Blog's down :(
Because of a technical issue with this blog widgit, I haven't been able to update for some months now. Working on a solution
News / Works in Progress
Deus Ex Caput - a work in progress
Below is a clip and some photos (by Paul Coffey) taken from a day of filming for my current project, which has the working title Deus Ex Caput. This clip represents a heavily processed version of the visual I'm working on, with previous clips I've posted having been more naturalistic. Of course, the processing has been tried out to make up for poor direction and shooting on my part (I'll likely have to shoot some of the scenes again) but it's an interesting visual and one of the themes of this particular project, is how far one can push the suspension of disbelief after a given aesthetic has been established. The actor here is Oliver Kirwan, who's generously helping me out by staring as Arthur in a series of scenes written as analogues to the stations of the cross. Notice the bottle and the falling down.
I'm excited about shooting (and writing) the rest of the film but it is a daunting task at the same time - especially given the demand for space and equipement in college. Organisation is key. Where's my keys?
Mesh Exhibition at Hello Operator
On Thursday I was involved in the opening of a group show featuring myself and nine of the people I've been studying with for the past three years. We called it mesh because we had no common theme or project brief - the show was a simple show case of a variety of different approaches to a number of themes. More about the individual pieces and their artists can be found here
Paul Coffey, who also exhibited, has put together an overview in video form, with a questionable soundtrack, which you can see below. It's hard to do many of the works justice in documentation, as they often required a level of user interaction, which seemed to make it a worthwhile visit for those who came along.
Big thanks to those who were able to make it, we hope you enjoyed the show.
m e s h exhibition - This Thursday
Group Exhibition this Thursday at 6 in Hello Operator, 12 Rutland Place, Dublin 1. Gonna be mega. More info on our blog http://meshexbition.blogspot.com
Making the world a slightly different place
I've been making video, all sketchy, all sort of ok. This being primarily a blog detailing stuff in process (the previous post's political tyradette not withstanding [at all {at all}]), here is it (them).
This one is for a college technical workshop in video editing. The class is focused on processing of various whacky sorts rather than the straight-forward, linear continuity we tried to get a grip on last year (successfully) so I'm going to make something like this - only better.
Below are my first experiments in creating an aesthetic for the final project of the college year, which will be a essentially a short film, composed along my own formal guidelines and with layers of meaning which I don't enjoy talking about because I'm not qualified - hence I make the pictures and what not. The formal qualities are derived from an interest in using patterns coming from the science of chaos to structure temporal compositions. As per usual. I've done a lot of work lately that has been more epic in scope than practical for my means because I've been trying to take in these entire, comlex structures all at once into every piece. The current project differs in that I'm simply taking a random pattern of managable parts (a deck of cards shuffle 8 times) as my model rather than a chaotic structure of infinite complexity, which makes it a bit easier to focus on aesthetics.
Self-Directed
I'm making a film for my final project of the year at college. So far I've written the screenplay and I'm working on the storyboard as I type. Well, actually, I'm typing to avoid continuing on the storyboard because it's not at all my favourite part of the process. In the meantime, I've been fooling around in the studio, making maquettes out of playing cards and poker chips and cutting and drawing cells of paper and acetate for projection in the background of scenes. Work so far has been slow and chaotic - much like my normal process, except slow. Yesterday a general lack of awareness and motivation was replaced by abject panic at how behind I really am with the whole thing, so that's a step forward.
Photographic Fictions
I recently finished and presented the result of a technical workshop in photograpy. I ended up taking a simple series of tounge-in-cheek self-portraits in the dank and cramped living room of my apartment with a 25mm lense to satisfying effect as well as a number of variations of the image in an empty room. I then scanned the negatives in layers and used the resulting digital images to create a little interactive installation where the spectator's proximity to the TV monitor on which the final images were displayed caused the image to fade from one to the other.
Here are some examples of the images fading in and out on my laptop screen as a test run.
This was achieved using an infra-red sensor connected to an Arduino micro-controller, in turn connected to a laptop running Processing and finally to the TV display. This is the first project of value that I've completed with this technology so, for other beginners in this area, here's the code I used for the Arduino. This code reads an analogue input from pin zero and sends the value every hundred milliseconds to the laptop via USB.
float temp = 0;
void setup(){
Serial.begin(9600);
}
void loop(){
int analogValue = analogRead(0);
temp = analogValue;
temp = (map(temp, 0, 1024, 0, 5000)/10.0);
Serial.println(temp);
delay(100);
}
And the following code for Processing calls one of two images to fade over one another (sort of) based on the reading from the Arduino.
import processing.serial.*;
int lf = 10;
String myString = null;
Serial myPort;
float num;
PImage go;
PImage stop;
void setup(){
size(1750, 1600);
background(0);
myPort = new Serial(this, Serial.list()[1], 9600);
myPort.clear();
go = loadImage("go.jpg");
stop = loadImage("stop.jpg");
loop();
}
void draw() {
while(myPort.available() > 0) {
myString = myPort.readStringUntil(lf);
if(myString != null) {
print(myString);
num=float(myString);
println(num);
if (num > 30) {
image(stop, 0, 0);
delay(5);
}else{
image(go, 0, 0);
tint(255, num);
delay(5);
myPort.clear();
}
}
}
}
I'm pleased with the way the project turned out and I plan to continue to develop this sort of photography in my spare time over the next few years (although the interactive element will likely disappear or become somehow less obvious).
Not exactly part of my art practice but worth mentioning because of how fun it was, a few weeks ago I built a tiny amp (from a kit, so not exactly from scratch) and connected it to a salvaged pick-up and speaker to electrify my crappy old acoustic guitar. It's really bred new life into it and made it a lot of fun to play (badly). I might tidy up the package somewhat when I feel like it but at the moment, this is how it looks.
Maquette
I've been working in dribs and drabs on another little project using a recycled toy, which still needs a lot of designing and building but this is one of the first tender steps toward something which will hopefully get finished sometime or other. It is one of a few little pieces, one of which will be used in my photography workshop in college, using electronics and an arduino microcontroller and sensors and switches and what not to make stuff interactive. It's all pretty primitive at the moment but the possibilities... well, you know what they are.
Self Directed research - Week 1
Below are smatterings of images from both the previous college research project and the one that has just begun. Last term I played with cards and filming stuff in front of colourful projections. This term I'm reading about fictional and historical figures with view to making, in narrative video form, a new myth for the moment. The over all concept is a reversal of certain elements from the Sumerian/Babylonian creation myth which has influenced much of Western and Middle Eastern religious myth and therefore culture since the earliest of civilisations. I'm reading a lot of biographical stuff and watching a lot of film noir for characterisation. Not doing a whole heck of a lot else.
Presidentational Address
This week in college, I have had to do two presentations about my work, one of which was also a pitch for a thesis subject. The one on Wednesday is most of the grade for our research module and I fairly mumbled my way through five minutes sounding like some sort of would-be mad scientist who can't do maths (which would be maddening!) without really giving anyone the impression that I knew what I was talking about or indeed that I knew that I was talking out loud. Today however, in a non-assessable version, I managed to maintain contact with the point, even as I veered away from it. I just had a look at the written statement I handed up with it and thought I might aswell paste the part about my own practice - for the record. Also, so that whenever anyone asks me what something is about for the next few weeks I can reply unpatiently "Gaah! Doesn't anyone read my blog?!" which I do anyway.
