SITE 09!!!!

What a party! The opening of Site was last night and it went off! There were hundreds of people and plenty of food and wine. Very fun night that I will remember for the rest of my life!

Thought I had better put some pics up for all those who couldn't make it.


Viet and I in our space a few days before opening.

Jewellery work by Jade Muirhead

Security Officer Alex broadcasting from Kansas City

Viet

Shelley Harding's installation



Our space during the opening

Me and Mum

Checking out my work

Leoni the head of the Art School opening SITE '09



It was a really good night with alot of socialising, checking out the amazing range of art works and a few too many wines.

The open day on Saturday was also great with a steady flow of visitors throughout the day. I'll post more pics shortly.

And here it is: World Navigation

update

So it has been an extreme week with a lot happening! the art school is buzzing and theres a lot of excitement mixed with stress in the air.

My Site exhibition "World Navigation" is now ready to be viewed and assessed on Tuesday. My presentation is at 1.35 and will go for 25minutes.

I have taken plenty of photos of the finished presentation but I'm holding off from posting them online to wait until the official opening. Watch this space!

more preps

Heres a bit more documentation of whats been going on in the last few days.

Our vinyl lettering worked out very nicely.

Cutting my prints took quite a while and I got a blister but its all worth it!

I mopped the whole room with an average 9-5 household mop.

Its all happening!!!

Quick update of whats been going on. The wall is done, painted sanded and ready to put stuff on. Our vinyl lettering is ready to be stuck on. Floor has been mopped. Junk has almost been moved out. Tonight will be a big night of hanging. Can't wait to have it up there the last few days have been very productive and we're getting very close to being done!

Wall construction

A lot has been achieved today with help from Viet and Colin. We have constructed the wall now and are in the process of sanding, filling and painting it.

Getting some important measurements.

MOUNT

Had a very productive morning today. Started work at 6.30am, finished at 9.30, went to design to pick up by mounting board, and then took my work with Viet to get it mounted.


Viet had his prints mounted at this place, its the Photo Gallery on George st. Tim the owner is a good dude and has a cool machine that mounted my prints onto the board with double sided sticky stuff. It took about an hour and resulted in a a very tidy job, a lot better and faster than if I had have used adhesive spray and alot less toxic. Now I just need to cut each one out individually.

Photos by Viet.

I'm helping out I swear!

We also went and got some shushi and our Vinyl lettering ordered and some sweet business card holders. boyaaa

new wall with layout mock up

So heres a bit of a mock up with each image drawn amazingly onto the 2008 polytech calanders. The highlighted white signifies where the sheets of MDF will go and they will be more white than the rest of the wall, but the contrast shouldn't be this much.

So there's 4 different clusters of images not layed out in any particular method although most of the NZ ones are in the first cluster. I want the viewers to look at each image individually and I think having them layed out similar to this would create that effect.

I'm still going to play around with layouts a bit. maybe even with the actual prints when they're mounted (which will be tomorrow yeeeea)

I'm happy with the amount of prints I'm using, they take up the wall nicely but there is still the option of taking one or 2 out.

Site Preps

Had a busy day today preparing our space for site.

• I have booked a mounting session for tomorrow at the Photo Gallery on George st at 10.30am so it will be good to have that done. DONE
  
• Then I will make my new wall with help from Colin.
• Also Viet and I need to have a quick chat to Rachel about our space.
• Gotta cut my prints out individually after they're mounted
• Order our Vinyl Lettering at Auto Art in South D.Done

Nice style Jesse, cut that shit.

Photos by Viet Tieu

Wet Paint....

So had a slight change of plans today when I discovered the wall I'm using (which is in shitty condition) can't be painted because its some special paint and a different colour than 'site white'. Colin the painting technician suggested a row of 1200x2400mm MDF sheets at the height I want to put my prints. the fact that its only 1200 high will limit me to dislpaying my work 3 prints deep which I am happy with.

Heres an MDF sheet with a few mock pieces of paper. Just testing if the height is alright. This would solve the problem I had with those crappy strips of wood. It would stick out about 40mm off the wall and be quite a different shade of white but I think that would be cool and make good use of space, not just putting it up on a plain white wall. I will have to re-think the design layout a little bit but shouldn't have to change it too much.

So the strip would go right along the end end of the wall. Need to paint the sheets and cut a few to size.

Action shot by Viet Tieu

Layout options

Heres some more layout options below.

I'm not too sure about this one, it seems to mechanisised and organised, not my style.

This one is a bit better, more random but not too random.

