Weekly reflective account

Monday 13th April (9.30-11.30pm)
‘Aged’ the Anaglypta wallpaper using coffee and tea and ripping paper in places. Once dry I will apply charcoal and chalk pastels to increase dirty appearance of the ‘wall’.

● Planning for work for the rest of the week.
● Ink storyboard of rest of animation and plans for shooting script
● Ensure camera is ready for use and tripod is set up ready to shoot.
● Explore the theme of ‘Englishness’

I looked into some of the views about Englishness and what this term implies.

Englishness: no fuss, please
Long-winded statements about civic virtues, swearing oaths ... none of this feels English
Roy Hattersley

"I am an Englishman. My passport was issued by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and it describes me as a British citizen. But English is what I feel and, therefore, English is what I am. I have never believed that my nationality made me superior to “lesser breeds without the law” or that, thanks to an accident of birth, I possessed elevated views on liberty, democracy and tolerance that are denied to other races. My allegiance is cultural (which means Shakespeare and cricket) and geographical (the Peak District and the Pennines) and usually I do not make a fuss about it.

Indeed, not making a fuss about being English seems to me an essential ingredient of Englishness. If we posses a national characteristic that should be (in Shakespeare's ungrammatical words) “the envy of less happier lands”, it is our emotional reticence - the “modest stillness” that Henry V regarded as the proper response to peace and security.

American schoolchildren swear an oath of allegiance to the flag that they fly on their public buildings because the US is a new country that is unsure of its identity. Italian city squares are decorated with statues of the heroes of the Risorgimento because Italy was only “unified” 150 years ago. We English do not need to behave in those flamboyant ways and we lose something that is essentially English if we start to copy the behaviour of less secure nationalities."

When Gordon Brown wrote yesterday about “common values” that bind the Union together, he was describing the virtues that should inform any civilised society and I very much doubt if Jack Straw, who soon sets off on a journey of exploration, will return with a definition of citizenship that is exclusive to Britain as a whole.



* Join me in a saucy oath to Britain

* What's wrong with a love of being British?

* That's the Britishness I love

* Citizenship: a British farce

But there is one characteristic that at least distinguishes the English from equally admirable races. We pride ourselves on not boasting about being English. When G.K. Chesterton wrote of “the people of England that never have spoken yet”, he did not mean to suggest that we had nothing to say for ourselves - merely that while other nationalities “talked of freedom, while England talked of ale”. We chose that subject because, being free, we did not need to assert the importance of liberty and because we would have been embarrassed to proclaim our love of what we knew to be our birthright.

If we abandon that natural reserve and replace it with oaths, flags, national days and long-winded statements of the civic virtues to which we should all aspire, we may do something to create a feeling of “Britishness”. But an essential part of what it means to be English will be destroyed.

Roy Hattersley's latest book is Borrowed Time: The Story of Britain Between the Wars
(http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article3621134.ece March 26, 2008)

Billy Bragg's top 10 books on Englishness

* guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 18 October 2006 00.00 BST
* Article history

The singer and songwriter Billy Bragg has been producing music for over two decades. In his first book, The Progressive Patriot - part autobiography, part polemic - Bragg considers his own family history and childhood, the influences of thinkers and artists such as George Orwell, Rudyard Kipling and The Clash, and reflects on how they have shaped his sense of Englishness. He also examines the historical impact of such things as the Magna Carta, the civil war and the miners' strike on the formation of the country's national consciousness.

Here, he chooses his favourite books on the subject of Englishness.

1. The Lion and The Unicorn - Socialism and the English Genius by George Orwell

Written during the Blitz, with Nazi invasion seemingly imminent, Orwell wonders aloud if there is anything in this country worth defending, even dying for. The picture he paints of "a family in which the wrong people are in charge" still resonates, as do his attacks on an English intelligentsia "ashamed of their own country". The most important insight he offers is that Englishness is constantly changing: "it stretches into the future and the past, there is something in it that persists, as in a living creature". The greatest book written on the subject from a left-wing perspective.

