Feedback from the Hangout Group on A Day In The Life

Feedback on The Second Draft of a Day in the Life

Having completed the second draft of my new project on A Day in The Life of my mother I shared the work with my fortnightly peer led Hangout Group.  The main points from the discussion are listed below:

• It worked well using my daughter to record the video as she 'became my mother'.
• Using my daughter's voice made it sound real and compelling.
• Several members thought that using my daughter really worked rather than my own voice.  This person felt a connection and found the work very interesting.
• One member of the group felt that the work became more confusing with the addition of a voice.  This person felt that my voice worked better as the female voice was flatter; there was no pause for reflection and it's freshness jarred somewhat.  This person also felt that if a voice was going to be used then there were two choices: a) no intonation at all and deadpan or, b) the opposite - illustrate the words by how they are spoken.
• Someone else suggested that the female voice was preferable but that it should be a performance.
• Perhaps use different voices or, as suggested by A Day in The Life group member in a different forum, try choral speaking with myself and my daughter.
• One member suggested that there could be different uses for the work.  I agree with this and intend to produce a version for family consumption as well as one for the art/academic stage.
• A general comment was there was a lot going on in the images and they were, perhaps confusing.  People were not sure which element to look at as none were prominent.  It was suggested that the map layer was the most distracting.  However, one member of the group felt that having several themes throughout makes it complex and makes the viewer work.
• One suggestion that I like is to produce the work as a video (with or without voice??) and have different elements coming to the fore and fading to allow another element prominence as the presentation proceeds.  I like this idea and can see it in my minds eye but it will need some research into technique.
• There was a suggestion that not only were the maps distracting, but the roads being all at the same angle/parallel lines was too.  As someone else suggested this could be resolved by changing the orientation.
• Overall people feel that this is a very rich project.

So where do I go from here?  I was very pleased with this hangout and it has given me much food for thought.  Despite the divided opinion I am still of the view that my daughter's reading of the words is the way forward.  I do, however, wonder if her rendition is rather flat.  In her defence, though, this was nearly done on sight.  I would like her to absorb herself in the full text and come with me to visit all of the locations and 'have a drink with her great grandfather' in the Star and Garter.  I would then like her to rehearse the reading and record it again.  I am also quite take with the idea of us sharing the reading; I don't think that the choral speaking idea would work.

I like the idea of producing the video and having different elements come to the fore and fade, but I am not totally sure how to physically do this yet.  I will try it with the Proshow Gold software first and if this doesn't work look elsewhere.

What I am very keen to do is to take out the maps and print the images with just the remaining two layers.  I will then print long narrow strips of map and use these to link the images together to reference the idea of journey.  This comes back to an original idea my wife and I discussed.  The work could then be exhibited in this way on a gallery wall as part of a larger exhibition.

I also like the idea of producing a physical collage with prints of my mother's writing, map sections, archive photographs and my own and, even as has been suggested other objects that are mentioned in the writing such as bottles of pop, tins of herrings.  I can see some of the images being cut out to be used in the collage in much the same way as I did digitally with the first image in the series.

With either of the last two ideas the work could be presented as a concertina artist's book.

There is much food for thought here and I have lots of ideas to play with.  I now have a deadline:  Grimsby Minster has nee booked for our group exhibition on A Day In A Life for mid January 2019.