YEAH!!! Things are finally moving on in the installations’ realms..I got two on the go, one due for next week –Valentine’s day- in the Atrium of the London College of Communication’s Media Block, and the other due for the end of may, of which you can read more on details by scrolling down to the previous post, but bare with me and you’ll understand while I’m already feeling the pressure of the task sending signals of fear and doom straight down my spine..
The first installation is called ‘Yeah!!!, and consists of a Walkman and a speech bubble floating in mid air, with the Walkman positioned as if ‘speaking on the bubble’. The speech bubble says –funny enough- YEAH!!!
They’re both red, and the reason is because advertising researchers believe that the colour RED augments the number of sales of a product, or anyway it attract the attention of the consumer more than any other colour. What I’m trying to do with this project is building an association between the colour RED and the word YEAH, which is a word that can be found in millions of popular –and not- songs and sound composition in general.
I didn’t do an appropriate research on charts or an anthropological study of the effects of the word ‘Yeah’ on people, but it seems to appear in many number one songs. One thing that I felt personally is by casually listening to a track of which I don’t know the lyrics and when the ‘Yeah’ hook kicks in well..yeah!!!..I can sing-a-long for a bit as well!!! More research is needed on this..
Coming back to the actual installation, I might say is an audio-visual piece, as it works with both of the before-mentioned senses. The sonic aspect of the installation lay in a tape playing through stereo speakers from the red floating Walkman Cassette Player itself, and it is a composition based on cut-ups of ’yeahs’ from different songs from different genres of music. This is actually the part of the project that got me going a bit mad in the last two weeks. I worked on something that holds similarity –at least sonically and aesthetically- to ‘YEAH’ two years ago, and it was an installation called ‘Tapegrinder’ (you can find a video in older posts), but that was based on the interaction between audience and three cassette players, so the random element was wanted. Here I’m not sure it is wanted. A first version of the ‘YEAH’ piece had three cassette players on repeat instead of one playing three different compositions, but it could have ended in chaos as portable cassette players don’t have the word ‘synch’ in their vocabulary, so I went minimal: one walkman – zero walkmen wasn’t an option..
My struggle is still in the mixing process of all this cut-ups, as I’m trying to find a shape for the composition with which I’m aesthetically satisfied with: I guess the core problem is that I’ve never really explored skills such as time-stretching and cross-fading of multiple tracks (or better, I did it in sound for film pieces, but here I’m in front of a SERIOUSLY different tasks). So ‘YEAH!!!’, still got four days to ponder and cut and paste songs – but at least the foam core for the speech bubble has been glued and cut and painted (..mm..the damn thing wasn’t easy to cut as I thought, and I didn’t know about ‘knifes that heat themselves’, as a friend doing sculpture suggested it as the perfect tool the day after my cutting mayhem. So..mixed results but I’m happy with it). Monday the 14th will be the judge – or Armageddon I might say.
Ok, back to the second installation: working title ‘I CAN walk (in my corporate grave)’.
I found out that is not gonna be 100 per cent sure that I’ll have access to the big red container outside of the LCC building – and to make things even heavier is not sure 100 per cent if the container will be red at all as they’re planning to repaint it!!!
But I don’t despair; I always had a PlanB, which consists of having it on a smaller scale inside the school gallery. And anyway, the focal point of the project now is: where and how am I going to get thousands of red empty cans of coke? ..and the answer is.. 
Where people throw them away! Which is in the rubbish bin, usually situated not more of a mile away from the purchasing place and along the route of consumption of the fizzy product. So, even if I don’t really care, most of my friends pointed out that is not cool -and actually pretty gross- to constantly go through rubbish bins around London in search of my Red Corporate Grail, especially when I’m with them. Also is not proving effective, as like most people around this town I too have a job or other things to do during the day – there are special cases of people that actually go through the rubbish all the time, like our friend the rubbish collector and, of course, some homeless persons.
Solution? I bought my own bins (RED BINS) and I’ll install ‘em around town. After some research I came to the conclusion that the best locations for the bins is in Kebab and Chicken shops, especially the ones open 24 hours a day. The only thing I need is the permission from the owner or manager of the business to do it. Some thought I’m crazy, some just got scared, but most of them seemed happy to help me out – some even thought that I’m famous, and got really excited about me telling them about their premises been in the credits of the installation. Another obvious place is the school’s canteen, and one of the RED BINS should be in place by Monday – many thanks to the canteen’s manager Simon for supporting the cause.
This will be accompanied by some posters, of which you can see the work in progress in the pictures. Thanks to Nadine for designing this and the stencil for the bins: You’re the queen of Photoshop. I’m the lord of rubbish.Signin’off..
So..a terrible toothache had the best out of me for the last two weeks, but finally I'm my brain is back into function. Two of the red bins are installed. They're in two of the chicken shops around the East London Mosque in Whitechapel. As I work in the pub next door I though it was a good idea keep the locations as local as possible - if the bin is full I can just pop by to the shops and collect/put a new bin bag. Today's the first day. Cross fingers and I really hope not to find too many chicken bones covered in mayonnaise in the bins..signing off..
