Eleanor MacFarlane: Mapping the Territory. Paradigm

Paradigm 1

Paradigm 2

Paradigm 3

Paradigm

            a map
                              a puzzle
                                         a mapping tool
                                                              all in one.

Paradigm

                      a low tech
                              interactive
                                                   multi solution
                                                                      conundrum.

Paradigm

                     a layered drawing
                                       a game of associations
                                                                           a psychological reframer.

Paradigm - Moving Image in Solid Form

Paradigm - a thought pattern, a philosophical or theoretical framework.

A paradigm shift occurs through realisation, through revolutionising thinking and understanding familiar concepts in new ways, creating changes in a person's perception of reality.

Mixed media - seven framed sheets of glass in various sizes, permanent marker pen.

Dimensions - variable.

Paradigm is a reframing tool, an apparatus by which the viewer may consider chosen elements through a different lens of understanding, thus navigating the territory of their thinking, rearranging ideas, and discovering new relationships between familiar and novel concepts.

The Key to Paradigm

Choose what the lines of images may represent according to your associations.

The overall half-obscured aesthetic of drawings is just beyond some horizon, represent that these are always forming ideas, perhaps hard to grasp, but standing for something, suggesting the rest.

Colours have their subjective associations. Transparent colours cast their hue and meaning onto the views and ideas in Paradigm, creating more variations or insights.

For me, the bottles represent a continuing theme of work in various formats and which still enthralls - all the ideas about reflections, containing, ambiguity, vintage objects.

The shadow figures also represent recurrent work for me, but are mainly a reminder of people - people I know and love, people I engage with and some I wish to engage with professionally, and the ever reminder of the audience, the viewer, and how I am conveying work to them.

There are musical themes, as I cannot disregard my classical musical background, and how that training has shaped my brain and outlook.

Books represent ideas, and all the sets of thoughts they contain. Books may appear solid, but they change, as we reread them, outgrow them, or come to understand new things they say.

There are abstract shapes, representing the unformed, unexpected areas of consideration.

There are references to natural things, plants, flowers and mountains and trees.

The roofs stand for place, home, buildings which house thoughts and aspirations, memories and time past.

The hand is presence, the presence of the artist and the viewer. It stands for touch, and the hand-made element of work, which is the interface between thought and produced objects.

Directions - apply frames or layers of Paradigm to objects, or the view in general, to look through, change, and reconsider.

Rather than a given mind map, Paradigm works as a lens through which to map thoughts, rearrange concepts and create new links between streams of thinking, acknowledging that this process is ever changing, and that altering one area of life affects another.

Apply the mapping tool to any art project, to art practice overall, or any other aspect one wishes to consider or territory to explore. Feel free to disregard or add on lines and frames. This is a map with probably infinite solutions. Every way is correct.

To add on frames - It is suggested to match the layers of drawings in various ways - like with like, perhaps bottles with bottles, or matching by colour, or by line. Perhaps you may make a pattern with the frames themselves. You may try to place the frames in ways which are not matched, trying to avoid obvious associations, choosing contrasts or experimenting with upside down images. Perhaps you may look through the frames into your vicinity and arrange the frames according to what you see there - lining up furniture, books, artwork, roads, clouds. This can be a game where the rules are according to how you play. Perhaps you find a perfect and permanent solution to the puzzle. Perhaps some bits fit but others don't.

Layered Paradigm details, lining up like with like, like with unlike:

Paradigm in use, applied to windows,
frames and layers                            books,
                                                             bottles,
                                                                        objects,
                                                                                    views,
                                                                                            instruments,
                                                                                    tools,
                                                                            ideas,
                                                                  rooms,
                                                    artworks,
                                        images,
                           material,
                 writing,
near and far.