Since our last post, we have made a prototype of the jukebox, erecting a downwards facing projector over a table and testing out a selection of different ideas, all prompted by post cards or photos.

 

Barney has been getting to grips with after effects and we have been trying out the basics of how it will work in terms of how to instruct people as well as writing and devising individual stories.

 

We have refined the idea down even further and although we are interested in the mobile phone technology (and may very well use it in future), for this first jukebox we are now limiting ourselves to top down projection, audio through headphones and RFID to trigger initial picture selections and further triggers (such as turning the card over to start a piece of audio or film) if required.

 

On Tuesday this week, we tested out a few of the ideas we had quite roughly put together so far. Our guinea pig audience were very helpful and encouraging. One of the things we wanted to find out was how long the pieces should be and so we made one that was longer than the others – about 4mins. The group all thought that this was probably slightly too long. This was kind of as we had expected and so we are now going to aim to make one of our constraints that they should be 3mins or under. 

 

Another piece of feedback was that people might want to do more than one card in a single sitting, so this is probably something we will need to think about if there are times when it could be busy. If we are there (which I'm sure we will be to start with) we can always regulate this ourselves.

 

In terms of the ideas, we started with a whole stack of postcards. I collected boring and weird post cards as I was growing up and I also had loads of post cards, flyers and posters on my walls when I was a teenager. Many of the cards from that time were in the stack which sparked memories and ideas. 

 

Barney re-visited a piece of work he did at Wimbledon for his degree show, which was about a modernist house built by our Grandfather in the 1960s. He selected a few photos from that time in the house and recorded our Dad talking to our Granny, Sneeze, about them and her memories. He also made a cine-film of the house as it is now, owned by strangers to our family. We tried taking a couple of those photos and the interviews he made for the degree show and playing them as short stand-alone pieces. At the end you are instructed to turn the card over which triggers a clip of the cine-film that relates to the part of the house shown in the photo.

 

A further source of inspiration has been 'the box'. In our family we have an old metal chest which contains papers, letters, some books, newspapers and records dating back to the 17th century if not earlier. It is a resource that we often dip into. Last night we had a delve and came up with some interesting finds including letters and drawings from our great grandfather, Cecil, to his mother in the Boer war and a special edition of LIFE magazine from 1969 of photos from the Apollo VIII mission.

 

We mentioned 'the box' in our initial application and thought back then that it might provide the inspiration for this project. It has taken most of the residency to come back to this, but it now feels that the idea of snippets of history and memories fits really well with the concept that is now developing. With this resource of family history, both mundane and important, we can create connections between the short experiences if they are taken from or inspired by the box and the family in some way. We have been talking for some time about creating some work that is autobiographical rather than fictional and now, without quite planning it, we feel that is the direction our first JukeBOX is heading in.

 

The last piece of exciting news is that we have found a carpenter who can make the unit for us. He is currently exhibiting work at an exhibition called the art of ply, which is right under our studio at The Parlour this week. Nice bit of serendipity!

Posted by StandandStare