Mon 29th - 89 newspapers

Sun 28th - 120meters of poly twine

so we arrive at the shop, we have some balls of string, and lots of small ends of string. we decide to start tying up the short ends to form one big single strand.

we map out the space with string. using points only from the existing architecture of the bookshop we loop the string through, it is a three-dimensional drawing of the interior space. we are learning so much about the space as we go. as it gets more and more web-like we must negotiate our way through the space. it is a challenge.

we realise from outside the string is not immediately visible, and so it looks like we are ducking and swerving and swinging our legs around for no apparent reason. interesting!

we turn the UV lights on at the back, and the spot lights on a the front. the string is visible in different phases and states. it is most effective with us moving through it.

Sat 27th

The shop presents us with three stages of space.

glass
interior space
back wall

I - I

How to simultaneously use all three has been a challenge for us. Something which is responsive to spatial situation given - a shop, only accessible visually from the outside.

The screen hangs in the central interior space. Translucent it divides the room yet doesn’t block out the back wall. The projector casts our shadows onto it which we inturn cut away allowing a shadow of our original shadow to be cast on the back wall. Our figure is then outlined from outside the glass further playing with traditional hierarchies of spatial organisation inside/outside, front/back, center/periphery.

it is simultaneously something & nothing, an illusion, a representation & reality.

Friday 26th

success. after massive efforts from anna in organising a projector claire is able to turn up the visuals projecting live hypnotic colour long into the night.

claire says: the colour is intense and enveloping. warm yellows and reds permeate the entire space. abstracted by the lack of frame, and thus the inability to determine where, what, how, the subject is the colour. its slow movement about the wall swallows you in whole, you are transfixed by the swirling, evolving forms, you are one with the colour, you are inside the yolk. this yolk is disturbed by a sudden burst of green, a dramatic flash of white light, the room is once again changed, and the colour goes on living, constantly, seductively inviting you into its engulfing depth. gradually the light gives way to darkness, and the deeper you are taken in, the darker it inevitably becomes.

Thursday 25th

Laura and I, armed with our fat liquid chalk markers, planned to go and draw on the windows during peak hour, unfortunately we got caught in peak hour ourselves, so got there a bit later than we planned. Still we made it and spent about an hour and a half in the windows doing our thing with our markers- it was fun!

Later Claire and I tested out the projector for tonight's performance, which we discovered might not be possible due to all the light coming into the shop from the street-ahh! but there's still hope if we can get a better projector otherwise it's plan B- wing it ha! So there will still be a projection of some sort tonight at about 7:30, we're probably going to bakery after so if you want to come meet at Brass Monkey first we can go out from there.

ps. probably the most interesting expereince of yesterday's events was the two (extremely) drunk homeless men who decided to make the shop alcove their shelter. It took them about half an hour to realise Claire and I were in the shop, despite projectors, lights and movement. Mostly they ignored us, we were slightly concerned though when one of the men decided he wanted to try and get in and tell us about his art career, we thought he might be angry at us (we're not sure why) and weren't sure how we were going to leave. In the end the vocal guy had gone off somewhere and the other guy didn't even notice us leaving despit his head resting against half the door.

Wednesday 24th- the sea's the possibilty

today was very spontaneous and improvisational. Anna and Claire, white dresses, red stockings, stand in the window, not really sure what's going to happen. We put on Patti Smith. We start pressing our bodies against the glass, we start moving to the music, we forget we are standing in a shop front on William street at peak hour. The glass is cool and smooth, and the hotter and stickier we get the more we want to press our skin across it's cool surface. Pressed in the corner of the window, arms strectched across, rolling back and forth, ear, face, arms, back pressed and flattened, swaying, it's a true romance with the window, we dance with it. Eyes closed, occasionally open to find a crowd gathered on the footpath, the occasional camera flash, the video camera across the road, the bus at the traffic light. People watch, some try to interact. We are too absorbed in the music and the glass. After an hour and a half hot and sweaty, the lights go off, we bow. the end.

