The Future Past Tense stills

14th April 2013

Studio Practice 1:3 Assessment

Assessment Studio Practice 1:3  - mark 67%

Overall Comments – Year Two

Well done Eleanor. This year has seen you make a step change in recognising the connections between your critical voice, your research and your visual work. You have also made strides forward in organisation.

Unit Comments

MA 1:3 Studio Practice: 30 credits

The moving image piece is very successful and apart from the odd glitch, is resolved into an atmospheric and immersive piece, which we imagine would work well on a large scale with surround sound.

The drawings are a valid exploration within a set structure and single medium that form a strong base from which to make moving image work. You have used a very explicit process to produce an enigmatic work and it seems unnecessary to show the drawings alongside the moving image piece, if you want to maintain the air of mystery.

The sound score is evocative and essential, it balances the depths of the imagery well without overpowering the delicacy of the drawings. It is significant that you discuss sound structures and mathematical compositional devices (Schoenberg) in your journal, and make the relationships between this and your drawings/moving image.

There is a contrast between your journal entries, your essay and your statement. Your essay is well written and structured but would benefit from more references and quotes, particularly to other practitioners and works. Given that the purpose for your statement is a public exhibition, it tends towards over-describing process, this element could be reduced. However your journal entries are a real step forward as the impact that research and critical reflection has on your making process is more explicit.

Unit Leader: Caroline Wright

Unit Tutor: Angela Rogers

Assessment Criteria

Knowledge of contexts, concepts, and methods specifically

Knowledge of your research context; which integrate imagination, critical awareness and technical or material competence (LO1).

Understanding through the application of knowledge, specifically

ability to undertake a rigorous critical engagement with thematic concerns which extends beyond your own practice (LO2).

ability to identify and understand the work of key artists, professional practitioners, writers and theorists, etc (LO3).

Application of professional skills, specifically

ability to articulate oral and written presentations that introduce and contextualise your activity (LO4).

Reflection

I was really happy with my moving image piece, The Future Past Tense, and with how all the drawing project and keeping up with the research and so on had gone. It was alot of work, and the piece squeezed out the last ounce of juice of my computing capacity. Technical and compatibility issues are always going to be the lot of digital artists or those working with any camera, and I really had to believe it would all work out - still to go through the piece a few times to iron out the inevitable slight glitches and rogue frames that creep in in such a large and complex digital piece.

If I wasn't so happy with my result, I would not have laughed so much at the comment in the assessment about my statement over-explaining work - after all the effort I made to be more explicit. I would never put a statement like that with work anyway - it did over explain, and I had done it for the MA. Can't get them all right. Also I knew that I hadn't managed to cram in more references and examples in the essay - it just didn't seem possible in practice!

Overall I thought this was a much better year in most ways in the MA - more about personal work and practice - more self directed. I'm anticipating more of that in the next two years. The shadow over the MA year was Emma leaving. I think we could still do with her different voice.

December 2012

The Future Past Tense

This is a one minute section of the hour-long The Future Past Tense.

I have put 10 minutes on Vimeo:

https://vimeo.com/60550109

The Future Past Tense

The Future Past Tense is a one hour Moving Image animation, made from sixty drawings completed on consecutive days. Each drawing was finished in an exact hour, and so the piece compresses these hours into one.
Science indicates that time may not be absolute; poetry and philosophy remind that time is an idea, and our own experience shows us time is malleable.
The drawings cross over between areas of mindfulness and the unconscious. The sound was made in a similar way to the moving image – isolating and then layering harmonies to create waves which roll in and out of synchronisation. As minimalist music repeats and reiterates, so the animation is minimalist.
Unanswerable questions come from transforming drawing into video – if digitised, are they still drawings; are the drawings images or objects? The camera reveals the nature of the drawings – the metallic, tarry presence of the graphite, the leaden, shiny sheen and the black entity of the darkness.
Shadows and lights, contrast and lines, implied movement. That is all drawing is really. The Future Past Tense moves through ideas, shifting through surface to image, through layers of what drawing suggests, collecting shades of inner activity, seducing and disrupting the eye simultaneously.

digital animation

2012

Eleanor MacFarlane

Assessment Summaries and Statement

Studio Practice Statement accompanying the moving image piece - The Future Past Tense, installation instructions, and the A4 summaries of relevant blog pages.

Reflection
Summarising and condensing these blog sections was not easily - for some reason it had not clicked to summarise until near the end. There is much to leave out and edit - of course that can be a good thing, and it is also now time to reflect on whether my initial approach of adding to several blog entries in categories was successful. I think it certainly helped me in developing and linking thoughts, and also in building up a more complete approach by gather all research thoughts together, and all music, and so on. It created a body of related research. What I was left with when it came time for preparing for the assessment was imbalance, as some blog sections were naturally more extensive than others. Overall, I think it was an effective way for me to work, and resulted in me being able to identify and be more explicit in references and influences without feeling I had reduced my practice to a set of points.

Artist Statement                                              The Future Past Tense

This statement is designed to accompany the Moving Image piece The Future Past Tense in exhibition, with or without the drawings.

The Future Past Tense is a one hour Moving Image piece which plays on loop, potentially forever. I made the piece from sixty drawings completed on consecutive days. Each drawing was finished in an exact hour, and I gave myself rules: I would not plan or decide upon a drawing before starting; I would not stop or give up on a drawing until it was completed in the hour. I relied on an inner mechanism to ensure that my intention and the allotted time would correspond.

