posters

Meanwhile, fate seems to be drawing me towards delving into the world of the research poster.

The walls of the department are covered with these things – they’re everywhere. So ubiquitous that they become almost like wallpaper. Even when I was an undergraduate in the department I can’t say as I ever really took much notice of them. That said, I’ve never taken part in a proper poster session. I’ve never actually seen these things in use…

Atoms to Art inaugural conference

Prof. Robert Freer, of the University of Manchester, and Alex McErlain of Manchester Metropolitan University have been awarded a grant from the EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council) to establish a research network in ceramics and glass over a period of two years. They will endeavor to bring together as many people as possible who are potentially interested in this venture at a conference ‘Atoms to Art’, to be held in September 2005.
From the Atoms to Art website.

As part of this conference, artists and scientists presented their research interests by way of posters displayed outside of the main room. There were pseudo poster sessions, but nothing structured: so although we had designated times to look at the displays, the relevant people were not formally on hand to discuss their work.

At some point a comment was made about how different the artists’ and scientists’ approaches to poster design were.

Suggestion

In between presentations at the ISP launch event, my engineering collaborator mentioned about how he’d be interested in investigating the whole communication difficulty thing. Posters came up again as part of this converstation.

Proposal

As a follow-up to the follow-up of the Atoms to Art conference mentioned above, we are planning to host an event at the Universirty of Birmingham. Various emails have gone back and forth as we home in on a format for the day, but for some reason this line from one of them

This and perhaps posters at lunch time to cover topics from the attendees (contributed papers)?

provoked quite a strong negative response from me.

I’m still not entirely sure why. Again, please note that I’ve never been to a proper poster session…

Anyway, there’s this whole format style convention thing going on with the posters I’ve seen in the department so I reckon there’s some mileage in delving deeper…

faceless portraits

I’m always intrigued by how much you can get from these – even though the faces aren’t there anymore.

mugs and vases

As part of The Residency I’ve spent some time being introduced to different aspects of the research group’s work and some of the other stuff happening in the building. There’s a plethora of high-tech gadgetry stuff here.

It all looks quite alluring, but I’m cautious of using the gadgetry for gadgetry’s sake. There needs to be a solid reason for using it.

…on the other hand it would be a shame not to use it whilst I have the opportunity…

The rapid prototyping machines (and processes) look like they may have some potential for going somewhere. The ideas I’ve had so far will take a lot of experimenting as far as trying out new combinations of materials. Just what the ISP is about, but not so hot for getting stuff done before graduation.

Never mind, I should really just get stuck in and see what happens.

In thinking about how I might do something that addresses the idea of manufacturing an object from computer-generated instructions; something that gets produced in this sort of hermetically sealed chamber; something that is magiced into being by lasers; something that is produced to near-perfect final shape, I decided to take a low-tech approach to seeking out an idea.

Last week I ‘borrowed’ students from one of the foundation classes at uni and gave them all the same prompt:

Hi, I’m just trying to generate some really loose, sketchy-type drawings. I’ve got two examples here: one of an object made from metal and one of an object made from plastic. What I’d like you to do is to draw something made from ceramic/clay. Don’t be too precious about it, just a 5-second job or somehing.

At this point most people’s minds went blank.

I tried to give them a free choice in what they drew, although I may have influenced them in giving two vessels with the metal and plastic examples.

I was looking for imperfection: thus asking them to draw quickly and then, after that, asking them to draw the same object again, but using their other hand.

Here are the results:

I’m wondering if I can use the precise rapid prototyping technology to generate imprecise objects.

meanwhile…

It was interesting watching the students complete the with-the-left-hand part of the request. (Out of 17 volunteers only one was left-handed). Initial reaction were usually along the lines of “I can’t do that” and “It will be rubbish!”. I tried to emphasise that it was more an excercise in mark-making rather than in producing an accurate drawing.

A lot of people didn’t actually draw using their hand. Or their wrist. Or their arm. A lot of people drew by moving their torsos. So wooden! It looked really uncomfortable.

now available with logos on

So, here we are on VIVID’s Interdisciplinary Support Scheme. A chance to formalise a relationship that was starting to develop with people within the IRC at Birmingham Uni.

In many ways it is the dream set up: I get a bursary towards the R&D of a project, with a not too specific deadline for when that all has to happen by. The exact nature of the project hasn’t been specified either so I essentially have a free rein. How often do you get an opportunity like that?