(another) update

We are planning a live projection for Friday night when the sun goes down. Expect the Arcane to be lit up with psychedellic moving colours and light. yeah!

update

ok so it seems like some of our early flyers had the wrong URL on them. oops. we're new to this blogging thing ok. so congrats guys for managing to find us nevertheless. If anyone wants to contact us if you scroll down to the bottom of the blog under contributors you can click on our individual profiles and there you shall find our email addresses.

also had confirmation we have the space until the 3rd of October so have been able to extend the project with perhaps a final extravaganza happening on this night- we'll keep you posted.
appreciating your feedback and support folks!

Tuesday 23rd

post sugar hangover we headed into the bookshop late to survey the damage. No ants but upon opening the doors we were instantly hit with a heady scent of burning sugar. our little jelly community had dehydrated under the heat of the spot light and lay shriveled up on the floor. We quickly put them out of their & our misery and then set to work giving the bookshop a much needed sprucing up- including another window clean, vacuum and a mop. Exhausted but not wanting to leave the site empty for the following day we strung up some bamboo blinds (thanks Darren!) in the window frames. We played with different ways of pulling them forward and it was with the advice of some guys walking past we decided they looked interesting when they twisted around on themselves. We lite them from behind and shut the doors. Across the road in front of the brass monkey if you stand in the right spot they look to be pulling away from each, flaying outwards to reveal a light source.

Monday 22nd - Jelly cup mania

This evening went like this:

Jelly cup race begins, jelly cups don't stick like they're supposed to, Anna and I resort to smooshing jelly directly onto glass windows, peak-hour northbridgers look on in bemusement, some interact. Re-assessing, we pop out each little jelly onto its foil wrapper and arrange on floor under light. The little coloured entities glow and glisten. It is a jelly community. We arrange the jelly town, social politics are played out in our hands. We are sticky, so is the space, it is all rather phallic, and hopefully there is not an ant infestation tomorrow...

update! jelly jelly jelly cup.

today will be a jelly battle-off... anna vs. claire, yellow/purple vs. pink/green, pineapple/grape vs. apple/strawberry. it will be a jelly cup extravaganza in the shop-front. we've counted our jellies, we've lined them up in the window! watch us battle it out at 5.30pm SHARP this afternoon.

Sunday 21st- Performance 6

I'm quite proud of our endurance as I really didn't expect we would do anything Sunday night,especially since we'd all been up til the early hours Saturday night. Have a night off, go to bed nice and early, but over our dim sum brunch (boy was it good) we decided to go in.

Once we all arrived we sat and discussed for a while, then cleaned up the glass (no injuries despite not having any gloves). I think it was over our communal glass picking we discussed using hundreds and thousands in some way -ps anyone got an FAL card we can borrow?- which then led us to those jelly cups (which me and Claire had found at a party on Saturday and consumed) with the fruit in them that you get from Asian supermarkets- conveniently the mini mart over the road.

We got quite excited and went over to the mini mart and bought 2 giant tubs total of 178 jellies. We wanted to stick them to the window. We sat and divided out the colours- yellow (pineapple), green (apple), purple (grape) and pink (strawberry). We then tried sticking one to the window, the suction of the cup held a bit but basically it just ran straight down the window. Hmm we had to re assess, somehow I don't think me and Claire could consume 178 jellies. We decided on a performance, which will happen today (see update).

We had previously talked about wrapping Laura in string and seeing as we had the structure up and were thinking of taking it down we decided to do it as a performance. First she crawled head first into the structure, the space within the string, - 'hey it looks pretty good from in here!' Then we decide to wrap her. A lone traveller walks past and offers to film us, after a confusing 5 minutes of mis-communication and hesitation we agree, he runs off back to his hostel to get his camera we decide what's going to happen. Laura stands at the dense end, holding the black light. We start at her head and wrap the tangles of string around her face and neck, down her body as she twists towards the door. We get close to the outer points the string pulls tight. She sits on the floor, we turn off the spotlight. The black light is flicked on and off. Claire and I get scissors and cut through the centre of the structure until we reach Laura. We cut her out, scissors at her face and neck. The string falls away from her face and body. We thank our camera man, he's going to send us the footage when he gets bak to France, he is very sweet and says goodbye.

Claire and I arrange our jellies in the window ready for tomorrow's battle. We go home.