"As
complexity increases, precision and meaningfulness become
incompatible. While precision thrives on stable (fixed) meanings, the
fuzzy meanings are unstable - they can simultaneously relate to
several attractors and express specific types of meaning-generating
crises. Instability of the fuzzy meanings make them flexible for
interpretation and open for evolution and transformation. And these
are precious qualities necessary for understanding social
complexity."
Vladimir
Dimitrov
The
above quote is included to illustrate my interest in Chaos theory,
the science of unpredictability and the study of complex dynamic
systems. The above is from an essay looking at the behavior of
Strange Attractors as analogues for variables influencing complex
social relationships. The theories and imagery associated with Chaos
are derived from the application of pure mathematics to problems of
unpredictable patterns in such things as the weather, population
growth, convection heating and more besides. How I have related these
theories to my work is by using the visualizations of observed and
fabricated chaotic systems as models for the structuring of
performances, videos, installations of drawing and compositions of
sound. These pieces will often use the chaotic structure as a
metaphor for psychological function and malfunction, with the content
often personal and autobiographical in nature.
In
the current project, I have been using the fall of cards at various
stages of being shuffled to build a model after which to structure
content of a planned video piece who’s content and characters will
take on wider issues than my own. Apart from that, I am due to
perform a participatory piece in Monster Truck, Francis St on the
seventeenth of December which uses game play, drawing, card shuffling
and story telling to illustrate the fractal nature of people in
society and their definition and projection of themselves.
So, that's what I was supposed to say, I suppose, so. That's in no way the complete picture but one tailored to appear to have relevence to the thesis topic I pitched. And tossed.
States and Affairs
I have an essay due this day next week for college, so in finding new and implausable ways to avoid doing that, I thought I would write something here instead.
I'm engaged at the moment in project 302, the second project of third year, which takes the shape of a body of research meant to identify an area of interest and, by implication, an approach to that interest. All this leads directly into our self-directed project, the big 'un, after xmas holidays.
After making what I thought was a rather nifty and very simple piece for the previous project, I decided to cast a wide net of experiments at the beginning of this one, in order to completely confuse myself. This I have managed to do most thoroughly. I've been mucking about with text, photography, video, electronics and (mostly) playing cards and paint.
From this period of experimentation, I have made a rough model of an editing process I'd like to use again later but in this case I've used all but arbitrarily chosen found-texts, where-as for a serious version, I'll be writing original texts and scenarios. Also, this is filmed very quickly with a problematically lone light source during the few hours available to me in a particular studio in the college and with almost no planning whatever, literally just to see what the colours would look like. Colour is, of course, not the issue with the work, it's a tool. The issue is still the behaviour of chaotic systems. Here's a little clip from what I came up with.
They kill'n'main'em...
On the fourth of November, I took part in a group performance, devised by Niamh Murphy and Meabh Redmond as part of Right Here Right now, an evening of some twenty durational performance which, for four hours on a stormy Thursday night, responded to this intensly cold shell and it's rich histories in front of a wierdly huge crowd of people pouring through at sixty or seventy at a time. The whole evening was organised by live art enthusiasts Amanda Coogan, Niamh Murphy and Dominic Thorpe as well as a number of those involved in the gaol / museum itself and whose names I don't know.
Penal Machinery, as our piece was called, was a voice based sound piece incorporating various texts from the archives of the gaol, performed according to a call-response method of relaying the information repetitively and dispassionately. The method was previously used in another group performance by the same artists called The Something Specials. You can read all about both right here - http://penalmachinery.wordpress.com/about/ (something is up with this editor all of a sudden and I can't put the links in as before - bummer.
Here are some pictures by the noted wit and sporadic stamp-collector, Paul Coffey (also a fine visual artist).
Edit: Paul Coffey is not now, nor has he ever been a stamp-collector; he is in point of fact primarily a visual artist.
The whole thing was super-amazing anyway, or so I've heard. I missed it, since I was talking the whole time.
Project 301
The video above is a snippet of the result of a five week project for the beginning of third year. I like it. Other people liked it too, including my tutors - which is nice. Why it was likable (set up as an installation in a white cube space), no one could really say, least of all myself.
Belated Entry #2 - Inferno, The Shed
On 26th of May, I participated in the Inferno event at The Shed’s new location of 43 Gardiner Lane, Dublin 1. The main event of the evening was Maria Laura Ronzoni’s Notes From The Underworld, which is a combination of texts from Dante’s Inferno and the work of Samuel Becket, each part ending in a song of Maria Laura’s own. Great show and one for which I was happy to be asked to improvise little musical links from one part of the performance to the next. Robson Jamaica demonstrated the music and dance of Capoiera, while talking about it’s origins and history and I did a hellish set of improvised electro-acoustic noise. With screaming and everything.
I’m working at the moment on compiling and editing the entire video archive of The Shed’s three or four years of events in performance, theatre, music and installation and Notes From The Underworld will be a part of that work but for now, I’ve just got this little video of a not very typical A Room For Improvement set. Not very meditative and there are no visuals.
Belated Entry #1 - LiveStock at Market Studios
On the 6th of May, I went along to Live Stock, Market Studio’s monthly evening of live art. It’s informal and workshoppy and really rather cosy. This was their fourth event and featured myself doing the sound piece I’ve been working on based on Genesis 11 7 and the story of the tower of Babel as well as a performances by Louise Ward and Joan Healy (who also organise the event with Francis Fay), who performed an object and spoken word piece called “Ornament and Grime” which was fascinating and funny, Valerie Joyce, who’s action of painfully slow crawling down the street in a powder-blue power-suit drew suitably baffled and concerned reactions from the passing public and really was quite intense and the tounge-in-cheek “Inner Child Workshop” by Mari Jarva and Eithne McAdam, involving the shaping and baking of the audience / participant’s inner children, which you were then allowed to take away and do what you wish with. Some people had eaten their’s before the end of the evening; mine is sitting in my cupboard in the pantry. This was the highlight for me. There was also a screening of American video artist Matthew Silver’s “Overmodulated Marriage” which was unsettling and unconscionably amusing.
You can find a comprehensive collection of photos from the evening on the group’s facebook page.
UNIT 30 Something followed by Misfits
This Thursday, the 29th of April, our college group opened our show UNIT 30 Something at The Complex, Smithfield Plaza.
There's a nice little review some photos here - the second ever post in our brand new group blog. The blog and indeed the exhibition (in a very large part) were organized by Paul Coffey who has been absolutely legendary through the whole process - Big Ups! Thanks and praise also go to our class' fearless rep Tanja Harney for all she's done for us throughout the year.
There was soooo much great work of all sorts there that well, if you weren't there, you missed it. Aideen Barry was good enough to come along and open the event, which was great; we're big fans.
Here's a wee video from the few clips I captured in-between setting up before the show and drinking and smoking during.
I was unfortunately both absent and, when present, absent minded during a lot of the post-opening celebrations and, indeed, work. The reason being that I was distracted by the looming performance of a brand new piece of story-telling the next night, Friday at the Dublin Art Mill, as part of the Misfits show curated by Patryk Starzykowski and Niamh Murphy. In the end, I had a great time. The performances were varied and super-facinating from start to finish.
