Chance: A chance is the same as a possibility. It means that something can happen and there’s a probability. A chance can also be accidental, it’s very much based upon opportunity.

Change: Change is all about the difference. It could relate to the public’s changing reactions. For example, if someone has a sad expression and then becomes cheerful and happy.

Challenge: A challenge relates to taking part in something, it also is similar to a test. You must demonstrate your abilities and provoke an outcome.

Dynamo is an English magician and stunt performer known for his exceptionally surreal and visually outstanding illiusions. Dynamo was born in Bradford, England in 1982 as Steven Frayne. Dynamo started learning magic at the age of 10 from his Grandad, a former Navy Marine and amateur magician. Dynamo began his career performing street magic in the streets of Bradford and soon came to prominence through the Prince of Wales Young Talent Scheme. Since then Dynamo has exploded into worldwide fame with millions of YouTube views of his performances, and an extremely successful, award winning UK Television series ‘Dynamo: Magician Impossible’. He is perhaps most famous however for his stunt in 2012 when he appeared to be walking unaided across the river Thames.

The type of artistic movement that Dynamo follows is surrealism. Surrealism relates to creating artwork/performance that displays something which appears to be illogical and supernatural, making the viewer perceive the event outside of their own notion of reality. Dynamo’s performances take this concept to the extreme, making events which are totally impossible and inconceivable appear realistic and viewable to an audience. Dynamo magic tricks are guarded totally by secrecy. This is a deliberate effort that Dynamo makes to keep the viewer/audience guessing exactly how he is able to pull of his remarkable illusions, and this also protects the surrealism of his magic, as the audience is allowed to fully experience to wonder out the performer, without the tools or knowledge to translate what is happeninginto something less then beautiful and miraculous. The surrealism that Dynamo creates with his magic forces the viewer to question what is really possible, and challenges them to world outside of their own concious perception. His magic is also a protest against the negative, limitating nature of society. As Dynamo says himself, “the most rewarding thing about what I do is to see the look in a person’s eyes and believe, even for a second, the that anything is possible”

Dynamo has stated himself that the biggest motivation and reward that gets from his work is the reaction of surprise, wonder and astonishment from members of the public after they have witnessed a performance. It is through the response of an audience that  makes his work more surreal, as the reaction is a reflection of the nature of the performance. This reaction is impossible to predict as no one quite knows how to respond to witnessing something outside  of possibility, and it is very entertaining to see people struggle to conceive what they have seen. An example of this is when Dynamo accurately predicted all of the results of the Euro 2012 two weeks in advance. The reaction of BBC Radio 1 presenter Scott Mills as he opened the concealed envelope and reaveled the accuracy of Dynamo’s prediction was one of complete shock and to some extent, denial of what he had just witnessed.

Dynamo’s performance style is non-conspicuous which means that he does not like to attract any attention towards himself as an individual and likes the performacne to be the most important aspect of the event. This is why after every performance Dynamo walks away immediately. He is not interested in gaining any credit or personal fame behind his work and instead he remains a fairly modest individual who uses his performances as a means of expressing. Though not quite to the same extent, this is similar to the concept of the French Mime Artist because the performer is de-individualised to give the performance dominance over the actor.

Remy Gillard is a French comedian and prankster who is famous for his many daring, satirical YouTube videos, wherein he pranks and surprises unsuspecting members of the general public. His videos are extremely funny, clever and in many cases simply outrageous. Gillard started to make videos in 1999 as a way to pass the time when he got fired from a shoe shop. Since then Gillard rose to fame and prominence with over 5 million YouTube subscribers, the sixth most subscribed comedian in YouTube’s history. He has been known to complete some very daring and unlikely achievements, for example: emerging form the stands and partaking in the lineup for the French national anthem of a televised volleyball game; dressing up as Mario and driving round France in an electric go-kart; and dressing up as a giant bee, capturing a police officer in a giant net.

The type of performance that Gillard specialises in is subversion. His objective is to test social barriers and boundaries to a great extreme. Gillard is also very daring in his work. He is not afraid to take extreme risks or challenge social taboos in an upfront and direct manner. An example of risk is when he dressed up as a giant bomb and walked around an airport, as a way of challenging the taboo of terrorism. It is an extremely controversial and unusual act, testament to Gillard’s fearless desire to use his performances as a reflection of issues within society. Gillard’s performances are very risky and he has been arrested on many occasions. This is however something that I find remarkable about his work, the fact that nothing is too extreme for him and that he would be prepared to try anything for the sake of his comedy. It is easy to dismiss Gillard’s work as reckless, stupid  and distasteful, however this is most certainly not the case. Behind the pranks and anarchy, there is a much deeper and more serious side to his work. His work is effectively a protest against conformity within society. He is asking his audiences to question what is socially acceptable, because as he argues in his term “C’est en faisant n’importe quoi qu’on devient n’importe qui”, which means “It is by doing anything that we become anyone”. Through this Gillard basically is saying that nothing is impssible and therefore nothing is ‘too far’ in terms of challenging society

The main intention behind Gaillard’s work is to act as recklessly and subversively as possible. Through the unconventional manner of his performances, Gaillard therefore stands out greatly and is able to draw larger responses from the audience or intended subject. For example, he has done a series of videos whereby he dresses up as a clown and often at a random moment with no apparent reason, Gaillard will prank an unsuspecting member of the public by throwing a foam pie in their face. The shocked individual then often runs frantically and angrily towards Gillard, and a sense of chaos arises, almost like as in a cartoon scene. In many cases, it is the public’s reaction like this for example that creates the element of comedy. Gaillard anticipates these reactions beforehand is attempting to provoke the biggest possible type of reaction. This is comical because Gaillard is establishing a juxtaposition of a serious reaction against a trivial matter.

