CRITICAL REVIEW/ Final Major Project

Student Name: Clementine Miller Pathway: Media Production

FMP Title: My Wrapped Round A Box

To be handed in alongside your FMP hand-in

1.Briefly describe the context of your project and how you used a range of critical perspectives and approaches to initiate your idea.My original project proposal said I wanted to make “an engaging and informative film” about how autism affects my daily life. I explained it was an extension of my earlier Who Am I? Assignment. It looks much more closely at how people on the autistic spectrum, like me, want to plan and build their daily lives around box-like structures that provide security.

This means having a routine to make moving between these boxes, and different aspects of my life, easier. I did change my original working title from My Life in a Box to My Life Wrapped Round a Box as this more accurately reflects the nature of my film. I live in a series of boxes with links running between them covering different parts of my life. I don’t live in a single structure looking out. My first template proposal said I would use medical research to explain what autism is and how it affects people in different ways.

Some things are quite common links for people with autism like obsessive planning, routine, colours and patterns. I looked at artists and architects who created paintings, buildings and images that were worth studying for those features and for any other ideas that might inform my project. I considered whether some of the artists might have signs of autism themselves as shown by their obsessive attention to detail. I also highlighted films and filmmakers that have been associated with autism.2.Describe how research, analysis and evaluation helped you to feed ideas and develop concepts?Research, analysis and evaluation were everything in this project. The starting point was The Autism Society for basic medical definitions of the condition and how it affects people differently. But there are common themes: the need for planning, structure and security and how patterns and colours can all play a role in daily routine.

Dr Helen Care, clinical psychologist at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, was very helpful in explaining the importance of colours and patterns and how they can affect our lives in a positive way. “Some people find particular patterns or colours soothing or containing,” she told me. Dr Care also explained how the key word for autism when things go wrong is “overwhelmed” and this can be triggered by “changes and disruptions to routine and planning.”

Using this information, and my research on different artists and architects, has been crucial in designing the boxes for my film set and in highlighting colours and special effects in my video.

The book that has influenced me most, and given so many helpful pointers, is The Legacy of Autism [2015] by Steve Silberman. It provides a history of autism from the

late 18th century, long before it was identified as a medical condition, up to the present day and traces the development in the understanding and medical treatment of autism.

Silberman looks at the work of Hans Asperger [1906-1980], the Austrian doctor who was an expert in autistic spectrum disorders and whose name was given to Asperger Syndrome, part of the autistic condition. There is a great quote from Asperger that is very appropriate to my project. He said: “It seems that for success in science and art, a dash of autism is essential.”

The book also covers the remarkable Temple Grandin who has autism and did not speak until she was nearly four years old. Oliver Sacks, who wrote the forward to Neurotribes, said Grandin’s first book, Emergence: Labelled Autistic was “unprecedented because there had never been an inside narrative of autism.” Today Dr Grandin is a professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University and has been inducted into the American Academy of Arts in Sciences.

Grandin helped Dustin Hoffman when he was researching for his role as Raymond Babbitt, a man with autism, in the film Rain Man [1988]. The work of Dr Grandin and Oliver Sacks, has made the American Psychiatric Association revise the definition of autism so that it covers a wide range of people from brilliant scientists, artists and musicians to those who cannot dress themselves.

Grandin notes on her website that labels like autism, ADHD, sensory processing disorder or learning disability are often applied to the same person. As she says: “When do geeks and nerds become autistic? That’s a grey area.”

Watching Rain Man was such a pleasure it hardly counted as research work. The film shows Raymond’s need for routine and planning in his daily life such as how he wants to wear certain types of clothing every day. These are habits I can identify with. It was also very good at showing how quickly Raymond has an “episode” and becomes confused and agitated when things go wrong. I modelled one of my boxes in the film around this theme of chaos and panic.

Chaos Box

Another film influence in my project was Forrest Gump [1994], starring Tom Hanks. But whereas Rain Man is clearly linked to autism there is no stated or obvious connection to Forrest Gump. However, there is some medical evidence I found in my research.

