A Malleable Mind

I named this module 'Master Of Plasticine', it was based on a bit of a joke that I used to tell my friends whilst doing my sculpture degree, that I was getting a degree in plasticine, and if I'd ever go on to do a Masters Degree, I would be a Master of Plasticine, it was funny and a bit silly, which is fine by the way, though recently I've started to understand it in a bit of a different light..

As the mid term assessment came up on me like I was sat in the middle of the road scratching some itch I hadn't scratched before (pretending to be a rapper) I was caught like a deer in headlights, as I found out literally days before that it was happening (my time management has be horrendous recently) but, this wasn't an issue, the mid term isn't assessed or anything, it's just for the tutors to see where were at, and another opportunity for feedback from lecturers other than your dedicated tutor.. But having to present something that made sense had its challenges, if you know anything about the Master of Plasticine project, you'll know that I've set myself the challenge of becoming a 'slow motion multi-tasker', which is basically allowing myself to jump from one project to another, and allowing cross-contamination between different subject matters to encourage creative and lateral thinking.

It seems easy writing that now, but before the assessment I had no idea what I was doing.. well, I did, I came up with the project months ago, but explaining it after being so loose with everything, it kind of got cluttered and awkward. I've been working on multiple projects, and recently have been part of more collaborative projects, I had a ten minute slot to explain everything I've been doing, how would I start talking about a business I've been working on based on creative thinking, and then also talk about a project based in the metaverse where I want to encourage people to create alter egos, and then talk about a collaborative project that started out as a toy making group, and ended up being a hip hop/ punk band... and all the while I'm developing new alter egos, fake companies and products to continue the Faketrix narratives..? There's been a lot going on.

A few days before my assessment a good friend of mine asked me if we'd be able to swap our dates, which meant I would be doing my assessment a day early, I hadn't prepared anything anyway so it was no problem for me, I ended up putting together a presentation the day I was doing it, and decided to describe the project as a whole, the heart of the project, instead of starting in one place and developing a project from there towards an end goal, I've built a base, a place for me and my art to exist, this includes this website, Facebook and Instagram profiles, and also setting up my shed for this new realm of work, it's a digital and physical base, a hub where I exist as Adam the artist, and from here I can expand to wherever I want to go.

This in many ways has been a continuous continuation from the work I started on my BA, I developed the @sculpt_factory project which took over my personal Instagram account, becoming a fictional project, this was great and allowed me to play in that semi-fictional world with multiple alter-egos interacting with each other, with the videos and with followers, this became a base for my practice. What made this set up a bit of a pain really was the fact that I felt like I had to keep up with the semi-fictional set up on that page, this meant that any other projects I did that didn't fit in that world, just didn't get shared, this meant that if I wasn't doing sculpt factory, or expanded Faketrix Universe stuff, I wasn't present online.. This is a difficult thing because, it would be great to just jump on and off social media from time to time, I like it, I'm not a massive fan anyway, but having a social media presence is like constantly updating art in a gallery that everyone has access to, and the ability to share insights, behind the scenes and the context behind your work really helps people to understand you more as a human being, originally that was the reason I spent three months filming myself talking to myself whilst doing the dishes in practice to put myself on camera - it started out incredibly awkward. But a constantly updated social media account lets people know you're there, when the Sculpt factory account was most active, I'd get friends, family, fellow student and lecturers all coming up to me and asking me about the project, it's a talking point "ah I saw your new video" or "that new piece is looking great", and even when you're not putting new pieces out there, when your art isn't in a gallery or whatever, it reminds people that you exist, so that when opportunities arise, if you're fresh in their minds, you're more likely to be a consideration for their project, the same with collaborations, conversations begin in comment sections and personal messages on social media, projects are made and continued in the real world, it was me posting my work and @deano_base posting his work that peaked our interests in each others work, and a year later were working on a wild project together.. So, considering all this, social media still holds a place as part of that central system, at the moment it's still much more of a central place for me than this website, more people see my Instagram posts than have clicked this website, and will be that way for a while I suspect.. So I consider it an important task to get my social media accounts set up in a way that allows me to share the projects I do..