This ones even better I think, it will keep the viewers interested as they walk along the presentation. At the moment I have the NZ local icons mostly at the start but this may change, I don't know if its very important or if I should just scatter them randomly.

Printing

Got a good chunk of my printing done today. 15 Images in total which includes 4 in the panoramic format and 11 square(ish) images, all slightly different in width.
I printed using the big printer in Design which is awesome! The Roland Versa CAMM. And I printed on JET PRO Satin paper, well not really paper kind of plasticy stuff. I plan to mount it on 3mm foam-plex, a thin but sturdy board which will give the prints a more solid feel without being to bulky or framed.

So the sizes of the more square prints range from about 20x25cm to 30x35cm and the panoramic sized prints range from 25x70cm to 35x90cm so they are not drastically different in size but enough to tell that each one is unique.

list of prints so far:

Panoramic:

• Moeraki Boulders
• Louvre
• Great Wall of China
• The Grand Canyon

Original Format:

• Taj Mahal
  
• Machu Picchu
• Times Square (too dark and intense)
• Disney Land
• Venice (possibly too dark)
• Trafalgar Square
• Statue Of Liberty
• Eiffel Tower
• The Vatican

New Zealand Icons

• Mitre Peak (too dark and wrong colour)
• Hole in the Rock
• Baldwin Street
• First Church
• Train Station
• Cape Reianga

More NZ icons to do: Uni Clock tower, pink and white terraces, Auckland Bridge, Lake Matheson

More Int icons to do if needed: Maya Bay, Colosseum, Sarce, washington Monument

NOTE: No Australian icons yet...could do Opera House or Uluru

mock up presentation

heres a super quick smaveragly inacurate mock up of how i could present in the life drawing room on the wall to the left as you walk in the door

the clock is ticking......

Need to do a quick list of things to do as lately progress has been slow, I feel I'm going backwards if anything and theres only a few weeks until assessment.

This week:

• Professional Practice: Fix up 500-1000 word statement. Needs theory + 6-8 images attached - hand to Bridie in hard copy and also on a cd. TICK
• Also turn this into a nice pdf that could be used for the year book, add image. TICK
• Make 300 word statement - sumarise the 500-1000 word document.
• CV + port folio finished TICK

all of the above make into a cd + present hard copies in an A4 folder

Studio:

• InDesign - make up virtual space and play with image layouts, scale to proper size
• Print images on wednesday at 10am-12 TICK
• do a practice mount using spray on adhesive TICK (didnt work amazingly)
• mount on thurs or fri
• book time to mount, photogallery.George st.
• empty our stuff out of studio on friday

Presentations: Practice presenting to the panel of assessers so I know what I'm talking about and say it with confidence - I need to be able to answer all questions they ask me.

this kind of clears things up but it would be great to tick something off the list today otherwise pressure will increase dramatically. keep focused!

I'll tick these off as I complete them.

Excite

This is the Art section of the Otago Polytechnic Excite 2009 catalogue which has just came out onto the polytech website. It includes one of my 'Iconic Thumbnails' of Cape Rienga, the tip of New Zealand. Far North yeeeeah!

Icons I have done so far...

Grand Canyon

I've been compiling images of famous places around the world, and when I came across the Grand Canyon this happened:

It turned into a big landscape scene with all these different things happening. I upped the opacity on some of the layers to bring certain parts to attention. Quite like the effect this gives as a big panoramic landscape which is totally altered and not true at all.

And heres one of the Great Wall of China

Different approaches

Heres two versions of the Washington DC monument. The top image is done using the same techniques that I've been using in past iconic thumbnail works.

This new one at beneath I have taken a slightly different approach. I have chosen one image which has a good average size of the subject (in this case it is the monument) and each image I place on top of it I re-size tomatch the size of the original subject. This means the actual thumbnail images all change their original size but the subject turns into the same size.

I have also upped the opacity in some of the layers to bring some of the important parts out. I quite like how it has worked with this particular image but I'm not sure if it would work so well with some of the others.

Disecting my work...........in AVI video

Im beginning to really delve into how my work is made up and experiment with one image - The hole in the rock - and try everything I possibly can to define how my final images will be made up. I have started with a clip of how I mave been working, you get a sense of the building up of the layers and how it all comes together to form the final image.

I like how on this video it is displayed at pretty much the same size as an actual thumbnail on google, all detail is the same and you canget a feel of the subject I am working with which is made to be viewed on a screen anyway.

It would be cool to make a series of these and display them on screen in a similar format.

Another interesting way of making a video like this would be to make the layering seem infinite, keep on going for a long time or loop, this would further inhance my ideas of the infinite access to online experiences.

when I get round to it.