Jon Burgerman

0:05[Applause]

0:15that was a private email all right.

0:20I was told to give one minute introduction to who I am so my name is John Bergman I am British I am anxious I like Yellow Jack I used to live in Nottingham people often think I say Notting Hill especially in America but I have to say no Nottingham I Live Now in uh in America in New York they have big portions of food and I like to tell people I am a doodler what is a doodle exactly a doodle is when you're making something and you're not quite sure what it is and then many hundreds of years later you realize that's what you were making and so doodle can be anything you know you can be drawing on a t a a place a napkin thing or something waiting for your food to be delivered doodle you make little characters a doodle you can draw on a magazine that's a doodle draw on a big piece of paper it's doodle canvas giant wall installation on a roof it's a doodle you could draw all over a subway station doodle doodle a balloon doodle with your breakfast that's a poodle you can doodle you can doodle with sound doodle doesn't have to be a drawing it can be anything you can be making anything I'm not sure what it is it could be sculptural it could be customization those are nood you could draw on a jacket you could draw on a boiled egg and pretend it's your brother you could doodle with some trash you can reappropriate some fruit you can do doodle with anything really in a little doodle doodle has the power to become something else so it's everything starts off with a little Doodle and then you might end up you know with a book or something that is a strudel so so doodling is thinking and making at the same time for me. And it's also about like having fun making quick things and having fun I really like doodling I really like making stuff so when I'm commuting on the subway you know traveling around in New York I'm I'm itching to to sort make stuff so I thought I've done a few projects Now using my phone where I I make work on the go this isn't my big project that I'm talking about I'm talking about little in between projects so one thing I did a few years ago is I screen grabbed celebrities Instagram photos and then I took photos of myself and put them next to next to the picture and you can do this all on your phone so it's very satisfying to do and it's no photoshopping it's just it's just it's just one image next to another image that's all it is and and then the two images get changed and I this was on a Blog and and someone left a comment saying I know it's not real but I'm still really jealous which which I thought was sweet so you know you can kind of change things very easily but But ultimately at the end of the day I'm still a man alone in my pants so so another little project I did in Korea a few years ago.

3:09I didn't have a very good phone but I would draw so I started drawing stuff on a notebook Sketchbook.

3:16And then I would try and give people sat opposite me new bodies and so the game I invented was that if you'd have to draw in balance and take the photograph and hope they wouldn't leave before or you you could cap cap capture it all. And then.

3:32I went back to Soul last year. And I had a great time and but I had a better phone so I realized you could draw directly on the phone so using stuff like Snapchat or Instagram you can draw with your thone and your and your fingers and stuff so I was having a great time because everyone you know everyone's on their phone so it's easy to get away with this kind of thing until Instagram post it on their feed and then which is good but also bad because I started to get a lot of comments because apparently I don't know if anyone's been to Career or from there but apparently you're not allowed to take photographs of people their immoral conducts so I got in a little bit of trouble for that.

4:18But I was in career with my friends so I thought maybe I could ask I could take photos of them and they'd be cool with it my friends are non too subtle in their sort of posing I tried to get some candid images of them it wasn't quite as successful I said maybe they could take photographs of me um so I've always really like the sort of blending together of sort of illustration art stuff and and real life stuff the these are some I tried to think of the earliest instances where I saw stuff like this even like with puppets like in rainbow and play school the kind of like pretending their real is is super cool so I love I really love stuff like this.

4:56And it's a reoccurring thing in in a lot of the work that I make and it's really easy to do this kind of thing so lot lots of them really involve a trick of perspective just you know like that looks like a normalized cat stick someone behind something in your brain can sort of tell you maybe it's a giant cat you know that it isn't but you can sort of trick yourself into thinking it.

5:17So I've done this a lot I did a little project year or two ago where you just stand next to something and and it changes things so whenever I'm out and about I'm looking for instances to do this. That's just in Muji they have everything set up for you.

