Friday, 29 April 2022
Thursday, 28 April 2022
Story of Honey: The First Steps...
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. He had been accepted to Cambridge university, England to complete his PhD and he had saved enough money and had funding to complete the full three years. 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 his slightly long wavy brown hair, he should get clean and get ready for work.
Honey worked in a small bar downtown called 'The Bison Bar', it was your average American bar, pretty busy at the weekend and with a wide range of people coming in from the young to the old. Everyone wanted to kick back and relax and although it was busy, he found the work relaxing and not stressful compared to his studies which took up all of the rest of his time. Also as the work was undemanding on his brain, he could use the time to think about his PhD. His PhD was going to explore the transformational effects of Saints and idols in the Catholic Church on parishioners. This study would not be some wooly anecdotal stories from old biddies from church but more an in-depth study that measured brain activity, health, oxygen levels - real measurable bodily transformation. Honey wanted to 'prove' the saint's had power through belief. Honey had been trying to work out how to find suitable candidates for this study, it was particularly different as this would be in a country he did not know and with people who might find his Americanness abrasive or that they would not take him seriously.
'Hey Honey, what'll dreamin' 'bout, we got customer's' the owner of the bar Cherilyn was hollering at him from the other side of the bar. 'Yeah, yeah I'm on it' Honey, yelled over the rather loud group of women arguing over the check at his end of the bar.
Creative Writing Chapbook 2: Planning 'The Story of Honey'
What is your final idea? Please explain in two sentences the theme and the form your writing will take.
I will create a chapbook that consists of the 'mirror' story to 'The Story of Milk' so this will be 'The Story of Honey' I will put the two together to create 'The Story of Milk & Honey' Honey will be a story in opposition to 'The Story of Milk' running parallel and 'Honey' will probably be a man. The story of Honey will be set in America and will, as the Milk story take a God's Eye View
Considering the form, how do you intend to layout your book pages?
I will layout the pages in chapters as last time with oppositional chapters for Honey and Milk
How many pages do you expect there will be?
With the additional of the already written Milk story I expect the book will be approximately 60 pages
Are you going to use images? Are these your own images (illustrations/photographs) or copyright free images that you will source?
Again I will use a mixture of copyright free stock images and my own images
What is the plan of your time and how much you will need to spend on this?
This is a two week project so I will be spending 8-10 hours at the evening and weekends over the next two weeks to complete this.
What do you imagine the final book will look like?
I will be using Blurb so that I have a completed published hard copy book. I will use the trade book form and 6x9 size again
Have you considered the cover page/contents page/back cover with blurb?
I will have chapters and contents page and use photographic images for front and back covers
Drafting and redrafting will need to be done? Who would you get to proofread your work?
I will get a colleague or family member to read my work prior to completion. I will add drafts and redrafts to my blog
Write down any other thoughts or comments related to your plan on your blog post.
I will need to organise the evenings and time to work on this well to ensure completion and I need to spend more time developing the story so that it can work with The Story of Milk
Creative Writing: Initial Ideas
In Media Project I we are looking at creative writing and, again, I will be exploring ideas for my chapbook. So I want to work on a theme that interests me and as I have done this previously I am tempted to do a 'mirror' book which would perhaps be 'The Story of Honey' and my first chapbook included 'The Story of Milk'. The Story of Honey again might incorporate themes of loss but this will be an entirely new and different story. Honey could be a man in this story and perhaps his life is in complete contrast to the The Story of Milk.
In terms of research and thinking of other authors, this time I really want to concentrate in the characters and the creation of characters. I may look at the author Barbara Pym as her characters really stand out; 'Barbara Pym, shrewd observer of a certain kind of middle-class Englishwoman, no longer young and not quite beautiful, whom society finds it easy to overlook.' (The Barbara Pym Society - Barbara Pym Society, 2022) I also enjoyed Pym as it is a time that I grew up at the end of, with the church at the centre of the community and the vicar coming to visit. Times have changed now so much, but perhaps not so much in academic circles where rivalry and jealousy, funding and grants are still just as important.
I also might look at much more over-stylized novels such as the work of David Cronenberg and his book 'Consumed' obviously most famous for movies like 'Crash' (Screenplay by Cronenberg - novel by J.G. Ballad and Videodrome. The Independent stated that: 'David Cronenberg's Crash, winner of the Special Jury Prize at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival, is one of the most sexually explicit and disturbing films ever made.' (Crash: The Uncensored Screenplay, 1996)
The stylized language and look of the film create a cold and distant portrayal of obsession with car crash victims. By looking at different styles of writing this should inform my new piece of work
References
Barbara Pym Society. 2022. The Barbara Pym Society - Barbara Pym Society. [online] Available at: https://barbara-pym.org/ [Accessed 26 April 2022].
The independent. 1996. Crash: The Uncensored Screenplay. [online] Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/crash-the-uncensored-screenplay-1351617.html [Accessed 28 April 2022].
Creating my Website: Home Page, Contact Page & Social Links
Today I started to create my website on Wix. I began by choosing my template. Today I chose to create a site as if I was doing creative and journalism.
I then added my name and the title of my website 'The Joy and Art of Writing', I did this by clicking on the text boxes and clicking 'Edit Text' and I used Cormorant Garamond Light Font at 67 pts for the title and 54pts for my name.
I then changed the strip background and replaced the image with an image from unsplash that is copyright free. I lowered the opacity so that the text box was more see through and did not detract from the image.
