My Hay Installation: Part 2 - Forming an Outline

My first attempt at my installation I abandoned. I realised that I was trying to give a summary of my novel and I think that wasn't a good idea. Instead, what was needed, I thought, was a series of samplers. So I read through my book again (a painful process at this stage because I can see so much I want to alter) picking out short passages which I thought would be suitable for reading aloud. I found eleven.

I then asked Hodmandod Senior to take a look at these and sort them into two piles - ones we thought worked, and ones he didn't. Luckily, the 'worked' pile was bigger. I took these passages and reworked them a little, trimming them so they would make sense on their own. I then thought of a question that each passage answered and then used these as my series of headings:

How we got there.
Why we left.
What we found.
Who was there.
How we found them.
What they did for us.
Who realised.
What happened next.

I thought each of these could form a back- bone of my installation and each short film could branch off from each vertebra.

With these in mind I then looked through the collection of pictures I have assembled during my research for my novel - pictures from my trip to Patagonia, Wales and a lot of archival material - to compose my films. I then constructed a series of short sentences which I could illustrate with pictures - each one leading up to passage selected from the book. I then opened a powerpoint file.