52 Encounters in one shot!

Ok I admit that 52 encounters in one go might be considered cheating but just hear me out for a second! Being a student in Nottingham as you can imagine I get bombarded with flyers and leaflets almost 24 hours a day, advertising everything from hair products to the latest bands. I even had one handed to me advertising for a job handing out leaflets which I'm sure has some has some comical significance. But this got me thinking about when you get handed these leaflets you’re immediately introduces to two encounters. The first of these is to the person handing the leaflet to you and the second the flyer itself. 

Let me ask you something, did you ever stop and have a full conversation with that person or just exchange of a few words? The likely hood is that you only exchange a few small words, such as come to 'Coco Tang' (a bar in Nottingham I'm constantly being leafleted for). But none the less this still counts as an encounter.   

So looking at this idea I started to play around with the idea of touring my studio, which not only contains all the first years but second and third as well and setting a large number of people a simple task through a basic set of instructions. 

I settled on using an old deck of cards and started to hand them out to people on my course. Most of the student that received a card I had never met before or experienced any previous encounters. They were issued with a set of simple instructions.

1. You must make one mark

2. You must write one letter 

Other than this there were allowed to do anything they liked to the card so long as the returned at least a segment of the card to me. 

Following this process I was able to quickly acquire a large 'portfolio' of encounters each documented by the card itself. Normally this would form my basis for further exploration into the subject however my current tutors have set me the task of simply to gather encounters so my further research for the moment will have to be postponed.   

Here are some examples of the cards....

Copy righted to Benjamin David Viney 2012

So where to begin?

It strikes me as a difficult challenge to try and create 100 encounters within the week. Let alone for each of these encounter to be meaningful and have some residual effect on my current practise and work. I think the best place to start is probably by looking at he word 'Encounter' itself.

The dictionary definition of Encounter is....

 ' A Meeting, especially one that is unplanned, unexpected, or brief' 

An Encounter could imply some spiritual aspect as well, being a Christian I face regular encounters with God weather it be through worship or prayer ect.... but I have decided to focus on the physical aspect of everyday life for the first part of the week at least. 

I may choose to focus on the encounters you have with people but also maybe experiment with an idea that you can have an encounter with an object. only time will tell!   

Work Examples

I should explain the when that I am a conceptual artist but also like working with my hands (which could be viewed as a little ironic I know) and I work in many different media's from everything to sculpture and painting to CGI animation, my specialist areas would probably have to be installation and performance and video this post is to give you a small flavour of my work and what is about to follow.