Where have the puppets gone? I visited the second year show at the Grand Parade gallery, University of Brighton, today and they’re missing. It reminded me of the time my car was stolen; it was as if there was a giant exclamation mark in the space I’d left it. Between Saturday lunchtime and Tuesday lunchtime the puppets have come to life and gone to seek their own way or someone has stolen them, but for what purpose? Just to have them? To play with them? To destroy them? I wonder if they’ll turn up in someone else’s art? And if they do, shall I steal them back?
The second year show opened this evening and this is the film displayed inside the Punch and Judy theatre. The film is looped and it doesn’t matter which point you begin watching because you can make sense of the chronicle and the story once you’ve witnessed the whole thing. Friends of mine made the choice to watch from beginning to end, though, after joining it part way through, which I found interesting.
I enjoyed making the theatre knowing an audience would be coming to view it. Knowing the exhibits would be displayed for one week was also appealing. Collaborating with Matt Page on the build was a pleasure and I received help from classmates, Lara (painting) and Edmund (building).
I made the curtains for the theatre by ruching a strip of material to drop down from the pelmet; I fixed it in place with a staple gun. Two straight pieces of material were attached to the sides and the digital image was surrounded by black curtains. I stapled black cloth to the top of the theatre.
A hole was drilled into the front panel beneath the shelf for the headphones wires to feed through. Headphones were placed on white hooks either side of the hole. This invited people to sit side by side to view the film. I noticed if one person sat to watch it they would choose a side rather than sit in the middle. This behaviour makes me realise how arranging objects invites people to use the space.
Matt helped me to put up three shelves, which Justine painted, near to the theatre. I put flower pots with the puppets placed in flower arranging oasis on them. I noticed people seemed immersed as they watched the film.
I realised the voice over I recorded during the puppet making was perfect for an emergent practice film. The audio tells a personal story of how unhelpful beliefs can form when blindly trusting the word of an authority figure; questioning snips away the ties that bind the belief in place allowing a realisation of some of the reasons why I make art. This realisation will help me to experiment with the purpose of art in future projects.
The audio fits nicely over the speeded up footage of me making the puppets. My words are not scripted and there is plenty of space between questions and answers. The slowness of the audio contrasts with the fast speed of the visuals, although there are occasional clips played at normal speed (23.967 fps), and this creates breathing space in the visual track. The third audio clip is different from the previous two in that tearing sounds can be heard, which do not match the visual images. I like this because it shows the temporal mismatch of the visual and audio tracks; it’s a reminder of the constructed nature of film.
After putting the sound and images together I thought about bringing the puppets to life. I wanted to use them in a way that was fun and nonviolent as an alternative to the domestic violence usually advocated by Punch and Judy professors. There is a song, Lean on Me by Bill Withers, that I’ve sung at parties or (ahem) in the kebab shop or in the street and people join in singing with me. It makes me smile and it feels good to sing together. I decided the puppets would sing this song. I phoned Justine and she agreed to sing for Delores, the female adult. Andy agreed to sing for Bill Senior. I recorded myself singing as Bill Junior then Justine listened to me through headphones and sang along as I recorded her. Andy did likewise.
Next I filmed the puppets (Andy and Justine moved them around in realtime) dancing and ‘singing’ against the backdrop of a large picture frame; the frame has marked out holes for pictures but it’s empty. This links back to audio during puppet making in the film where I talk about the effect of believing I wasn’t good enough to do art: I stopped drawing and painting for a long time. Judy had suggested, during a tutorial, that I film the puppets in my wardrobe with painted scenery backdrops but that was before I was ready to work with the puppets and, of course, now I was ready it didn’t tie in with the emerging story.
About a week ago I wrote a script for the puppets based on the adults talking to me as I make the child. The child has wings but the adults don’t because they ripped them off each other in arguments and I’d grown tired of making them. I recorded myself doing the voices for the puppets and tried to edit it into the film but it wasn’t working; it felt like the story was the baseline holding the film together. In my journal I voiced a new idea: to make speeded up footage of the making of the puppets and then go with the stop motion animation.
I suddenly felt at ease; I could let go of the script and put the footage together in the order I shot it as I made the puppets; it would be a chronicle detailing emergent practice. The story made by the puppets interacting will emerge when I play with and film them tomorrow.
Yesterday Lara (Moving Image student) and I painted black and white stripes onto the theatre, making it look more like an actual theatre. Starting on the left hand side at the back we measured 10 centimetre spaces and drew vertical lines before protecting the soon-to-be white stripes with masking tape. I painted the top section of the front black and there is a shelf to be added, which I also painted black, along with the pelmet, which I sanded (for ages!) first.
Matt Page, Moving Image Technician, has offered to cut a decorative pelmet (to hang the theatre curtain from) using the electric saw if I draw it. I started off by drawing round things onto the MDF but that didn’t work. I took a piece of paper, folded it in half and drew round things onto that instead; then I cut the shape out. I didn’t like it so I just cut the paper freestyle and ended up with a design I like. I taped the paper to the MDF at the bottom and drew around the shape onto the MDF and voila: it’s ready for Matt to cut.
Matt Page, Moving Image Technician, and I built the Punch and Judy theatre on Wednesday in the photography studio before shipping it over to the gallery, in pieces, on a trolley. Today we put it together and I painted it white. My piece is in the space outside the canteen, which means a lot of people walk past it as it is being built. I feel exposed quite often.
I went to St Peter’s House Library with Justine to look at The Red Book again. I let the book fall open at this image and then turned to the text it referred to. I was hoping for some synchronicity but I couldn’t see how the text related. Justine pointed to the text a few lines above. It said this:
“Come to us, we who are willing from our own will.
Come to us, we who understand you from our own spirit.
Come to us, we who will warm you at our own fire.
Come to us, we who will heal you with our art.
Come to us, we who will produce you from our own body.
Come, child, to father and mother.”
Image 59 The Red Book, C. Jung.
I’d been thinking about how my original idea of using my experience of my father in my film didn’t tie in with emergent practice. I’ve been feeling like I should work with the stuff around my father but I don’t want to; I should because I stated clearly at the beginning that I wanted to. I don’t want to because I think these puppets will tell a different story if I let them. I don’t want them to be violent.
Jung’s verse resonates with me because it feels like it could be the puppets calling me to their story, rather than me fitting them to mine.
I tried animating the puppets today by taking a short shot, moving the puppet, taking another short shot and so on. In Adobe Premier Pro CS6 I pulled one frame from each shot successively in order to make this short sequence.
I decided to film the initial scene against the backdrop of the green screen with the intention of keying out the green and using a different scene behind but it didn’t work; I couldn’t light the green screen properly in my bedroom using two Dedo lights.
I like the bright green background that changes to duller lighting when the boy puppet hits the ground. The everyday mundane things like the radiator contrasts with the magical sense of the puppets moving.
Oolia touching reality 