My intention was to allow an element of automatic drawing; that my inner sense or consciousness would reveal images that a more conscious planned drawing would not. Such rules are perhaps made to be broken, and so I allowed myself to follow what occurred, to let patterns and ideas emerge which would be outside a purer form of automatic drawing espoused by the Surrealist artist Masson. My version is to allow a crossing over between areas of mindfulness and the unconscious.

Compressing sixty drawing hours into one could give a different idea about time, one that I often explore in work. Scientists Einstein and Hawking indicate that time may not be absolute; poetry and philosophy remind that time is an idea, and our own experience shows us time is malleable. Moving Image is an especially fruitful medium to explore issues of time, as artists can manipulate the normal pace of life.

The word Tense brings ideas about concepts of time, qualities of the surface layers of things, and properties of tension. The sound was made in a similar way to the image – isolating and then layering harmonies to create waves which roll in and out of synchronisation.

I especially relish those unanswerable questions that come from transforming drawing into video – if I digitise them are they still drawings; are the drawings images or objects; if I change them further, what do they become? I was able to see the drawings through the camera, and capture further what I consider their essence. Looking through a camera lens, I feel I can really see a thing, can isolate the way I see light working and reacting, can scrutinise the surface matter and say – that, that is it. The camera showed me the nature of these drawings – the metallic, tarry presence of the graphite, the leaden, shiny sheen and the black entity of the darkness.

Making the Moving Image mirrors the drawing process with hundreds and thousands of decisions, choices and judgements. These decisions are where art practice lies, trusting the inner self to see and to visualise. It's both a discovery and a recognition, reinforcing years of practice whilst subverting it at the edges.

Shadows and lights, contrast and lines, implied movement. That is all drawing is really. The Future Past Tense moves through the drawings ideas, shifting through surface to image, through the layers of what drawings suggest, collecting the shades of inner activity, offering a vision of a language not really to do with words.

500 words

Art & Today notes     

http://eleanormacfarlane.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/art-and-today.html                 

Choosing a chapter from Eleanor Heartney's Art and Today through which to contextualise work makes me realise what chapters may be missing from the book - chapter titles which more exactly relate to my work. It's a little difficult to realise and limit direct influences - I remember the impact of seeing a painting by Baselitz many years ago - an upside down painting of Nazi heads. I know that made an enormous impression on me and somehow informed what I now do, and likewise with so many other different artists and approaches mentioned in this book, influences and concerns are multiple. I can think back at many artists and art that have had a profound effect and influence - Francis Bacon, Marina Abramovic, and yet I think I'd be hard pressed to show that within my work. Ideas come out in all sorts of ways.

So in the absence of a chapter about me that helps me to define myself, I choose what I relate to, and by a process of elimination, find the relevant chapter. Of course the Art & Time chapter is relevant, and I certainly relate to some of those concerns, completely in some cases. But the chapter Art and the Quotidian Object, and to some extent, Art & Abstraction also particularly speak to me. Of course, most artists would probably not rule out the relevance of some content of each chapter to their work, but this process of fitting in one's work to a particular chapter heightens main concerns in art.

I am looking to create the paradox, the moment of confusion when one does not really know what you are looking at, although it is perfectly clear. There is a moment when you are lost in the abstraction - when you are aware of the positive and the negative space at the same time, when you see through the illusion but are still caught up in it.

What I relate to in Art & The Quotidian Object is a reframing of objects and what meaning they bring which can be incorporated within art. So much of art and human activity is all about our relationship with objects, acquiring them, rearranging them, desiring them, using them, and so on. We spend so much time in this material world that of course objects of all sorts are rife for retelling as art.

The main stance that I don't relate to, however, is the idea that using readymades is somehow anti-art, and a cynical kind of democratization in a diluting way of objects deemed worthy of the status of art. The idea that fascinates me about objects is in remaking their meaning, changing them, and presenting them as vehicles for other art ideas. Using objects of glass, plastic, gold, stone, objects - it makes us more aware of the molecular nature of all things, and their equality in that way. It elevates matter to be used for art, rather than diminishing it.

I'm not interested in kitsch, or commenting on the consumerist nature of society - I'm only interested in adding more layers of meaning, context and references - more shades of interpretation and triggering memories by using and reusing ready made items in order to serve the philosophical or psychological ideas or insights I am seeking.

Art Manifesto                                          

http://eleanormacfarlane.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/art-manifesto.html

When I was doing my art foundation a tutor gave us a project one day of writing down our internal art rules and writing them out as if we were creating an art manifesto by which all art must be created. I was the one who came in with screeds of rules, and although little came of it at the time, this felt like a trigger point for me, and something of a revelation. I realised that I already had a considerable internal manifesto, and I have often thought of this and reconsidered my rules. These rules are often inverted, tested and broken, however, the more I define them to myself, the clearer is my artistic intention to myself, especially if I consciously ponder such ideas while I am engrossed in making work.

This is the beginnings of my Art Aesthetic Manifesto.

Some rules include:

Work must look effective from near, middle distance and afar.

Work must look effective upside down as well as right way up.

Art must be the right size for itself, whether small or large or human scale.

Art must fit into resources available.

Art must be translatable into black and white or colour.

