Test_piece.cda

 

I finally made artwork this year. It's a random test piece, because I wanted to see if printing on 17 x 9.5cm size Filofax paper would work. I went on Adobe Illustrator, made a replica of the funding graph line for the Library of Birmingham. Even drew a silhouette of the building near the graph line.

Printing the graphics onto Filofax didn't go to plan, because part of it cut off in the end, but I was able to improvise and staple/tape the pages onto graph paper. I noticed I'm passively influenced by my workplace. I work mainly in an office environment now (knowledge work-based), and this test piece shows traces of this. I've seen my colleagues tape things to walls and tape paper together. I must have started doing this on my test piece because there was something endearingly unique about the tape - it wasn't regular tape. It was individual square pieces. I wanted to remake a graph, because when I was at work the other day, I saw a graph of temperature recordings, and it looked pretty, because there were a lot of recordings from different items in one graph, and you don't necessarily see it as data first.

The meaning behind the test piece.mp3

I used the Filofax page from 1st of April to 4th of April, because it was the end of the fiscal year. The best part is the monopoly token of the boot standing above the dip of the graph. Maybe it's suggesting that we, the players, are standing on the graph we don't have control over - whether it ebbs or flows - and because it's a token from monopoly, we helplessly land on spaces others own, and we have to pay to be in this space. We’re at that stage of the game (monopoly) where some players have hotels on almost all the spaces- late stage capitalism. When the institutions and businesses inevitably land on other institutional/ business spaces, they go bankrupt. 

PhD keeps following me like a recurring dream.mp3 

I was set on not doing a phd, and I'm not sure why, but the universe seems to have a way of finding people and situations to wake me up. I was reading about pH and TSS tests (for my work in my own time - I printed the information sheets off), and at home I started researching about what TSS means - it means total suspended solids, and then I wanted to research about how refractometers work, and I realised I'm not meant to stay in this place until retirement. I think my path really is to study towards PhD. Most people would be happy just reading the information sheet and not question it, but I'm not satisfied with it, because it didn't explain what the TSS acronym was. I've booked to go to a postgraduate fair (happens to be on my birthday), and ask around. I'd like to do an art practice-based PhD, contributing towards sociology and humanities subjects, because what seems to be a research area that seems to be sticking for me is Bourdieu and cultural capital. Hopefully I can still work if I do go on the PhD programme - and work alongside it, because I need money to maintain my hedonic treadmill lifestyle.

 

To be honest I’ve thought about the PhD vs job dilemma for so much that it doesn’t make sense now. The pros and cons from both sides are congealed. Maybe I’ll run it through the Bostwick meter to see how much it flows.