Thoughts over the last few months...

Yikes, it has been getting on for 6 months since my last post. I have been doing various activities in my few months off, but now am keen to get them written down on the blog and really start pushing myself forward in developing some new work using these thoughts...

I started to think more specifically about my life and why I'm a walker.

Walking to make a memory?

I walk to feel good about, if I miss it out of my daily routine then I feel badly about myself. It would be stupid to think that it was all about the physical aspects of the ritual. As it is not just generally about exercise, if I don't take my time to walk and think then I feel like I am loosing control. So is that what it is about? Loosing control? Possibly. Its definitely something that only I alone, can control in my life and no one can do for me, the days I walk, are the days I am most content with life, with my life. It is never something I have to do in terms of career, friendships or just general survival necessity, yet it is always at the top of the list of my priorities. If I do do it, then it is something good that I didn't have to have done but I have anyway, and therefore I am in absolute control of my physical actions despite what life throws at me, especially the problem of TIME. There is always that issue of TIME, the ticking clock, it never goes away, there is no respite from it.

This control, I think, must be to counteract some bad behaviour somewhere along the line. But when I say BAD, not immoral, just some personal things that I feel I needn't have done. But this might not necessarily be true. This is only if feel it is only an activity to balance the element of control in my behaviour. Maybe it's simple. Maybe it's so simple in that it makes me happy and I enjoy it. But that wouldn't explain the feelings before and after. It could be an addiction, an addiction to endorphins released?

I am less interested in the reasons for this however, and perhaps more interested in this idea of the before and after..... How an activity, person, object, event can change dramatically before and after an event when really it hasn't changed at all, but our minds have.

"Most of what we do is the result of automatic responses to the world around us, rather than the outcome of conscious decision making. Changing our context is a more powerful way of shaping our behaviour than trying to change our minds..." [Autonomy]

I came across this quote when researching and reading for my previous work before the summer, but I feel that it is something that really sums up almost all of my thoughts and theories that I am interested in.

Something I read somewhere opened up my thoughts on the possible dramatic change of how we think about something sometimes based on a memory....

Degree Show Pictures Continued....

Degree Show...

Here are some photos from my recent degree show in June...

I took the idea of using 'the system' to go on a leisurely walk, and created a video piece where the timings of the two monitors interacting, were direct results I had gained from going on a walk round Platt Fields park in Manchester. The number I recorded when rolling the dice shown in the left monitor, is then the number of minutes the monitor shows me walking on the right monitor.

The footage of me walking was taken when I went on a walk in New York in November, when I was attempting to walk the same shaped route I had done all summer in Manchester, and see how it would feel taking this physical parallel to another city...

The other piece I exhibited in the show was my most recent work, here I wanted to take a step back and discover why I had such a passion for walking, but I also wanted the work to be more physical, with more direct links to my actions.

I decided to take a 20 metre roll of paper on a walk with me, where I scuffed it and walked on it and dragged it, so the paper started to take on more of the physicality of the walk as evidence of the act, as opposed to documentation of it, which is what my previous work centred around.

I had spent a long time thinking about what it was specifically that I thought about when walking and what I did, and music seemed to be a natural focus of my walks, as I never go on one without listening to something on the journey. As this piece was a lot more personal and almost more 'real' than my other work, I decided to write down every single song I had listened to whilst walking, over about the period of a month, and printed them as a sort of playlist along the paper. The piece represents to me a personal enjoyment I gain from walking as well as showing a sense of time, in both the length of the paper and also individual times shown for each track.

Exhibitions...

Hello there, apologies that it has truly taken an age to update this blog! Been very busy with finishing my degree, which I have now done, the Degree Show went fantastically with a couple of opportunities coming my way hopefully, and I have now graduated with a Upper Second Class BA, and I am ecstatic!

In previous posts I promised I would show how the exhibition in March went, and what results I gained from introducing the new system of walking. I got some really positive and interesting comments from viewers and this really pushed my work foward to result in the pieces I exhibited in the Degree Show, therefore the title of the exhibition became almost frighteningly apt! Enjoy...

These are just a few images of some of the cobbles in their locations. Since I have spread the cobbles, I have been back to look at what has happened to them, see if they have be moved etc. Surprisingly many of them have gone! However, staff working for Spinningfields wrote me a message using the blog address on the cobbles, informing me they had to move them due to health and safety.

I have already exhibited my findings from the first walk in Manchester as a documentation piece of work, in an exhibition by me and three other artists on the 11th March.

I have a three week break from university now for easter, where I am going to do more walks and document them via video. I am going to try and experiment doing them in different locations such as London, and Cumbria and see what happens. I will keep updating the blog.

The System...

Walk the original route, every 3 minutes throw the dice, record the result.

When all the numbers have been recorded, start the route again, but use the numbers you recorded as the number of minutes to walk before you roll the dice again. This time however, flip a coin, if tales is the result, take the next right, and if you get heads, take the next left.

Then you will find yourself on a route that it determined for you by chance.

You can keep doing this forever, always using the numbers the dice gets from the previous walks...

More details...

I must ask that you leave the cobbles where they are so that others can find them and use them and so they can be collected by me later and used in an exhibition.

For anyone who finds them all and thinks they managed to walk the whole route in its entirety and are interested, I am coming up with a system to take you on your own unique walks using dice and flipping a coin to determine the route.

I will post this system on the blog.

Hopefully I will do this myself at some point and document each different walk I do and then display my findings in an exhibition along with the cobbles used from the oringinal route.

Happy walking.

Steph