The Chapbook: Planning

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 

Creative Writing Project: Generating Ideas

 For the next two weeks we will be creating a chapbook, which a small cheap book that was popular between the 17th and 19th centuries in Great Britain, was then repopularised by the Dadists in the 1920s and now artists and writers use them and can easily create small hardback and digital books for sale.

Chapbook Workshop Examples (2015)

I wanted to use this time to write the other half of my story that I began in the Book of Lost Things

My original story was called the Story of Milk and I wanted to write The Story of Honey as a mirror and connecting story - I actually began this last year but only briefly worked on it so I wanted to go back to this and start again so that I could eventually have the completed version of the Story of Milk and Honey 

I created an ideas generation piece which you can view here

I will start to draft out my first chapter over the next couple of days as the Story of Honey will begin in a bar in America.  I created a first draft of Chapter One previously  - this is the direction I do think I would like to take. 

Creative Writing Exercise 1

 Disgust

Melanie closed her eyes for a second and was thinking about a perfect hotel room with crisp white clean sheets on a bed that smelt of flowers and had chocolates on the pillow when you arrive.  The bathroom would be fresh and white with fluffy, sumptuous towels that were huge and you could wrap around yourself after a lovely hot bubble bath.   As she opened her eyes from her brief reverie Melanie was confronted horribly by the reality of her real life.  Melanie was a third year student at a low level university in the Midlands, she lived in student accommodation a Victorian terraced house (probably built for industrial textile workers) where she shared a living room and kitchen with three other students who unfortunately seemed to share the same attitude to house cleanliness and hygiene as she did, I suppose at least they had that in common.  The upshot of this, as she opened her eyes was the first thing that she saw was a pile of plates, cups and cutlery that had built up over several weeks that were covered in half eaten, now rotting food and cups filled with congealed drinks that now all looked brown, disgusting and smelt like milk that had gone off and made you want to hurl.  As she turned her head to take in the rest of the room the bed had, what were once pretty pink covers with a Japanese flower pattern, now they were a slightly yellowed, nicotine, coffee, and other unidentifiable green stained mess that had not seen a washing machine in at least a month.   Melanie looked at the the floor that was covered with mostly her dirty clothes, underwear was hanging on the radiator and was worn and now starting to look grey and very tatty, there was a desk but mostly it was covered with make up and hair crap.  Underneath this vile mess she assumed her laptop was living, not that she had opened this or really done any university work recently that she could remember.  This small, shabby student room certainly reflected Melanie's state of mind a dirty mess that is disorganised and seemed to champion chaos uber alles (as Nietzsche might have said), why she had chosen to study Philosophy was also a mystery as this had certainly sent her spinning into despair.

Tokyo Compression: Michael Wolf

 As we have been studying urban photography, one of the photographers that we looked at in class was Micheal Wolf, we looked at the Architecture of Density (2014) this piece examined through the photograph; 'the structural urban fabric of the city of Hong Kong is one of the most astonishingly condensed, populated and vertical in the world, propelling its edifices soaring into the sky to contend with the lack of lateral space' (designboom, 2015)  These images really explored the idea of living claustrophobically close to others and when I was out taking pictures I looked for images that might have hints of this in Leicester to include in my own work however Leicester although it has quite a high-density population with 4,494 people per kilometer (Leicester Population 2023) in Hong Kong (as below) it is 7140 per kilometer. (Hong Kong Population Live 2023)

Micheal Wolf (2014) Architecture of Density

Considering further the work on Micheal Wolf I will explore the work in his project Tokyo Compression (2010) these images were; 'were photographed at Shimo-Kitazawa station in Tokyo over a four-year period.' (Flowers Gallery 2017) the images were all taken through the small glass windows of the subway train framing within the frame the subjects of this 'subsurface hell' (LensCulture, 2015)

From Tokyo Compression (2010) by Michael Wolf

In this image the woman's face presses against the glass, her hair is stuck to the condensation on the window, and she has her eyes closed making it look as if she could be dead or maybe just trying to block out the horror.  A woman trapped in this has many implications for her physical and mental health, such close proximity to others pushes the boundaries of what is acceptable to anyone, and as a woman has the potential to be even worse if standing close to the wrong man.   Consider also that this image taken by Wolf is voyeuristic, not only is she experiencing the hell of this train she is also being photographed from the outside and now we stare at her, taking in her suffering and pain, Artsy states that;'voyeurism has emerged as a central theme of Wolf’s works.' (Artsy:2010) We are now in collusion with the photographer staring into the painful beauty of this shot, the woman leans her head to the side of the image which gives the shot an asymmetry that makes it even more pleasing to look at.  The water of the condensation gives it a soft focus look and the button the outside to press which she cannot reach leaving her forever, for eternity, trapped in the glass.  Araki stated of his subjects that they came to him to be 'murdered' meaning that the women wanted to be trapped in the photographic image which Araki considered to be death, however, Araki's subjects were willing and complaint and wanted people to see them in their erotic state, Wolf's subjects are in public, trapped and not necessarily willing as some of the images show..

