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For our seminar event we cleared the studio to restore it to it’s other function as a gallery, creating a “white cube” space. We then randomly applied over 3,000 black dots to the fresh white walls creating a giant join the dots on three of the four walls. On the fourth wall we wrote the words “Join the Dots” in the dots themselves tracing out the words with a marker. We then placed 100 coloured markers on a plinth beside the Join the Dots sign.

We gave no other instructions to the audience, and they began to engage with the space in a way they felt was appropriate. Some joined the dots with different types of lines, some created abstract shapes, others played games, joined the dots to make recognisable shapes, uses the dots as eyes in figures, some people even began colouring in other peoples drawings and responding to images and shapes already on the walls.

Our intention with this event was to give simple instructions to the audience that they could interpret and engage with however they please. The outcome was indeterminate and we had no control over what someone may chose to put on the walls. We wanted to create a fun creative experience that questioned the idea of authorship but also subverted the idea of the gallery space as a clean white space with which one cannot physically engage with into a space not solely for the display of creativity but a place creativity comes alive.

I was excited to be involved in this event because of it’s playful manner and the fact that we could not control what other people would create with the dots. In my own practice I am concerned with constructing images containing a potential narrative that I want the viewer to interpret for themselves so I identified with the concern of this work. The viewer’s interpretation (through engagement with the join the dots) is at a more basic level than interpreting the narrative of a photograph but the idea is similar – the viewer’s interpretation is what ultimately finishes the work. From our point of view the ‘piece of work” that we created was the opportunity we gave to others to create their own artwork  in a way they would not normally be allowed to do.

The fact that the results of the work was indeterminate when we presented it to the public is what I identify to be the “Odradek” element of the piece, the vagueness and possibliities that lay in the parameters we set out for the audience is somewhat mirrored in how each person can identify the character of Odradek in a different way. The images I have included here, one of the join the dots instructions and two of the dots themselves show the actual physical piece we created and even by looking at the expanse of dots on the white wall in a photograph one can see the potential images jumping out at them. Even the dots themselves appear as a vast inverted solar system – something that had in fact been illustrated by an anonymous viewer who tagged different dots as stars and created constellations out of them. Anything could appear on the wall you just had to look and imagine.