The official website for Applied Behaviour Analysts argues that there are “signs scattered through the movie that Gump might be autistic” and although it is a fictional story Shinji and Naomi Ijichi, who are both doctors, wrote a paper on the film entitled Forrest Gump has autism.

The other film link in my project was a different angle. I was fortunate to be able to see Stanley Kubrik: the exhibition at the Design Museum. It gave me a chance to look at his work first hand and to see whether there was any evidence in the retrospective diagnosis that he had autism.

The book that suggests this diagnosis is called Asperger’s syndrome: A Gift or a Curse. It was co-authored by Dr Viktoria Lyons, a neuropsychologist with a special interest in Autism, and Professor Michael Fitzgerald, the Henry Marsh Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Trinity College Dublin.

After seeing the exhibition and Kubrik’s obsessive attention to detail like filing everything he did in specially constructed boxes I believe the diagnosis of autism is correct. I found it very encouraging that I identified closely with his boxes, planning and the need for structures. Watching Full Metal Jacket [1987] was interesting as a study of a filmmaker’s attention to detail but it did not have the same feel good factor as Rain Man!

The intense pre-planning and location preparation meant that Kubrik was able to film almost the entire Vietnam War movie on location at Beckton gas works near London (with the help of 2,000 palm trees) and viewers did not know. I also found out that Kubrik is in the Guinness Book of World Records for the most number of retakes in his film, The Shining [1980] at 127. That is obsessive enough to add to the evidence that he was a brilliant filmmaker who happened to be autistic.

The real value to my project of the films I watched, Silberman’s book and Dr Care’s insights, is that together they gave me a greater understanding of what autism can look like and how I might use these themes in making my own film and creating an installation. They got me thinking about other ways in which I could create a visual statement to express the way I see and do things in my daily life.

Since this project started I have visited more than a dozen exhibitions and galleries. They have all given me something. One of my starting points was an exhibition at the Exeter Museum. It was called Criminal: Ornamentation and was curated by Yinka Shonibeare a British-Nigerian artist, on behalf of the Hayward Touring/Arts Council Collection.

The exhibition drew on the work of a number of artists but what really inspired me was the art works that were based around patterns, colours, shapes and wrapping. This has become an important part of my final installation about enclosing or wrapping different parts of my daily life around boxes with different colours and patterns to explain what autism means to me. I want to also show that organisation, repetition and planning for an orderly or structured life can be colourful.

Exeter Museum was also the source of other ideas for my project. It has a permanent display of African clothing that have patterns and symbols woven in to them.

Adinkra Symbols

The symbols all have different meanings and they describe feelings such as security and wisdom. The patterns on the garments tell you what region in Africa they have come from.

I also found a wonderful link between the idea of symbols and patterns on clothing with the work of Sir David Adjaye, the British- Ghanaian architect. His exhibition at the Design Museum called Constructive Narratives takes the idea of patterns and symbols and uses them in Adjaye’s words “to construct a narrative” in his buildings.

Adjaye says the key words and themes are about using “patterns” and “stripes with multi-layering” and exploring ideas through “creating boxes”. I would say that Adjaye has been a major influence in my final major project and using boxes to tell my story.

David Adjaye National Museum of African Art

My Stripes Patterns

The Hauser & Wirth Gallery has also been a source of inspiration where I went to see Stefan Bruggermann’s Hyper-Palimpset. The guide helpfully explains that palimpset in modern terms “is used to denote an object made or worked upon for one purpose and later re-used for another.”

Bruggermann uses black-painted large plywood panels like a rough construction fence around a boarded up building. It could be used again on another site and maybe painted in a different colour next time.

BruggermannStatement

What appealed to me was the way he had used various statements on the installations like “Sometimes I think Sometimes I don’t” and “This work is realised when you stop looking at it”. I have adapted this idea to display key words on my boxes to denote different feelings and emotions like calm, order and security as well as chaos, worry and stress when things go wrong.