From Tokyo Compression (2010) By Michael Wolf

 

While this man was clearly angry, in most of the images the subjects were too beat or preoccupied to notice the photographer or care about the picture.  This series was praised highly by Martin Parr and caused a sensation, there are four volumes of these photographs by Micheal Wolf clearly striking a chord with the public, the connection people feel to these images is clear as the people framed in the windows have resonance all over the over-populated world, we are becoming more, living longer, using resources and therefore more and more we are compressed into the small spaces on the surface of the earth. I will end on the words of Christain Schule; 

'Nowhere do we come closer, involuntarily, to our neighbour than in the underground. The underground is a conspiratorial venue for human excesses: the enforced compression of anxiety, sorrow, pain, madness and fury. In the realm of the soulless underground, the suburban metro represents the ultimate test for today’s city-dweller, the place where the crucial focus of his inescapable anxieties, constraints, neuroses, desires and hopes is revealed.' (Flowers Gallery 2017)

References

designboom, nina azzarello I. (2015) Michael Wolf photographs the architecture of density, designboom. Available at: https://www.designboom.com/art/michael-wolf-photographs-the-architecture-of-density-01-16-2014/ (Accessed: January 27, 2023). 

Hong Kong population (live) (no date) Worldometer. Available at: https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/china-hong-kong-sar-population/(Accessed: January 27, 2023). 

Leicester Population 2023 (no date) Leicester population 2023. Available at: https://worldpopulationreview.com/world-cities/leicester-population (Accessed: January 27, 2023). 

Michael Wolf (2017) Flowers Gallery. Available at: https://www.flowersgallery.com/artists/173-michael-wolf/ (Accessed: January 27, 2023). 

LensCulture, M.W.| (2015) Tokyo Compression - photographs by Michael Wolf, LensCulture. Available at: https://www.lensculture.com/articles/michael-wolf-tokyo-compression (Accessed: January 27, 2023). 

Araki. N (1997) Tokyo Lucky Hole, Benedikt Taschen Verlag, Koln

Michael Wolf (1954-2019): Tokyo compression #9 (2010): Available for sale (2010) Artsy. Available at: https://www.artsy.net/artwork/michael-wolf-1954-2019-tokyo-compression-number-9 (Accessed: January 29, 2023). 

SMART Objective: The Story of Honey

 In my creative writing project this term I will be creating a small chapbook that will be the mirror of the chapbook created previously 'The Story of Milk'.  The book will include text and images, I will be taking some of the photographs and using stock images where necessary.  The book will consist of three chapters and I expect the book to be around 30-50 pages in length.  I will create this book on Blurb and I will make this book in book hard copy and digital format using Flipsnack.  The book will be available online and on my website by 16th March 2023.

Milanote: The Story of Honey

 

I created a Milanote to explore the themes and research I may undertake while carrying out my creative writing project.  I intend to explore the work of Malcolm Bradbury and Mil Millington.  I also looked at my target audience and considered millenials and use of language as this is my intended target market for the story.

The Story of Honey Milanote

Quality Control & Curation

 Today we looked at curation and selected the images that we thought might work in our final portfolio.  I started by selecting images I liked and thought might work together for my final portfolio.  I will consider the curation process later in this post however, the images I choose I looked carefully at each image in Photoshop and adjusted them using various tools here are some examples of the quality control of my images.  So I chose around 30 images to look at more closely so I could make final curation decisions, I want to have more images than I will use in the end as I will be considering the relationship between my images and how they work together as a set.

For the below image, I checked the quality of the image, looking carefully for anything that was not sharp, and then as the image was perfectly straight I just adjusted the curves on Photoshop to very slightly brighten the image, the difference is subtle but it will make this the best image it can be in the final portfolio.

