Lecture 4 - Inextricable Links Between Landscape and the Artwork?

Today we talked about ancient earth works. Such as, crop circles, the Cerne Giant, and Stone Henge. I come from a village near Westbury, so it was really interesting to see about Westbury White Horse as I can see it from my garden! When you live that close to a landmark like this, you tend to take it for granted that other people may find it interesting. I'm also relatively close to Stone Henge, so those doesn't really phase me much either. However I would really like to see the Cerne Giant, and the Spiral Jetty is impressive too.

Lecture 3 - Body Modifications?

This weeks lecture is on body modifications, in the form of cybernetics, scarification, tattoos, etc. We looked at Margot Lovejoy, John Cage, Marina Abramovic amongst others. We also looked at Dr. Gunther Von Hagens, and his work (www.bodyworlds.com) involving dead people, embalming them and removing their skin, and posing them for display. This was disgusting.

Body modification (and decoration) is quite a broad subject, but doesn't really relate to textiles. I probably wouldn't use todays lecture in my work. Apart from possibly the idea of tattoos, as they are decorative.

Body Augmentation

Our second lecture - body augmentation.

The lecture starts by focusing on Rebecca Horn. One particular video of her early work, where she has extended arms that can touch either side of the room, was the main subject for our lecture. Her work is very multisensory, focusing on sound, movement and smell. Her work is very personal to her. Again, I didn't see a very strong link ofthe human body and textiles in this lecture. But it was interesting all the same.

If I were to augment my own body, I would like to be a giant. Just to know how it feels, to look down on people for a change. Being 5'1 this is something I'll never experience!

First Lecture from Ben Owen Jones

First lecture from Ben Owen Jones - Medievil tapestry.
The series of lectures are based on a theme of how textiles relate to the human body.

I initially found the lecture interesting as I have little knowledge of tapestry, and the inclusion of it's history gave it another angle. I have always found history fascinating, so this was a refreshing lecture, slightly away from the main CTP focus I am used to.

Ben used language that a lot of us were not used to, but definitely improved our vocabulary!

However, I don't think medievil tapestry is that relevant for me personally. I prefer more printed, designed textiles, rather than maker/artist. But overall, I felt it was really good to learn about some of the background of textiles. It was definitely a very thorough insight, coming away from the lecture I felt I knew a lot more.