The video above is a short test, using screen captures from Google Mars. I really like the intricacies of the jpegy compression and the bizarrely coloured artefacts that appear in the noise. Not sure where to go from here, I think I need to apply some kind of logic rather than just an intuitive scanning around and capturing. I really want to avoid Koyaanisqatsi-esque nonsense, maybe I would be better off using something else as a source, or finding some method to organise the images. I quite like the idea of collecting thousands of images and which could then be compared to frequency graphs of audio (maybe Mars from the Holst’s Planets) but then sonograms are very dull to watch and are in many ways an arbitrary representation of sound. Or if there was some way to compare to other images, find the images that are the closest approximation of the video for Pump Up the Volume. Hmmm…
I’m currently starting a residency as part of the Artists’ Access to Art-schools (AA2A) scheme at Nottingham Trent alongside three other artists: Ruth Scott, Priya Mistry and Georgina Parks. I’ve been catching up on technical things that I never learned at Uni the first time I was there - So I’ve been doing some print making, making screens etc. I’m trying to find ways to make quick turn around publications and artist’s books, to get things out of my sketchbooks and into the real world… I will be adding a publications section to my site very soon.
It’s early days but it looks like it is going to be a really useful and fun experience, as the staff seem keen to make more of it than the minimum requirement of allowing us to use the equipment.
“explore the possibilities of the essay form. What forms can the essay take and how can such texts be read? What is an essay and who is essaying and where? What kinds of knowledge can be produced? What is lost and gained in moving beyond conventional discursive approaches into using visual and textual material, the space of the page, variations of typography and design?”
I’ve been thinking a lot about all the books I own but either haven’t read, forgotten, got distracted from or plain don’t-understand-a-word-of, and trying to put a physical shape to those ideas. As part of the Essaying Essays project we are putting together a quick publication with three pages per contribution, my section is called - Reader’s Block(s):Mapping Missunderstanding(s) (which I only just realized for definite is a spelling error as the red wiggly line appeared, I was 50/50 that it was, but decided to leave it and if it was wrong I’d say it was deliberate.) The title is deliberately mispelled, misspelled because I’m curious about the way text can easily be distracting, conjuring ideas that can’t be anticipated by the writer. Is it the writer’s job to accurately steer you towards their mental picture of something? And is it necessarily the reader’s job to be obedient?
Did James Joyce realise after his years of slaving away at Finnegan’s Wake there would be a partially read (maybe 2%) red and black copy lying on the floor of my room, so I can stand on it to more easily smoke out of the window? I’ve been thinking about this as a Fluxus like performance of “not reading Finnegan’s Wake” so it feels like I’m learning something from the book without looking at the words. A less extreme idea but in a similar vein stems from my experience with a compilation of Stan Brakage’s letters and essays, which I am continually reading the first chapter of because I get so wrapped up in his elaborate metaphors and puns that it makes me think about new pieces of work or imagine films instead of concentrating on the content of the text. I always put it down to write in my sketchbook at around page 12. So I’m thinking about this as a property of the text, a fluctuating ball of possible meanings, readings and contexts and trying to visualise it somehow.
Anyway, I made four pages worth of stuff so I thought I’d post the additional page here as the drawings didn’t quite fit with the theme of the rest, (and they’re a bit sillier). I’ll post a link to the publication when it is published later this week.
The main piece of work I’ve been making here in Sandnes is an installation called Isostasy. It consists of a drawing and an 8 minute video loop. Here are some images of the drawing, which will become the screen for the projected video.
The video consists of thousands of individually captured images of the drawing stitched together as frames, creating a shifting network of lines and textures.
I got hold of a large roll of paper 1.5 meters wide and I’ve decided to make a drawing that fills a 4:3 rectangle with the rocky images from the previous post. The goal is to project a video made form the drawing either back onto it or onto another screen the same size. I’m about 2 thirds through and as much as I say I am interested in ‘the process of drawing’ its a little time consuming especially when I’m in a strange place with a lot to see….
