Installation
and Showing Instructions for Construction
The
moving image Construction is designed
to play on loop, ad infinitum. It plays for exactly one hour.
It
is supplied on DVD as an MPEG file, compatible with most DVD equipment. Aspect ratio 4:3.
The
dimensions are variable according to the projection or monitor equipment, and
the exhibition space. It can be projected on screen or shown as an installation on
a TV monitor, and there is curatorial flexibility in how it is shown and
presented. Keep on the smaller side, ie, as if in a TV monitor, so adjust if
screening at a distance, eg, a high wall. Dimensions range roughly between 10cm
to 1m.
My
preference in TV monitor is a plain black surround.
I
encourage curators to be creative and inventive in choosing a location for the
piece – it has elements of a built-in installation, and is designed to give the
illusion of a brick hole in walls, the gallery floor, and so on, wherever it is
shown. A plain background is preferable, but projecting directly onto a plain
brick wall may be effective.
An
area with restricted lighting is preferable. A dark space is optional.
Sound
The
volume is not designed to be played high. Ideally it should be set so that it
is audible and no more (the words in the piece cannot be distinguished). There
are occasional deliberate harsh sounds, as all the elements of the piece breach
their own barriers to some extent, and the volume should make this within a
comfortable listening level. The sound is designed to
be much quieter than usual for moving image exhibition – allow it to be
background. To give a relative indicator, my TV monitor volume control goes up
to 100, and I set it at about 7 for Construction. It is a suggestion of sound
rather than an immersive experience.
Stereo
speakers placed in corners will enhance the effect of the sound moving around,
but this effect is within the piece and will happen anyway.
Construction
can also be shown without sound.
Construction projected onto a ceiling
Construction projected onto a wall
Construction playing on a TV monitor
Research
- I have been thinking more deeply about what it is exactly
about bricks. Bricks represents to me the construct of psychology, and the
structure or pattern of thoughts we as humans naturally create. I am interested
in collecting the images of irregularities in brick walls - whether by design
or by weathering. Sometimes the pattern is still fairly regular, and the
variations are within the individual bricks themselves, with different
colourings due to the chemical constitution or happenings within the firing
processes. Recycled London brick stock make the most interesting walls. The
real treasures to find, however, are the cracks, the fissures, the crumblings. I
also like the abrupt transitions between styles, or those odd patches of damp
or bleaching. these to me are like the individual psychological constructs - it
is all the same material, but always unique, and always that belief in
solidity.
- The street compositions look at the given elements
abstracted from their function, and regarded totally for different qualities of
line, shape and density. And above all, they are all about the relationships
between these, and the balances and imbalances they infer. I realise they are
ready-mades. They are ready made compositions, ready made photographic
drawings. Further, all photography could be said to be ready-made imagery.
- I was thinking of the work of Keith Arnatt. His
photographs are the far end of the spectrum from the Boyle Family, but related
in accepting as art what is already there. As well as genuinely offbeat and
humorous conceptual art, Arnatt's photography from dumps and rubbishy places
are outstandingly beautiful. He looks at these subjects purely through the lens
of composition, and while he forces us to see them through painterly concerns,
we can still see exactly what they are, and can still imagine what they might
feel and smell like. Similarly, street compositions and bricks still retain
exactly what they are - they are not disguised or distorted. They are reframed
or recontextualised.
- Village of the Damned, film 1960. I have
a very strong memory of watching this film as a child, and was fascinated with
the cinematic device of the brick wall, used by George Sanders, as he tried to
block his thoughts from the telepathic alien children. He was trying not to
think about the bomb that would blow everyone up, and as the children
penetrated his mind, the wall crumbled. I loved to have such things explained
over and over to me by my father. I realise this metaphor had a very strong
fascination for me, and made a lasting impression.
- Internet of Things.
I visit trade shows when I can. Technical, broadcast and video-type shows are a
great source of trends in equipment, and I am always getting applicable ideas
for work and installations. Whether or not I have the resources to follow
through, it's an essential aspect of feeding creativity to imagine different
uses and applications for equipment. They increasingly incorporate art,
architecture and student projects. I particularly love the intersection of
handmade, digital and internet technologies. I feel I could employ some of
these ideas myself in devices, inventions and contraptions. I particularly
think there may be a solution for me here in the mechanism I will have to
devise for the 24 Hour Sibelius project, in how the whole piece coordinates and
moves.
