Surprisingly figuring out what we would want to produce for the publication was sorted within the first lecture on the project, to be perfectly honest there were images of arguments stretching over weeks forcing production to be set into one rushed week, ruining the overall piece compared to if we were to start producing the publication now. Obviously there were discussions of what we would want to for the publication. The decision was made that we will go our own separate ways to produce a piece of artwork that stuck to a agreed theme.
The theme was chosen quite quickly, procrastination. This theme works perfectly for the group as its bound to be that we all have that one thing that stops us in the production of our university work, for me its gaming, the challenge is to make something with minecraft that would be accepted as a piece of work to go into the chap book. The theme, while interesting has already given problems to my project as I’m struggling to decide what i should do. For me my procrastination is Minecraft, a cube based game where you can build anything you want in a cubic nature. Now I can make something unusual and draw it but that would be a waste of time and productivity. If there was a way to be able to use minecraft itself in the production/presentation of the work that will go into the chap book. Possibly taking a screenshot and printing it onto some handmade paper. This is the only way I could consider adding that handmade element to the work. My argument to this though is that I was the person who was creating the project in minecraft, take the image below for example a good 3-4 hours was spent placing the individual blocks to produce a scene that was worth taking a image of and rendering it so it looks a lot smoother than the default textures of the game allow. And in a personal opinion I feel that it works as a piece, people can argue that it can’t be used as it isn't’t art but, thankfully I was given a link by a third year to an artist who has made some pieces of work that use minecraft.
http://moussemagazine.it/articolo.mm?id=1074
http://rachelvalinsky.tumblr.com/post/77516594153/jan-robert-leegte-remake-of-robert-smithons
The two links above this show that minecraft can be used to produce a piece of work, one is a remake of a Robert Smithon’s “spiral jetty” and the other is looking at how minecraft can be used in the production of artwork, and how it can influence how people look and interact with 3d objects and how they view them. This sounds really random to me, but it makes sense, minecraft allows you to make structures you have dreamed of. Be it your dream mansion or pixel art of your favorite game character, minecraft allows you to do all of these things without the hassle of making a model in real life. I use it for this purpose I like to build, particular fantasy or old style builds, as it adds that challenge to make something with such detail. Take the images below these are my own creations in minecraft. There are many more creations like these on the servers I play on, and all take the same time to produce something I feel worthy of showing to people.
The second lecture provided us with a more final definition on what we would want to do for the project, we finalized the theme, we would still be going with the procrastination theme as expected, the main decisions that were made were to the actual appearance to the publication. Thankfully the group talked about the possibility of using a different form of binding than a simple chap book. For those who are unaware of what a chap book it is medieval form of a zine. It would consist of separate pieces of paper which were bound up with a cover or sleeve that wasn't’t connected to the pages. The idea to use the chap book came about an idea that we would all be making our own work so if people wanted to keep a certain piece of work they shouldn't have to worry about ripping the piece to frame it. By making a chapbook not only does it stop that happening but gives us the opportunity to produce the best piece we can for the publication.
This got me thinking about what would be appropriate to display a piece of work. With the images seen above I would be happy with any of them being displayed in the chapbook, but they could be regarded as un “arty” And this would be an acceptable premises, but when using minecraft the closet you can get to creating “art” is pixel art, and all the time I’ve played Minecraft I have never found a pixel art that would be worthy of making, they tend to be of computer game characters or traditional pixel art you find all over the internet. A style that I have never found appealing.
This got me thinking about what would be appropriate to display a piece of work. With the images seen above I would be happy with any of them being displayed in the chapbook, but they could be regarded as un “arty” And this would be an acceptable premises, but when using minecraft the closet you can get to creating “art” is pixel art, and all the time I’ve played Minecraft I have never found a pixel art that would be worthy of making, they tend to be of computer game characters or traditional pixel art you find all over the internet. A style that I have never found appealing.
When it came to the assembling of the Publication I encountered a problem, mainly the factor affecting it was if the piece I had produced was really “hand made”. After discussions with my tutor we came with the idea to make each piece “unique” I would add a hand drawn element to each photo to allow them to be classed as “handmade” and adds that special element with each piece being different. If there was someone who was interested in collection these works would have just reason to with everyone being different. Also added to the fact that the publication has two different images split between to 40 publications, adding the fun element of which one will the person get, obviously though I have the publication with the arguably best one as after drawing on top of all of them the drawn lines only helped to heighten the geometric nature of the image being displayed.
When bringing everyones piece to start forming the publication it was very interesting to see how the members of the group had taken to the theme of procrastination, people like myself had taken it literally and made use of the thing that causes us to procrastinate. Where others had seemingly seen it as a way to make a piece of work for there bafa that could fit into the publication. Some however worked both ways, take the work of Adam Coley, his work is very performative unusual. But he always has that element of comedy in his work, and the publication was no different. The piece submitted for the publication was a handmade envelope made from old book pages that contained a single piece of paper with a joke typed onto it. Now Coley has a habit of making puns out of anything that is said, and in every envelope there is arguably a bad pun. This type of work has turned out well as it incorporates both factors for Coley, his work and his jokes.