Kader Attia [1970-], who was born in France, had an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery called the Museum of Emotion that sums up the modern approach to displaying art and story telling the multi-media way. The installation is a mix of art, sculpture and video. Based on detailed research, Attia says he wants to harness strongly held feelings like “anger, sorrow, joy and grief.” In the same way I am using a multi-media installation to capture “routine, boxes, structures, colour, calm and chaos”.

The Christian Marclay exhibition at White Cube Gallery was also a major contributor to my thinking on this project. One of his video installations is based on everyday things you see on the street but often don’t think about like signs: Look Left, Look Right, Look before you cross the road, Look before you turn. What I particularly liked was that you often see Marclays’ feet in the shot that gives a great feeling of intimacy and of actually being at the scene yourself. I have used the technique in my film.

Look

In terms of influence in my project, the husband and wife artist team of Christo [1935-] and Jeanne-Claude [1935-2009] has been profound as they use wrappers and installations, but on a far grander scale than I have been thinking of for this project. They create art installations by wrapping up famous landmarks. They have wrapped the Reichstag in Berlin and the Pont-Neuf bridge in Paris. This is wrapping on a grand scale.

Reichstag in Berlin

Closer to home Christo created this enormous box-type structure using7,506 oil barrels fixed to a steel frame on water in the middle of the Serpentine in central London.

Mastaba installation, London

Christo also provided me with the encouragement to develop the theme of my film about wrapping up my life in boxes. I found an old video on Vimeo that he took as far back as 1969 at the Wide White Space gallery in Antwerp. He wrapped the floor and stairway of the gallery with house painters fabric sheets and then filmed the installation using a hand held camera including shots of his feet! Perfect support for the ideas and concepts of my project.

An artist who gave me some great ideas about colour was Sarah Morris at the White Cube gallery with an exhibition called Machines do not make us into machines. I said in my blog that it is “a riot of colour and pattern that gives you all sorts of ideas and even imaginary shapes and outlines.” She also showed me how to use the hard-edged lines and then experiment with different colours inside a box to achieve a satisfactory outcome.

Sarah Morris: An imaginary New York Skyline

Two other artists whose work I studied stand out for more than just their work based on what Asperger said about “a dash of autism is essential” for success in art. The Emma Kunz exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park was very thought provoking in this sense. She was primarily a healer and researcher of nature.

Emma Kunz Visionary Drawings

Kunz [1892-1963] used fine graph paper to make her drawings and the lines are based on pendulum swings to reflect answers from her patients to questions on a variety of topics both personal and philosophical. The fine detail of these drawings is incredible and I don’t think many people could match it. I said in a blog posting that I did wonder if Kunz might have been on the autistic spectrum. The catalogue notes: “She was known to work continuously on each drawing for periods that could stretch over twenty-four hours.” That might be seen as obsessive.

Greta Bratescu

Greta Bratescu [1926-2018] is another artist who could become absorbed in her work for long periods of time that might be called border-line obsessive. For her Game of Forms exhibition at the Hauser & Wirth gallery, her friend Marian Ivan wrote “nothing could stop her from going to the studio to work, not even physical ailments”. But what appealed to me most about Bratescu’s work is how clean and fresh it is and how it generates a ‘feel good’ factor in me which I hope is reflected in some of my boxes.In conclusion I would say that my research, analysis and evaluation have enabled me to complete my project to make a film about what how autism affects me, and my daily routine, and how it might look in art form. I hope it also shows that what Asperger said about a dash of autism in artists being an essential ingredient to success is probably true.