Reflective tool /
Learning Styles
Reflection in Action:
Works on getting to the bottom of what is happening in the experiencer's
process, decision-making and feelings at the time of the event or interaction.
Reflection on Action:
Works on sifting over a previous event to take into account new information or
theoretical perspectives available in conjunction with the experiencer's
processes, feelings and actions.
- Having read through these and various writings about
reflective mechanisms, I realise there are some areas I am drawn to more than
others, and so I have been hoping to come across something that feels exactly
right, that will be the most productive for me, the most reflective, etc.
Naturally much depends on how I use any mechanism, but I am also looking for
something inherently rigorous, so that I can bypass any tendency in myself to
avoid something I'd rather not subject myself to and thus scupper the process.
- I notice that many reflective models are presented for use
in medicine and education. I notice also that I have a crumb of resistance to
plumping for a model because I know I already have an internal model or
mechanism of reflection. It's very difficult to pinpoint exactly what that is,
and to summarise it into a series of points. Perhaps this whole exercise will
help me in iterating that inner process.
Reflective Tool - I
am using the thinking frameworks of Reflection-in-action/Reflection-on-action
at all stages of my reflective cycle, which allows me to easily cross the
overlapping borders between stages. I have merged what I consider to be the
significant points I'd like to consider whilst reflecting all together, and I
will allow merging between points.
1. Describe / What happened / What did I do / What were the significant factors 2. What
was I trying to achieve / What were my thoughts and feelings / What are the
consequences 3. What things
like internal/external/knowledge affected my decision making / What other
choices did I have and what were those consequences
4. Analyse /
Evaluate / Judgements / Different people's experience / What worked / What
didn't work 5. Conclusions / What can be concluded about the
work or media / What can be concluded about myself / practice / thinking
6.
Research / Is there any research that might deepen my understanding / Are there
ideas from outside
7.
Learning / What will change because of this / What will I do / What have I
learned about art, myself, other Learning styles -
I've never given too much credence to them before, because I feel my own
responses could vary so much, and that I could come out as a completely
different type each time I fill in the questionnaires. It's a bit like finding
something relevant in every horoscope.
Reflections
- I am happy in having a big project to work on. I like all
the thinking through and imagining, and the research so far is gathering
together of favoured information. Recent MA crits and seminars have emphasised
the growing structure in all our work, which both generates and informs the
work, and I want to become very aware of this in myself, as I believe is it
almost the key to my practice.
- In the group crit I was led to my own conclusion about
this project, that I need to feel I am exploring meaning, and that what I am
really looking for in a work is its philosophy. I am still pondering that as I
think it is yet another key concept I need to explore in understanding my own
practice and what I am aiming for.
- I was trying to find enough inner control of the piece in
order to really make a start. I am aware that such a big and multilayered
project could become burdened with entropy if I have too much material drawing
me in extra directions and distractions. I have a great sense of happiness and
fit, and feel energised with the focus to work through the project.
- Before last night, every angle I looked at this project at
ended up in unresolved byways, but after the moment of connection, everything
fits together, slots into its place. I can examine them in relation to each
other, and although I have a realistic understanding of the complications that
will inevitably come along, I have a sense of grasping this piece in its
entirety, and the steps I need to take to make it.
- The recent group crit was significant in my thinking, as
for myself and the other students, the sense of work emanating from underlying
structure was paramount, both in developing and allowing the structure or
codification, and then in further allowing or following through work according
to that code.
- I understand about moving image - my moving image, that
whatever logic I set up to make a piece, I will always have to subvert that
within the piece, and improvise - I will decide a piece will be made according
to certain criteria, perhaps pace, or direction, or movement, but in the making
there will always occur so many natural variations, aesthetic decisions and
individual solutions to particular frames or passages, that, although seeming
simple, it can never be recreated exactly. It can't be programmed to its
natural conclusion, and will always have the handmade human element. Of course,
this is the fun part for me - making all those artistic decisions based on
years of looking and thinking and making, and also based on trusting the moment
of choice. It's also the messy problem-making problem-solving part, walking out
into new territory, trusting my decisions.
