1. Location:

I have chosen to base this work at my desk as it is a place where I spend most of my day and I am not always happy about spending so much time here. I wonder if the emotion of feeling trapped here will come through in what I produce.

My Desk

Tucked away in the corner of a room
Facing a barren wall
No window to dream out of
Prisoners have more pleasure
Yet my desk remains
The source of my income and freedom
Entrapment leading to enrichment
A neceesary evil?
Constant pings as people keep me here
Tasks pile up, yet the space remains clear
No papers anymore to show what I have achieved
Digital is the only mark I make.

2. One-Line Drawings

1-minute

3. Lines through the Space

4. Change

5. Sounds

Reflection

I really enjoyed this exercise and it has given me lots more ideas to try to develop.

The one I haven’t tried yet which I will return to at some point is the ICM photography. I need to spend a bit of time working with my camera settings to get that working.

I loved doing the one-line drawings. My favourites were the quick one minute using a brush and ink. I like the connection with the ink as it is the same ink I use to fill my fountain pen for writing and so there is that connection to work and the area I chose. There is also a time element as there was only a certain amount of ink the brush held before it ran out and would need topping up. This could be linked to time. how long will the bruh last before running out. Completing quick 1-minute drawings allowed me to experiment more than I would for a longer piece.

I also really like the effect of the white pen on black paper. It gives a negative feeling which is what I associate with my desk.

A feature of my drawings and desk seems to be the use of wires which end up tangled everywhere. I experimented with trying to create something with the monitor light background and wires hanging. I like the shapes it has produced and the backlit effect. It makes it feel like the wires are tree branches taking over the desk and monitor.

The change piece is my favourite and something I am going to develop. To create it, I recorded my screen for 10 seconds and then used the recording to create a tracing of my mouse movements and marked each time I clicked the mouse with a dot. I want to try this for longer and use the white pen on black as the lines. I think this will create a map of my day on the computer, with the mouse clicks marking moments in time.

I then want to use the sounds as a background to viewing the piece. To create that sense of sensory overload and overwhelmingness of working online all day with constant pings, background noise and notifications. I think it could be a powerful piece about what the reality of work is like.