3. What specialist skills and methods did you use to realise your project?To complete my project I had to call on a number of skills and methods. Some of these, like filming, I had already used in previous assignments but this time I had to be much more adaptable. Editing was the most demanding. I used Adobe Premier Pro as the basis for my Timeline but then I found Photoshop was more suited to making Gifs. I had to change direction slightly to incorporate that into my storytelling. I found that when I encountered problems, or needed practical advice, that many of the books and guides I had got from the library did not seem to cover my particular query. For most of the time I found the quickest way to resolve something was either to experiment with whatever software I was using or, found out on the internet. It is amazing how many times I could find the answers through watching short films and reading explainers online. Where I did find some help from the guides was in looking at different framings and shooting angles because it gave me ideas to try out.4. How did you integrate practical, theoretical and technical understanding to solve complex problems within your FMP? Please use examples.Integrating the practical, theoretical and technical aspects of my project into a film was the hardest part. My starting point was how to tell a story about a condition that is in the brain and therefore cannot be seen. The plan I came up with was to begin with the medical research to explain what autism is. Dr Care was very helpful here because she explained that there is a link between emotions and key words and the colours and patterns that often affect people with autism. The next step was to link those theoretical or technical observations to the artists I studied and then to create a visual installation. Between them the artists gave me enough material to come up with the idea of building boxes with Lego, and other materials, to represent the daily routine of my life where shapes, colours and patterns play a part.

I found the most helpful filming tool throughout my project was my Apple iPhone. As I was going round exhibitions and just travelling to and from Ravensbourne I could film, record sounds and images and then analyse them when I got home. In terms of filming it beat the Canon Camera by a long way in both quality and flexibility. On several weekends I took out a Canon Powershot SX500 and a Cannon 700D. I found them heavy and unwieldy to use even when they were on tripods. I did spend a lot of time filming with both and setting up in different indoor and outdoor locations. Unfortunately most ofit was discarded when I decided to reshoot the boxes in an agricultural barn.I also found a few problems with recording audio. The camera-mounted microphones on the Canons did not produce the right quality and lapel mics were not much better. I did try my dictaphone but again the quality was poor. After a number of different experiments I settled on the Tascam DR-40 recorder - that was ideal.

This is the first time I have written a script and recorded an audio track to go with a film. I did find this was quite time consuming and technically difficult in terms of syncing the words and what the film itself was showing.

My sketchbook was also very helpful in bridging the gap between the practical and the theoretical parts of my research. I could experiment with different ideas, shapes, patterns and colours to see what worked best.

5. What systems/ tools did you use to plan your project and how effective were they to organise and develop your work?My main system or tool in planning the project was the Gantt chart. This was helpful in terms of keeping me to a schedule but what I had not factored in was the number of times I wanted to change key elements including locations. That had a knock-on effect on my planning.6. What type of evaluative and reflective records did you keep? How did this help you develop your learning? Please use examples.My main type of evaluative and reflective record was my blogs and sketchbook. They helped me to log what I had been doing on a regular basis with the benefit of looking back on fresh ideas I had just got from exhibitions and more general research. I was able to make decisions on what would work and what wouldn’t and how I could design my boxes to reflect my colours, patterns and shapes.7. Who is your intended audience? Describe techniques and methods you used to communicate your idea to them.My intended audience is two-fold: to show people with autism who may not have thought about their daily lives in terms of their condition and to show them how many artists are themselves probably on the autistic spectrum. I also wanted to reach a wider audience to explain the medical condition in art form and this includes friends and family of people with undiagnosed autism who might recognise some of the pointers like patterns, colours, planning, routine and obsession about details.8. Overall summary: Describe the key points to take away from this experience. In what ways will your approach to creative production change in future as a resultThis has been by far the biggest multi-media installation I have ever undertaken. The key points I have learned from this experience are how to take a subject, in this a medical condition that is not visible, and turn it into an art installation that covers film, design, art, sculpture, texture and architecture. What I have learned from my Final Major Project will certainly influence my work in future. For example, I think I may have started filming some of my scenes too early and I then had to re-shoot them later on as a result of further research or thoughts about something. So I will be more flexible in my planning schedules in future or maybe I need to be more disciplined in the planning stage so that I am better prepared for the actual filming process.

Clementine Miller Media Production

Bibliography

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Claude, J and Claude C (2019) Mastaba Installation, London Available at https://christojeanneclaude.net/projects/the-london-mastaba (Accessed 18/05/19)

Claude, J and Cluade C (2012) Christo during installation of Wrapped Floor and Stairs. Avaliable at https://vimeo.com/34733773 (Accessed 18/05/19)

David Adjaye: Making Memory [Exhibition] Design Museum, London 2nd February- 8th

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