- Again and again I test and then prove to myself about
believing in the inner mechanism which meets deadlines. If I can imagine a
thing, I can make it happen. I just believe it, and sometimes I look back at
previous times to keep the belief and encouragement going.
- In themselves, images are not necessarily arwork - I feel
the need to transform them, to extract and remake the whatness of them - the
quiddity of the quotidian.
Photography,
Channels, Vision, Choice
- As I have been processing the hundreds of street and brick
images, I have been thinking much about the visual choices and assumptions in
vision, and especially in photography. Through photography having been a major
part of our culture for over a century, we have become used to seeing
photographic imagery and its shorthands. We become used to the processing, as
if the photographic results are true, as true as reality, and in some cases
more true. Photography foreshortens, brings into relief or flattens out what we
see. It makes a more precise image than our eyes perceive unaided, and that
becomes a truer version of reality than looking with our eyes.
- Photographs frame, in all the senses of cutting out a
vista thus changing its parameters and context, and also frames in a more
psychological sense by freezing or capturing a moment, a view, a viewpoint. The
old family photograph becomes our memory.
- The truth is that all photography is just as false and as
true as unaided vision, that is, equally false and true. Our belief in the
truth of our visual perceptions is bolstered by photography - it gives us
unending and physical proof, and we believe in that one slice of the spectrum.
- Vision is a spectrum, a layered series of interpretations,
some shared, some individual. Variations in individual perceptions range from
physical differences to emotional states, personality types, aesthetic choice
and other sensibilities. And yet the photograph generally presents a standard
view.
- If this was a piece of academic writing I would cite
Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag and James Elkins for their insights in this field.
I would mention certain artists and photographers whose images are forming in
my mind and memory as the most appropriate examples, and I will come back to
that another time.
- Art is not default imagery. It is deliberate, not
accidental, even if it incorporates the accidental - that is a planned
spontaneity.
- I find the brick and the street images beautiful and
fascinating. They work for me, in how they isolate the graphic elements,
recontextualise them, reframe them, transform them. I know from our group crit
that they are not without meaning to others also - partly I know that is by
sheer cataloguing - you present any collection and the viewer makes connections
and begins to see what the collector sees. But for art, I believe there must be
more.
- I am looking for the version of the images which both look
familiar and unfamiliar, a way of rendering them which does not deny what they
are and emphasises their innate abstract qualities which I framed by taking the
photographs, choosing the subjects and collecting them together. I am choosing
the channels and layers to make them look more like - themselves, my idea of
them, what I hope to find in them, what I believe they can convey, and so on.
- I must find my version of them, the layers or channels
which alter them enough not to change them, which makes oblique that which remains
in plain sight. I do like tinkering about at these paradoxical edges.
Myriad
Myriad. Paradoxical
Objects
Paper and card have
been used as conduits for art and ideas for centuries, yet other media add
layers of context. Skeleton leaves are a delicate material, requiring a high
level of manipulation in the digital printing process, adding duality, and
making the prints at once objects and images. Within a leaf: a tree, a sky, a
hand. Within a book: an idea of the world.
I often abstract and
then layer imagery to offer the viewer multiple aspects and meanings. I am
interested in the paradoxical edges between areas of art, the solid nature of
film, the objectness of images, the feel of sound.
- It is one of those situations when I have to make a
decision and commit to it, and, once having decided, not alter it. It's not
exactly my normal way of processing or letting ideas evolve, but sometimes art
just has to fit inside practical considerations. Whether to use books as frames
- to cut out windows, inset the skeleton leaf print and then glass, all glued
up. It could work, it could look beautiful and just right. It adds a layer of
meaning and context but still allows the image to be centre stage. In my work I
see that, paradoxically, I always want to strip away extraneous things, edit
and pare away all images until they are only what I see, and then I want to
build them all up in layers so that they are both simple and complex at the
same time.
- Basically, resolving the work oscillated between thinking
about how much I love being an artist and getting to solve my own problems,
coming up with ideas that I get to see realised, and that other extreme of
intense frustration with things not working out, cheques taking so long to
clear, drill bits breaking, and circumstances basically not cooperating with
me. However, I maintained my focus and got everything finished.
-Thinking through what works in a multi layered piece. The aim
of printing upon skeleton leaves, of having two merged images each, and each
layer of that being visible itself. When one layer works, another is
imbalanced, and so on, and so, not wanting to balance everything through trial
and error, I had to imagine and anticipate results, and record variations.
