Aims Short version: History of one word, ‘all’ Slightly longer version:

1. Proposal Presentation Daniel Fone Page 1 Aims Short version: History of one word, ‘all’ Slightly longer version: My project is about the history of meaning and language using the history of the word all as a focus point. This is a big project and I’m currently looking at ways of sharpening it up and paring it down. However, in the process, I keep on coming up with ways of making it bigger as well. But this is all to come.

2. Proposal Presentation Daniel Fone Page 2 Proposal Presentation Daniel Fone Page 2 Objectives • I want to look at the emotional attachments that have developed with relation to a particular word. How did these attachments appear? • Discover more about Flash and PHP with a view to using them in a more artistically motivated context as opposed to a commercial one. • Investigate immersive installations and the process of including the viewer in the artwork they are viewing. Some of the work can be either created or influenced by the viewer as they look at it. • Examine the effect of overloading a space with information, with special reference to the above point. I am aware that time may be against me on this one. I want to investigate it though. The accompanying picture is an example by the artist Ilya Kabakov. This is an excerpt from the Ten Characters series called ‘The Man Who Flew Into Space from His Apartment’.

3. Proposal Presentation Daniel Fone Page 3 Rationale Meaning has undergone an incredible journey. In the past ten to thirty years alone the way we respond to culture has been transformed by rapid technological progress and accompanying increasingly slippery theory in the writing of Baudrillard, Derrida and other Post Modern funsters. That’s before even mentioning the previous thirty thousand or so years. I think to relate this change to the journey of one word, I need to break it down in to a sequence of ‘moments’. Each moment must be made distinct from the others either by being made in different media or by being presented differently. The beginning of meaning Immigration All reconfigured All Now

4. Proposal Presentation Daniel Fone Page 4 More Rationale As it stands my moments, described in a little more detail are: The beginning of meaning. Grappling with the moment when the concept of ‘all’ might have dropped in to the mind of a passing caveman, cro magnon or relevant step on the evolutionary chain. This may well be pre language. Immigration The word all came to English from the Germanic languages. Either with the Anglo Saxons or Vikings. That’s what this bit will be about. All reconfigured Baudrillard claimed that the world, the span of all human activity, no longer exists. Apparently it was “never more than a regulative concept for planning and implementing a global society.” He would have said that wouldn’t he. All now What do people make of the word now? To what extent has post modern jiggery-pokery trickled down? This part is likely to be interactive and consist, in part, of data gathered in the duration of the exhibition itself. No doubt I’ll think of more moments the more I read. Ideally, I want to keep myself down to four or five distinct blocks though.

5. Proposal Presentation Daniel Fone Page 5 More Rationale "....almost every Kabakov installation confronts a visitor by an immense mass of pictorial and textual material. Such an installation cannot be grasped and apprehended by a visitor at first glance. Rather, a visitor feels himself lost in the installation's space which escapes his visual control. The visitor becomes in a sense a part of the installation itself, an object among other exhibited objects. That is why Kabakov speaks about his own illustrations as "total installations", leaving no neutral space for an external spectator." - Boris Groys - 'Ilya Kabakov – Der Kunstler als Erzahler'. I think this would be a sensible approach for a piece of work about the evolution of meaning that uses the word 'all' as its lead in point. And another thing... I think successful artwork, on a formal basis at least, tends to take as its foundation a very simple idea. I want there to be a formal simplicity in evidence in my final piece. However - the history of meaning is complicated and our approach to it has undergone a mind-boggling transformation in the past hundred years, in tandem, to a large extent, with the rise of new technology. So, there must be a formal complexity to the final piece, reflecting the strands of this evolution. This balance between simplicity and complexity is one of the major issues with which I must struggle.

6. Proposal Presentation Daniel Fone Page 6 Outcomes One obvious way of presenting all of these moments (I don't like this word and want to find a better one. Suggestions on the back of a postcard or sheet of electronic paper please) is to have a timeline and for everything to be seen consecutively. I don't like this idea. I want to have everything there in one space at once, layered on top of or underneath everything else. I think that would be much closer to the way we actually experience this area of history. This means that each part would consist of: Beginning: Sound and/or an object placed in the middle of the space set up to deliberately create shadows on other parts of the show. Perhaps a zoetrope of sorts. Immigration: More conventional display consisting of photographs and writing on the walls offering a history book. Reconfiguration: Projection shined over the top of the Immigration section. Elements will be carefully placed to interact with the material that's pinned on the wall. For example, a large scale photograph of a hillside could have people or buildings projected over the top of it. Some parts of it may be controllable by the audience, either the potential zoetrope object in the middle of the exhibition space or the projection, which could be an interactive animation or website. This is where immersive installations come in.

7. Proposal Presentation Daniel Fone Page 7 • Media • A website displayed on at least one computer monitor but also using at least one projector. • Printed photographs. • Drawings. • Found and or specially built objects. • Writing - some of it typed, some of it hand written, some printed. • Collage. • The list most likely won't end here.

8. Proposal Presentation Daniel Fone Page 8 Methodologies • Researching the current perception of my word by conducting interviews and different experiments. I will then play with different methods of illustrating these experiments. • The most important part of my schedule will be the staging of a small show in the House Gallery over the summer. I will try out many of the things I am proposing here when I do that show. This will be a massive opportunity to take stock of how well the ideas work, take criticism and generally reflect before next September, when work on the final piece will have to begin in earnest. • I am in the process of researching etymology, linguistics and semiotics.