Project Updates, Hubberholme Trip, City Centre Focus

• started with a place to visit and document the 'everyday' in that place. I wanted somewhere different and unique from the ordinary everydays of modern society and so picked the small hamlet of Hubberholme in the Dales.
• The difficulty of  getting there and the lack of 'action' meant I couldn't continue making work there.
• However the trip was helpful in starting the work and opened my eyes up to the challenge of documenting the mundane.

• The accessibility and variety of goings-on in Leeds City Centre made it a good choice for the location of the project.
• Started by attempting to 'exhaust a place', similar to Georges Perec, writing observations of what happened around me, along with quick sketches
• I was not too happy with the drawings, I don't feel like the are well done, nor do they seem to tell much of a story of the everyday, however they were a start.

• The idea of documenting everyone entering and leaving a place tells more of a story than the random observations.
• Not only is the passing of time documented but also the variety of differing individuals connected by a unifying action. Closer observations can be made, or questioned, such as why are these people visiting the gallery midday in the middle of the week? What does this say about society as a whole?

Project Proposal/Presentation Feedback

Presentation went well, but discussion afterwards was so helpful and invaluable - I needed feedback to know if the seed of an idea or direction I was heading in was sufficient enough and the answer was most definitely yes.
Over summer I had the idea of documenting and recording life, but at that stage it was way too broad and I was unsure how to narrow it down into a manageable, interesting exploration. The work in the module briefing and in my portfolio that interests me the most were about a place - so this will be my starting point. Narrowing down to a starting focus ensures that the idea can be explored properly via that starting point; the place I choose will become the filter with which to explore the everyday.

Some key words/points from feedback:

- Small personal experiences
- What is the everyday? Mundane? Define
- Untold story, place nobody knows - unexplored
- Have something to say - why should other people care?
- Start broad, record everything
- What interests you in the place?

Next Steps:

- Define 'everyday' and 'mundane'
- Research suggested contextual sources; other artists, illustrators, scientists
- Choose a place; unexplored, unknown, historical
- Spend time in place; thinking, observing, exploring, finding
- Start recording discoveries; sights, sounds, smells, sensations, landmarks, people, wildlife etc.
- Build up varied portrait of place with recordings
- Analyse findings; anything unusual, particularly interesting or unique? Anything worth focussing on or exploring more?