Art must either – have strong contrast, and well placed areas of light and shade to emphasise these, or encompass a washed out, barely there aesthetic.

Things must be placed dramatic centre, with infinite disembodied black around or things must be off centred so that composition is imbalanced, or things must be offstage, as if they are about to happen or have just happened.

If seams show, they must be part of the artwork.

Things must be done as best as possible – precisely by hand is better than a machine finish.

These rules are immutable and yet changeable. There can be no cheating! If a rule does not seem to be working, it must be remade, or a new rule made.

I further realise that I already have other lists and writings to add to my art manifesto, which I would like to add here. Some visual examples would also make sense.

I do like the idea of artists' manifestos. It seems like a previous idea, although I'm sure it's all still going on somewhere, but one thinks much more of late 19th century to mid 20th century artists - brotherhoods and earnest fellowships. I have never been too much of a collaborative artist or person, and I have never yet met anyone with whom my ideas about art so concur that I could write anything other than a personal manifesto.

Drawings                                                         

http://eleanormacfarlane.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/drawings.html 

I uploaded images of sixty drawings as completed, along with comments, observations and ideas about them and about drawing, and so this page acts as a written sketchbook:

I am always looking to subvert myself when drawing, not to revert to favourite solutions, and to find a new aspect I haven't given myself before.

I wanted to make a drawing with an imbalance, with elements that didn't fit, but would play off each other. I had the scribbly bit, and a big round cluster of more organic shapes that I thought I would obliterate. I got more involved in the obliteration, and would like to make drawings with the original intent, with an underneath drawing more visible. The drawing still needed something that wouldn't fit. I though of what the painter Jules de Goede once said to me at Middlesex in a tutorial, when I was doing alot of centred, glowing work - he said to try to fit in something odd, something different, like a pink straw. This drawing needed something illogical - the strip of masking tape.

All this writing is me thinking aloud about drawing and other related thoughts, on the nature of thinking and time. As I hoped, in the end the meandering led to create something else. The eye can't help filling in the lines and shapes to create figures, to imagine bodies and figures, to imagined the shapes coloured in. It's interesting that writing gives no clue or dynamic, in shading and emphasis, and can only be decoded with the right syntax. The overall meandering lines tell something, but you never know what may be hidden in plain sight. Thinking of concrete poetry, fluxus, and especially minimalist music by Steve Reich, which repeats over and over with small variations in repitition, very like waves of thought.

Another drawing which started out as one thing and ended up as something else. The truth is, I like being in that uncomfortable state when I have ruined something and have to retrieve it. I like allowing that inventive and resourceful part to take over, and believing that an inner clock is timed to complete in one hour. I turned this drawing into a structure containing energy, but what I really like about it is that it doesn't really make sense - it is illogical even according to its own terms - the boundaries and what contains what. I seem to know what I am doing while I am drawing, although I would like also to retain control of the aesthetic in some drawings, rather than let the process take over - in other words, sometimes to imagine something I would like to draw first, and then render that, instead of following what happens.

In order to draw the negative space, alot of the other must be filled in. I like the changes of direction and unevenness. I think I've decided now not to move into colour with this series of drawings, and to stick to the few pencils I am already using. And I'm ready to look back and through what I have done, and possibly use some as starting points for new drawings, so that I have alot of interrelationships, and build up its own visual world.

The idea of layers of maps, splats, and how colour can both signify and deceive. The ruinous scribbles, the shadows, the possibilities.

And so I end at a good place to begin. A simple idea really that I imagined and then had to try to match what I visualised, and how to get that. Dramatic. A searing fissure into something else. The idea of an indistinct boundary, moving. I like the line going outside of the page, and that it might be any scale imagined.

Film                                                 

http://eleanormacfarlane.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/film.html 

With Moving Image, I can show not just the image, but which part of the image to look at. I can make the eye follow at the right pace, see the parts I emphasise. This sounds more controlling than I intend. It's not about forcing a vision on the viewer, but presenting for myself, and in turn the view

How I make Moving Image. It is impossible, really impossible to describe how I actually make the moving image. I have been thinking about that as I make some now, and have to conclude that I either make it or describe how I tend to make work. I can't describe the thoughts that lead me make all those choices and decisions, but here is an attempt.

Like the drawings project, I tend to amass images and clips, and hone them, edit them, until they are exactly distilled and have no more than I want - this means polishing them, checking they do not include extra lines, marks, images, etc, getting them to the right colour and light balances, saturation, etc. Especially with stills work and black and white work, I will have all along also imagined it in negative, and at this stage I will have every image in positive and negative, ready to go. I tend to keep them in making order so that I can remember where to find them. For the drawings I have 120 images, so 60 positive, 60 negative, which I can keep in my head.

Then I make the piece by making each frame or clip move as I want it, bearing in mind what it will be moving into or from. During this process I may reorder them, make them go forwards or backwards, and as if moving in another dimension, near or far. I find that the pace of the work emerges then - what seems right overall, which I can micro-vary or disrupt as appropriate. I balance the strength of images with the more subtle, perhaps the background with foreground, bearing also in mind the extra shapes and imagery created by layering and juxtaposition and negative spaces.