Joan Healy's Cyberskin must be experienced to be believed. It's simply a miracle of modern technology. Any more info will ruin the surprise should you ever have the chance to catch this performance. Elizabeth Cleary's Box was a grippingly performed, deceptively simple, object-based narrative performance. Tracy Martin and Sadie Ryan performed Papa Don't Preach, an absolute scandal of a performance; it was hilarious, shocking and really thought provoking, all in about 3 minutes. Angelika Schori's bizarre and beautiful human sculpture, Boundries, turned out to be a heck of a lot more engaging than it sounded when described to me. So, try to see it. Francis Fay's Delightful Illusion was delightful and very real.
Here's quick clip of my own piece on the night. I really enjoyed doing this and want to do it again soon, only slightly better. The story is a retelling of an ancient greek myth and a passage from the bible, which are intended to contextualise the main part of the story which is an original myth about our own time, as told from the perspective of an improbable, distant future.
It seemed to go down well.
Related again to the Unit 30 Something exhibition, here's a fun video of some of our college mates helping to hoist Michael Gavigan's exhibition piece Church 2.0 into the air, in-studio, a few days before the exhibition. I'm not there, because I was guarding some TVs at the time. It was mostly shot by Moya Clarken, I think. As I say, I wasn't there. As much as we all enjoyed making fun of him during the process, it's an impressive achievement. Kudos to him and all the other v v v talented folks who were involved in a wonderful show which has made us all very, very, very tired. And poor.
Exhibition time!
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| Från 30 Something Show |
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| Från 30 Something Show |
Paul Coffey's informative flyer and map say it all really but, if you need more words to read today, here are some I typed out earlier.
UNIT 30 SOMETHING is a two day exhibition of thirty something artists from IADT working in a wide variety of media. Art works on show range from ambitious architectural and technological experiments to deceptively low key, intricate explorations of traditional media such as painting, drawing, print and sculpture, as well as a host of original approaches to contemporary interdisciplinary media of video, sound, performance and installation.
So, that's it really. My own piece won't really be seen by most people since its a hefty 80 minute video, housed in a small self-contained installation BUT I like it so much that I'm going to burn lots of extra copies because I'm sure everyone will want to take the video home and enjoy it in the same cold, dark, lonely light as the starry heavens above and the moral law within.
I've uploaded a scene from the video here
;
The statement available at the exhibition will read something like this.
Spectre (For TV)
This 80 minute video is a scaled down
visualisation of an 8 hour sleep cycle. Narrative structure is superceded by a
form derived from the marrying of the progression of a sleep cycle to the
behavior of a complex dynamic system, as described by chaos theory. The content of the video revolves chiefly
around the creative process and the anxiety of the protaganist in the face of
the blank page.
A Room For Improvement
This installation of appropriated and
combined objects is representative of a philosophy of self-improvement and
introspection which motivates much of my work. Here, I am using the structure
of the room and the inconvenience of the entrance to suggest that the work
requires more commitment on the part of the viewer than many shorter or
repetitive/durational video art works.
Opening on the same night, Thursday 29th April, is the Misfits show in Dublin Art Mill in the Liberties. I'm hoping to make it down there to have a look but in any case, I'll be there the next evening to tell a story at a performance oriented event curated in conjunction with the show. Details to follow.
SelfDirected2010 Research Ctd
Getting my head back into our end of year project good and proper this week.
I'm kind of in the middle of a few little experiments involving web-art as well as thinking hard about whether to focus on filming or performing the eventual script that I've been working on. I've been story boarding the script I wrote for a performance as if it was a film - which is confusing but interesting. Been watching Steve McQueen's Hunger and thinking about how it compares to Mel Gibson's The Passion Of The Christ.
Here's a random smattering of images to give you some idea of what's been going on in the school department of my brain.
Here's a sketchy idea for a web based piece relating to the project, which would also feature in a filmed version of the whole project. zenTest.swf
A Brief History of The Past Six or Seven Weeks
On January 28th, I organised a performance oriented event at The Shed, Henrietta Lane.Apart from the fact that it was shut down by the fire safety folks, which was a shame, it was a success. The artists were of great quality, people came and, as far as I'm aware, enjoyed themselves in a lovely space, provided by Eli McBett at The Shed.
The fire folks came before we'd started, after people had started to come and gave us the option of getting out right now or sqeezing the night's performances into an hour.
I guess I pretty much decided, and then persuaded the artists, that the latter would be our course. I think that was worth doing. It was short lived but extremely well documented. Since the artists were encouraged to bring experiments and works in progress to the friendly little public we'd gathered, I know from experience how important it is to see yourself in performance as well as to do it. Sometimes, the mistakes that ring out like gongs in one's head while performing will be almost invisible when looked back on, sometimes vice versa. It's an important learning tool and needs an audience.
Having said that, I really liked all the work. Of course, I would say that - I was the one who decided which artists would be there. Here's a quick cut of the footage I managed to get on my own camera, there is a lot more footage from two other cameras which I'm almost done putting together - I'll start a seperate blog to archive it and write proper reviews. As the word "archive" implies, I don't intend this to be the last The Howl Into The Hole event. The Shed is unable to host events for the moment, but I'm looking for an alternate venue right now.
Big friendly thank yous and many warm handshakes must go to the artists who took part, more of them travelling from outside the county of Dublin than not and who provided, under some considerable strain, both entertaining and thought provoking examples of ephemeral art practice - Alive and unpaid, just off Bolton Street.
The next day, I went to Cork. The Basement Project Space to be exact. The Podium #1 to be absolutely precise.
The Podium is planned as a monthly platform for the free expression of ideas, curated by Stephanie Hough, one of (I think) six artists with studios attatched to the space.
Stephanie herself performed a piece called Porn From The Podium, reading found texts of extremely explicit content, recording, playing them back and repeating until the repitition made the shocking content seem extremely banal. An effective experiment I thought. We also saw some video clips, apparantly made the day before or something of the same artist dressed in silly wigs, singing hilarious songs in the guise of some sort of worst case senario eurovision song contest winner. I remember there being some sort of over all point with them but all can recall now is how very wierd they were.
There was also a piece called Appliance Ensemble or something, which made snacks for everyone as per intructions sent from the artist. It's in the video too. The piece itself wasn't doling out booze, just smoothies and popcorn, so I stayed away from it.
I believe I was next and read fairly successfully, I think, ...from the works of Icarus Crane - always a worthwhile endeavour. People were pretty positive about it afterward, as I recall.
Colm Madden, another of the artists at the studio, performed a piece, entitled Self Love. It was great! It was mostly pretty conversational, the artist reading intermitent pages from a note book, happening on the main points of the performance he had not completely prepaired and then singing these wonderful songs, somewhere between Bessie Smith and Britney Spears, amid a deceptively ad-hoc environment, including a projection and mirror.
I got a lot out of (oh yeah, and some other guy got a really silly hair cut to raise money for the Haitian earthquake victims, which was nice of him) the performances at both events and just in the past few weeks, I've been making real ground in my own work of the past few months.
Here's a random smattering of images from my research since Christmas time.
A lot of what I've been doing has been text and sound based. A little of it appears below. I've been writing a lot and going back and rewriting some of the core passages of performances I've already done. The performance workshop video shown here is the most recent and was pretty much a total failure when it actually came to performing it but, the happy accidents that did occur and the comments of the workshop group have led me, over the past few days to totally rethink the mess of information gathering and experimentation in one very simple narrative, which is written and which I'll try to get filmed in some way over the coming weeks.