5:35So anyway after after soul I came back to New York and I continued with this taking photos of people on the subway they didn't seem to mind as much in nework plus everyone's really tired so it it lends lends themselves for for doing this kind of thing. So that was a lot of fun and they also have video they so on Instagram stories you can shoot video and you can shoot video and then draw on top of it.

6:07So I started to experiment a little bit with that so you have to shoot the video first and then then make the drawing these are some sorry for the very lwd humor but it's a lot of fun so you can do a lot with very little which I'm really into like a high yield low effort so this this kind of shows you how how you can do it just a video without the thing and through doing this I've been drawing this little hot dog guy he appears in a lot of the videos and I mainly I mainly draw him because he's so easy to draw so I'm making these things on the go I'm trying not to spend any time doing them so just drawing with my Thum and and and stuff training sometimes I draw other things sometimes you want a pole daning banana so yeah I'll show you how how I do them I spent a long time shooting videos like this.

7:15And imagining what will go there.

7:18And then I start to sort of build in the thing. And I draw a little Anchor Point a little sort of thing that will hinge on whether the you know the video will work.

7:27And then it's then you just add in the little sausage guy and there he is very easy so you can all make them now.

7:33And then in Instagram stories if you have a video it'll automatically play the next video so I've recently started to try and do sequential ones where you you put two videos together so so I you know do stuff like this.

7:47This is a guy on the G train and then the next video comes in straight away so you can start to build little narratives start to have little little fun with these things this a very well behaved cat go all right.

8:05So I did that for a while it was a lot of fun and then. I decided it was too much like hard work. And I was in my supermarket and I saw this Shadow and I thought if I just added a little eye then it looks like a face and that's like really quick to do so I started to make a lot of these very recently because they're even easier I than the videos so and New York's got a lot of trash so it's kind of fun they this seems to have a lot of Personality this really wasted waste can and and you can still I still sometimes do it with the videos and things.

8:43And it's quite satisfying if you can try kind of bring out personality or some sort of narrative out of very inanimate objects so yeah I've been having a lot of fun doing that some some tulips and it's particularly satisfying if you you can sort of build build a a character or something out of out of the actual environment you know like using the the chains or something or pieces for the teeth so yeah it's been a lot of fun someone in it snowed recently and someone built an igloo in Williamsburg where I live and immediately it was up for rent and it it got taken and the little little hot dog man moved in it's good it's all melted now so as a byproduct of all this I'm starting to see faces everywhere in lots of different things like it's quite quite obvious. But in my studio I've seen this exit sign for three or four years. And now I can't not see it as a face it's not really an obvious face but I can't not see it as a face when I'm walking home. And I'm a little drunk or something I started seeing faces in the footprints in the snow which are quite scary and the really nice thing about putting this stuff on on the Instagram stories or Snapchat is that that it it disappears after a while they last for about a day and then they automatically delete so you can do really stupid goofy things that you wouldn't normally want to show anyone and not worry about it unless you're showing it in extraordinaire Mr Egg explores the outer reaches of the kitchen in his avocado spaceship oh we're Landing Planet salad it seems very friendly down here oh no what's that no no leave me alone no so you'd never really want people to see that but and then through doing all this stuff like goofing off playing around I've start you know I've shown some of these things in in Galleries and things which is really hilarious and and and I've tried to learn how to do after effects a bit now look at that through the thing.

10:59So this is this is just this is just me trying to learn how to do it because I've been inspired inspired to sort of try and take it a step further which I never ever thought I would do because I just you know predominantly just like drawing on paper and stuff so so yeah it's it's good I don't know if I'll keep doing it. But it's kind of fun doing it.

11:23And then and then another thing is that you know doing it digitally has only made me want to do it in an analog sense and now. Now I carry stickers made so I can put things.

11:37So yeah allow your imagination to be a real material and remember any idiot can put eyes on things so can I be that idiot thanks very [Applause]