Be Inspired Comp

The Harman Be inspire photographic competition i found advertised on blackboard. The information on the website is as follows:

HARMAN PHOTO is delighted to announce the launch of a UK 2010 student competition.

THEME : URBAN CULTURE 'A SOCIAL DOCUMENTARY'

We have left the brief deliberately broad to encourage a diverse range of images. You could focus on lifestyle &
experiences, city to city, at home or abroad. Be inspired by Art /Music/Travel and the world around us.

We will be looking for images that are original, imaginative, contemporary and powerful.

Entries must be printed on either HARMAN CRYSTALJET RC or HARMAN by Hahnemuhle Fine Art Papers. *

Prizes:

• 1st Prize - Nikon D3100 digital SLR camera, plus 18-55mm lens worth over £500
• Runners Up - 2 prizes of £200 worth of products from www.harmanexpress.com
• College Prize - The college that submits the most entries will receive £500 worth of products from www.harmanexpress.com

The winning images will be displayed on our stand at the Focus on Imaging Exhibition 2011.

There is also a downloadable PDF that gives the full terms and conditions of the competition.  which ive read through and seems very reasonable. 

New project?

Well not really new, but adapting my project something new. i really like this idea of using superstitions with a mix of poes writing. Ive been looking around for a new competition and ive found one that would be approapritate to where my project is going. 

The new competition ive found to look into using i actually found on blackboard which was uploaded as a thing of interest to us.

be inspired

its the Harman Inkjet 'be inspired' compertition on the idea of Urban Culture. The first thing that jumped out to me was the idea of being inspired,  by music, travel, art they state

on the website by why not literature? 

the second was the use of culture, and the idea of superstitions is all to do with our history and culture. its whats passed down from mother to daughter, father to son.

And the way its urban culture, it makes me think of modernistic culture, the modern world. it made me think, 

how are these oldwives tales and storys and superstitions how are they relivent in modern day times?  And i think this is what im going to be exploring in my work from now. 

I enjoy the documentry style of photography without being to candid, so i may ask people what susperstitions they follow or believe in and photograph them doing it, or ask what ones are outdated. or even myself just look through a list of them and think which ones i feel are outdated and are no longer relivent and stage them.

inspiration from a lecture

A lecture i went to the other day had alot of relivence to the idea of taking a story and translating it into a photograph but without being obvious. It also inspired me as it showed the lecturer Zoe Childerley and her thought and development from initial idea to something completely different with her work abroad on her retreat style residency. It makes me think its ok for me to change my idea and its never to late to stop one idea and move onto a next. and one of the things she said inspired me to where i can lead my project to next. 
Zoes Project begun with a briefing from the museaum services where she was paired with a writer to create a collaberation. They started off lookin at the location he wrote in and in the surrounding areas, looking at the atmosphere of the forest and the comination of light and dark (initial photos below)

They then had a chance encounter in the wood with bees being attracted to the lights and caught a photo to which the writer wrote a short peice to go with. This image reminded her of Crewdsons early work and his 'natural wonder'  collection of photos. She then moved onto images using stuffed animals lent to her from the museum services, and started to look into fables and fairytales. She got into totally creating these pictures using animals based on fables, fairytales and then moving into superstitions and later onto storys from other cultures.

what really caught my eye was a photograph she had created from superstition based around a crow/raven. which obviously made me think of this project. the relationship between poes work and that of susperstition is one thats featured highly, he uses crows, black cats, stuff that is often associated to superstitions. 

Ive really been looking for a way out of this idea and rut ive been  stuck in and i think this idea of superstitions is a good one. it links to poe and i may even be able to use someofhis quotes along with images i create.

Too late?

i know i havent uploaded a post in a while, and im panicing about how little i have done so far for this module. and in all honestly i feel like i have total artistical block and the more i think about ti the more i panic and the more/ i worry about how little work or the lack of ideas im having and its having a very bad repercussion on me at the moment. After talking to my tutor in my tutorial last week it was clear to me that i need to focus in on my work, decided why it is im doing what im doing and what i want to acheive from it. I also need to kick my butt into gear and experiment even if it is bad. My problem is that im really usure that what i initially said i wanted to do, was not just me scraping the bottom for ideas and actually what i wanted to do. Reading these storys are giving me ideas but narrative pieces are not what im good at. I enjoy alot more conceptial or even abstract images and i think heres where my problems lies, how do i turn my idea of a narrative based around the works of poe into something that i can feel inspired and feel i can achieve in, and thats more me?