All beautifully timed to coincide with an identity crisis of monstrous proportions…

The last 9 months or so have mostly been occupied with me asking some fairly fundamental questions of myself and of my work. Actually, most of that time has probably been spent figuring out that I needed to ask some questions and then identifying which questions needed to be asked.

Whilst the “am I art or am I science” issue seems to have been resolved some time ago (I decided it’s a stupid question – not something to waste my time on) this was replaced by the “am I craft or am I fine art” chestnut. Whilst this may ultimately also turn out to be a futile question, the upshot is that I’ve been looking very critically at the work I’ve done over the last few years and have been trying to identify what my strongest projects have been.

I touched on this in an earlier post and I think I now have a general strategy for tackling future work. Which is good, because I really need to be making some work now!

It’s all been a bit fraught: whilst the ISP residency itself is fairly open, I am also coming to the end of a BA degree and that definitely does have deadlines!

So, here we are on VIVID’s Interdisciplinary Support Scheme. At first I really struggled to justify my place on the scheme, but now I have gone a long way towards laying some solid foundations.

The idea of using this website as a sort of online sketchbook seems to be working really well for me. Better than I had expected. Exposing one’s workings to the world in general seems to be fairly narcissistic, but it is forcing me to sit down and marshal some disparate trains of thought. It will be interesting for me to look back later and see how different threads have come together.

But for now, time to do some work.
And stick some logos on the bottom.

beermats

After this, I spent some time trying to figure out how I could follow it up once I was back in the UK. Main problems (seemingly) being sourcing raw materials and lack of the specialised equipment.

I had a bit of a eureka moment down the pub and thought I could use beermats as my source of pulp. I also thought I could utilise the whole collection process to give any resulting sculptural objects some back-story. I thought I could make a simple sculptural form that used the beermats collected over a set amount of time as a form of documentary tool.

Well, I did a few experiments but I decided that my vague ideas did not have enough weight to justfiy time spent on them at this stage.

Project status: shelved.

Meanwhile…

I had asked my local pub to collect their used beermats for me. This meant that, besides the smells and the stains, several of them had some biro doodles on them.

Project status: interesting tangent that I might come back to later but with a few samples put here for your viewing pleasure in the meantime:

fuggy fuggy and the brothers mcleod

No, not another Japanese post, just some nicely pitched ninja animation.

I was immediately taken by the combination of ‘analogue’ background with simple computer graphics over the top. No, wait a minute, those computer graphics look quite analogue too…

Here are some skillls sorry, stills from the fuggy fuggy movie

Simple concept (different aspects of a young ninja’s training); simple style; simple colour pallette; all off set by a nice gentle sense of humour.

Anyway, in posting these stills I was wondering how to approach the whole copyright/credits thing, but then I remembered the fuggyfuggy home page:

After watching the movie I can get some desktop art, download to my mobile and then signup for the newsletter…

Maybe the intention with a site like this is to play off the whole viral marketing thing. I mean, that’s how I came across the thing in the first place, right?

I’m not being cynical, I just think it’s a neat little package and done well: something to bear in mind for the future perhaps?

Anyway, I ended up at the creators’ website www.brothersmcleod.co.uk/ and if I wan’t supposed to be doing other stuff right now I’d probably have a good ol’ dig around…

adjunct

I’m sat here writing a paper about interdisciplinary practice. As part of this I’ve been quite critical of ‘adjuncts’ between artists and scientists promoting themselves as ‘collaborations’ between artists and scientists.

For what I mean by ‘adjunct’, you need to read MACDONALD CROWLEY, AMANDA (2003), Creative Encounters: The Art/Science of Collaboration to see what she means by it. (.pdf file)

So, here I am working as artist in residence as part of the Interdisciplinary Support Program. Am I adjuncting, or am I collaborating?

At this stage I suspect it’s the former.

note to self: probably not an Interdisciplinary Artist, but maybe an Artist Working on the Subject of Interdisciplinary Practice. For now. Let’s see what happens…

04/01/06: commission for wedding photographs

Work in progress…

secret garden

Found tucked inside a book on garden design.

henohenomoheji

I don’t know if “henohenomohe” means anything. It sounds very strange even for us.
Machiko Kusahara

more here.

Made me think of faces I’ve seen made up of roman letters, but I can’t remember which blog I saw it on…