One positive thing about trying out the performance is that it reminded me of how I'd learned the performance I was developing this time last year. Video taping and watching and rewatching. Using objects in the recitation of texts seems to be proving useful to me too. I'm not sure if it's something like the sense memory technique used by actors or just that it distracts me from what I'm saying, so I don't fuck it up.
All of this stuff is totally sketchy and a lot of it uses borrowed sounds and images. This week's plan is to draw together imagery from the various texts I've been working on into plastic form (on paper).
Site specific project - Sandymount Strand
This week I have been mostly trying to finally wrap my head around our last college project of the calander year. All Joycian and wordificating have I been.
At the beginning of the project, I was thinking in the way of land art, in the sense of sculptural ideas, rather than going with my strengths and with my actual skills as they are being taught. I got over that and then I settled on a text / landscape based film idea. Here are the results.
The above video is the culmination of a few different experiments in how to tie filmed images of the landscape with the literary ideas suggested by its connection to two episodes from James Joyce's Ulysses. I won't bore anyone (except my tutors in college) with the other the sketches. They're really not that different.
Coalting research and making presentable seems to be important in this particular project, since we are supposed to be making a proposal for a fictional grant or award. Interesting to see what's involved in that. I think I'm going to need some kind of manager. Never was any good at filling out forms.
Below is the layout of my main proposal, which I've printed off in large format. It really is rather snazy... but in a very-obviously-not-a-professional-graphic-design-job-kind-of-way. It certainly beats all the drawing/printing attempts I made at presenting the idea.
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| Från SandymountProposal |
I also had the chance this week to go along with my classmate Stephanie Golden and document herself and volunteer firestarter Louise Brady experimenting with her own project. Below are the results, with some stolen music by Tunng - a fantastic band who hopefully wont sue me.
Why am I writing a blog entry about college work at half two on a Sunday morning? Good question. I haven't finished my homework and I'm procrastinating, that's why.
Site Specific
Below is some of the sketchy work I've been doing in response to a college project to develop a proposal for a site responsive artwork located along the coast of south Dublin, as featured in James Joyce's Ulysses. I've been focusing on Sandymount.
Run On
Here is the final edit of my piece for this confounded Disassemble / Reassemble project we've had in the past few weeks in college. I decided to go for a three minute edit in the end in direct response to a call for artists I saw a few weeks ago for a local radio station (in Roscommon if I remember correctly) which specified a three minute limit on pieces of sound art for air play. So, after assesement on Monday, I'll be putting together a CD with this track and a few others to send off to that show. Should be interesting to see what they make of the various pieces.
Gen117TowerFinalRadio Rendered.mp3
Below is a video I've put together over the weekend. The dialogue comes from a bit of scribbling which turned into a loop quite organically and which seemed to lend itself to the format you see below. Immediate problems with it are(even in the uncompressed AVI which is better quality than the video below), relatively low resolution and an annoying buzzing on the soundtrack which I removed, but at the expense of the general clarity of the sound. These are both problems of equipement quality and should be fixed by borrowing a better camera and hopefully a stand alone recorder from college. Once I've got it down to perfection - I would plan on trying to screen it somewhere - this would be the first video I've had screened in its own right for a few years in fact... I've been waiting to come up with something awfully clever...
You heard it here first
The above videos are two that I have come across during my lazier moments of "research" for the project I'm working on. I have no other comment on either one.
Below is the link to another sound piece... more than likely there will be more little ideas like this along shortly, which I won't bother to publish but which will become part of a larger composition incorporating the sound piece from the previous post also.
Below that, we find some screen shots from a model in Google SketchUp - I've made models of the Hebrew letters in of Gen11:7 and stacked them on top of one another...
like a tower.
Not my most inspired work but, you know, learning by doing.
disReassemble Continues
Following the initial research talked about in the previous post, I have made these pieces. This first piece is something of an aside to the brief of the project but relevant to it none the less.
It is an homage to Baldesari's "I will not make anymore boring art" but informed by the content of my project of the moment. It's extremely sketchy and not really of any use without being projected on a larger scale. It is shown here in much abreviated form.Before I'm done with the project, I may go to the trouble of making a better version. I may not.
This second, more sophisticated piece is a sound piece, which I have written some notes on for the benifit of my tutors in college and which follow the link in this post.
Building of a "tower" of sound.
A somewhat literal deconstruction / reconstruction of Genesis 11:7.
- Found audio of Hebrew text Gen 11 online.
- Isolated 11:7 by analysing key points of my phonetic interpretation of the original text as well as the verse's relative position within the chapter.
- Using Audacity and Paul's Extreme Strech, produced variations of the verse, manipulating the tempo at various sample rates while maintaining the pitch.
- Imported the slowest rendering at a fairly low sample rate into 8 tracks on Ableton Live; 2 tracks transposed to -24 (semitones); 2 to -12; 2 to -7; 2 left at original pitch.
- Added reverb of various parameters to remove harsh extremes and fill the gaps between sylables - a solid foundation of sound.
- Added next slowest verse with the same variations of pitch and reverb into another 8 tracks.
- Repeated process with next slowest sample.
* Overclocked processer.
* Decided to render smaller chunks at a time, as I would normally do with video.
- Spread 16 tracks over the stereo field, recorded, rendered.
- Repeating this process to create a big sound which can, over the course of the composition, be broken down and the meaning confounded.
-Thus, the first three tracks in the final project / Live Set are actually comprised of forty tracks - forty variations of Genesis 11:7, differing in pitch and tempo, as well as treated with a simple set of reverb effects and spread about the stereo field.
From Here...
it all gets pretty intuitive.
I add more tracks of the verse read without manipulation to the start of the composition - then treat the whole as a live set - adding new samples by keyboard triggers and practicing / editing / re-editing and repeat - until I record a final live mix.
This format lends itself also to performance of the piece as a set of live electronics - coming quite close to downbeat electronica.
Key Composition Points (and how they are achieved)
- "Tower" of sound : As illustrated above.
- "Period Three": All the samples used so far have been slowed down by multiples of 2 - as variables in a stable dynamic system will tend to rotate inside this parameter.
- "Period Three Implies Chaos" -
- After the introduction of the "Period Three" sample, I use grain delay to create the chaos implied by period three.
-Later in the composition, I use midi controlled instruments to break down the passage from legible Hebrew into sylables and phrases and using those sounds as content for regemented beats.
* There is something of a fall when a piece of durational art moves from the transendant to the banal during it's composition.
Disassemble / Reassemble Project Week 1
Last week, we recieved a brief for a four week project where we need to select an object, image or process to disassemble and reassemble by formal means, focusing on the tangible rather than the personal.
During the first week, we have been asked to select our object of focus and present a short statement of intent along with some the research and work we've done so far.
Below is a slideshow of some of the work I've been doing with my chosen object, which is Genesis 11:7, as well as the proposal itself. I've ommited my research images since they are all under copyright.
"Having first considered taking the theorised strings of theoretical physics' String Theory as the object of focus for this project, further thought led me to look at the idea of disassembling God as an idea/object. This being an enourmous undertaking, I narrowed my view of God as object to simply taking the name of God as the object. Given the belief of certain Jewish mystics that the name of God is, in fact, the entire text of the Koran, practicality eventually led me to take a single line from the book of Genesis as my object for disassembly and reassembly during the coming weeks. This line is Genesis 11 – 7
"Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another's speech."
