Developing Ideas – Fairy Tales

Ruth Scott / / Main Page

Within my past blog post of discovering the library, I explored into the idea of the books themselves- through the thought of non-fiction and fiction books. As a university student I, myself, use the library purely for research methods within my course. This then came to mind –how many people use the university library for finding and reading a fiction book, purely for pleasure? Not only does the library have factual books, but various genres of books for an enjoyable read purely get lost into. Being able to find the time to allow one to sit down and read isn’t very often. This then led into the idea of childhood and having the time to read, also often being read to as a child, in particular fairy tale books.

In order to relate back to the site and the users of the library, I researched into the idea of Grimm’s fairy tales, which would be highly fascinating to the likes of 18 year olds and upwards. The Grimm fairy tales show a strong sense of violence and sometimes brutal tales, not suitable for children. Using these forms of fairy tales, this could relate to the idea of the university library potentially being scary place. University being a place to grow up and develop oneself can all together be quite daunting! Using these two factors could be successful to create in performance art as it still relates back to the site itself.

Ruth Scott

The Book as Art

Ruth Scott / / Main Page

The library is full of vast assortments of books with various book covers, sizes and genres – But could a book be considered a piece of art?

Our task was to create a book as art, but not in the conventional way of how a book is usually formed. I decided to take one of my own made up book titles that we had to develop in a previous task. One of my book titles was called – Natural World. I took the title quite literally, and decided to form a flower out of paper and write the title all on the inside and outside. I also added the lilac ribbon to add to the idea that the flower is a naturally pretty and striking form created from the Natural World.  I was drawn to creating this inventive piece by the artist Jodie Harvey-Brown, who creates remarkable book sculptures within the books themselves, while relating the sculpture to the content within the book itself.

If I was to take this idea of sculpture further, this could be a potential section to form in some kind of installation, while still relating to the idea of books.

photo 2photo 3photo 4Harvey-Brown,J. (2015) Your Story, Coming to Life. [online] http://www.jodieharvey-brown.com/[Accessed 30 January 2015].

Ruth Scott

BOOKS! What Are They Good For?

Billy Cummock / / Main Page

The task set to us to complete for 2nd February was to create a book as an art form by taking the

simplest definition of a book.

Definition:

A written or printed work consisting of pages glued or sewn together along one side and bound in

covers. (Oxford Dictionaries, 2015)

My Definition:

A book holds information.

Using this information, I devised the idea from one of my book titles. The Complete Collection Of

The History Of The Lizard Kingdom. Using this title as a stimulus I decided that I would create a book

that was a representation of the information held inside of it. Lizards can be pets. When kept as pets

lizard are kept in clear containers with no freedom to leave their surroundings unless exhumed by

their owners. I used this information in order to come up with the idea of using a plastic bottle and

shoving information forcibly into it, this would create a sense that not all information is obtainable

either, or that all information is set out as one would want it.

I gathered information on lizards and cut it into fragments, I placed it all into the bottle. Voila, my

book.

IMG_20150227_041027687 IMG_20150227_041018581 IMG_20150227_041008975 IMG_20150227_041002296

Billy Cummock

OxfordDictionaries (2015) Book: Definition[Online] Available at: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/book

What The Math Is A Book Anyway?

Billy Cummock / / Main Page

On the 28th January 2015, our first real site specific seminar was based on the idea of what a library

is, what a library is ultimately doing and what in turn this means for the books in the library. Does

the incorporation of different materials presented in books change the meaning and ideology of a

library? Does it change what a library does? Does it change a library’s social context? What if the

categorisation of books was a massive contributing factor in how a person learns? Perhaps libraries

should be more social, perhaps a library should become what it entails in its book.

In this seminar, we were asked to clear our minds of all thoughts (if that’s even possible) and

subconsciously write 50 book titles. Whilst doing this task I adopted a method in which I counted

back from ten whilst controlling my breathing in order lose focus of anything around me. I had to do

this several times whilst performing the task in order to keep my desired mind state.

50 Potential Books: (yeah, right?)

1. 72 Virgins & Counting

2. The Complete Collection Of The History Of The Lizard Kingdom

3. What If We’re Not Alone?

4. Conspiracies theories about 911

5. Charles Manson: Our Lord & Saviour

6. This is becoming apparently futile

7. Life as we know could come to an end

8. The only thing you’ll ever need to read

9. 9/11 was a hoax

10. Stephen Fry is a Lizard

11. Bring me that horizon and other things Jack Sparrow said that no one really understands

12. OK, time for plan B

13. Wake & Bake

14. The Cruel intentions of David Cameron

15. Dragons and China

16. The Terrorist’s will win

17. North Korea: the Script for the musical

18. The Theories behind the conspiracies

19. Nuclear relationships: A blast of a time

20. Wibbly Wobbly Wongle Dong

21. The A-Z of Lizards

22. The encyclopaedia of the troubled north

23. Suicide Season is over

24. Bass is best

25. Come toward the light and live in fear forever

26. The Evil Living

27. Cut off from all

28. How to assassinate a president/prime minister or other worldly leader

29. Deicide

30. The Yoghurt Thieves

31. The universe isn’t expanding

32. I think you’re the fucking antichrist

33. Why are you wearing that stupid man suit

34. Farage is a dictator

35. Why being political is boring

Billy Cummock 1338304226th January 2015

36. What if we’re all to blame?

37. Or Maybe not

38. Grandma Death

39. Scream

40. How to have common courtesy

41. An open letter to no one

42. Watkins should hang

43. How to kill a vampire-werewolf hybrid

44. How to set a fire

45. How to not get caught

46. How to not plead guilty

47. Solar Plexus

48. Smoke

49. Cooking with fire

50. Breaking the 3rd wall

Okay, so maybe some of them are a little unorthodox. Next we were asked to come up with a few

categories in order to section these books off from each other. So here they are:

Potential Sections:

1. Conspiracy theories

2. How to:

3. Miscellaneous Items

4. Why we all hate politics

5. Statements

So maybe I’m a little disturbed but whatever, not like I’m actually going to publish one of these

books. Oh Wait…

Billy Cummock

Food Library – Experiment

Paul Chappel / / 101 Things to Do with a Trolley, Main Page

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zF5Ys2Pw3c&feature=youtu.be

On Wednesday the 18th of February, we were asked to test out our idea for our final performance. Our idea is that during the day we set people who want a piece of food, a question or a riddle which relates to a certain book title or passage in the library. The reward for the correct answer is a snack of some kind.

In our miniature version, we tested out an example of a question and reward system with the groups in our class. Everyone in our group came up with a different question to test on the other groups. My task was: “Find a book that was written by a Drama Lecturer at the University of Lincoln in under 15 minutes”. The premise being that, even though we as students are taught by these lecturers, we are unaware of their work and how it is kept within the University Library. The group had to find the book without resorting to the dependency of technology and the search tablets within the library. Unfortunately the task turned out to be a lot easier than I had intended it to be, within no time at all they had found 1 of the 10 known books which were in the library. So, I gave them an additional task to try and find another book by a drama lecturer… which they did just as quickly as the one they found the one earlier. The group were very pleased with themselves, deservedly so, and were rewarded with their snack – a bag of sweets.

The simple idea behind the task is that students are motivated to learn through a physically active game as well the prospect of free food as an award. In my mind, it builds upon the idea of both: the metaphor “Food for Knowledge”, and the student food-reward system (where a student rewards themselves with food if they have completed the amount of work on their essay that they have done)

 

Paul Chappel