I then go to menu on the the left hand side and add a contact and portfolio page. I did this by clicking on 'add page' and then choosing a blank page for portfolio and a template page for the contact page
I then set up the Contact page form by clicking on set notification on the pop up dialog box and making sure that the contact page was directed to my email. I also added a picture to make this page more visually pleasing.
I added two social media links which I have placed in the navigation bar so that this will appear on every page. I set up the correct links and tested these in preview.
Tuesday, 26 April 2022
Creative Writing Exercise: Disappointment
Emotion - Disappointment
This is a creative writing exercise of a piece of prose that we wrote in class for 20 minutes
Paris has spent days waiting for the letter, it was his future contained on one small beautifully typed (he imagined) piece of vellum paper. He had imagined seeing the his name and the words; 'you have been accepted' for what seemed like an eternity. Paris could hear his mother calling from downstairs; 'Breakfast Parry, lets go, I ain't waiting any longer!' Twenty two years old and he still lived with his mother, embarrassing and painful. He wanted to blame the economy, the state of the nation or his parents but really the fault was his own. He should have worked harder to save a deposit so he could get a nice little studio flat or houseshared with a friend. He was, at times, lazy and it was this laziness that meant that he never quite did as well as he should have at school, at work or even with his friends. He would often beg off going out or going somewhere just out sheer laziness and a feeling that he would prefer to stay in and watch Netflix. 'Parry, get your arse down here, we are both going to be late' his mother shouted again; 'Come on, eh you have a got a letter 'ere..' The day really had arrived, he knew it would be today, Paris in a sudden fit of energy ran down the threadbare stairs and into the awkward little kitchen that he had been in a million times growing up, it was where everything important happened. The letter sat on the table, he reached out to touch it...
Monday, 25 April 2022
Charles Cohen: The Art of Absence
In this post, I will explore the work of Charles Cohen I have chosen this photographer/digital artist as my own work this term is beginning to use NFTs and investigating how to put photography out in a real-world context. The work of Cohen is interesting as it uses absence and subtraction of the subject as a concept 'which explore[s] representational qualities in the context of abstraction through erasure. Cohen's work, which eradicates the human figure from pornographic scenes, subverts the images' original function and creates a void where absence becomes a presence in its own right' (Paul C. 2008:38) Presence and absence is an area in which I am particularly interested in photography, as I was discussing previously in my urban landscape shots, there are no people in the shots however there is evidence of people and this trace is throughout the images.
The work above from Buff (1999-2005) depicts a woman clearly naked but erased facing an image of (a very young) Leonardo DiCaprio. The room looks like a teenage girl's bedroom which is slightly disturbing in the context of this image being from a pornographic shoot. The erasure of the subject here has an interesting effect. As a viewer, it is almost as if you are seeing a time past and the act, the pose of the woman has been voided. In modern parlance perhaps it looks as if she has been cancelled from the image! This is interesting from a feminist perspective and the act of looking at pornography. The artist chose to use pornographic images for this work and yet subverted the nature of the pornographic element, we can see it is a woman yet it is no longer pornographic as this does not induce sexual desire. Solomon- Godeau argues that the problem with pornographic work is not with the image itself but that; 'Images, do not casually produce a world of female objects and make subjects; rather they articulate, naturalize and confirm and oppressive order whose roots are elsewhere' (Solomon-Godeau A. 1991:221) The artist here has understood this notion and has sought to repurpose these archival images and create a new more democratic gaze that questions the nature of looking and how subtraction of the subject can affect the viewers perspective.
In the image above the couple are in an outdoor environment which, depicts illicit sex in a public place and this over-acted representation of sex is again removed by the artist. I chose this image as this had both a male and female interacting (as far as I can tell) the woman appears to be on top of the man. The interesting thing about this one is that due to the erasure of the subjects all the momentum of the sexual encounter is removed and these voided figures again seem to be speaking to the viewer as a shadow of a past time. The setting remains real but the flesh and bodies are now nothingness, more like a chalk outline in a crime scene. In Barthes, Camera Lucida Barthes states that: 'Every photograph is a certificate of presence.' (Wike, 2000) and that is the nature of photography on a personal level often, it is just to state; 'I am here, I existed'. With these images, there is the suggestion that the subjects existed but now without faces or flesh in the image, the removal of their forms, they become anonymous and we can no longer interact with them in the image as we could have previously, their purpose has been removed. Cohen left us with a trace, a taste of what did once exist in the frame, what do we do as viewers of this scene. As with a crime scene, this leaves us to imagine the people, the act itself. We are left with questions and imagination and as voyeurs, we desire to look.
These images are important as they change the discussion on aspects of photography, the act of looking, pornography, and the feminist perspective and the presence and absence in the image. When working n my own work I often play with presence and absence in the image. Looking at this work has made me consider alternative and digital ways to create presence/absence and reconsider how I look at an image and really see...
References
Cohen, C., 2022. Charles Cohen Art. [online] Charlescohenart.com. Available at: https://www.charlescohenart.com/ [Accessed 25 April 2022].
Paul C. (2008) Digital Art, Thames & Hudson Ltd, London.
Saatchi Art. 2022. Charles Cohen | Saatchi Art. [online] Available at: https://www.saatchiart.com/cacnyc1 [Accessed 25 April 2022].
Solomon-Godeau A. (1991) Photography in the Dock, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.
Wike, L., 2000. Photographs and Signatures: Absence, Presence, and Temporality in Barthes and Derrida – InVisible Culture. [online] Ivc.lib.rochester.edu. Available at: https://ivc.lib.rochester.edu/photographs-and-signatures-absence-presence-and-temporality-in-barthes-and-derrida/ [Accessed 25 April 2022].
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