2. England's Dreaming by Jon Savage

Savage was there at the beginning of punk, hanging out with the Pistols and falling for Malcolm McLaren's Situationist shtick. Despite that, his book - the first to attempt to put punk into its proper context - gets beyond the safety pins and snakebite to shed some light how the mediocrity of mid-70s England produced punk rock.

3. The World Turned Upside Down by Christopher Hill

Hill's masterpiece captures the turmoil of the one true revolutionary episode in English history, when the principle of government by consent led to the execution of the king. A great period of radical thinking was unleashed, much of it coming from below. Diggers, Ranters, Levellers and others seized the moment to agitate for full democratic accountability. All their arguments are here, alongside those of the grandees who eventually snuffed out the English revolution.

4. The Village That Died For England by Patrick Wright

Ostensibly the story of Tyneham, a Dorset village that was evacuated in 1943 to make way for the D-Day preparations and whose residents were never allowed to return, despite Winston Churchill's promise. For Wright however, detail is everything and he clambers over the locked gates and barbed wire fences to discover a "deep England" of eccentric squires, quasi-fascistic communes and neolithic pathways.

5. England, Half English by Colin MacInnes

MacInnes was an Australian who brought an outsider's view to post-war London. He sat in the bars and cafes of Soho, writing articles on the emerging teen culture and the impact of West Indian immigration on the staid English character. This collection of articles, written originally for magazines such as the New Left Review, offers insights into both the roots of swinging London and of our multicultural society.

6. England The Light by Stuart Clarke

Stuart Clarke is a photographer who, in his own words, sets out "to show a landscape that its quite beautiful without the need for football, industry and people - but is better for their existence". This engaging collection of photographs was mostly taken during Euro 2004 in Portugal and constitutes a dazzling celebration of fandom, accompanied by text in English, German, Portuguese and Swedish.
See photographs by Stuart Clarke

7. England In Particular by Sue Clifford and Angela King

A marvellous compendium of the peculiar. Want to know how to participate in the Haxley Hood game or master the ancient art of fen skating? This is the book for you. Every oddity of the English landscape is here, from cabbies' shelters to deserted villages, countryside customs to city superstitions.

8. The Making of the English Working Class by EP Thompson

The founding text of English social history. Thompson shows how the ordinary people of England were not content to wait for political reforms to be handed down to them from above, but were actively fighting for their rights throughout the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

9. A Song For Every Season by Bob Copper

The Copper family tended sheep on the Sussex downland for generations, and built up a vast collection of folk songs which they sung in the fields while working and in the tap room while relaxing with a beer. Discovered by the BBC in the early 1950s, their material formed an important part of the folk revival. Bob Copper's memoir of his family's life on the Downs at Peacehaven is accompanied by songs from the family collection.

10. The Strange Death of Tory England by Geoffrey Wheatcroft

It cheers me up just to write that title, never mind read the book.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/oct/18/top10s.englishness

Tuesday 14h April
Aims: Continue to ‘age’ the wallpaper

● Create test shots of wallpaper, with natural lighting, highlights, dark lighting and props.
● Create shots of cigarette falling into ashtray and smoke. (video)
● Use video to capture wine cork popping , (plastic syringe, and tea cup being stirred).
● Continue ink storyboard of shooting script, including tea stains, brown betty teapot,
● Wallpaper, tea rings, part of a plate (chipped) or old.

Storyboard the following:
Mug (explore methods on this one key word).
The findings could be used for poster 2.
(different ways this can be shown, including 4 methods from research, different influences BB, Lye, Brownjohn, Transcription convention, everything. also concrete poetry, try 2D and 3D, using paper and extending, using props relating to tea i.e. tealeaves and glue.
Union jack from the word ‘T’


