Sophie B'sWWH

First draft here:[edit]

WORK 1 WHAT: The work is a video. It is eleven minutes and twenty seconds long. It contains a large variety of short clips ranging from 1-10 seconds. There is a female voice over that speaks in a low unembellished tone at a constant speed. She talks in the first and the third person alluding to different perspectives from one individual. The dense voice over often distracts the audience from the imagery so it becomes difficult to comprehend. The shots vary from close ups of a body to longer more staged shots of outdoors and interiors and a mixture of middle distance where the camera is rarely still.

HOW: The work was made by encountering certain scenarios and documenting them on my mobile phone in short video often using the camera in a turning circular motion. These then became the key scenes of the video, and i wrote a story from each of these scenes mostly based on personal experience. I filmed a lot more scenes and gathered some other text I had written and some found text I had written and some found text from surveys and articles. Then, I re-recorded the text into a disjointed narrative and read it out loud to record. It took 20 minutes to read. I edited it so there was little pause between the sentences and little time for the listener to digest.

WHY: I had been gathering lots of small ideas for works and I was waiting for a big idea to make something for my final degree show. I never had this eureka moment unfortunately so I had to build some kind of formula to make a work, something I had never done before. Instead I decided to put all of the small ideas together and see what happened. It was an experiment and I was very unsure what the final result would be. The reason why I wanted to make this work was because I wanted to make one work that spoke entirely for itself and didn’t need other works to support it.

WORK 2 WHAT: The work is a text diagram. It uses the format of a magazine questionnaire where you answer yes or no for the question and then follows the direction to the next question. The difference is that there is no final destination of the diagram you keep going round and round the same loop. The diagram is presented in an A5 publication where it spreads across a double page. The text is small and in a rounded square box. From a distance the diagram looks quite confusing. It has no colour, just black ink on off-white paper. The questions are about how you manage yourself and your thoughts in social situations.

HOW: I made the work by inventing questions that had a yes or no answer in relation to my question: How to self-manage. I then tested these questions on people to check how they responded. I then organised the questions in an order of progression that made sense to how I felt they related to one another. The diagram was made on an online program where I created small text boxes and arrows with yes or no attached to them. It was then printed in an A5 booklet with a bright green cover chosen by my friend, Katti and myself.

WHY: I made the diagram in response to a workshop. As a focal point of the workshop, rather than asking what is your work? The workshop asked: What are your questions? My question were about over-thinking and managing inner voice thoughts. The work used the format of a quick-fix solution in order to criticize the way people try to solve problems using the internet, questions, surveys or quizzes in society today. I wanted to make something that used irony in order to question the reader and to make them engage with their metacognitive thought process.

WORK 3 WHAT: The video work has three still shots of a lady, wearing a long skirt mowing the lawn of her garden on a very sunny day where the sky is very blue. The sound is mechanical at first and then you begin to hear a women breathing deeply. Text appears at the bottom of the screen and scrolls up until it disappears. The text in informing the audience about the history female ejaculation and how is has been banned in pornography in the UK in 2015. The piece is seven minutes and the female’s vocals and breathing become louder and louder as she reaches orgasm.

HOW: I asked a friend who had been talking about mowing her lawn at her summerhouse in Denmark if I could film her doing it. I only filmed the very beginning used it over and over again in the editing to show a lack of progress. The sound I recorded from a vibrator that I thought sounded similar to the sound the lawn mower. I found the text from an article online and edited it to make it a bit shorter. I then recorded the female sound and edited altogether to make the work.

WHY: I made this work because of the female ejaculation ban in the UK in pornography and the lack of knowledge about the female orgasm or ejaculation. I wanted to inform people on the information I found out from this article, as it has been something that has interested me over the last few years since my housemate bought me a vibrator for my birthday. I thought it would be a satisfying and amusing piece to make and also quite liberating. The work was shown a year later at an exhibition about gender and sexuality. When I first made the work I didn’t intend to show it apart from to my school mates.

Second Draft (after group feedback)

Steve's note to all: I suggest you cut the headings: what,  how & why. The text will hold up well.