Workshop

Thought you might like this sweatshirt I saw the other day:

It’s proving a lot harder to find the time to do this blog than I thought it would be as the workshops and discussion tend to last from 10am till about 9pm, but rest assured that everything is going really well - we’ve had nothing but good feedback and apparently by comparison to last year’s workshop, our kicks ass.

Also, everything is continually being photographed and filmed by a team of about three ICC cameramen, so we will get plenty of footage from them of whatever we want.

Anyway, what’s been going down since I last wrote?

 

 

Balloons

The balloon sculptures exercise went really well. Once people had got their head round how to make basic shapes and structures, Dick set them the challenge of trying to make a big communal project together.

Which, obviously ended up being a balloon scultpture of Marie Antoinette in a strange futuristic court of Versailles?!

It was all very bizarre, a dress was created in balloons and then it was decided who would play the role of this inflatable goddess. The group then decided to photograph the finished piece in Rinzen’s painting space and there was a team of people doing make up and others doing lighting, etc. They all took it very seriously, but when you see what the scene looked like it was hysterical and I realised that I was having probably the most surreal day of my life.

 

 

Photography Treasure Hunt

The next project we did was the photography treasure hunt with the idea being that the participants have to go out and photograph the objects/concepts we wrote on a blackboard, then present them however they liked.

So, Hogg san and I came up with as many ideas as possible for the group to catch…

…and we asked them to give us a list of things to find too. We all then set out to find our photographic treasure and came back together the next day to go through the images. It was interesting how different people interpreted things in their own ways, some choosing quite a literal response and others taking a more abstract and conceptual approach.

The ‘winner’ (basically the first person to collect everything they needed to find) was rewarded with a copy of Fred’s new Triptych mix album - this went down very well!!

 

 

Stop Motion

Though we had quite a few workshop ideas in reserve, something that Rinzen had been doing was documenting their painting workshop using a built in stopmotion function on their new camera. This gave Dick the great idea of actually doing a whole project based on the technique.

So, we introduced the idea and watched numerous stop motion examples on youtube, etc and discussed the pros and cons of each. Then people split into small groups and went off to practise the technique and make a short film of anything they liked, which included a melting snowman played in reverse so that water formed itself back into a snowman and the lame Airside/Rinzen effort below. We’re all about the concept, yeah?!

The group are enjoying this project so much that they’ve decided to spend the last days of the course continuing with it and we’ve set them the challenge as a group of creating a video that links into the beginning of a days painting in the Rinzen workspace. This is very much in the spirit of their RMX idea and is another example of the two workshops overlapping.

So, watch this space to see the outcome of the stop motion project!

On a social note, last night was really nice - I cooked a chicken and spinach curry for everybody and we chatted and had a few beers after another tiring day. Steve Baker from Tomato popped in too as he is in town talking at a conference on Japan’s creative economy.

Day two began with a dry mouth and a dull ache in my frontal lobe - which is strange, as Nat told me that sake doesn’t give you a hangover??

(Maybe it was something to do with the beer and shochou we also drank.)

But being Airsiders, we’re made of strong stuff, so we laughed at our hangovers and got down to the ICC where the workshop participants were eagerly waiting. Dick kicked the morning off with a fine showreel presentation with a little Q&A at the end where people asked about the work as well as about the structure of Airside. We told them that Sibylle runs a tight ship and doesn’t take shit off anybody. She sometimes has us doing press-ups on the kitchen floor if we step out of line.

After the presentation, we began doing balloon sculptures after a few initial diagrammatic pointers from Mr Hogg.

Firstly, we took people through the basics of inflating the balloons as well as how to twist simple shapes so that they could get used to using it as a medium. Then we all made the staple of any good balloonist’s repertoire - a dog. Or in my case a dog with one ear bigger than the other and a squirrel-like tail.

Then people just played with the balloons, either adding to their existing sculptures or starting from scratch. We ended up with items as diverse as: a flower with bees pollinating it, to a dress, to a cup and saucer, to Dick’s giant ball of balloon tumbleweed which he claims is actually the boulder from the game, Katamari.

The day ended with us asking people to think collectively about a giant communal piece they might like to make. We’d be discussing it the following morning and carrying on the next day.

In the afternoon, Steve and Rilla took over with the second day of the Rinzen RMX project. A black room containing a cube and a pyramid had been graced with beautiful paint marker drawings by the class the day before and today’s project was to take white paint and add to the piece by selectively painting over or not choosing to paint over certain areas. The idea being to complement the existing artwork, but add your own personal touch.

Dick and I mucked in and our efforts are below:

More tomorrow…