Recording my time as a BA (Hons) Fine Art Student at Cardiff Metropolitan University – “Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” – Andy Warhol
Within this City project, I was asked to create two final pieces individually, one inspired by the fine art painting project and another that reflects the ideas, thoughts and new processes that I learnt during the collaborative process. As a collaborative we made drawings and stop motion animations. It seemed obvious to me that for this second piece I would like to create an animation that includes drawing to fit in with what I have learnt and worked on with my collaborative group and to portray the hidden loneliness of city life. The collaboration work we made as a group has already informed my individual work and I have started playing around with animations showing loneliness in the city.
I thought the experiment I made where all the people were cut out of a photo one by one apart from one individual was quite interesting and had a lot of scope for progression and so I have decided to make a stop motion animation incorporating the manipulation of my photographs to portray inner city loneliness as a final piece.
I have included two aspects of loneliness in the city within this piece. The imagery where all the people are cut out/scribbled over/painted in portrays the fact that you might as well be alone in the city when surrounded by others because you interact with no one. If the only people you see are the passers-by of the city then you are going to be highly lonely because you would never converse with anyone face to face. The imagery where only one person has been singled out conveys the fact that you are insignificant which heightens the feeling of loneliness and that to all the other people you might as well not exist.Also, singling one figure out portrays them as being alone within an urban environment.
Within this piece, I have experimented with manipulating photos in a variety of ways to show loneliness. I have also included drawing within the piece and the use of tracing paper and paint. I think this piece is very successful and consolidates all the photo manipulation work I have produced throughout the whole of the project. These photo alterations inspired my paintings and kicked off my ideas to create this body of work so it seems only fitting that they make up one of my final pieces.The track that is playing behind this animation is “The lullaby of Loneliness” by Aaron English, chosen for obvious reasons. I have uploaded my final piece to YouTube so it is shared with the public and I can gain feedback from the users of the site. I think this piece is successful in portraying the hidden loneliness of city life and demonstrates a skill that I have worked on from making animations with my collaborative group.
Today, all first year students presented the work they had produced in the 4 week period of Manifesto. I think this was a highly successful activity and it was interesting to see what the other groups had been doing within their manifesto sessions.
2D Manifesto – Collage
I undertook the 2D manifesto workshops based on collage. Throughout the sessions we used collaging techniques to create work that has been put all together to create the exhibition/presentation below. We created minature collages combining drawing and collaging imagery from magazines. We used print techniques such as monoprinting and etching to create surfaces that could be pieces on the own or could be collaged on top of. The third session incuded rubbing surfaces to obtain textures known as frottage and then layering the frottage to create new imagery. Finally in conclusion to all these works, we worked together to create a fanzine. For this fanzine, I used my original collages and combined them with new coollaging on top to make a page fanzine to go in a publication that summed up 2D manifesto. It was valuable to obtain an insight into collage, it is a quick and easy way of getting information down on paper and is highly effective. I will definitely be experimenting with collage more throughout my artistic career i’m sure.
3D Manifesto – Creating a Drawing Machine
The 3D group were set with the task of making a functional drawing machine with which you could make marks on the paper without using your body. They first showed us an example of an existing drawing machine, a harmonograph. Then, each sub group talked about and demonstated the drawing machine they had made before we were all able interactively have a go making our own drawings with the machines. All of the drawing machines were highly successful but i particularly liked the ideas behind the two below. The top one was created with a washing machine in mind and four cups with holes were spun around with paint in them to create a splattered abstract painting. The one below that was created with beyblade in mind and turned the conventional spinning tops into a fun game and successful drawing machine. The 3D group were very innovative in their approach to the tasks set.
4D Manifesto – Video from 1 to 1 in 1
4D were asked to produce videos that transformed from one thing to another in just one minute. The videos were highly entertaining to watch but definitely captured the sense of transformation. It is interesting that eventhough everyone was given the same brief, they all interpretted it completely differently and that is what art is all about. Some people made their videosby videoing their surroundings and others by taking a series of pictures and putting them together into a minute slot kind of like a stop motion. Many techniques were used here including video effects, sound tracks, animation and photography.
Overall, I feel that manifesto was definitely a success. It was nice to focus on something whilst undertaking the time project and everyone seemed to really enjoy the tasks set. Also, we all learnt from eachother and were sharing ideas which could have aided peoples time projects and helped them to experiment more or take their projects in new directions. I like the work that I personally created within manifesto but it was much more significant when it was show in collaboration with all the other works.
GemmaSchiebeFineArt 
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