My idea for the physical part of this piece has always been to make paper mache caricatures of celebrities and put them into a hall of fame. Although this was not to be realised until after the prototype hand-in, I thought it would be good to make 1 or 2 caricatures for now as well. Although I had initially wanted full-body sculptures with speakers built into them, I realised that I may need to compromise due to time, budget and space constraints and just make heads to put on plinths. As the making of these caricatures is the only part of the prototype making process that isn’t sound-based, I thought I would leave this step until last as I really wanted to focus on the sound for this element of the project.

Yesterday, I began with the process of making a paper mache head. I can’t have done this for a long time, probably not since primary school, so I found a couple of tutorials online that showed how to do it. I gathered some balloons, PVA glue, newspaper and petroleum jelly and set to work.

Surprisingly, the most difficult part of this process for me at the start was just blowing up the balloon and tying the knot on it as this isn’t something I’ve actually done before, and I found it a bit fidgety and frustrating.

Once I’d finally finished with blowing up the balloon I put some petroleum jelly on it as the tutorials I’d found had said to – this was so the balloon could then be pulled out of the cast by the end of it. This proved to be a mistake and bit of a waste of my time though, as the balloons kept popping when I’d put the jelly on them. Eventually after 3 tries I decided to leave out this stage and go straight onto making the cast.

I dipped the pieces of newspaper into a mix of water and PVA glue that I had prepared and stuck them on to the balloon. This took a while but I eventually finished the first layer. I then left it to dry as I went out to see an exhibition (Women’s Revolt at the Tate Britain) and then came back later to add the second layer. Unfortunately in the time that I had gone out the balloon had started to deflate and the paper had come unstuck:

The layers of newspaper were all crinkled and came off easily. This meant I would have to start from scratch the next day – I was unsure if the same would happen again though, and I didn’t want to waste my time especially as it’s not too long until the hand-in date and preparing and painting these caricatures is a process that would have to be done over a few days.

I thought about my larger hopes and goals for the visual part of this installation, and I realised it might be best to change things up. I had originally wanted to have life-size sculptures in my hall of fame, but had to compromise and just make the heads as I thought the full body sculptures would be too time-consuming. However, as silly as it seems, I was finding the whole process of making the paper mache heads a bit frustrating, as it was still a lot of time and effort for something that was essentially a compromise and I was even still having difficulty with that.

What I realised I could do instead would be to just make some life-size cardboard cutouts. This means I don’t have to compromise on the scale of the caricatures I make, but it would also be easier and less time consuming, which is good as I should be focusing mostly on the sound for my installation. This is actually similar to the gallery piece I made last year, where I had a blank family of cardboard silhouettes sitting together on a sofa watching the same film as the viewer:

Obviously the cardboard cutouts I want to make would be a lot more sophisticated than the ones I made last year, and I would like to decorate them with collage to make them resemble their assigned celebrity but in a warped way. I think this could actually maybe be more effective than my original idea of having painted paper mache heads as it runs with my theme of collage and cutting things up to make something new. I’m not sure if I will have the time to make these before the presentation I have to give on the 12th, and it would be difficult to transport the cutouts to LCC, but what I may do instead is provide sketches of what I imagine the installation and caricatures to look like and show diagrams of speaker placement.

Overall I’m happier to continue with the cardboard cutouts as I’ve realised that the paper mache models might be more difficult and time consuming when I could achieve a similar affect and make life-size caricatures with cardboard. However it was still useful to experiment in the way I did so that I could come to this conclusion.