Here is what I am thinking of including. It will obviously need tweaking/edited.
My Body. My Home.
This journey started for me last year upon studying the last year of my Bachelor of Spatial Design at Massey University, when I began to investigate my relationship to my home, located on Wellington’s popular Cuba Street. My initial interest was sparked through time-lapse, but I found static objects too boring when the effect and affect produced was a result of an external force to what I was actually looking at – such as the sun, or Wellington’s infamous winds. I decided to film the affects of time-lapse on myself, initially sitting on the front steps of The Old Dominion Museum under the scorching sun with a tri-pod in front of my face. I focused the camera in on my facial expressions – which I later found to be known as ‘display affect’ – and filmed myself scowling, twitching and sweating under the sun’s rays. ‘Display affect’ is the sign of emotion expressed subconsciously through posture, vocalization and facial expressions.
I decided then to set off to my home on Cuba Street; BODYLAPSE (2010)[1] maps my body’s response to my home, and in turn, the rhythm of that space through my body. I filmed myself sitting in my lounge as one of four sun shadows passed over my body, through plastic ceiling apertures; the only source of natural light into this room. The subconscious relationship between body and home was visible through nose twitches, excessive blinking and other subtle gestures. This was the beginning of my investigation into the relationship between my body and where I live, how the body affects my home and in turn how my home affects my body.
From filming my body in my home I progressed to use my body a drawing tool, drawing the physical relationship between my body and it’s environment in Sensorial Space (2010). I covered an unfamiliar room’s floor and walls in white bed sheets and clear tarpaulin and placed a large bottle of paint into the centre of the room. I dressed in a black singlet top and skin-tight leggings and excluded myself from visual and auditory senses – wearing a blindfold and earmuffs. Using my body, I felt my way around the space. For 30 minutes, this unused cupboard was transformed and the relationship between my body and architecture became heightened. Where the paint on the body collided with the architecture, the body and architecture become ‘one’ for a moment.
My final, and probably most successful, investigation into the relationship between the body and architecture was The Bed Sheet (2010). In a state of complete passiveness I went to bed covered from head to toe in a thick layer of fake tan and make-up. As I lay dreaming on my white bed sheet my body was drawing the relationship my body and my bed. In the morning when I woke, I looked in the mirror; the face staring back at me looked nothing like the night before; paler, blackened sunken eyes and smears of red around my jaw. The bed sheet was no longer white but covered in pasty pale brown markings. One pillowcase was bright white against the dirty sheet; the other was covered in red blemishes, black smudges and pale brown imperfections.
These investigations were all very helpful in demonstrating the relationship between my body and my home. The Bed Sheet was the most useful for informing my design development however, as it visually demonstrated the space my body occupies while I’m asleep, in comparison the bed I sleep on. The rounded blob of brown fake tan on the white bed sheet indicates that my body doesn’t occupy a Single, Queen or Double –sized rectangular shape, but a Me-sized shape.
[1] Smith, L. (2010). BODYLAPSE. Retrieved March 13, 2010, from http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=zm4BZQrwS0Y
