wrong.
This is the beginning of Chapter Two - it does need work and development, as does Chapter One and I also need to research further as I will be using Saint Jude and I want to ensure accuracy in this area. I will also be researching catholic monasteries and the different orders to ensure that this also is correct in the story
What is your final idea? Please explain in two sentences the theme and the form your writing will take.
I will be creating 'The Story of Honey' which is the other half of 'The Story of Milk' I created last year. Honey is an American PhD student studying St Jude and is about to embark on a trip to England to research the Saint and the impossible!
The form of the writing will be prose/short story and I am aiming to create three chapters as I did with 'The Story of Milk'
Considering the form, how do you intend to layout your book pages?
I will use text and image throughout and it will be in three chapters - the images will be my own and stock images (copyright free)
How many pages do you expect there will be?
Around 40 pages
Are you going to use images? Are these your own images (illustrations/photographs) or copyright free images that you will source?
Yes, as above a mixture of my own and copyright free images
What is the plan of your time and how much you will need to spend on this?
Remember writing is something that you will need time and concentration without disturbance - you must make sure that you plan time to do this.
I plan on spending 16 hours over two weeks on the book and adding this to my blog with research
What do you imagine the final book will look like?
I imagine it will be a standard small book size with a hard cover, I would like to create this on Blurb
Have you considered the cover page/contents page/back cover with blurb?
Yes I will be using Blurb software and I will use Photoshop to create the cover page and to quality check the photographs that I use - they will all be photographs not illustrations to mirror my first book
Drafting and redrafting will need to be done? Who would you get to proofread your work?
I will use a spelling and grammar checker and I will get my partner to check my book for errors before final publication
The target market for my book is millennial as they are the largest market and consume book hard copy and digital books so they can be reached in many ways through advertising and online and physical bookshops