This includes the branding of myself, a lot of artists shy away from any kind of branding, but I think it's very important, I see it part of the art, stylistically speaking it's part of the package, and it worked well for the Sculpt Factory, it was consistent enough for what it was, but would like to take that a bit further in the future..

But way before the branding I've decided on currently my social media presence went through a few considerations, I thought maybe I'd split everything up, have a page dedicated to each part of my practice, it's organised then, clear to see... kind of, not really, maybe it just makes it messier, but the thinking was there.. I created an account for my production design, set building and prop making work, thinking the idea behind it might be to have this account be followed by specifically film people who could give me film jobs, they don't care about my other art where I'm acting as Dai Jones with my belly hanging out, you know? They want to hire someone who can build them a set that won't crush their crew members... the sculpt factory definitely wasn't safe, but it was a personal project, it was different, so separation felt like the right thing.. But then I ended up with all these different accounts, a sculpture account all sorts, and it would have gotten really messy..

I decided I needed one central account, my main account, this would be where I could talk freely as an artist, talk about my art, show all my art without worrying about whether it was in a fictional world or not and a place to share behind the scenes stuff, whether it be film based, sculpture based or hip-hop group based. And this is where Adam Holt's Faketrix Universe came from. Which I wasn't sure on still for a while, the Faketrix Universe is a fictional world in which the fictional elements of my practice e.i Sculpt Factory, Fine Art Bargain Store and Plastic Baby Co can exist along side my alter egos. So was it the right name to call my generic practice as an overall? After a lot of careful consideration, yes I think.

I decided that I think too much about these things, the idea of the Sculpt Factory, which is where all this began, was to be able to not worry about things, to be able to create without putting things in a box, and that's kind of ironically what I've been doing ever since.

The Faketrix was originally a metaphor for my mind, a place where all my ideas could co-exist, so in that sense making the Faketrix a base is perfect, right?

So the base has been created, I can post freely on social media, this website is set up in a way that allows me to share everything I do, and I've recently given my shed a bit of a make over in order for it to work much better as a base for my alter egos, and any other project I want to take on.

On the day of the mid term assessment I thought about my project and ended up just explaining the basics of this really, researching creative thinking, trying out this new kind of lifestyle/ way of working, and talked about the projects I had on the go at the moment, but not in any detail, just giving an outline of the diversity of projects I currently have on the go.

What was interesting about this is that due to me swapping my time slot from the day after to the day before I was put in a group where the lecturers watching my presentation ended up being lecturers on the design pathways I believe, which gave a completely different perspective than what I would have got the day after.. One of them asked me after my presentation what I got out of it, I talked about how I haven't had any kind of incline of 'creative block', I've always had something new to jump on, always new ideas to explore, there's just too much to do.

I talked about How I was being more productive, I explained it by using a film script, when I used to sit for days trying to write a script, I'd sit and sit and eventually after three days maybe have a page written, in this project I write a paragraph, go onto something else, a sculpture maybe, then something I do there will inspire an idea for my script, I'll go back, write a line of dialogue, which pushes me on to write another sentence, and something I write there will remind me of a song I was writing last week, I'll jump back to that, finish that song, it sounds terrible, no worries, move onto that video I've been meaning to shoot, I might get half way and then get bored of it, it's not quite working, Ill go back to the script, Since the last time I worked on it I've seen a few different things, the words come out easily... By the time the three days are done now I might have written 3 or 4 pages, where as before whilst trying to really concentrate on one thing, I'd procrastinate and get annoyed I wasn't getting anything done, forcing myself to do something doesn't work, allowing myself the freedom to jump from one thing to the next allows me to be more productive..

