New Sound Art Experiments

So impoverished by austerity, fighting for my son to get an income / battling Universal Credit, back in March, I took part in an experiment.

Self Portrait in the Sleep Lab

This was in the Sleep Lab at the University, where I had wires glued to my head to measure the electrical signals of my brain whilst sleeping.
Below are some of the readings of my sleeping brain activity:

These look like sound waves, so I had the obvious question of what they would sound like. As far as I know, no one else has investigated this.
The Beatles' I'm Only Sleeping

What I liked particularly was that I was paid in £50 Amazon vouchers, so I could buy my nephews birthday presents without going into my overdraft.
Being paid to sleep is also a very good idea for artists, and carers, not being starved to death. 
It's obviously a lucrative concept, or Jacob Rees Mogg wouldn't be doing it in the House Of Commons...
It's subversive. People hate it, because they buy into the notion that leisure has no value, that work has value, but in fact, work has no value, so it needs subverting. 
Culture is a lounge. 
Culture is a not gate.

Here is the first track "Dreamfall" from the new album Lost Dreams, by Blackbird

This video probably doesn't even work.

Lost Dreams - the new album by Blackbird

Album artwork is a colourised Inktober 2018 illustration to reflect the very sci-fi sound created by my brain.

The reverse is of an odyssey to Europa, with a sonic aurora taken from running the sound sample through an online spectrograph.

Track listing:

1. Dreamfall

2. The Europan Ambassador

3. Dreamwalker

4. The Crystal Cathedral

5. Starlit Quorus

6. Hlör U Fang Axaxaxas Mlö

Add caption

Peace Painting Workshops

Elizabeth Price @ Nottingham Contemporary

I love Elizabeth Price's work, so I was curious to see two new pieces at Nottingham Contemporary whilst in Nottingham for Nottingham Does Comics.

The combination of retro 1980's advertising style imagery, with music and text combines to form a narrative, like so many other video installations, of a dystopian or utopian future for FELT TIP.

This history of mining in KOHL

Images segue as KOHL switches over to FELT TIP

The way the images work in a way that reminds you of old technology and imagined future utopias, fashion and wearable technology that is maybe subverted somehow, has a strangely hypnotic effect.

Artist Being Starved

In this old blog post, I was terrified of UC.

Recently, my youngest son became stressed out and ill, then left his college course. Which has caused a devastating loss of income.

I have found myself with only £15 per week Tax Credits until April, then it goes up to the grand total of £53 per week. Stop that champagne shower now!

So I previously set up a fundraiser on Facebook, and friends kindly donated enough to help for a couple of weeks, which was some relief.

I considered it as payment for this blog post :-)

UPDATE

It's now November, and we're still waiting for Universal Credit. He has now spent the last EIGHT MONTHS with no income due to not being given enough or correct information, and the difficulty of being of a generation so tech savvy, but apparently not tech savvy enough to work out how to navigate a bureaucratic nightmare that is the digital by default Universal Credit application.

See my previous posts about Grantium being unfit for artists.

The CSA have also written off a debt owed by my sons' absent father that would help to pay my Hellish energy bills.

I have ever-mounting debts, I have had to take a break from a zero hours contract non-arts job meant to provide an additional income, for my sanity, but I am now poorer working than in all the years I was a single parent struggling on income support, and we are all worse off economically because of austerity.

So do not believe any politician that tells you that austerity is "improving the economy", because that is a lie.


UPDATE - COVID 19

It's now May 2020. We finally got some help with the hated Universal Credit in January, and I returned to my hated non-arts job very reluctantly, despite the fact that it gives me imposter syndrome.

Thank God we did before the Coronavirus pandemic has forced me to stop that. I'm on furlough. Working tax credits have increased, and my son's Universal Credit has increased.
I was hurtling towards my overdraft limit, and there was nothing I could do to stop the financial car crash.
The DWP had tied a brick to the accelerator.

Finances have now started to stabilise to the point that debts aren't perpetually spiralling upwards and out of control.
Sales of work and a commission at Christmas helped.

What help have the arts offered?
A Grantium application!!
Otherwise nothing.
I was just starting to return to profit, with the first funded workshop in February funded by Carers_FIRST, and I was about to plan some more. 

But obviously, I can't do that now.
HMRC had told me I didn't need to do a tax return, as my profits were less than £1k. Not enough to claim any self employment relief, of course, because there are always stupid rules to prevent anyone from ever earning above a pittance.

The care crisis has just gone into superdrive, and all there is is clapping.
#wagesnotclaps

Research - Double Fantasy at Liverpool Museum

FUND PEACE

I have no idea if this video works!

Yoko Ono's artworks

1. Painting To Hammer A Nail 1966

2. Ceiling Painting / Yes Painting 1966

3. Apple 1966

Helen and John and Yoko

I really wanna go back to NYC!

Proposal for a neon text piece for Lincoln Central train station

I've been doing a lot of things this year, it's been an adventure.

And thoughts turn to ideas for art projects I'd do if I were commissioned.

Several thoughts have merged for this.

One is a desire to use neon, travels on trains, train stations, and Tracey Emin's piece at St. Pancras, but with my own concepts and research.

So I've been playing with some conceptual ideas for neon text works for Lincoln Central train station. All concepts copyright the artist.

These have come off the back of an application for some funding that wasn't successful for some more exciting commissions to greet residents and visitors to Lincoln.

"And our heroes have misplaced their map"

Another spin on a proposal I've had in mind for a couple of years now.

Re-imagined as a neon text piece.

This piece based on The Midnight lyrics, pop culture, and references Lincoln's unique skies, local photographers capturing the beauty of sunsets, and the Cathedral on the hill.

The Midnight lyrics - Lost Boy - references nostalgia for lost magic, and also the Cathedral, shining like fool's gold on top of the hill.

Slightly different contextual pop culture reference, lyrics from Nina's 80's Girl captures the romance of train stations, of meeting long lost lovers, and 1980's romance.