Dead Silence

As ive found it very difficult finding photographers that deal with superstitions ive decided to look at some films i know contain the theme of superstitions, myths and legends. One of the ones i was recomended to was Dead Silence. Dead silence is a horror film based around a ventiliquist doll and how its lead to people from the main characters home town or life dying.  The idea its based on a superstition that a ventriliquist doll is ment to be a bad omen and brings death with it. And this one in particular that caused his wifes death is attached to the legend of Mary Shaw, even with her own lil poem of warning:

'Beware the stare of Mary Shaw,

She has no children, only dolls.

If you see her in your dreams,

Be sure you never, ever scream.

(Or she'll rip your tongue out at the seams.)'

the plots not overly bad, its rather jumpy in places and there is overall a good plot with a twist at the end. However horror isnt really where i want to lend myself with these images...

While its more a story of  ghosts and redeption but itsnt that the way for most of the legend based horror films? 

i think superstion lends itself to the idea of horror purely as they were created to scare people into doing what is conventional or scaring people einto certain idealologys.

superstitions list

list of superstitions

I found this list of superstitions, some of them are very well known... others not as much. below is a random selection of them:

BABY

To predict the sex of a baby: Suspend a wedding band held by a piece of thread over the palm of the pregnant girl. If the ring swings in an oval or circular motion the baby will be a girl. If the ring swings in a straight line the baby will be a boy.

BED

It's bad luck to put a hat on a bed.   If you make a bedspread, or a quilt, be sure to finish it or marriage will never come to you   Placing a bed facing north and south brings misfortune.   You must get out of bed on the same side that you get in or you will have bad luck.   When making the bed, don't interrupt your work, or you will spend a restless night in it.

BRIDGE

If you say good-bye to a friend on a bridge, you will never see each other again.

CLOVER

It's good luck to find a four-leaf clover.   Clover protects human beings and animals from the spell of magicians and the wiles of fairies, and brings good luck to those who keep it in the house.

COIN

It's bad luck to pick up a coin if it's tails side up. Good luck comes if it's heads up.

COUNTING CROWS

One's bad,

Two's luck,

Three's health,

Four's wealth,

Five's sickness,

Six is death.

CRACK

Don't step on a crack on a sidewalk or walkway.   Step on a crack

Break your mother's back.

EYELASH

If an eyelash falls out, put it on the back of the hand, make a wish and throw it over your shoulder. If it flies off the hand the wish will be granted.

FINGERNAILS

It is bad luck to cut your fingernails on Friday or Sunday.   Fingernail cuttings should be saved, burned, or buried.

FRIDAY THE 13TH - how did Friday the thirteenth become such an unlucky day?

  fear of Friday the 13th is rooted in ancient, separate bad-luck associations with the number 13 and the day Friday. The two unlucky entities combine to make one super unlucky day.   There is a Norse myth about 12 gods having a dinner party at Valhalla, their heaven. In walked the uninvited 13th guest, the mischievous Loki. Once there, Loki arranged for Hoder, the blind god of darkness, to shoot Balder the Beautiful, the god of joy and gladness, with a mistletoe-tipped arrow. Balder died and the Earth got dark. The whole Earth mourned.   There is a Biblical reference to the unlucky number 13. Judas, the apostle who betrayed Jesus, was the 13th guest to the Last Supper.   A particularly bad Friday the 13th occurred in the middle ages. On a Friday the 13th in 1306, King Philip of France arrested the revered Knights Templar and began torturing them, marking the occasion as a day of evil.  

In ancient Rome, witches reportedly gathered in groups of 12. The 13th was believed to be the devil.

  Both Friday and the number 13 were once closely associated with capital punishment. In British tradition, Friday was the conventional day for public hangings, and there were supposedly 13 steps leading up to the noose.   It is traditionally believed that Eve tempted Adam with the apple on a Friday. Tradition also has it that the Flood in the Bible, the confusion at the Tower of Babel, and the death of Jesus Christ all took place on Friday.   Numerologists consider 12 a "complete" number. There are 12 months in a year, 12 signs of the zodiac, 12 gods of Olympus, 12 labors of Hercules, 12 tribes of Israel, and 12 apostles of Jesus. In exceeding 12 by 1, 13's association with bad luck has to do with just being a little beyond completeness.

 FRIDAY THE 13TH - how is fear of the number thirteen demonstarted?   More than 80 percent of high-rises lack a 13th floor.   Many airports skip the 13th gate.   Airplanes have no 13th aisle.   Hospitals and hotels regularly have no room number 13.   Italians omit the number 13 from their national lottery.   On streets in Florence, Italy, the house between number 12 and 14 is addressed as 12 and a half.   Many cities do not have a 13th Street or a 13th Avenue   In France, socialites known as the quatorziens (fourteeners) once made themselves available as 14th guests to keep a dinner party from an unlucky fate.   Many triskaidekaphobes, as those who fear the unlucky integer are known, point to the ill-fated mission to the moon, Apollo 13.   If you have 13 letters in your name, you will have the devil's luck . Jack the Ripper, Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, Theodore Bundy and Albert De Salvo all have 13 letters in their names.

Superstitions as a whole

Superstition is a credulous belief or notion, not based on reason or knowledge. The word is often used pejoratively to refer to folk beliefs deemed irrational, which is appropriate since irrational means "not based on reason". This leads to some superstitions being called "old wives' tales". It is also commonly applied to beliefs and practices surrounding luck, prophecy and spiritual beings, particularly the irrational belief that future events can be foretold by specific unrelated prior events.

Many superstitions and old wives tales are passed down from families, i know my mum always mentions some of them, while other more unusual ones are forgotten of ignored. For example when mentioning this project and an idea of breaking a mirror my friend got rather freaked out by the idea. Its funny how we still do some of these old wives tales that were created for nothing more then to scare people into doing certain stuff.
How many of these are still relivent to the modern world and how many are still remembered? in my notebook im going to write down as many superstitions i can remember or think of, and get my friends to do the same.

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.