The lecturers response made me think a lot, he said he comes form a much more technical background than I do, he's a designer, I think he might even have been on the automotive design course, which is just incredibly technical and precise, but even without the automotive part, being a designer is much more technical based than I am, he asked my how I knew I was being more productive, he asked me if I had any proof, to which I had no answer, I said, I have absolutely no idea, I feel more creative, I feel more productive was the only proof I could give him, which isn't really proof at all.

We talked about how it could be measured, How could I prove that this radical method works, how could I prove I was more creative and more productive? I said, maybe I'm not more productive, maybe I just feel it, because I don't stop, maybe I'm not more creative, I just feel it, because I'm not getting bored and I'm jumping from one thing to the next..

We talked about ways we could measure creativity, using the Torrance test of creative thinking as a ball park guide, take the test at the start of the project, in the middle and again at the end.. I suppose productivity is more difficult, I could say that I've finished more projects this term than the last for example, but that doesn't take into account the size of projects etc.. This needs more thinking, plus I'm not really a testing kind of guy.

So I've been doing a lot of thinking recently about this, and about a speed tutorial session I did the week after, where I got a lot of feedback from different people in a short space of time, and it really got me thinking about where this project is heading, part of being an artist is motivation, and theres no better cure than putting out a new piece of work, which during this project, the pay-off period has been much longer, that's a down side, projects are generally taking longer this term, though I may be getting through some things more productively, generally the projects I've taken on are bigger, and will take more to get them out than projects I did last year..

I'm really excited about the Creative Laboratories project at the moment, and I'm very tempted to spend a lot of time on it, I will, I know that, but I've been tempted to slow down a lot on other projects, and really push this one, I think it's a project that

like the Sculpt Factory lends itself to an open space, a base for me to do many different creative things in one project, and though there are a few other projects I've got on the go that give the same or similar opportunity, I'm just really enjoying this, and it also pushes towards helping other people, and possibly even making a business out of it one day.. The problem I have with concentrating too much time on one project at this time is that I've committed so much time to the Master of Plasticine ethos, and quitting it now would feel like something I've done many times before, like quitting at the last hurdle almost.

I've built a good base for my ideas to thrive on, and I want to see what happens with the continuation of this bizarre way of creating, this mind shift and radical way of jumping from one thing to the next, kind of rebellious in way, they tell us in school to pick on this and get good at it, and I've decided to not be good at anything, but do a lot of things... The trick is bringing those things together.

And this is where I'm at right now, This new realisation and re-imagining the 'Master of Plasticine', because plasticine is malleable, it can constantly be moulded and squished, it can be left on the side for a period of time, yet it will never dry out, you can have one big ball of plasticine, or you can split it up into lots of smaller balls, then you can make those smaller balls into anything you want, then two of those balls can be squished together to make something new.

During the Sculpt Factory project I came up with a concept which materialised in the form of a fictional substance called 'creative waste', the idea was that we shouldn't hold onto our old ideas, we should let them go, come up with new ones, don't live in the past, come up with something fresh, in the sculpt factory world they were scared of creative waste, scared of old ideas.. I fully believed it too, but I'm not so sure these days, I've recently picked up an old script I started years ago and it's becoming one of the best things I've ever written, an old idea of mine recently became the base of a successful collaboration that I'm hoping to release properly soon. Idea's don't die, they sit in the back of your mind ready for the right moment to materialise, like plasticine they never dry out, they wait, and when you pick them back up they can me moulded and squished into something brand new with fresh eyes full of new experiences.

The Master of Plasticine was originally a joke, but now it's a meaningful concept that doesn't only refer to me, but the ideas I'm creating, a metaphor for the project in such a perfect way, and even more so that it came about through this creative process, the way the concept grew out of a joke completely embodies the nature of this project, just like plasticine it begins as a lump with endless possibilities, it's then shaped, moulded, stretched, left, kneaded and sculpted into something that has value and meaning, that meaning or value isn't always present at the beginning of the process, but blossoms through experimentation, patience and play..

Go back to the start of this project