I'm including all the shades and versions of the images I can muster, while also editing away weaker or boring ones I try not to linger too long on the most interesting parts, but echo those or counter them with something different. All this while I will usually still be thinking of a title and some writing to summarise the work, and which is part of the work, and so it seems that here I am seeing and understanding what the work is about, and looking for ways of grasping and expressing that. I am also looking for beauty, and other things that I might describe as lack of scale, certain illusions of movement, conflicting time-lines, subtlety, things that can be mistaken for something else, suggestions, a certain clarity.

I have multi-streams of moving image in my head with these images, which I aim to resolve in one flow, like a complex thought. What is going on in my head is employing, stretching, breaking the rules in my Art Manifesto. I add to these rules and discoveries through each work, and sometimes have unifying theories about my working and creative processes, which I adopt from then on.

Crucially, what I refer to when actually making work is aesthetics and imagery I have made before or seen and registered - ways of looking at things, memories, works I have made. I look to my own visual language and repertoire and make those links and connections. That is the only validity for me. Everything else, outside ideas, influential artists, novels, films, are all secondary.

Research                                         

http://eleanormacfarlane.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/research-search-for-context.html

I subtitled this Research  page:  “A Search For Context” . I have been more used to allowing audiences to draw their own conclusions about links and context, but now see that referring to other ideas and works only opens more doors rather than closing them. I linked references and images of artists, writers and musicians to my own work and concerns in art.

Something that really struck me about Turner and Monet, was that these painters' vision was at the very brink of the leap into abstract. Some paintings could have been painted yesterday, or tomorrow, with everything that has happened in art in the 20th century informing them - a type of abstract expressionism expressed through colour. It's only with a final suggestion of form, a slight focus of colour suggesting place or landscape, which make them a picture of something. A denseness indicating the sun.

It's such an intriguing thought to wonder if Turner or Monet ever truly thought of missing out the signifyer of reality, or if that thought, that a painting was not a painting if it did not have some connection with landscape, however tenuous, simply did not yet exist in the shared mind. There must have been points while painting, or in mixing their paints, when the colours and form already seemed complete, that it already delivered the emotional and imagined world they were creating. Today we would read their palettes as works of art rather than byproducts.

When I was at music college I joined what was then the 20th Century Music ensemble. I found I really took to playing some contemporary music and interpreting some challenging scores. At home I was listening constantly to various pieces including Steve Reich Violin Phase. I remember vividly the first time I heard it - it struck me as exactly the way my mind works. I also related to the out of synch, different timescales - it reminded me of when I was about ten and used to go to sleep with a watch on each wrist, listening to them go in and out of time with each other.

I have not particularly noticed before the painter Ed Ruscha, but browsing through Art And Today, his painting jumped out at me. These movie stills as paintings seems so exciting to me, such an insight. I have for the previous Exploratory Project in the MA collected and used such stills and titles for a Moving Image piece.

As imagery, I have felt there is much more for me with that, and I feel really thrilled with Ruscha's paintings. They give an insight into time and the medium of film and how we experience the convention of created film time in the way that Gerhard Richter's paintings reflect to us, conversely, insight into the photographic image and how our sense of vision is reflexive with the photographic images we look at - we remember memories through photographs - they become our memories. Roland Barthes also talks about this in Camera Lucida. Richter's paintings are indebted to photography as Ruscha's are to cinema. Richter somehow shows us both the truth of what the camera sees, and the falsity of vision. Through painting, and the transformation of medium, the transposed medium is enlightened.

Scheduled Conversations    

http://eleanormacfarlane.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/scheduled-conversations.html

                  

I had scheduled conversations with MA students Alexa Cox in June, Clare Parfree in July, Jo Keeley in September, Jennifer Mawby and Sarah Lundy in November. We discussed our progress in the Studio Practice unit and the MA in general.

Alexa. Alexa talked of the things the MA has made her feel challenged by, and how it has made her look at her painting more critically in order to progress - to really see them as others see them. My challenge with the MA so far is not so much about the art, but all about the framework. The reason I'm doing the MA at all is so that making my art would not just end with me, but would actualise somehow in the artworld. Assessing and reassessing everything is indeed challenging - ploughing through the restructuring and paradigm shift of the dyslexia tutorials, trying to restructure.

Clare. I am reminded to research as I go along, as intended. Rather than pulling in all sorts of random possible related things, or all things drawing, I am looking for relevance in approach, and may hone in on practitioners in other fields such as music or writing. I almost find it too distracting and confusing to research everything possible. That must be edited and chosen for a point - to create a case. At the moment my drawing project is about the process and where it leads me - with the moving image end in mind - I am looking to create a structure directly drawn from a more subconscious part of my mind.

Jo. In the MA we all feel a little disconnected at the moment, with Emma leaving and other issues. It's actually reassuring for each to hear they seem something rather than a piece of paper when looking at work, and progress and depth. Also noticed that in recent group crits and seminars - we may feel a bit more scattered, but there is progress being made.

Jennifer. Both agreed that having time, or the space to really think deeply enough about work is what is essential and missing, or out of synch. Such head space has to fit in - we multitask - think about things while travelling, etc, but that is not always enough - and for both of us - not enough now. Commitments and life and worries are pressing, but there is no alternative. There may not be three consecutive days to take, but I am going to schedule a day to think, without being efficient and doing other things at the same time - just to think about the drawings, work the moving image, to try to grasp it. That's all I need - to gain a handle into its meaning so that I can make art from it.