To the end of meeting the brief for this project, I have undertaken to familiarise myself with the Hebrew characters that represent the original form of this line of text as well as the context in which it occurs in the book (it is a passage related to the story of the Tower of Babel – more or less the final part of the creation myth of Judaism, Islam and Christianity).
In the coming week, I will continue to break down the text, not only in caligraphy form, as I have been doing, but also using audio and video to examine the text as annunciated. In the final two weeks of the project, I envisage a reassembly and reinterpretation of the text moving from the written word to a finished piece in video and audio."
Below is a link to stream(click) or download (right click, save target as) a quick experiment in breaking up the individual sounds of the passage as read phonetically by the PDF "read aloud" function on Adobe Acrobat Reader and remixing them into beats and noises.
Disassemble / Reassemble Project
During the first week, we have been asked to select our object of focus and present a short statement of intent along with some the research and work we've done so far.
Below is a slideshow of some of the work I've been doing with my chosen object, which is Genesis 11:7, as well as the proposal itself. I've ommited my research images since they are all under copyright.
"Having first considered taking the theorised strings of theoretical physics' String Theory as the object of focus for this project, further thought led me to look at the idea of disassembling God as an idea/object. This being an enourmous undertaking, I narrowed my view of God as object to simply taking the name of God as the object. Given the belief of certain Jewish mystics that the name of God is, in fact, the entire text of the Koran, practicality eventually led me to take a single line from the book of Genesis as my object for disassembly and reassembly during the coming weeks. This line is Genesis 11 – 7
"Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another's speech."
To the end of meeting the brief for this project, I have undertaken to familiarise myself with the Hebrew characters that represent the original form of this line of text as well as the context in which it occurs in the book (it is a passage related to the story of the Tower of Babel – more or less the final part of the creation myth of Judaism, Islam and Christianity).
In the coming week, I will continue to break down the text, not only in caligraphy form, as I have been doing, but also using audio and video to examine the text as annunciated. In the final two weeks of the project, I envisage a reassembly and reinterpretation of the text moving from the written word to a finished piece in video and audio."
Below is a link to stream or download (right click, save target as) a quick experiment in breaking up the individual sounds of the passage as read phonetically by the PDF "read aloud" function on Adobe Acrobat Reader and remixing them into beats and noises.
11 7 PDF Beats.mp3
Culture Night, Random Noise and The Howl Into The Hole
On the 25th of September, Culture Night, I was lucky enough to take part in Mamuska Dublin at the Back Loft, where I read portions of The Last Days Of Icarus Crane and, later, at Reptile Cabaret at The Shed, where I performed an adaptation of The Forger Of The String by Icarus Crane. Both events seemed to go well and my thanks are due to curators Brigit McCone and Phil Lee as well as the respective crews at both venues.
I do believe that documentation exists from both events but I don't have it as of yet... I'd really like to see it though.
Since then I've been in funk of minor creativity and also been sporadically attending college. Here is some of the stuff I've done lately... as rough and unready as it is
A further verse in the ongoing epic of the Guitar Player's Heart, continuing on from the work of Icarus Crane.
A roughly thrown together video to the improvisations of Oliver Kirwan over some simple loops
And a bit of loopy wierdness put together with images from my older video work
In other news, I will be curating a night a month of ephemeral art with an ending in mind from Thursday, January 28th at The Shed, entitled The Howl Into The Hole or THITH for short. Detail, right here
Culture Night
Culture Night was on Friday and bang dab in the middle of a bit of a long weekend. How and ever... I performed ten minutes of the Last Days Of Icarus Crane at the Mamuska Dublin at the Back Loft followed by a twentysomething minute version of The Forger... with a little of The Last Days included at the Shed.
A fine evening I had after my sickly nervousness subsidded (after I was done the shows) and people seemed to respond really well to both shows. For this I am certainly thankful.
There were a few people knocking around with video cameras at both events, so hopefully, I'll have some documentation up here soon.
Right now, I'm just drained.
I wanna play football for the coach...
TermThree WeekOne
I enjoyed the 3D workshops (to be followed in the coming weeks by a set of 4D and 2D workshops) more than I thought I would. I rather like the possibilties of using plaster for the moulding and carving of props for video and performance. My work, in the end, was all quite literal and descriptive compared to the work of some of my classmates who, in particular in metal, were immediately drawn to more formal concerns of physical and aesthetic balance. That's why I would still see 3D in general being very much on the periphery of any work I do and why I won't be choosing 3D as my line of study in a few weeks when we "present our findings" so to speak and then choose between one of the three areas.
Been some time...
On the 25th, Icarus Crane put on a little exhibition in the Project Space in Unit H at the Market Studios here in Dublin. It went well... I think.
The guys at Market Studios were most accommodating... even to the point where I'm confident that all the drawings I left rolled up in an office beside the space are most likely still there and doing just fine.
Enough people came along to have a look so that I didn't feel like a loony putting this show on and for this I am very thankful. Nice one everybody! A few other people graciously apologised for not coming because of various commitments and what not so I feel like there is some sort of interest for my work out there. I'll keep doing it so.
Here are some photos from the show taken by Paul Coffey who is in my class at IADT and also a fine photographer and graphic designer and god-knows-what-else-he's-got-up-his-sleeve in his own right. Unfortunately, I didn't bring a camera on any of the days of the show or ask anyone to document the performance on the night in any way, so below Paul's shots is a slide show of grainy video stills of the drawings. Although it may not appear obvious from these photos.. there WERE other people there, I swear!
I have to thank in particular Oliver Kirwan, all round creative type and very nice guy, for his lending me of equipment and general helpfulness throughout the setting up and such... and for always helping me keep my head out of the clouds with his constantly disparaging remarks. It's appreciated.
I will be making the full audio sound set as performed on the night available here... um... tomorrow?
It feels like I've learned a lot during the journey toward this show and the putting on of the show itself but too much time has passed now for me to be bothered writing down such thought. I tell you what... as I use the knowledge gained, I'll try to make note of it here.
A few weeks after this exhibition, at 03:42, on the 9th of September, Icarus Crane died tragically... swallowed up by the sea.
During his last days, Icarus wrote a cycle of poetry, seeming to predict his demise and took a series of photos, experimenting with a battered old SLR camera, borrowed from his father Daedalus Crane.
As his benefactor and archivist, I will endeavour to present these poems and photos in performance venues over the coming months as well as continuing to develop the works left unfinished by Icarus brief existence.
Blurb / aside
Big train bearing down on me.
Is how it feels to have my first non tidy-paintings-on-walls type solo exhibition coming up in a week and a half.
It's all good though, as they say. The work nears completion and is, for me at least, going to work just fine as an installation.
Below is a slide show of images from the past few weeks which I've created in the open source paint.net program. Basically, a free (donations welcome) version of photoshop. These are a mix of digital paintings and photo manipulations. Nothing special by the standard of the people who specialise in this sort of medium but fun to do and it's through these kinds of experiments that I've put together the web based portion of the exhibition mentioned above.
Digital painting to me is fairly empty without the added touch of interactivity which, as one sees from the simple flash files displayed at the "Please to enjoy..." page, is a skill I have yet to master. The idea of seperate but connected work exsisting soley online and made entirely from digital media is something I will continue to develop though, as it is a facinating area to work in and is one which is so desperately under used by contemporary artists even now when the internet seems so integral to our daily lives.
