Becoming : Fischeli & WeissresearchInformation taken from:http://www.matthewmarks.com/artists/peter-fischli-david-weiss/andhttp://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/fischliandweiss/

Peter Fischli and David Weiss started working together in 1979 when the created their first work called ‘The Sausage Photographs.’ From there they have gone on to create pieces of work that captivate and amuse their audiences.

They use a massively wide range of media to create their art, including; sculpture, photography and installation. Each part of their work has a childlike quality that encourages the viewer to look differently at their every day surrounding and experiences. The work combines, rearranges and manipulates these objects and experiences.

The transform what is commonplace and make normal everyday ob-jects do what they are not meant to do. They are always out to discover what things are like under the surface and what they can make things do other than what they are meant to do.

The main things to me that stand out about these two men are:

-They want to look deeper at mundane boring things, push them and see what else they can do.

-They want to add humour and interest to the daily things we see or do.

-They want to experiments with all different sorts of media.

Becoming : Fischeli & WeissresearchThis is a selection of their biggest peices of work:Information and images taken from: http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/fischliandweiss/

Black rubber sculptures that are casted form the original objects. Black rubber makes them feel disturbing and adds the feeling of mass production and sexual fetish.This reflects their interest in everyday objects.

They are concerned with what is hidden and overlooked.Sewer Workers(1987)Shows maintenance workers cleaning sewer pipes.Related to artists investigations to what’s beneath the surface.

Suddenly this overview (1981/2006) lots of hand modeled unfired clay sculptures.As Weiss has explained, ‘The intention was to accumulate various important and unimportant events in the history of mankind, and of the planet – moments in the fields of technology, fairy tales, civiliza-tion, film, sports, commerce, education, sex, biblical history, nature and entertainment.’

Photo series Airports (1987 – 2006) and Flowers, Mushrooms (1997/8)Both series are contracting.Flower, Mushrooms shows familiar themes in art history.Airports show suburban, housing estates and motor ways.In their world these two merit each other.Airports carefully documents the day to day life of an airport and its workers.Images are unusually calm, don’t have the nose and pace of the airport in themFlower, Mushrooms images are double exposed.Much time given over what to photograph.Because of double exposure no image is the same, and over laid on other photos.Gives them a unreal quality, colours are brighter, forms magnified, landscapes merged.

Son et Lumière – Le rayon vert (1990)Animated light sculpture.Simple materials – plastic cup, flash light etcInterest in creating spectacular effects with everyday materials.

Beetle (1986-7) is a prop from the film The Way Things Go (1986-7)Made from an aluminium water-jug mounted on roller-skates and flanked by knives, this aggressive object plays a part in the film’s chain-reaction of staged collisions and chemical reactions.

Equilibres / Quiet Afternoon (1984) series of photographs.Precariously balanced sculptures.Looks like it’s captured just before they collapse.Everyday objects piled on top of each other.All work was based on balance. No way to do it right or wrong, just correctly.Adding personalities to the objects, dramatic scenes.

Becoming : Fischeli & WeissresearchVisible World (1987-2000) is a collection of almost 3,000 photos from various trips take by the artists over the world.A break from the studio.No intention of finding photos that already existed.Photos of major sights, and also amateur photos – sharply focused, ap-pealing subject matter etc. For example sunlit gardens.Show limitations of photography, shows only superficial surface of ‘visable world’.Arrangement of photos broadly chronological.

Rat and Bear costumes.Worn by the artists early 1980’s.Struggling character that plotted day dreamed and squabbled.First film – The Least Resistance (1981) – set in LA.Second film The Right Way (1982-3) – Mountainous landscape.

An Unsettled Work (2004) (originally titled Freakshows,)Pictures taken during the making of visible world.Too disturbing and gross.Night club scenes, ghost trains bloody wax figures etc.According to Fischli, ‘the unpleasant and pleasant should inexplicably overlap in a sort of beautiful, feverish madness, in the end imploding under an overwhelming number of interpretive possibilities.’

Fotografias (2004/05)Series of photographs.Existing painted images.From amusement parks, fairgrounds, shop fronts or the sides of vehi-cles.Another collection presented in a uniform fashion to show the dramatic nature of the photos.Fantastical, exotic and mysterious.