I draw many comparison’s of Remy Gaillard work to that of Tom Pope. Both artists use similar philosophies and influences. An infleunce in particular that both of them use to a great degree is farce, which refers to ‘comedy based satirical elements, punctuated at times with overwrought, frantic action’. Which effectively refers to the fact that both artists use extreme forms of physical comedy and nature to enhance the effectiveness of whatever message they are attempting to convey.

The avant-garde are people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics.The avant-garde pushes the boundaries of what is accepted as the norm. This relates to the unit that we are studying, trying to creat videos or pictures that push boundaires. The avant-garde is considered by some to be a hallmark of modernism, as distinct from post modernism.  This type of photography is what I am really interested as it focuses on manipulating a model by physically making them look unsatisfactory for society, and I love to be creative. These images have really inspired me to try and make someone look different so that I would get public reaction from walking down the high street.

Tom Pope was talking to us about the idea of surrealism in photography which basically means that when he takes a photograph the picture has a much deeper meaning than possibly portrayed which is hard to show through one photograph. Photoshop allows you to manipulate photographs to make the image more surreal and force the meaning to come through. Ultimately, photographers aren’t just taking a picture because it looks nice, mainly they are produced to show some sort of deep meaning that needs to be addressed. The questions you need to ask yourself when looking at pictures is why was it taken? What is the contextual reasoning behind this?

On this day we went to Societe Jersiaise were we were introduced to Gareth Syvret who took us through some images in the Jersey Archisle, through this we looked at how portraits of childhood had changed from the 1840’s to 2010’s that had been placed into the Archisle. I think that it was interesting overtime how the portraits changed overtime and how photographers change their styles of how they take their images. The  purpose of having an Archisle  is to save photographs and make history  and to keep history so that in years time we can look back at the images. You can also gain a lot of knowledge from looking at the Archisle, which Gareth said ‘having knowledge is power’. The Archisle is important as it is there for everyone to look and and is used as a source for people to use as research, and to inspire them in their own work to make further images, which could possible go into the Archisle.

Other historical and contemporary photographs who have worked in Jersey with the Archisle are Michelle Sank, Yury Toroptsoe.

On this day we also met Tom Pope and we went out to take some performance photographs with him. For these images we went out into an open space and someone would throw an image and you would have to catch it and try to take a photograph at the same time as trying to catch the orange. This was an interesting exercise to  introduce us into the idea of performance photography as you are performing and act to take the photograph. The idea was that you had to try and get the orange as close to the camera lens as possible. Before we took these images we changed our camera settings so that the camera was on manual focus and we focused the camera on the orange close up, so then when the orange was in the air and you were trying to catch it, the orange would be in focus.

Tom Pope’s work has been majorly influenced by this theory. Physco-geography is a physiological concept which applies to Geograophy. It’s very spontanous and different. The people who did group that created this were called “Situationist International” and they wanted to go against the rules of society which are placed upon them. They were very radical and wanted to create some awareness. Their ideas pushed the envelope, as they changed daily things into much more interesting creations.

‘ Derive’ is a French word meaning an unplanned journey through somewhere.

This is all about being random, and letting your environment guide you. For example, you can use this technique of Derive to guide you through somewhere.

Tom Pope’s work has been influenced by other Artists work, some of these include Vito Acconi, Erwin Wurm and Nikki S Lee. These artists influenced Tom’s work as a performance photographer. When Tom is out on a shoot he gets inspired by the situation he is in, this is what he calls psycho-geography.  This concept involves when out on a shoot, or just in everyday life, something, as simple as a balloon may inspire Tom and give him an idea for a video/photo.

I think that some people are confused by Tom’s work as it challenges the social norms of society and how people are suppose to act around others, and Tom captures this in his videos as the audiences reaction is usually in the videos. Some would say that Tom Pope’s work is not photography and it is media based, but Tom uses a film camera and the camera takes 24 frames a second, so it can be considered a photograph, it just challenges the expectations of a usual photograph. Tom explains this as ‘subverting social situations’.

Some other concepts which have influenced Tom is Feminism, Cubism, Dadaism  and Neo-dadaism.

When talking to Tom Pope he mentioned the word ‘Psychogeography’, as he used it in one of his shoots. He used it as a way of travelling around the Tate Modern. He made a paper aeroplane and flew it through the gallery, and where ever the paper aeroplane landed would be what piece of art he would look at. As well as experimenting with psychogeography, he was also doing this experiment to see what people’s reactions would be- as he was going against the social norms of how to travel round an art exhibition.

Psychogeography was created in 1955 by Guy Debord as “the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals.” Psychogeography is an approach to geography that emphasises playfulness and “drifting” around urban environments. It has links to the Situationist International.

One way of achieving psychogeorgraphy is using the wrong map to navigate your way around an area. I think the idea behind this method of geography, is to lead yourselves to places you may have never of been before, which may be someplace wonderful. It also gives the person an element of freedom and leaving the route to chance. I really like this idea of travelling around an area.