I did this for all the images and adjusted each accordingly the image below I liked the concept but it needed to be straightened using the crop, straighten and grid tools 

As can be seen this is much improved, this process is vital when considering photographic image I have now been through the 30 images chosen and adjusted - I will now consider curation to hone down what I actually want to show in the final portfolio and how I want to display these to really have maximum impact.

Curation is: the action or process of selecting, organizing, and looking after the items in a collection or exhibition.  This element of presenting art/media work is very important how items are placed together affect the viewer's perception and it is important as an artist that the work is shown to give the right message or feeling intended. 'It's worth thinking about the etymology of curating. It comes from the Latin word curare, meaning to take care. In Roman times, it meant to take care of the bath houses. In medieval times, it designated the priest who cared for souls. Later, in the 18th century, it meant looking after collections of art and artifacts.'(Jefferies & Groves, 2014) I like the idea here that we are guardians of the work we curate, that we take special care over this and this is what we should be doing whether we add this to our own website or an online gallery or whether it is a physical exhibition.

I listened to an interesting podcast that you can also listen to this here which is about curation this is with  Jennifer Frazier, a senior scientist and curator at the Exploratorium, a hands-on science museum in San Francisco. To listen please click here  I liked this as it was about science and curation and it is important to look at different areas and how they understand curation and care for their work. 

In The Art of Curating By Harbison for Frieze magazine, Harbison discusses curatorial practices and whether some of these had become outdated.  One of teh exhibitions discussed was described as follows: 

'The Barbican’s ‘Magnificent Obsessions: The Artist as Collector’, plumbed the personal collections of 14 artists. The show included Jim Shaw’s selection of found ‘thrift store’ paintings – famously gathered as part of an ongoing project – and Pae White’s collection of more than 3,000 Vera Neumann fabrics, which were artfully hung on diagonal washing lines as a colourful, billowing installation. Hanne Darboven’s knick-knack-laden studio and living room were reconstructed, complete with original furniture, before an installation of her photographic series, ‘Mitarbeiter und Freunde’ (Co-workers and Friends, 1988). Padded out with old rugs, worn tables, antique vitrines, cupboards and excess haulage cases, the exhibition proposed these artists as inspired hoarders and implied their curatorial arrangements were inherently meaningful.' (Isobel Harbison  2015)

I included the whole description here so that the reader could understand what the exhibition consisted of, and it is clear what was intended through the curation of this exhibition with essentially the artist's stuff - I do find that often exhibitions are 'padded out' by including objects and materials to enhance the viewer's experience however whether this is inherently more meaningful or that the viewer needs this to understand an exhibition I would argue that perhaps it is unnecessary.  I hold to the pinion that in curation less is often more as I would rather concentrate on a few images than be overloaded by them, I think this means that I can absorb and reflect on the image or piece more meaningfully than wondering around a mass of 'stuff' as if I need to fill time or have to keep moving.  

Ydessa Hendeles, From her wooden sleep ... (detail), 2015; Courtesy ICA, London; photograph: Mark Blower

The joy of a good exhibition is one where I can sit and take in the pieces rather than fight with a crowd to get a glimpse or be moved through an exhibition without being able to really reflect. An online exhibition obviously means I can take time on my own and as long as I like on the things I really want to see and experience and this is great however I do still think that a physical exhibition is a far more meaningful experience to me as I want to see the original in the flesh and the screen does remove you from that experience.  

On my own website gallery, I will put my images together in the most meaningful way I can so that they work consistently together, so they flow as you go through them, and make sense however I know that these images would still be better viewed in their physical form and I can play with size, space, and light in a physical exhibition which is much more difficult to achieve through a screen or where most people might view this on a mobile phone. Perhaps I am old fashioned or perhaps I do feel we are moving into a time where people are disconnecting from the real world and communicating with it in a meaningful way. As Jean Baudrillard stated: "We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning.” ...

References

Jefferies, S. and Groves, N. (2014) Hans Ulrich Obrist: The Art of Curation, The Guardian. Guardian News and Media. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/mar/23/hans-ulrich-obrist-art-curator (Accessed: January 24, 2023). 

Quagliarello, M. (2021) New Flipboard podcast, "The art of curation," explores the art and science of selection, About Flipboard. Available at: https://about.flipboard.com/inside-flipboard/new-flipboard-podcast-the-art-of-curation-explores-the-art-and-science-of-selection/ (Accessed: January 25, 2023). 

Isobel Harbison 23 APR 15 et al. (2015) The art of curating, Frieze. Available at: https://www.frieze.com/article/art-curating (Accessed: January 25, 2023).