I've also been tipping away at the soundy trickery I'm developing to try to complement the narrative elements of The Evolution of Lauren Begaun and will be doing a run through / recording of that next week with a view to a small salon type performance at the end of the month. I think.
The Song of a Sick Boy
And a video from Bray Festival a few weeks back. This show got funnier as it went on but I only got the first few minutes. Go see Coco Le Bouche should the oppurtunity arise. She's a minor celebrity you know?
PostStockan
Thanks are due to an awful lot of friendly folks who put on a great festival in the Wicklow hills this weekend. KnockanStockan is organised, built and taken care of by volunteers who love music and good times so fair play to them.
My personal experience at first was one of feeling out of place, unprepared, boring and old but once I stopped thinking I actually had any real responsibility to fulfill, I had a smashing time.
The arty tent only sort of happened on Saturday after taking ages to set up on Friday and eventually being taken over as a regular stage due to the cracking Melty Marquee getting blown away Saturday night. Fuck it. When I did get around to doing one of the pieces I'd prepared, there wasn't really anyone there and I'd already realised it wasn't the most fitting thing to present in that setting so yeah, fuck it. I did it how it ought to be done more or less and I know now what work is left to get it ready for the gallery space its being designed for.
Much more satisfying work wise was earlier on the Saturday when I thought it was a bit of a waste sitting in the lovely indian (that's from the country called india) marquee with all these flowing colours and patterns sweeping about in the wind, listening to an iPod on the PA and decided to grab my gear and do a few A Room For Improvement style electroacoustic sound sets. About the same time I decided to that, a deadly painter called Barry Quinn showed up and launched into a lovely live painting session and over the course of his painting and my sound set, enough people wandered in and out, a good few staying to chill out after hearty breakfasts and what not, that I felt like I'd made some contribution to the festivities. It'll DEFO be A Room For Improvement who applies to do any festivals from now on. Until the Icarus Crane is willing to muddy up his sports jacket anyway.
Later some different folks hanging around in the healing tent across the way mentioned that the music had changed favourably into what sounded like my set so, job done.
Also performing in the arty tent were Stephen James Smith, Colm Keegan and Karl Parkinson all doing spoken word. The first too guys I've seen before and they both do a great set and it was cool seeing Mr Parkinson for the first time. I hope to come across his set again. What sets him apart is a kind of natural dramatic flare which sort of sneaks into his reading without coming over as fruity or pretentious. Good stuff.
I just about managed to get around to see a few of the acts that were either known to me beforehand or recommended by trustworthy folks during the festival but not nearly enough of them. Deadly stuff I actually saw include but are not limited to The Northside Kontraband (or something very like that) - stompin' good fun! Toward slavic type party music, banjo, percussion, heaps of brass and a clarinet. Not a milliion miles from the Ompa music I love so dear - on Sunday evening right after Eric Noon and the Future Gypsies - those two bands in succession will melt yr legs off! Manu Negra eat yr heart out. Seriously good, seriously fun songwriting and bags of energy (backed up by real talent in the individual members). Indeed the Fish Stage was the new Main Stage (as Mr Noon kept insisting).
Something I wasn't going to miss was just after that on Sunday night - Marcas Carcas was due to do a longer set than I'd ever seen him do (just seen him twice on his own unplugged) and I was dying to see what he'd do in this setting. Couldn't see really, he had the Tunnel of Fun WEDGED and nearly bouncing the tent spikes out of the ground. Missisipi Wine is still knocking around in my head during quiet moments. Great stuff.
Saturday is a really random blur altogether I have to admit but yeah, loads of talent knocking around. On Friday I actually took my video camera out for a little while until I started to unhinge from work mode and decided to actually enjoy myself a bit and I think I got the odd good tune on tape. I think the guy's name is James Guilmartin who was with his band (don't know what they're called I'm afraid) in the Melty Marquee on Friday eve and really impressed me. I've seen the guy play unplugged on his own too a few times and never totally got into it even though he demonstrates himself to be massively talented, the songs he's doing are really more suited to the format of the band I saw him in, guitar, bass and drums all being played very very well indeed. An eclectic sound for such a simple set up, enough bluesy guitar to even out metally build ups and some great songwriting.
I was in that tent a good bit on Friday (not just cos it was raining mind) and saw some really different stuff. Over all I'd say it was younger talent in that tent, so some really good acts that people will be delighted to hear more and more of in the coming years. Don't know who they are but I'll pick my way through the bands on the festival website to try to find out a little more about some of the bands.
That doesn't really cover anything at all in comparison to the amount of great acts that were about but I'm sitting quite uncomfortably and haven't quite recovered yet.
For this reason, I'm going to relax a bit more and continue the days work which has been small scale drawing in preparation for a refocusing on the exhition in August.
Peas and Love
Todays THIRD blog entry (I more or less took the day off today you see)
programmed by Mia Mallow for KnockanStockan festival
this weekend (subject to change etc etc)
Friday:
All day: Brian Lynch, Ana Carey, Stephen Lawlor
2.00: Video art and shorts
4.00: Tickle
4.30: Aileen and Aoife (10 minutes)
Icarus Crane
5.00: Frank Wasser
5.30: Karl Parkinson
6.00: Stephen James Smith
6.30: Aileen and Brian Keary
7.00: Hugh Cooney's films.
8.00: Mikey and Matt's music videos, gig footage etc etc.
11.00: Deccys movie choice thing
Saturday:
All day 2-7: Brian Lynch, Ana Carey, Stephen Lawlor and Barry Quinn
2.00: Video art and shorts
4.00: Tickle
4.30: Icarus Crane
Aileen and Aoife (10 mins)
5.00: Frank Wasser
5.30: Colm Keegan
6.00: Stephen James Smith
6.30: Enda MacNally
7.00: Aileen and Brian Keary
7.30: Films from Ray Hyland, Hugh Cooney and David Loder
8.30: Mikey and Matts films.
11.30: Deccys movies
Sunday:
Brian, Ana, Lawlor and Barry all day
2.00: Video art, gig footage, bands music videos, festival footage etc
4.00: Frank Wasser
4.30: Icarus Crane
5.00: Colm Keegan
5.30: Stephen James Smith
6.00: Ophelia
6.30: Mikey and Matts films etc etc
11.00: Deccys
Check out the festival website and myspace for all other info.
I
am preparing three different but similar sets for the three days with
room for improvisation (and improvement of course) in each, so if yr at
the festival, stop by EACH DAY and enjoy. Upon my return I'll hopefully
have heaps of bootleg video footage to stick up on the old interweb,
for now here is a video from Bray Festival's art arena yesterday of
Riona Hartman, a deadly jazz singer with her two accompanists who's
names I don't know (sorry).
I've got a few other clips from the show (the previous post
feature's my own performance) but I just want to check with the artists
before I put them up. Inspite of seriously long hold ups and technical
problems and what not, the whole show was lots of fun and ranged from
the anarchic cabaret stylings of Rose Lawless to the comedy of Coco
Lebush (or something like that), from the one woman drama of Lauren
Begaun to the improvised electroacoustics of Kim V Porcelli and the
wonderful singing of songs of Eleventy Two. All to be highly
recommended. I really enjoyed the show (once we got going).