Sarah. With the assessment deadline very much in sight, Sarah and I discussed the essay, statement and submission to finish. It's a good time to reflect how this year is quite different to last, and how we have come on - or not. Writing an essay doesn't actually get easier, and writing about own practice, and within 2,000 words, cramming in all research and so on, is a challenge.

Sound                                      

http://eleanormacfarlane.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/sound.html

This page contains notes linked to research and thinking about sound and music, and charts some ideas towards how I may translate ideas of sound for the drawings as minimalist music.

I am considering my internal rules and preferences in making sound pieces, and how these may differ or concur with my moving image and art making methods.

I have been collecting sounds and ideas to use, thinking about what sound the drawings may have, and the moving image. The sound is a separate piece, and yet integrated and accompanying the rest. It must be sympathetic yet potentially anonymous. I am constructing it by serial methods.

Serial music - generally from early 20th century composers such as Schoenberg, creating new scales and new forms based on deconstructing the traditional scale, and remaking it in more mathematically constructed version - notably the twelve tone series - again generally, atonal and irregular to a Western ear.

So I am using these structures as a model for sound, constructing it as I construct the moving image from drawings, with every changing, ever moving apparent repetition, and other things.

Sound for Drawings

Each of the sixty drawings has a sound. As they are layered, so the sound is layered, although not necessarily synchronised. The principle of minimalist music, although on a rather large and complex scale. It's such a neat solution, and feels exactly right. It may take me a long time to realise. I feel I could repeat variations of this entire project yearly for the life, and perhaps I will - the drawings, the moving image, the sound, and how they all connect and interrelate to each other.

Studio Practice Structure       

                

http://eleanormacfarlane.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/studio-practice.html

Have examined otherwise, I realise again that I find it difficult to make work without a purpose or deadline, and do not like at all having unending, open-ended practice or exploratory meanderings. I need to say to myself and commit, that I am writing a novel, or making a piece of Moving Image, or an exhibit for a specific project. It's the commitment more than anything. I need to have it all mulling over in my mind, making the connections, filling in the layers, ideas and solutions, and allowing the creativity processes to lead me. Then I am able to explore, meander and experiment. But I must have the reason, the idea or set of ideas I am exploring, the concept I am attempting to manifest, the feelings and thoughts I want to process through work.

I am taking on the structure of eight blogs for the Studio Practice project - initially dividing the task into eight sections and updating them as I go along, so that by the assessment at the end of the year, I will already have them divided and formatted. It feels like a different way of working - still linear, but more multi level as I go along. This has much to do with recent dyslexia support, and evolutions in thinking and working practices I feel I need to make for the MA. The reason I passed my degree was by realising that I needed to break everything down into parts, stitch them together, and then reform them in a linear fashion. Now, I feel I have come to a pass where I need to work at things differently - integrating different aspects at an earlier and more multiple way, so, for example, I weave research, projects, working, etc, into work at a much earlier place, rather than unravelling everything at the end.

I have assiduously pursued working through the Studio Practice project as decided, and largely found it workable. Dyslexia tutorials and IT training have added insight, but everything has to be worked through. I perhaps I am just beginning to feel I am getting the hang of researching in ways rather than patching things together. Thinking of allowing research and references to seep into my work, to allow all that to be part of the work rather than secretly behind the scenes.

It's been different. I have felt my mind working differently and making new connections. No matter how much you try to do in advance, things for all projects, exhibitions and this MA, can only all come together at the end - and I could only hope and anticipate how everything, the essay, the research, would work out. And so I found myself in a strange place in the end while writing the essay - I found that, yes, I had developed the ideas and research as I went along as intended, and yet, irony of ironies, there was still a confusing gap about how to weave them all together - I have given myself a workable solution, which involves frequent printing out, cutting and pasting by hand, and patching in post it notes of research, and so on. In a way I created a completely different way of arriving at a similar problem. It's also bemusing for me to notice that while I am doing this, I am making the moving image piece, which involves keeping multiple images and negatives of images in my head, keeping in mind the variations of relations between them, and imagining counter currents of video flowing in and out - basically a much more complex process than forming the ideas into an essay. The visual things and the concepts I can handle, but I have to resort to getting into a mess of papers for the essay. As long as it gets somewhere in the end.

Writing   

                                                         

http://eleanormacfarlane.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/novel.html

Although this MA is in Fine Art, it is an essential part of my creativity to write. I've long been fascinated in the processes of creativity, and what works for the individual, or generally. It's often a process of discovering, or uncovering, inner mechanisms which are already there, or of responding to ways of thinking and reasoning. I have written much over the years, stories, poems. Over time I developed discipline in writing, and figured out formats which made sense to me. I stopped the unsatisfying writing of endless story and novel beginnings ideas, and realised that I was much happier and infinitely more productive when I had committed to a particular project, and therefore completed it.

Aspects of my own creativity mechanism which writing has taught me, I have also applied to visual work. My approach is not identical, and although I write or make artwork as different mediums in pursuing similar aims and ideas, they are not directly related, and neither illustrative or descriptive of each other.

The point now, is that in the three years before the MA, I wrote two novels, each about a year-long pursuit. Since starting the MA I have realised that I wouldn't really have the time to write another until it was finished. However, I can't go back and unthink what writing novels has given me.

Although I'm not a painter, I have done some paintings, and I often think of writing novels or making moving image as working on a big, complex abstract painting, with its own internal logic and equations. Basically, although writing a novel is difficult, in fact gruelling at times, it's wonderful to be so engaged and engrossed in solving all the problems within, and finding the ideas which will propel towards completion.

