Blog 4
The beginning of my personal project:
After I had researched a little bit about my chosen subject of running and where I might be able to go with it, I then started by initially collecting data. In the last project that I did which used running as the subject, I created a video mostly using my POV and the sound of my footsteps in a 3-minute short film, with its aim being to embody my experience of running. It was quite literal in the sense that you were seeing my feet running and seeing what I see on a run. Whereas in this new work I would like it to be not necessarily abstract, but definitely more obscure with how the work looks like it is related to running. I'd like to almost force it into a fine art situation in a white cube gallery where running has rarely been. I started collecting data from runs on the Strava app, where you can see all the lines created from where you go on your run or even cycles or walks etc. I've always been fascinated by maps, map making and the outdoors in general and this project will allow me to explore that in more detail. I like the aesthetics of maps and using them as a tool for printing on or using even as mark making, in collages and drawing.
Therefore, the start of this project began with me simply drawing from the Strava maps. They are then literal representations of where I've been, they're not abstract, but they are very stripped back and quite minimal. I've decided in the work to translate something from the digital to the analogue or the ‘artistic’. There is tension there because running is such a primal, physical thing. I started by working with pen on paper before expanding to coloured pens and then crayons or ink and more recently I have been working on bigger paper and on better quality paper. I feel that because my project is so minimal, the quality of each aspect is very important. I do feel like I need to figure out a way of making the work more sensory, more visceral, more immersive. Because right now it looks quite removed, very clinical, but then maybe that’s what I want. Perhaps that's what I'm trying to say in the work, that we're making running too clinical by obsessing over data all the time.
That is where I am now then. I need to figure out and explain in more detail why I'm doing this project and why it matters, because I don't know what exactly I'm trying to tell the audience. Whereas in previous projects, I've always had an aim that I would like to educate, make people think differently or highlight something that people might not know about. Compared to this work, where I’m not quite sure what my main aim is yet.