-The third layer was a new level of complication for me, and
making each distinctly clear was an enjoyably frustrating challenge. I decided
upon using eyes as the shared image, as the ones I had used were working well -
they had the element of immediate recognition I was seeking, and also gave the
jewel-like colour I was imagining. I thought of images I could use, and trawled
my image archive for others with suitable qualities of contrast. I deliberately
allowed a variety of images - some merge, some are background, some blend, and
some juxtapose. I could have chosen all stones, bricks streets, etc, or all
trees, etc, but felt as a collection the variety worked better - therefore they
have similarities and differences conceptually.
- I've never before put up work with such help - actual
staff. Actually, the highlight of my evening turned out to be these guys. Once
I started hanging my pieces, they all looked at them, thought they were great,
and even took pictures on their mobiles. Brilliant.
Music
- Much of 24 Hour Sibelius has had to be going on in my head
recently, rather than in actuality, as I have rather alot of life things going
on. However, I have been thinking it through when I can, and allowing it to
make its own connections and developments. I do love thinking through a big
complex project like that, and the thinking of it is an important part.
- One of the elements to emerge has been about the scoring,
and the actual music. In my first year of my degree, and so in 2001 - 2002, I
spent alot of time getting creative with the photocopier and with script and
scores. I was really examining the more hidden aspects of writing and music,
the complexities and invisibilities of communication. Some of these images came
clearly into my mind while thinking of 24 Hour Sibelius, as a very apt set of
starting imagery and ideas. There are several strains - the sound, the
installation, the moving image, the drawing, the musical conventions.
- I have many of these pieces still, and will scan and use
them now when I get the time. It feels right. Rather than going backwards, I
have always had a sense that some work is not to do with when it was done, but
that it is a part of my aesthetic language or repertoire, that has its day for
development or use when the time is right. It's sort of joyful to make
connections between different years as if they are a continuous thought. I love
that feeling of connection in remembering exactly making a previous image, and
layering that with other times.
- I couldn't find exactly the images I was thinking of, but
rediscovered these photographs, which are a good aesthetic start for me for
this project. I had been thinking of photocopies I did - there is such a unique
look and feel of those. I plan to spend some time at some point taking the
photocopies I imagine - I'd love a photocopier of my own - not just a scanner.
The photocopier somehow is like a little solid film.
- Now I have at last come to making the sound for moving
image piece construction, and I have realised that constructing moving image
around sound or music is not the way for me - it comes from a different place,
the idea, the imagery and where that leads me. The sound is secondary, but it
must be there, and it must be right.
- Research in this area is reading, listening and pondering
my own revelations and ideas. I also realise that I already do have a long
established practice in constructing moving image, and I'm going to build upon
that. I make sound really in exactly the same way I make moving image -
isolating the key moments, and then layering them and building them up into a
structure according the piece.
- For Construction I have made a track of voices - mostly
crowds, mostly indistinct. These are gleaned from a mixture of public domain
sounds and recordings I already have. Now all I need is an exquisitely
beautiful sound - music, string, bells, singing, air, magic. I could only
imagine the sound once I have seen the completed moving image piece. The voices
are murmuring like thoughts and memories, while the musical sound is the
essence.
Interim Moving Image
Piece, Linking with Previous Work
- Many years ago I had an important lesson in staged making.
When I went to instrument making college I had never done woodwork before, and
so had a big learning curve. After we all make apprentice-piece style
instrument-shaped boxes, we decided what actual instrument we wanted to make.
Being a player of the bass viol, that's what I wanted to make - the bass viol
is about as large as a cello. I would not listen to the advice to make a
smaller instrument first, and that if I did that, it would be easier and
quicker to make the larger, and that in effect I would have ended up with two
instruments in the time it took to make one.
- After completing my bass viol, I grew to realise that the
advice had been correct. However, there are still advantages to going for the
big project, and I don't regret my decision, although I took on the principle.
One thing making that viol did for me was prove to myself that I could not be
an instrument maker and was by nature an artist. I could not stop myself from
innovating and reinventing the pattern. Innovation and sculpture is good in
instrument making, but not if you are supposed to be recreating an instrument
on commission.