Sky

I search the sky for the meaning

Of today.

Come on, clouds. Where is your metaphor.

I thought I spoke cloud,

Read it.

How can it be that it is all further away.

Further

                Further

Evaporating like a cloud

I thought I could touch.

Installation / Exhibition / Sound / Size / Equipment instructions

In exhibition, I would indicate from a variety of ways for the moving image piece and the drawings to be shown. They may be shown separately, as autonomous pieces, or together. A solo exhibition in a gallery would show the pieces altogether, but mostly it is the moving image piece which I intend to exhibit.

Over the last few years, I have experienced sending work with specific installation instruction to galleries, only to find that in exhibition these have been changed or compromised. Sometimes that will be for pragmatic reasons, and sometimes it is to the detriment of the work – for example showing moving image in unsympathetic bright light. However, these experiences have made me flexible in the installation and curation of my work. Sometimes I have been pleasantly surprised to see how work can thrive in unpromising situations. Additionally, setting up exhibitions and pop-up gallery events have given me an eye for installing work according to the venue, exploiting the quirks of each place. Even white cube galleries tend to be irregular and could host a variety of options for showing work.

As an artist it is fascinating to see the same work in different venues, and there are a couple of works of mine I have had the experience of seeing exhibited from a small TV monitor to a cinema screen to an installation in an awkward space.

It is always my intention to make work that can adapt to different exhibition contexts while ensuring that an intelligent and sympathetic approach prevails. I like experimental approaches to display, and personally set up multiple screens together when possible. I also appreciate a more traditional projection in a dark space of a gallery, a setting which would usually be my first default choice.

This is a long way of saying that although for a particular exhibition venue or license, I understand the importance of specific instructions, in this case for the MA assessment, the installation of this piece is not what I wish to emphasise at this stage, but the work itself. Ideally I would hang the sixty A3 drawings mounted in plain frames either all around a room singly, or else closely together upon one wall. For the MA, they are available as portfolio work.

I realise that seeing the moving image and the drawings together is a very different experience from seeing them separately, and I anticipate that I may exhibit them in both these ways. One is not dependent upon the other, and I especially want the moving image piece to be able to stand alone.

Projection and installation are possible for the moving image, but for the moment, please view it through a TV monitor, an older style glass fronted TV is my preference. I have not yet had the opportunity to see it projected, and I do not object if you do that during assessment. The sound volume should be comfortable.

Rogue frames or anomalies in the piece at this stage of near completion will be edited out.

December 2012

The Meaning of Words

Studio Practice Essay

During the Studio Practice unit I concentrated upon one major project. I wanted to make a piece of moving image, and also to employ lessons gleaned from the MA. I have previously made work more or less knowing which concept or idea I wished to express. This would suggest to me imagery, and a form and discipline would develop in order to achieve the artwork, honing both the making of the work, and the formation of the idea, until I was satisfied that I had concluded and expressed or summarised my view. I decided upon a different approach, one that had more engagement with research and structure from the beginning, and where I would create a process first and discover where it would lead me to, believing that it would lead me somewhere. I started out trusting and intending that the crossover from form and structure into meaning would occur: in other words, that making structured work would produce art.

I decided to draw sixty drawing on subsequent days, and use these drawings to make a sixty minute piece of moving image. I would not to plan the drawings or censure my work during making, as an exploration towards automatic drawing and allowing the unconscious to reveal imagery. The numbers struck me as a neat concept about time, compressing time, and questioning the relative experience of time. I often make work showing a different apparent experience of time. In Art and Time, (Heartney, 2008), Eleanor Heartney discusses the use of video mediums by artists to manipulate time, giving a difference experience than the everyday. This is something I do myself when I have differently paced timeframes playing together in a piece. I also note science’s take on time, which gives more questions rather than answers. In A Brief History of Time, (Hawking, 1995), Steven Hawkins poses alternative realities of time which differ from our linear experience.

Although time was my initial thinking and inspiration, I anticipated and allowed that other meanings would occur or emerge during the making, and so I was not determined that this piece would be “about” time. I predetermine the structure and discipline of working to observe my processes and to link them to on-going research and reflection. This examination of procedures required being uncharacteristically explicit about my working processes, influences, thoughts and realisations as I work. This is an inverse of my normal practice and an observation of my creativity as I deconstruct it. Rather than a one-off exercise, I intend to bring more explicit structure to my practice.

Using drawing and the underlying mechanics of thought involved I redefined areas of my art I had previously described as nebulous, or indescribable. I realise that I can allow intended ambiguity within work whilst, conversely, clarifying areas of enquiry.

I limited the parameters of the project and made an initial decision to limit the resources used, consistently using pencil upon A3 size paper, so that the inventiveness and creativity would remain contained within my overall idea rather than seeping into exploring new ways to draw, or to question the basic understandings of what a drawing might be through different media - it was already positioned to become moving image.