Today's THIRD entry (I more or less took the day off you see)
Friday:
All day: Brian Lynch, Ana Carey, Stephen Lawlor
2.00: Video art and shorts
4.00: Tickle
4.30: Aileen and Aoife (10 minutes)
Icarus Crane
5.00: Frank Wasser
5.30: Karl Parkinson
6.00: Stephen James Smith
6.30: Aileen and Brian Keary
7.00: Hugh Cooney's films.
8.00: Mikey and Matt's music videos, gig footage etc etc.
11.00: Deccys movie choice thing
Saturday:
All day 2-7: Brian Lynch, Ana Carey, Stephen Lawlor and Barry Quinn
2.00: Video art and shorts
4.00: Tickle
4.30: Icarus Crane
Aileen and Aoife (10 mins)
5.00: Frank Wasser
5.30: Colm Keegan
6.00: Stephen James Smith
6.30: Enda MacNally
7.00: Aileen and Brian Keary
7.30: Films from Ray Hyland, Hugh Cooney and David Loder
8.30: Mikey and Matts films.
11.30: Deccys movies
Sunday:
Brian, Ana, Lawlor and Barry all day
2.00: Video art, gig footage, bands music videos, festival footage etc
4.00: Frank Wasser
4.30: Icarus Crane
5.00: Colm Keegan
5.30: Stephen James Smith
6.00: Ophelia
6.30: Mikey and Matts films etc etc
11.00: Deccys
Check out the festival website and myspace for all other info.
I am preparing three different but similar sets for the three days with room for improvisation (and improvement of course) in each, so if yr at the festival, stop by EACH DAY and enjoy. Upon my return I'll hopefully have heaps of bootleg video footage to stick up on the old interweb, for now here is a video from Bray Festival's art arena yesterday of Riona Hartman, a deadly jazz singer with her two accompanists who's names I don't know (sorry).
I've got a few other clips from the show (the previous post feature's my own performance) but I just want to check with the artists before I put them up. Inspite of seriously long hold ups and technical problems and what not, the whole show was lots of fun and ranged from the anarchic cabaret stylings of Rose Lawless to the comedy of Coco Lebush (or something like that), from the one woman drama of Lauren Begaun to the improvised electroacoustics of Kim V Porcelli and the wonderful singing of songs of Eleventy Two. All to be highly recommended. I really enjoyed the show (once we got going).
Fail
Just a thought
Immediatly Upcoming
to perform some Icarus Crane spoken word on the 24th, 25th and 26th of
the month. I'll be on at around 1630 each of those days in the arts
tent organised by Mia Mallow of Arty Party fame.
This coming
Sunday, the 19th, I'll be doing something similar in the arts arena of
Bray Summer Festival and maybe showing some videos. Not too sure.
I have nothing else to say right now.
Immediatly Upcoming
This coming Sunday, the 19th, I'll be doing something similar in the arts arena of Bray Summer Festival and maybe showing some videos. Not too sure.
I have nothing else to say right now.
Just a little procrastination is all
This Sunday, I'm going to do the first full live set of Icarus Crane spoken word with live electronic processing at Bray Summer Festival in the Arts Arena on a day of events MC'd and organised by Rose Lawless, who I'd only vaguely heard of until a few days ago but who I've enjoyed checking out on her site here. So that should be a fun day. I'm also going to bring along a few videos in case there's time that needs filling in, so we'll see what happens with that.
In other news, my entry to the Hilltown New Music festival was rejected but I guess it's just aswell since it was on this weekend too and I'd rather go perform than install. That does look like a good festival though and I'll probably spend some time making a better piece for it for next year. (I went to the site of the festival and took footage and sound samples which I edited together in a day - bit of a longshot)
In other news of rejection, my entry for the RDS student art awards was also rejected rejected rejected. Bitter? Yup, bit him too!
Nah, not bitter - especially when I saw yesterday that my classmate Tanya Harney had been accepted to the show. I hope she wins the 10,000 euro award and buys pints for the class on our return to college. I'm assuming she entered the video she made for the end of year show in May - it was really beautifully made and a lovely idea to start with, so good on her!
When I get round to it, I'll edit this post with the inclusion of the piece I made for Hilltown. Not right now though.
Just a little procrastination is all
This Sunday, I'm going to do the first full live set of Icarus Crane spoken word with live electronic processing at Bray Summer Festival in the Arts Arena on a day of events MC'd and organised by Rose Lawless, who I'd only vaguely heard of until a few days ago but who I've enjoyed checking out on her site here. So that should be a fun day. I'm also going to bring along a few videos in case there's time that needs filling in, so we'll see what happens with that.
In other news, my entry to the Hilltown New Music festival was rejected but I guess it's just aswell since it was on this weekend too and I'd rather go perform than install. That does look like a good festival though and I'll probably spend some time making a better piece for it for next year. (I went to the site of the festival and took footage and sound samples which I edited together in a day - bit of a longshot)
In other news of rejection, my entry for the RDS student art awards was also rejected rejected rejected. Bitter? Yup, bit him too!
Nah, not bitter - especially when I saw yesterday that my classmate Tanya Harney had been accepted to the show. I hope she wins the 10,000 euro award and buys pints for the class on our return to college. I'm assuming she entered the video she made for the end of year show in May - it was really beautifully made and a lovely idea to start with, so good on her!
When I get round to it, I'll edit this post with the inclusion of the piece I made for Hilltown. Not right now though.
also
aWindowTwoLiveSet.mp3
also
aWindowTwoLiveSet.mp3
Live Set for Down Load
Senryu4Live.mp3
Also, here are just a few photos of the last few weeks drawings for an upcoming Icarus Crane installation. It's not that I haven't been drawing much mind, it's just that I can't take a photo to save my life.
Live Set for Down Load
Senryu4Live.mp3
Also, here are just a few photos of the last few weeks drawings for an upcoming Icarus Crane installation. It's not that I haven't been drawing much mind, it's just that I can't take a photo to save my life.
stop time
Samsung Test One Rendered.mp3
stop time
Samsung Test One Rendered.mp3
flasher
Blog Feed (Works in progress)
Deus Ex Caput - a work in progress
Below is a clip and some photos (by Paul Coffey) taken from a day of filming for my current project, which has the working title Deus Ex Caput. This clip represents a heavily processed version of the visual I'm working on, with previous clips I've posted having been more naturalistic. Of course, the processing has been tried out to make up for poor direction and shooting on my part (I'll likely have to shoot some of the scenes again) but it's an interesting visual and one of the themes of this particular project, is how far one can push the suspension of disbelief after a given aesthetic has been established. The actor here is Oliver Kirwan, who's generously helping me out by staring as Arthur in a series of scenes written as analogues to the stations of the cross. Notice the bottle and the falling down.
I'm excited about shooting (and writing) the rest of the film but it is a daunting task at the same time - especially given the demand for space and equipement in college. Organisation is key. Where's my keys?
Mesh Exhibition at Hello Operator
On Thursday I was involved in the opening of a group show featuring myself and nine of the people I've been studying with for the past three years. We called it mesh because we had no common theme or project brief - the show was a simple show case of a variety of different approaches to a number of themes. More about the individual pieces and their artists can be found here
Paul Coffey, who also exhibited, has put together an overview in video form, with a questionable soundtrack, which you can see below. It's hard to do many of the works justice in documentation, as they often required a level of user interaction, which seemed to make it a worthwhile visit for those who came along.