So the past couple of days I’ve been hiding from it - yesterday I stayed at the flat and did some doodling and music and today I went to a charming gallery in Brusand in its old train station: Nordisk Kunst Plattform. And I don’t use the word ‘charming’ lightly - its in a village near the beach with a population of around 300, it has retained the original luridly patterned wall paper and is run by the friendly artist couple that live above the gallery space. Only open for 4 hours on a Sunday, it seems to be a small bastion of culture as the train heads south into increasingly christian (kristian?) territory. I’d also like to note that it is beyond Time (see map).
It rained all day yesterday so I didn’t want to brave it into the studio. So I sat next to the window in the residency accommodation doing some work. The window opens on a hinge and the familiar sound of the rain is like white noise. Closing the window acts like sweeping a filter, cutting out more and more of the top-end as the window closes and flooding the spectrum as it arcs open.
Above are just some notes I made, about a theoretical performance - often in cinemas there are speakers placed behind a perforated screen to let the sound through, I like the idea of being able to slowly reveal the sound from behind the screen. I did a little searching around and found that drive in theatres frequently use inflatable screens -endless possibilities of puncturing the frame spring to mind.
Some test footage of horizontal channels in rocks at the top of Dalsnuten. (If you’re reading this on facebook, you need to ‘view original post’ to see the video (apologies for the bad quality… )).
And some ’story-boards’ drawn afterwards.
I went for a walk yesterday up to the summit of Dalsnuten, a mountain that overlooks Gandafjorden on the opposite side to Sandnes and Stavanger. The walk was exhausting (mostly because I mistimed the bus and had to walk back to Sandnes) but really beautiful. The drawings below weren’t done at the time but in the studio and are attempts at generalising (or abstracting maybe) patterns in the rocks on vertical edges of mountainside. I’m not sure they are really there yet, but they’re only really the first attempts. I’m thinking about maybe another trip to get some more/better footage for the video, perhaps then I’ll get a bit more insight.
Above - still from 3 Noodle Minutes a short film which came about due to having to eat cheap food as, by an irritating set of coincidences, I’ve arrived in the third richest country in the world with only about 50 of my worthless pounds… I thought I’d left Mr Noodle in Nottingham. Video soon - when I can get vimeo to stop playing up.
I’ve just started a 6 week residency in Sandnes, Norway. I’ll be posting bits of work and notes while I’m here (actually I started posting yesterday). I have a lot of thinking to do as well as enjoying the long days here. The studio, Stasjon-K is an old fire station and is next to a larger complex KinoKino containing three cinema screens and a gallery space that is opening in September. (Which looks very exciting…)
Not entirely sure what project(s) I’m working on while I’m here - I have a few ideas half developed but feel like its a bit pointless to just plough into them without taking in my surroundings here first. Trying to balance the panic of knowing I’ve got a couple of shows coming up and relaxing into the place will get easier when I’ve got some beer money… I’m off to the smallest mountain I can find tomorrow, building up to the terrifying but ‘tourist friendly’ Pulpit Rock. I’m still thinking about these natural patterns mentioned in the two previousposts - but I want to go out and find sources and starting points from nature rather than allow myself to just descend (should that be ascend?) into the wholly imaginary.
In the absence of any well written prose, here’s a short list of things I’ve written in my sketchbook, without their accompanying illustrations or explanations.
video-soup
guts of an old cinema
cake stands
film mechanisms
cyclones
eye-floaters
winding desk/edit table
runes
tatoo convention
tony conrad
wooden cabins
A1 paper - boo!
rolls - yeah!
newsprint
hydrocarbons
guitar picks and table tennis balls are made of celluloid
I’ve been making drawings that I call semi-procedural for a while now. “Procedural” meaning there is a fixed rule about how they are made and “semi” to mean that these rules aren’t so fixed - so they’re never written down. The rules only exist as a set of parameters in my head with a vague idea of what the limits are to each parameter.
I’ve been struggling with methods of animating for a while, the idea of copying frames then adjusting them makes me so bored I quickly lose interest. So these animations are made by drawing a field of marks and taking frames as samples of the larger image. Similar to the way the previous post cut apart the origami paper into a grid of frames but in a much looser way, using a small camera making judgements on the fly (in a similar manner to the drawing).