I am interested in multiple approaches to drawing, although not espousing a particular practice as my method. Although my drawing is non- representational and not involved in some traditional pursuits of drawing such as perspective, neither do I make pretence that it is naïve. I may use my left hand, hold the pencil oddly or take off my glasses in order to achieve a feeling of spontaneity, but that is not to ape an unknowing hand. In addition to Automatic drawing developed by Andre Masson in the 1920’s, where Surrealist artists found ways to liberate their work by drawing as if from the unconscious, (Dempsey, 2002). I also referred to research which links drawing to complex and abstract ideas: Drawing to Learn, (Ridley and Rogers, 2010), and Art Students who Cannot Draw, (McManus, 2010), explore the process of drawing in the understanding of concepts. These approaches examine ideas about what drawing might mean other than expression or representation in visual arts, and towards mechanics of the thought process.

I apply insights into thinking and the creative processes to my practice as I go along. It is both a process of learning and uncovering. Andre Masson applied strict rules to his drawing endeavours, (Gompertz, 2012), and while I apply discipline and structure, I feel free to change my rules accordingly.

My practice includes a quest for the meaning of terms to describe work. I ponder various meanings of terms such as abstract, abstracted and minimal. These words are clusters of concepts, whose meaning shifts as we comprehend them further. Words have multiple shades of meaning, absorbed and evolved over time: a definitive absolute of a word or term is not always possible. Added to that is a shade of miscomprehension or a personal understanding of a word.

I initially read and understood the chapter Art and The Quotidian Object, Art and Today, (Heartney, 2008), and the word quotidian as if it was the word and concept of quiddity. While quotidian is the everyday, quiddity is about what an object is, or the essence or whatness of the object. If the quotidian nature of water is rivers and rain, the quiddity of water is that it is wet. I embrace my misunderstandings as extra insights and not mistakes, as they lead me to realisations about my use of the quotidian object in work, and that I am interested in the essence of objects, abstracted or removed from their original use.

Contemporary definitions of words bring with them a trail of previous indicators. I research words in old dictionaries, (Nuttall, 1914), to find versions of definitions. It reminds that even current dictionaries and definitions are moveable, and that words are concepts or thoughts, and the agreed meanings become more nebulous and debateable upon examination. While this is a personal insight, it allows me to consider artwork from new subtleties of meaning, which I then present as art, with titles and writing attached to the art offering additional insights to the viewer.

There are words at the core of my practice which I seek to clarify - minimalism in music – repetition with small variations, as opposed to minimalism in art –– isolating and abstracting elements, especially colour, line, shape in painting. The definition of minimalism and my understanding is not always the same.

I have allowed previous work, influences and knowledge to become more apparent, such as my background in classical music which had lain dormant. I named diverse influences in painting, novels, and culture, being specific about elements I relate to, and linked these to my work in progress.

Producing the sixty drawings has led me to new imagery I would not have predicted. Initial drawings were not dissimilar to previous work:

Fig. 1

Fig.2

I found that the discipline of the daily hour gave me indicators of further imagery to develop, for example, drawings like maps:

Fig.3

Fig. 4

Processing the works, photographing and videoing them for the moving image, suggested layers of interpretation to develop, especially subtle and crumpled drawings which I photographed emphasising their surface:

Fig. 5

I routinely imagine, use work in negative, which emphasises qualities of the above image:

Fig.6

This image particularly speaks to me and suggested the exploration of the moving image, to play on the surface qualities of the drawings as objects, and not merely their graphic imagery. This is the seminal image of the project, as it balances and contains within one autonomous piece the graphic imagery and the surface reality of the drawing, suggesting shadows and atmosphere. It is at once image and object, yet paradoxically, because it is in negative, only exists digitally.

Elements of the way these works were produced, the rationale behind their process, borrow from construction processes in other disciplines, such as concrete poetry or serial music, where mathematical order and syntax informs the work.

Perhaps not apparent within current project, recent processes have made more aspects of practice available to me, as I examine and reappraise resistances to transparency. This has meant a restructuring of my thinking which has not been easy. I have noticed and worked through unfamiliar hesitancy in my art practice through believing that my system would be productive.

I realised that positioning art in a contemporary context places it within linked ideas, rather than fixing and defining it. This has made me freer to draw parallels and be transparent about influences. In a postmodern artworld, where everything is available, (Freeland, 2008), links to other practices, ideas and contexts are moveable:  the approach, methodology, and use of ideas is constant and definable.

In positioning myself in contemporary context I do seek to fix my practice into a definitive area, but often cross and blur boundaries, as my practice is partly a seeking of form. In describing and presenting work, I use terms and talk of influences outside the realm of moving image. Rather than mentioning a science concept or an idea about time or optics, I am becoming open about what that idea is, where I researched it, how it resonates with my practice, and other artists who might be exploring similar ideas.

Current art practice in drawing and moving image is diverse, and there are a variety of links and parallels. Positioning art practice could be related to imagery, concepts or working practices. I especially relate to sole painters and novelists.  I have a similar individual relationship to my art as many of them, as opposed to other video artists who often collaborate, delegate or work within a team to create work, (Phillpott, 2012). I therefore contextualise my work within a continuum of cultural ideas.

I wish to give my viewer an experience of duality or paradox. I use imagery which may be abstracted, but is not completely abstract - there will be an element of recognition.  I often include recognisable elements such shadows, people passing, or windows. This gives the viewer a feeling that they recognise the human experience, while seeing those images in an unfamiliar way. I hope to engender a feeling of uncertainty in what the viewer is looking at, which oscillates with recognition, as work moves between positive and negative, actual and digitised, real and manipulated time. I make work to be read as abstract photography or painting. I hope to, and almost hypnotise into a state of recognising things differently, connecting memories to new ideas, entwining the everyday with the universal, giving a sense of a beautiful insight.