- It's surely an important and core element of any art
practice to link and recognise links with previous works. In art we have the
same repertoire of ideas which are realised in various incarnations from
childhood on. Even when working in new territories and when trying out
radically different media or commissions, there is a personality in the thought
pathways and the solutions they tend towards.
- There are particular works which come to mind, usually
after I have made things, which I realise are more linked in themes throughout
the years. All that matrix of connections and meanings throughout my entire
body of work is the important references for me, above any research or
influences outside myself. Once I recognise a direction of ideas in a work, or
a different way I explored it before, it feels authentic to me. As long I have
added some shades and aspects of thinking about it, I have a feeling of sense
and purpose.
- Influence, 2007. Influence. Interactive TV. The viewer's relationship with the screen, and what
is beyond that threshold is a fundamental illusion seeming to transmit directly
into the imagination. Here, the moving hand within seems to be making contact. Influence
was a vintage TV installation within a filing cabinet, with a hands on magnetic
device to make it interactive.
- Also Chairism, 2007, another TV installation. Chairism. Our idea of solidity is one slice of the
spectrum of reality. If solid objects are really in constant motion at a
molecular level, perhaps our solidified thoughts and beliefs are also subject
to change.The
statement about Chairism is still one I actively explore.
- More relevant in layering is Seep, 2009. Seep. Time erases the boundaries of our selves,
our bodies, and there is a letting of the person, a haemorrhaging, as we absorb
the flow of tidal, cyclical, everyday experiences. Time seeps into our lives,
as we seep into the overlaying membranes of our selves. In Seep the merging layers are the
piece.
Found People, Making
Day
- I am struck yet again at how patterns and tendencies
emerge in practice - I can see connections already to work I have made in the
past, and to current concerns. The main conundrum for me in this project is the
fascination with how cutting out a shape turns it into an object, where before
it was an image. a transformation of form
- As I was making the image variations, I noticed that the
parts which really interested me were the shadow suggestions: These are the
details which suggest life and movement, which suggest that the images are
breaking out of their two dimensions. Whatever these images or shapes are, it
is the shadow which animates. I immediately think of another occasional project
I am working on, which I have never pushed to a fruition as yet. I have some
card cut out shapes - objects like scissors, an elephant, glasses, etc - all
objects immediately recognisable at a glance, which I have cut from black card.
I photograph scenes such as from windows, holding up these shapes near and out
of focus, so that they blur as a shadow coming from nowhere. Difficult to
describe, and I don't think I could find examples to show quickly, but for
myself I see the connections, and how I could move on that other conundrumical
work - not sure if that's a real word.
- The Vermeer image I ended up using gave the video
qualities other images would change, and everything linked up with the V&A,
from the brochure in the post, to a network of links with previous work.
- Jo mentioned she found the piece unnerving, that it made
her tense up and cold, and was sinister and unsettling, as a strength of work.
Of course I am aware of the look and effect, but I tried to explain that that
aesthetic or effect is secondary, and almost a byproduct of the intended
process. I mean the unnerving element is what happens, and how it is
experienced, but it is not reached deliberately to unnerve. It's fascinating
that so often, when everything else is pared away, that feeling is what is left.
Also, poetic was mentioned.
- So often we come up with new ideas and choices, and yet
find a similarity with previous pathways of thinking. What I was doing today
felt newish, but of course I used methods and techniques I know, and found new
ways to apply my solutions to choices. As Angela said, that's a nice model of
practice, to go to new places and link back to work.
- I do like working to completion, and I feel I must. I
actually like the stress of a deadline - although like is probably not the
right word - more respond to and understand the importance of. I believe in the
mysterious underlying equations the mind works out which all coordinate in the
end. I work by that.
- That old chestnut about artists writing about their art -
if it could be expressed in words it would be a piece of writing rather than
art, and so on, but the reality is, that if a thought can be expressed in art,
it is not just instinct and impulse. That clearly plays its part, but engaging
the intellect at a conscious level means those artistic ideas are accessible to
the artist, as well as the audience. Outsider art, pre-critical art, unschooled
art does not have that balance of meaning and intention that fully realised and
iterate art does, art that also can be considered with the intellect, with
experience, knowledge, learning and culture as well as with instinct and
feeling.
20th September 2013
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