In Bangor the Pontio building is under construction. It is an arts centre so will house a theatre, a gallery, a cinema, a student union radio station and more.However, this building has been delayed more times than I can count and is essentially a black hole of money.
A sad element of this whole thing is that they had already had their programmed made for the Autumn season. Designers have painstakingly worked on this programme, for months on end, sending emails back and forth, drafting, re-drafting and then finally having the completed thing. For it to get burnt.
We, at the college have been given boxes and boxes of these programmes that are “NOT FOR PUBLIC USE” and have been given free reign to do with them as we please. Except show them to anyone..
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I wasn’t sure what to do at first, because we were only allowed to use the programme as our raw material. However, I decided to create a video, and for this video I needed money. Lots and lots of money.
So I printed out a lot of money. Yes I know this is illegal, however I was alternative means for it rather than to spend it.
Once I had all of the money printed and cut out, I set about my task. I intended to burn a copy of the programme along with all of the money I had printed out, as a small protect I suppose. I find it incredibly stupid at the amount of money the government is throwing at this project and it still can’t even be completed on time? It’s ridiculous.
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Editing the video was relatively simple, apart from the version of Premier Pro that we use at the college being updated to the Creative Cloud version which took a bit of adjusting to, however I got there in the end!
The day before I started editing I went looking online for royalty free music. There were two reasons for this, Firstly I wanted royalty free incase I decided to upload it to the internet, so I wouldn’t be hassled by copy right laws e.t.c. and another is that royalty free music is for the most part lyric-less which is what I wanted, I didn’t want people singing throughout the video because I wanted the focus to be on the fire and the burning of the programme and the money.
However I’m not sure if the music I had found, and have used within the video is actually royalty free, but it suits the video so well! it is incredibly atmospheric and adds a lot of depth to the video.
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I needed to think of an effective way of presenting the ashes that I acquired from burning the money and booklet. Initially I wasn’t very sure of how to present them, I thought of pinning the larger pieces to the wall and place the smaller ashes beneath it but I knew that the pieces would be too fragile for that.
So rethinking my plan I thought of tile edging, how it was a U shape and would make an ideal thin shelf. So off to B&Q I went, bought a length of white tile edging, cut it in half, chopped off the text and majority of plastic that made the back of the edging and then nailed it to the wall.
I then picked out various pieces of the larger pieces of ash to display on this shelf. I think it turned out very well, the display makes the ash an interesting thing to look at. the transition from solid page into such a fragile form interests me. Also the edge of the burns and the flame patterns on the pages is interesting.
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After completing the video and the display of the ash, I then began thinking of other ways I could use the booklet in a more physical way.
I created this wall piece from initially cutting the booklet into strips of paper approximately 1cm wide and forming them into hexagons. I then worked layer upon layer creating a column that got to about 4 inches tall before I chopped it into sections.
I initially wanted to create a type of surround for a plotted plant, however my enthusiasm dwindled for this idea when the plant I wanted to use has vanished and it started looking rather tacky. So I decided to rip the layers apart to create a piece of wall art. I thought that geometric shapes are very popular with modern design so thought that this wouldn’t look out of place in a boutique shop even thought it was shoddily glued together over the corse of two days.
Overall I’m very happy with this outcome. I was happy to come through from something I wasn’t happy with, and not give up, but to pursue it and end up with a piece of work I am happy with. I think that the pattern on each separate piece make them interesting, especially when you get closer and you can read segments of sentences, and see strips of peoples faces.
stacey2.0 