● ● ● Significant findings occurred today when merging together linguistic methods with visual cues. I began storyboarding a shooting script as planned from yesterday’s agenda.The aim of the shooting script is to visualise my thoughts about methods and their efficiency in communication of intonation. Based on reflections of previous visual methods I have utilised such as chalk pastel, the organic use of ink, exploration of concrete poetry etc I started to synthesise these methods with linguistic explorations I had researched earlier on in the year. Linear, contour, levels and crazy letter methods have been linked firstly with my influences such as Brownjohn, Barnbrook, and Lye. After this first way of working, I quickly moved onto other methods or movements I had reviewed, such as concrete poetry, dada and I began to create my own processes and rationale. A storyboard of seven methods has been recorded as follows:

1 Crazy letter method (Bollinger ’72) + letterforms CCE (Allanson-Smith’09) (CCE=created in unison with content, context and environment) The word mug will be created using tea related materials, such as liquid tea, tea leaves, tea stains, 3D references and 2D references.

2 Levels method (Pike ’45) + letterforms CCE (Allanson-Smith’09)

3 Crazy letter method (Bollinger ’72) + Dadaism (Schwitters collage, ‘Bild mit Heller Mitte’ 1919

4 Linear method (Fries 1940) ) + letterforms CCE
5 Crazy letter method (Bollinger ’72) + letterforms 0IE (Allanson-Smith ’09)
OIE = created using organic shapes to represent intonational emphasis.
6 Levels method (Pike ’45) + concrete poetry
7 Crazy letter method (Bollinger ’72) + multi-sensory technique.

This method has been inspired by the following books Toe by Toe’ and ‘Brain Gym’ and linguists Jannedy, S & Mendoza-Denton, N (2005) Structuring Information through gesture and Intonation, Humbolt University, Berlin & University of Arizona
‘greater information density can be achieved by presenting part of the information acoustically and part of it (possibly complementary or reinforcing information) visually, bringing us closer to modelling the online workings of face-to-face conversation.’ p201-2

This final method will also feature sound as well as visual stimuli.
In this method the ‘U’ of the word mug will extend on folded paper as the syllable is uttered and will be deliberated over emphasised to aid intonation.
The next phase of work will involve small quick rough stop frame animations to test the results. These tests will be also reviewed with tutors and peers and developed and if appropriate will be applied to the animation.


Thursday 16h April
A series of animations were created. I found that the methods I had used before were helpful and I was able to build upon them. I had an idea of what the pieces should be like, however, stronger work emerged that was unplanned and right at the end of the animation ‘set’. Having produced concrete poetry from strips of letters, affecting letterforms with ink, I found that using the raw material connected to the conversation (in this case tea leaves) allowed the work to be more fluid, creative and expressive. The final animation was produced with an enlarged letter ‘u’ appearing from a swirl of tealeaves. The large text relates to the linguistic method ‘crazy letter’ in Bollinger’s book 1972 ‘Intonation’.

Friday 17h April
Tutorial feedback (JH and RN) NTU Summary: points addressed:
● Include still photography (not video footage)

● Audio of the tea being made and cork popping are effective, consider including
birds singing and gate opening (to lead audience into the sequence).

● Set up the next animation phase with out any text to resolve the photography sequence and audio only. MAKE SURE THE IMAGES WORK WELL AND JOIN UP WELL TOGETHER.
Consider changing or de-saturating the colour.

● Bring back narrators subtitles, it is not working without the dialogue and the words feeding and leading. Think about how the subtitles look, could they be handwritten on a notebook, or more business-like?

Set up outside shots of the house, gate, door then inside and some cut away shots
Allow text enough space against photographic backdrop

Leave ‘1 and a half’ on screen for longer

Include the precursor garbled message ‘are we gonna record it on now’, show jumbled
letters jostling together.

Apply mixture of methods and approaches in the work

Work on the other storyboards to give the current work contrast

Create evocative and subtle shots of cigarette falling into ashtray/smoke.

Consider using photography and clock ticking as the clock ticks the images change
or repeat (**really appreciated this suggestion as it would help the work’s structure and ‘heartbeat’.)

The linear method lends itself well to motion graphics

The linear method could look too dry, think about mixing the methods or approaching
the project in a more emotive way