Tutorial with Steve Bulcock and New Ideas

So yesterday I signed up for a tutorial with Steve Bulcock as I was feeling very helpless in regards to progressing any further with this project. Luckily, the tutorial really helped. He told me that the outcome didn't need to be high-tech or gadget based (the wording and examples in the brief made me think otherwise in the beginning) and that I should start with smaller more simple ideas. He also said it could evoke a memory more than experience, and then that in turn would be an experience in itself. He said imagine I've told you that you can do absolutely anything you want with no boundaries, and then reign those ideas in to fit the brief. I must admit it was a great comfort to hear these helpful ideas and I now feel a lot more comfortable about this project.

I really liked the idea of basing my project around objects/ideas that could evoke memories and that the project would be more about me and my  own experiences, rather than the outside world and experiences I have never encountered. Any work I have ever made has never been especially personal or specific to my life, so this could be an interesting learning curve but I believe it could ultimately make my work more meaningful.

On my way home I started listing some objects/ ideas that cropped up when I thought about my childhood.

• Favourite childhood books.
• Family holiday video tapes and photographs.
• Memories of Infant and Junior School, old friends.
• Divorce of parents, choosing to not see my Mother.
• Music that reminds me of my childhood.
• Clothes with childhood memories attached.
• Big events in my childhood.
• Certain objects that trigger memories.
• Teenage memories, senior school, friends, etc.

My house has changed a lot since I was a child. Rooms have been redecorated, things have been broken and toys have been thrown out. So I really do have to look hard to find things that link with memories from my childhood.

Some more specific objects/ideas that came to mind.

1. I still have a mint green bathroom stool with little chubby elephants on it that was bought for me when I was a toddler. I couldn't say 'stool' when I first began to talk so resorted to calling it a 'scoob'. This  then turned into an inside joke in my household. It's stayed in the bathroom ever since and stood the test of time. Until recently when my Dad stood on it and broke one of the legs. I repaired it and now keep it out of harms way in my room.
2. My Dad always filmed our family holidays. One year when I was 6 or 7 whilst we were on holiday I discovered if I looked through the prongs of a fork at someone it would look like they were in jail. It also worked particularly well if I held the fork right up to my Dad's camera lens, then anyone who watched the video tape afterwards, including me, would feel like they were in jail too. This entertained me to no end and just the mere sight of fork that summer would have me in fits of laughter. What can I say? I was a strange child. We still have this video tape, and it's one of my favourite childhood memories.
3. When I was about 4 or 5, I loved the taste of Calpol which is liquid paracetamol for children. I vaguely remember even pretending I have headaches just so I could have a spoonful now and then. It became a bit of a problem and one day I managed to get past the child lock on the medicine cabinet and drink about 1/2 of a bottle of the stuff because one of my parents hadn't screwed the top on properly.  I was rushed to hospital but luckily I hadn't drank enough to give me kidney or liver failure and therefore didn't need my stomach pumped. Calpol bottles have been around me ever since then and always remind me of that little accident, but fortunately I have more sense now to not chuck down the contents of the bottle.
4. When my Mother was in hospital having my little sister, my Dad would drive me to and from the hospital to visit them. I had a Spice Girls cassette in the car and would listen to it non-stop. The sight of this distinctive cassette case would always remind me of those journeys.

These are just the initial memories that always come back to me when I think about my childhood. I think it would be a good idea to watch some of the holiday, Christmas and birthday videos from my childhood to help refresh my memory of things that happened to me. Then I might come up with more interesting objects/ideas to include in my project.

EDIT: I had a great idea for how I could present these ideas if I wanted to approach it quite simply. I could produce a series of sculpture/paintings/drawings of the objects/memories, but distort or blur some parts to show how sometimes we don't see all the details of the memory clearly. I believe this would be more interesting that just presenting the object in complete, and more closely represents the experience of remembering something from the past.