Widening Participation – Summer workshops 2014

Students from the Interactive Sculpture Workshop helped facilitate an event on Thursday 10 July 2014, Art and Design Portfolio Day, to  stimulate work for portfolio to apply to foundation or BA courses in Art. We offered the workshop ‘Creature in a cup: interactive sculpture’ more info about the day here 
Below is our final performance video and details of the development of the work made in one day.

We used littleBits electronics kits to introduce the idea of animating everyday objects to create challenging and different perspectives on everyday life.

 Fluxus and Surrealist art as were considered as a starting point, we also looked at the Fischli and Weiss video, ‘The Way Things Go’ We then discussed the kind of work we would make from there. The group worked towards a video event, experimenting with electronics and creating sculpture from everyday objects.

Our group were keen to create something loosely based on George Orwell’s book Animal Farm that some had been reading for their GCSE, some were also keen to add an element of film horror to the work, we mentioned David Lynch’s Eraserhead in discussion.

Starting with the idea of animating a paper cup this led to animating paper plates. The group decided to work together to create a dinner party for animals,

 

 

Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party was

also mentioned in our discussions. The performance was shared with other participants from the Art and Design Portfolio exhibition at the end of the day.