The hour-long Kanalvideo (1992)Footage from electric probes.Travels through Zürich sewer system.Sense of claustrophobia.Hypnotic journey.Reflects their interest in the hidden and overlooked.

Question Pot (Big) (1986),Large sculpture.Questions and text spiral round inside.Hand carved from foam-like material.Made other suculptures – hippo – ear – bean.Interest in inside spaces.

Questions (2002-03)Hundred of hand written questions.For different languages.Projected onto a wall, playfully in patterns.Mundane problems of everyday life.Described as questions that don’t need a response.Makes your wonder who would ask that?With casual doodles from some sense of a wondering mind.According to Fischli, ‘they’re like decorations on a Christmas tree; one doesn’t really need them but they somehow spread a good mood any-way.’

Becoming : Fischeli & WeissresearchI have chosen to look at in more details two pieces of the work that Fischeli and Weiss have done. Information and images taken from: http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/fischliandweiss/

As a group we were very interested in their piece:The way things go (1986-7)

This video is made of lot of simple household everyday objects from tyres to chairs. All the pieces are balanced carefully and then made to fall or explode create a chain reaction in which things happen because of the last occurrence.

The video is very well put together and its fascinating to watch and all the hard work and time that has gone into this video.

The humour in the video is that they are misusing the objects, using them for something other than their attended purposes.

They got the idea from their work Equilibres / Quiet Afternoon (1984), which has all the carefully balanced items. They discrbed the piece as capturing the objects just before they collapsed and fell and they want-ed to create energy to give to these almost falling objects.

The whole piece last 30minutes and is 100 feet of interactions, explo-sions all done precisely to create crafted chaos.

I think it shows their love at looking at things deeper and beyond the surface. To see what else these objects can, other than what they are meant to do.

Becoming : Fischeli & Weissgroup workOur group started out by building the contraction that would be like what Fisheli and Weiss created. The photos are from Scott Wooden.

I honestly didn’t have much to do with the making of the piece as the boys seemed much more interested in making and actually just felt a lit-tle useless when building it as I was unable to come up with any ideas.

It was a lot of fun when we set it off each time though, and at the same time exceptionally frustrating as we had to re set it again and again as parts stopped working half way through or we had to re think other parts.

We decided to do a live video feed to show this to our classmates as this kept with the excitement of letting it off and not actually knowing what was going to happen.

The video didn’t work so well as the video connection was poor, but I think that people got the feel of it as some people were getting excited to see it.

In the end we got a fairly decent video from this.

After making this I knew that I wasn’t really interested in creating something like this. Although it was fun to watch, I wasn’t really sure I wanted to create something similar and I didn’t really see where I could take this any further.

Becoming : Fischeli & WeissresearchThe Sausage Photographs (1979)

This was Fischli / Weiss’s first collaborative project. It is a collection of everyday objects showing scenes and being used and bought to life. The put fun and humour into these objects.

By just using Sausages and cold meats, and a crumpled bed sheet for a mountain landscapes, they create dramatic scenes and humours stories.

The one I am interested in they have used two sausages as cars and they have collided in a narrow street lined with cardboard buildings. On-lookers are made from cigarette butts.

I really like this work as I’m very interested in character design, and I loved the way they have injected character into these inanimate objects.

I think the pieces are fun and interesting to look at.

The Sausage Photographs really appeal to me; I would like to create something similar and entertaining as this with everyday objects. I like the way that they bring to them to life and as I’m very interested in character design I feel that this will help me also in my search to what makes a character and how to bring them to life.

Becoming : Fischeli & Weissterry borderUpon browsing the internet I came across an artist called Terry Border. His work was very similar to what I was looking at with Fischeli and Weiss.

Terry Border’s Bent Objects collection depicts everyday objects as characters in a series of amusing situations. Border began by making wire sculptures to sell and posting photos of them on his blog. It turned out that people were more interested in the photos of the sculptures pos-ing in animated set-ups. Over 70 of Border’s most comical photos are featured in his recent book, Bent Objects: The Secret Life of Everyday Things.