My background of music training influences and dictates structure in the pacing and attention span of moving work. I time slowly moving images, when my attention wanders at about eight seconds. I want to engage viewers, rather than making them endure. I make these choices in timing according to my own perceptions, and not a scientifically measured median or average, in the sway that a painter decides how much orange or how much blank space they brave in painting according to their visual sensibilities, rather that researching how colour and space is perceived by viewers.

I often offer writing with work in exhibition, where in a more poetic way, I indicate meaning. It is my interpretation and summation. I am pondering how to include more specific context in this. I see non-specificity as a value I wish to maintain, and like subtle ways of alluding to research and influences without reducing ideas to a list of facts. I attempt to defy definition and retain ambiguity, whilst positioning my artwork in a context and continuum of ideas.

I look to the meanings of words to find ways of thinking more deeply about art, and to realise more facets that describe paradox and ambiguity.

1976 words

Illustrations

Fig. 1. MacFarlane, E (2012) Drawing 1 [Drawing]. In possession of: The author, London.

Fig. 2 MacFarlane, E (2012) Drawing 2 [Drawing]. In possession of: The author, London.

Fig. 3 MacFarlane, E (2012) Drawing 41 [Drawing]. In possession of: The author, London.

Fig. 4 MacFarlane, E (2012) Drawing 42 [Drawing]. In possession of: The author, London.

Fig. 5 MacFarlane, E (2012) Drawing 57 [Drawing]. In possession of: The author, London.

Fig. 6 MacFarlane, E (2012) Drawing 57a [Drawing]. In possession of: The author, London.

 Bibliography

Anon, 2012. clive_phillpot_interview.mp3 (audio/mpeg Object). [online] Available at: <http://luxdev.org/lux_vx/sites/default/files/media/podcast/clive_phillpot_interview.mp3> [Accessed 30 Nov. 2012].

Anon, 2012. dyslexia link with artists. [online] Available at: <http://www.mdx.ac.uk/aboutus/news-events/news/dyslexia.aspx> [Accessed 12 Nov. 2012].

Anon, 2012. Hildegard von Bingen. [online] Available at: <http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/med/hildegarde.asp> [Accessed 12 Nov. 2012].

Anon, n.d. art student who cannot draw.pdf.

Danchev, A., 2011. 100 artists’ manifestos. London: Penguin.

Dempsey, A., 2002. Styles, schools and movements : an encyclopaedic guide to modern art. London: Thames & Hudson.

Freeland, C., 2003. Art Theory : a very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Gompertz, W., 2012. What are you looking at? : 100 years of modern art in a nutshell. London: Viking.

Hawking, S.W., 1995. A brief history of time : from the big bang to black holes. Toronto; New York: Bantam Books.

Heartney, E., 2008. Art & today. London; New York: Phaidon Press.

McManus, I.C. et al., 2010. Art students who cannot draw: Exploring the relations between drawing ability, visual memory, accuracy of copying, and dyslexia. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 4(1), pp.18–30.

Nuttall, P., Austin, 1914. Nuttall’s Standard dictionary of the English la... [online] Available at: <http://archive.org/stream/nuttallsstandard00nuttrich#page/n7/mode/2up> [Accessed 22 Nov. 2012].

Ridley, P. and Rogers, A., 2010. Drawing to learn : arts & humanities. Brighton: University of Brighton.

Weintraub, L., 2003. Making contemporary art : how today’s artists think and work. London: Thames & Hudson.

December 2012

Art Manifesto

When I was doing my art foundation a tutor gave us a project one day of writing down our internal art rules and writing them out as if we were creating an art manifesto by which all art must be created. I was the one who came in with screeds of rules, and although little came of it at the time, this felt like a trigger point for me, and something of a revelation. I realised that I already had a considerable internal manifesto, and I have often thought of this and reconsidered my rules. These rules are often inverted, tested and broken, however, the more I define them to myself, the clearer is my artistic intention to myself, especially if I consciously ponder such ideas while I am engrossed in making work.

This is the beginnings of my Art Aesthetic Manifesto.

Some rules include:

Work must look effective from near, middle distance and afar.

Work must look effective upside down as well as right way up.

Art must be the right size for itself, whether small or large or human scale.

Art must fit into resources available.

Art must be translatable into black and white or colour.

Art must either – have strong contrast, and well placed areas of light and shade to emphasise these, or encompass a washed out, barely there aesthetic.

Things must be placed dramatic centre, with infinite disembodied black around or things must be off centred so that composition is imbalanced, or things must be offstage, as if they are about to happen or have just happened.

If seams show, they must be part of the artwork.

Things must be done as best as possible – precisely by hand is better than a machine finish.

These rules are immutable and yet changeable. There can be no cheating! If a rule does not seem to be working, it must be remade, or a new rule made.

26th November 2012

I further realise that I already have other lists and writings to add to my art manifesto, which I would like to add here. Some visual examples would also make sense.

I do like the idea of artists' manifestos. It seems like a previous idea, although I'm sure it's all still going on somewhere, but one thinks much more of late 19th century to mid 20th century artists - brotherhoods and earnest fellowships. I have never been too much of a collaborative artist or person, and I have never yet met anyone with whom my ideas about art so concur that I could write anything other than a personal manifesto.