The reality of the smudge

splodgy photoshoped footprint

The idea is that I will embroider a 100m length of fabric with footprints in the position that my actual footprints would have been.  At the same time I will have the data of the electrical activity of my heart whilst I was running the 1 ½ miles in the Spinning Room.

The footprints hopefully will be fairly straightforward; I’ll have lengths of paper that I will have made relief prints on.  Initially these are likely to be wet prints from the dirt off the actual floor in the Spinning room.  The theme of the exhibition is cloth and memory;  I love the thought that 150 years worth of ingrained dirt will be used in the creation of this piece; that there is a continuing physical presence of the work that went on here for so many years; they keep sweeping the floors but the dirt is always there; the fabric of the building will be adding to not only the prints I make this Saturday but will add to the piece itself when its laid out in August.

I might have to make relief prints off my trainers for the embroidery programming.  In experiments in my studio the prints are often ambiguous and smudged which raises the question should I use a neat crisp image or the reality of the smudge?   I’ll take some prints whilst on site; if I have them then I can always not use them, but this will mean inking up the bottom of my lovely new Asics Gel Nimbuses!  I am going to have to be careful on this and do this after the actual run as I don’t want to leave inky footprints all over the floor of a listed building.