Terry Border’s work is very like what Fishchli & Weiss created in their first project together ‘The Sausage Photographs’I really like his photos. They are so simple and alot of them have hu-mour in them or are play on words.He creates characters and series out of food or everyday objects by add-ing hands and legs or just putting them into situations.

Becoming : Fischeli & Weissterry borderHis work is really interesting and i think because of the humor in it is makes it really appealing.

In particular i like the egg with the wings one and also the banana’s in bed one. I automatically have an emotional connection with the egg as i feel for him wanting to fly and you know that when he does jump that is it he will go splat. SO although there is humor i also somehow become emotionally attached to the egg.

The Banana one is very good too. I like the way he has used the skins like clothes, i think that is very clever and funny..

All the information and images can be found on his blog:http://bentobjects.blogspot.com/

As well as light hearted funny images he also has a blog full of darker adult rated images which although are amusing i don’t think work as well as the cleaner ones.

Which can be found:http://reallybent.blogspot.com/

Becoming : Fischeli & WeissIdeasFrom looking at Fischeli and Weiss’s work, ‘The Sausage Photographs’ (1979) and looking at Terry Border’s Bent Objects collection I knew I wanted to make imamate everyday objects come to life. I’m very inter-ested in character design and that is very much about bring something to life and giving it character.

I wanted to do something related to this and decided to use food as you can’t get much more every day than that. It worked well with Fischeli and Weiss and also Terry Border. I think this is because food already has quite a lot of character to it.

You have the taste and the colour. Also what food goes with what and where and when you eat certain pieces. I’m very interested in cute char-acters, which have an easy approachable appeal and felt that cakes and sweet things would show this well.

My original plan was to add faces to some cakes that I made. However this did not go so well. My baking skills were somewhat lacking and I was unable to draw neatly onto the cakes.

Rather than having cute approachable fun designs I ended up having scary cake things.

Becoming : Fischeli & WeissIdeasI then thought of just buying pre bought cakes as I considered creat-ing some art that worked was more important than perfecting my cake making skills. Instead I took photos of them and bought them to life by adding amusing faces and a back story for them.

I had the idea to create a cake that had a photo album and these were his favourite photos of other cakes in this ‘cake’ world.

To add faces and expressions onto them I added illustrated faces via Il-lustrator and Photoshop. I kept the faces simple and cheeky to go along with the theme of what I wanted to create.

Becoming : Fischeli & WeissIdeasI added a textured background of some paper and a torn edge type pat-tern to give the feel that they perhaps in a really old photo album. The font I picked was to give the feel that it had been hand written into the album.

Upon showing this an audience however, I began to see some flaws in it. It was suggested to me that the faces made the image too literal and obvious. It was going away from Fischeli and Weiss’s work.

I went back and looked at their pieces. It is very simple and no eyes or emotions are shown. It almost allows me as a view to create my own emotions to the image. Rather than making it obvious a simple title explained what was going on and I was able to make my own mind up what was what but just looking at it.

They used the composition and positioning of the pieces to show what was going on and tell the story. This I felt was much stronger than mak-ing a ‘cutesy’ piece that gave everything away straight away.

I went back to my pieces and started to take away parts of it. I took away the illustrations so there were no emotions, however I then found myself looking and making up different emotions for the characters in the image, rather than having them forced upon me.

I then simplified the image by taking away the border, as I felt this added too much and made the image look chaotic and busy. It drew the attention away from where it needed to be!

I kept the story instead changed the one for the front page slightly, these would act as a type of ‘title’. All it does is tell you what and who are in the image. It says nothing about why they are there or how they are feeling.

I kept these images as I had originally put thought into the composition and positioning of the pieces. I aligned them how a photographer would if taking a portrait or the class photo. When I looked at them again I felt that the subject of the image was obvious because of this and also because of the title at the bottom of each page.

I was happy with my end pieces. I feel that they carry the theme of Fischeli and Weiss’s work, ‘The Sausage Photographs’, and I can defi-antly see that less is more in this case.

Becoming : Fischeli & Weissfinal piece