Im going to push myself to findout what it is i want to look at. Ive got a few artists and photographers to look at from the last lecture (zoey) who did work based on fairytales and folk storys but they werent really obvious which i liked. She also looked at susperstition which really interested to me as Poes work features heavily on objects, animals ect that feature heavily in susperstion, Maybe this is my way into something abit more me? 

I've kinda felt lost in the theory behind this, Ive been reading about the horror genre, the philosophical looks at the genre, books on gothic literature and the history of poe and i really think this isnt what i need to be looking at. I need to be focusing my ideas on this of photography, art, film, instillations. that which i can get my head around in relation to my work.

Im also going to have a look at different competitions. I think after this time debating about what i want to do ive realised that film isnt it and that my confidence and skillset is much better in photography.

My aims by my next tutorial 25th November is to have a new basis of my work, Alot more reaserch done looking at relivent works and decided on my 'brief' of choice as it were.

reading research and opinion about ideas.

So far I've been reading the selected tales book by penguin popular classics, and so far only parts of storys or selected phrases are standing out to me, I've read the duc de l omelette however much I like the story the fact that a lot of the dialog is in french, I need a translator for most! Ms found ina bottle was an interesting story but due to its location set makes it near impossible for me to use the whole story. The assignation is another great story with some great text that could be used, but is set around venice! full summerys are in my notebook.

Also got some great ideas for photos from this story that I couldalways experiment with, I guess part of me don't have the confidence in film to create a film and its not helping me to be subjective and allowing me to make choices! I think my next tutorial I shall discuss maybe doing film and photos till I choose where to take it, I'm stuggling with just film to continue my ideas and keep uip motivation.

Ive never really settled on a style of work and i really need to think  about who i am as an artist and what i want to getout of this. Am i doing this just for the sake of it or is it an actual idea of mine? this project is turning into me not feeling like i can do it, so i think i may have to reconsider my idea. I may do some brain storming in my notebook to discover what it is that i want to achieve for this project.

I've also got out a few books on the horror genre as a genre in film and literature. A lot more research and reading for me I think.

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Janet Cardiff

Janet Cardiff was recomended to me the other day by my lecturer, about her peice entitled 'the murder of crows' which is ment to be linked to Edgar Allen Poes The raven. When looking at her work with George Bureres miller i was very intreaged, there instillations are very impressive and would love to go witness one in person. I could only manage to get short clips of it and not a hole peice but from what i have heard its a very interesting mix of sounds collected together, the peice ive heard is where there is a woman telling a story about a soldier who tried deserting his troops and they discuss how they tell him there gonna chop off his leg so he cant run again, but they do it to scare him as hes no use to them with one leg.  From what ive read of the peice as its 30mins long and i cant find more then 5min selections of it: the instillation is ninety-eight audio speakers mounted around the space on stands, chairs and the wall. The structure of the piece tries to mirror that of the illogical but connected juxtapositions that we experience in the dream world. One soundscape moves into another with an electronic dreamscape composition shifting into sound effects such as factory noises, crashing waves or birds wings and then into a guitar and strings composition then into a choir sequence and marching band. 

The title for the installation is ‘The Murder of Crows’, which means a grouping of crows. Sometimes when a crow dies, many other crows flock to the area around the dead bird and caw for over 24 hours, creating a ‘crow funeral’. The title also provides a thematic entry into the installation; a basis to create a work that becomes a metaphor for our political situation today. And features heavily around the ideas of dreams.

The Crow

In 1994 a gothic style horror film was released that soon turned into a cult movie. Following the death of its lead man during filming, the crow still remains a classic gothic horror movie. With even the title leaving a suggestion to the raven,  as crows and ravens are almost identical with very little to tell them apart. While the story is different in that of the crow then it is in thepoem of the raven, The crow even quotes lines from the poem by poe. The themes within the crow is that of vengence and that of a love lost, as Eric Draven (the crow lead Brandon Lee) rises from the dead on the aniversery of his and his fiancees brutal deaths to murder those who murder them. The crow name comes from the fact that they use the mythology that and to quote: 

'People once believed that when someone dies, a crow carries their soul to the land of the dead. But sometimes, something so bad happens that a terrible sadness is carried with it and the soul can't rest. Then sometimes, just sometimes, the crow can bring that soul back to put the wrong things right.'

 The crow brings Draven back to life, and aids his quest for revenge giving him almost super human powers. at one of the revenge murder sights Draven leaves the symbol of the crow outstretched in blood on the wall as a warning. 

With its classic horror undertones, with most scenes set in a rock club, graveyard and church and its use of music and quoting the likes of poe its no wonder this film became the cult it is today.
what i just love about this film is that while the plot isnt very similar there are hints and i love the way that the quote from Poes wrok was just added in very subtly and unless u knew where it was from you wouldnt of guessed where it was from.