Surveilance Footage

Currently I live opposite a nightclub called Sugarcubes. To fit in with my project I decided to film some footage of people outside of the nightclub. After one of my crit sessions this idea was suggested. Humans often show their most animalistic sides when under the influence. People tend to let go, relax more and get into fights.

I filmed the footage from a bedroom window that looks out to onto the street where Sugarcubes is located. The camera was well hidden as I wanted to get footage where people did not know I was filming them. Often when people know they are being filmed or photographed they act up for the camera. They will often play along, do things that they would not normally do. This is the reason why I wanted to keep the footage undercover.

I want to now take the footage further and edit it. I want the footage to have a darker feel to it, and for the sounds to be muffled and more animal like.

Stills from the footage:

Change Of Plan

After my disaster with bleaching bones I decided to have another look around to try and find different animal parts to cast. I went into a local pet store in which I found a pig trotter and a cows ear which are meant as dogs chew toys. The pig trotter especially appealed to me. I was looking for a symbol to represent the Animalisation of humans. Hands are a vital source for communication for humans, they are what we touch with, how we enable ourselves to feel things and others.

I began to cast the trotter in Latex. After a chat with Rob he decided that this would be the best way to go about casting the trotter. My aim was to make wax casts of the trotter. I wanted a material that I would be able to remold and that would be flexiable and easy to use. I also chose to use wax as I thought the trotters would take on a nice effect when cast in wax.


Starting to cover the trotter in latex:

Pig trotter with dried latex, marked with lines for covering with modrock:

Latex Cast of trotter covered with modrock, ready for filling with melted wax:

Melting the wax ready to fill:

After melting the wax I needed to wait for the wax to cool down before pouring it into the mold. I was using the hollow casting technique in which I poured the wax into the mold, swirling it around to cover all of the mold. I would then pour out the wax and then do the same thing over and over again. After a thick enough layer of wax covered all of the mold I was able to leave the wax to cool.

Result Of Bone Bleaching

I left my animal bones to soak in a solution on half hot water half bleach. I changed the solution every 24 hours for three days. I used metal scourers to try scrape off alot of the tissue beforehand on the bones to make it easier for the bleach solution to soften up the tissue. After 24 hours I went back to the bones and tried scrubbing more of the flesh off. The softer red meat flesh was coming off well, however the muscle tissue attached to the bone was not shifting anywhere.

I left the bones to soak again for another 24 hours. After this I went back to the bones, this time taking a sharp knife. I tried using the knife to cut off the muscle tissue from the bone. Some of it I was able to cut into and then peel off the bone. The rest again was too hard to peel off.

Again I changed the water/bleach solution and soaked the bones again for 24 hours. After returning to them again I was still unable to shift the muscle tissue and some of the meat would still not come off. By this point the bones were starting to become very smelly, and stank of rotting. This made it impossible for me to carry on working with them as every time I went near them I would gag! Even when changing the water solution they never lost their smell.

The bones were sadly way to big for me to boil, so I had no other choice but to sadly bin them. However I managed to photograph them before throwing them away.

Collecting Bones..

After my chats with Ang about the small skulls I had to cast I decided to try and cast things that were less precious to me. I didn't want the skulls to break as they are very delicate. I decided to take a look around for bones that would be stronger and easier to find.

My first point of call was to go to a local butchers, they had a range of different bones from different types of animals that are used for meat. The bones that I got belonged to a pig.

Skeleton of a pig:





The Butchers were kind enough to give me a scapula bone (the shoulder blade) and two costal cartilage bones. These bones were still covered in fat and some muscle tissue from where the meat had been removed from the bones. I looked up techniques for cleaning bones. There were many different techniques for cleaning the bones, from a burying technique in which you buried the bones to leave the flesh to rot naturally and then dug up the bones after a period later, to a bleaching technique. I have previously used the bleaching technique on my skulls to get rid of excess flesh, and in the circumstances of time and having no garden to bury bones in I thought this would be the best technique to do with these bones.


Article on cleaning bones I looked at:

http://www.jakes-bones.com/p/how-to-clean-animal-bones.html