The Thought Experiment

01.10.2021

Day 1:

Pick a number between 1 and 101

34 is my number, completely random. My number relates to experiment 34 in Roger-Pol Droits 2002 book '101 Experiments in the Philosophy of Everyday Life'.

I saw straight away that its a repetitive action, something I'm not a fan of, I find repetitive boring. I created my current on going video series based on the repetitive actions of mass produced sculpture, and how something I found so exciting, was incredibly boring to create, so I made the production process more interesting by fictionalising it.

I've made good out of repetitive actions before, but animals are not my strong point.

08.10.2021

The Experiment

I'm used to being in front of a camera now, I've been training myself to not be awkward in front of a camera for over a year now, starting September 2021 whilst vlogging myself building my shed. Since I'm comfortable in front of a camera, and I've kind of become obsessed with documentation and archiving recently, I felt the need to video the experiments, even though part of the experiment was to be alone, I feel that maybe I wouldn't be 'acting' any different with the camera off.

I started off being an ape. Its the easiest to do, I know, but it was the first thing I thought of, and I'm not to keen on animals, but monkeys are pretty interesting to me, being so close to humans.

Directly after the first experiment, I recorded how I felt about the process. After a few goes at 'playing the animal' it definitely felt clinical, like a laboratory, this gave me the idea to try playing a lab rat;

I researched filmmaker Peter Greenaway in the introduction to this module, and though I mostly disagree with most of his beliefs, some have resonated with me, specifically Greenaway's ideas on an image based cinema. Now I don't believe we shouldn't write scripts, I believe story and narrative is a fundamental human trait that definitely should continues to be explored in the moving image, yet this idea that all visual film is written first and foremost has startled me a bit, and maybe Greenaway's onto something, maybe we should be more image based in the writing process, more image based in the development of the idea, rather than just text based.

I've been dealing with experimental evidence, recording data. I wanted to make this visual.

So, I cleared a space on my studio wall for the thought experiment, to visually guide me through my thought process..

This will become my space of creative development and experimentation. Opposite to this wall is my archives which I have recently started, displaying my sculptural, film prop, production design and stop motion animation puppet work, as well as all my creative journals from 2011 to current.

This is important for this experiment, it's the thought experiment, I need access to my thoughts whenever I need them. When things get tough in this mind experiment I can call on my archives for constant inspiration. My shed, The Sculpt Factory, my creative space, has a role to play, it's another character in this module.

And it will develop along side the thought experiment, forever adapting to my creative needs.

The Experiments got their own space on the wall. Just recording the data of each experiment, slowly started to give it a visual. The date of the experiment, the length, the subject (animal) and what the specific experiment was, as I found when doing the first experiment, that I didn't know what to do, so in the second I gave myself a pen and paper as something to interact with. As an ape I ended up throwing the pen and paper around the room.

When I got the first three experiments on the wall I noticed a pattern with the screenshots from the videos. My printer is very low on black ink, which has given the prints a static kind of cctv video look. I like this, I think maybe this gives it more of a laboratory testing feel, as if these animals are being tested in a kind of lab.