Big thanks to those who were able to make it, we hope you enjoyed the show.
m e s h exhibition - This Thursday
Group Exhibition this Thursday at 6 in Hello Operator, 12 Rutland Place, Dublin 1. Gonna be mega. More info on our blog http://meshexbition.blogspot.com
Making the world a slightly different place
I've been making video, all sketchy, all sort of ok. This being primarily a blog detailing stuff in process (the previous post's political tyradette not withstanding [at all {at all}]), here is it (them).
This one is for a college technical workshop in video editing. The class is focused on processing of various whacky sorts rather than the straight-forward, linear continuity we tried to get a grip on last year (successfully) so I'm going to make something like this - only better.
Below are my first experiments in creating an aesthetic for the final project of the college year, which will be a essentially a short film, composed along my own formal guidelines and with layers of meaning which I don't enjoy talking about because I'm not qualified - hence I make the pictures and what not. The formal qualities are derived from an interest in using patterns coming from the science of chaos to structure temporal compositions. As per usual. I've done a lot of work lately that has been more epic in scope than practical for my means because I've been trying to take in these entire, comlex structures all at once into every piece. The current project differs in that I'm simply taking a random pattern of managable parts (a deck of cards shuffle 8 times) as my model rather than a chaotic structure of infinite complexity, which makes it a bit easier to focus on aesthetics.
Self-Directed
I'm making a film for my final project of the year at college. So far I've written the screenplay and I'm working on the storyboard as I type. Well, actually, I'm typing to avoid continuing on the storyboard because it's not at all my favourite part of the process. In the meantime, I've been fooling around in the studio, making maquettes out of playing cards and poker chips and cutting and drawing cells of paper and acetate for projection in the background of scenes. Work so far has been slow and chaotic - much like my normal process, except slow. Yesterday a general lack of awareness and motivation was replaced by abject panic at how behind I really am with the whole thing, so that's a step forward.
Photographic Fictions
I recently finished and presented the result of a technical workshop in photograpy. I ended up taking a simple series of tounge-in-cheek self-portraits in the dank and cramped living room of my apartment with a 25mm lense to satisfying effect as well as a number of variations of the image in an empty room. I then scanned the negatives in layers and used the resulting digital images to create a little interactive installation where the spectator's proximity to the TV monitor on which the final images were displayed caused the image to fade from one to the other.
Here are some examples of the images fading in and out on my laptop screen as a test run.
This was achieved using an infra-red sensor connected to an Arduino micro-controller, in turn connected to a laptop running Processing and finally to the TV display. This is the first project of value that I've completed with this technology so, for other beginners in this area, here's the code I used for the Arduino. This code reads an analogue input from pin zero and sends the value every hundred milliseconds to the laptop via USB.
float temp = 0;
void setup(){
Serial.begin(9600);
}
void loop(){
int analogValue = analogRead(0);
temp = analogValue;
temp = (map(temp, 0, 1024, 0, 5000)/10.0);
Serial.println(temp);
delay(100);
}
And the following code for Processing calls one of two images to fade over one another (sort of) based on the reading from the Arduino.
import processing.serial.*;
int lf = 10;
String myString = null;
Serial myPort;
float num;
PImage go;
PImage stop;
void setup(){
size(1750, 1600);
background(0);
myPort = new Serial(this, Serial.list()[1], 9600);
myPort.clear();
go = loadImage("go.jpg");
stop = loadImage("stop.jpg");
loop();
}
void draw() {
while(myPort.available() > 0) {
myString = myPort.readStringUntil(lf);
if(myString != null) {
print(myString);
num=float(myString);
println(num);
if (num > 30) {
image(stop, 0, 0);
delay(5);
}else{
image(go, 0, 0);
tint(255, num);
delay(5);
myPort.clear();
}
}
}
}
I'm pleased with the way the project turned out and I plan to continue to develop this sort of photography in my spare time over the next few years (although the interactive element will likely disappear or become somehow less obvious).
Not exactly part of my art practice but worth mentioning because of how fun it was, a few weeks ago I built a tiny amp (from a kit, so not exactly from scratch) and connected it to a salvaged pick-up and speaker to electrify my crappy old acoustic guitar. It's really bred new life into it and made it a lot of fun to play (badly). I might tidy up the package somewhat when I feel like it but at the moment, this is how it looks.
Maquette
I've been working in dribs and drabs on another little project using a recycled toy, which still needs a lot of designing and building but this is one of the first tender steps toward something which will hopefully get finished sometime or other. It is one of a few little pieces, one of which will be used in my photography workshop in college, using electronics and an arduino microcontroller and sensors and switches and what not to make stuff interactive. It's all pretty primitive at the moment but the possibilities... well, you know what they are.
Self Directed research - Week 1
Below are smatterings of images from both the previous college research project and the one that has just begun. Last term I played with cards and filming stuff in front of colourful projections. This term I'm reading about fictional and historical figures with view to making, in narrative video form, a new myth for the moment. The over all concept is a reversal of certain elements from the Sumerian/Babylonian creation myth which has influenced much of Western and Middle Eastern religious myth and therefore culture since the earliest of civilisations. I'm reading a lot of biographical stuff and watching a lot of film noir for characterisation. Not doing a whole heck of a lot else.
Presidentational Address
This week in college, I have had to do two presentations about my work, one of which was also a pitch for a thesis subject. The one on Wednesday is most of the grade for our research module and I fairly mumbled my way through five minutes sounding like some sort of would-be mad scientist who can't do maths (which would be maddening!) without really giving anyone the impression that I knew what I was talking about or indeed that I knew that I was talking out loud. Today however, in a non-assessable version, I managed to maintain contact with the point, even as I veered away from it. I just had a look at the written statement I handed up with it and thought I might aswell paste the part about my own practice - for the record. Also, so that whenever anyone asks me what something is about for the next few weeks I can reply unpatiently "Gaah! Doesn't anyone read my blog?!" which I do anyway.
"As
complexity increases, precision and meaningfulness become
incompatible. While precision thrives on stable (fixed) meanings, the
fuzzy meanings are unstable - they can simultaneously relate to
several attractors and express specific types of meaning-generating
crises. Instability of the fuzzy meanings make them flexible for
interpretation and open for evolution and transformation. And these
are precious qualities necessary for understanding social
complexity."
Vladimir
Dimitrov
The
above quote is included to illustrate my interest in Chaos theory,
the science of unpredictability and the study of complex dynamic
systems. The above is from an essay looking at the behavior of
Strange Attractors as analogues for variables influencing complex
social relationships. The theories and imagery associated with Chaos
are derived from the application of pure mathematics to problems of
unpredictable patterns in such things as the weather, population
growth, convection heating and more besides. How I have related these
theories to my work is by using the visualizations of observed and
fabricated chaotic systems as models for the structuring of
performances, videos, installations of drawing and compositions of
sound. These pieces will often use the chaotic structure as a
metaphor for psychological function and malfunction, with the content
often personal and autobiographical in nature.
In
the current project, I have been using the fall of cards at various
stages of being shuffled to build a model after which to structure
content of a planned video piece who’s content and characters will
take on wider issues than my own. Apart from that, I am due to
perform a participatory piece in Monster Truck, Francis St on the
seventeenth of December which uses game play, drawing, card shuffling
and story telling to illustrate the fractal nature of people in
society and their definition and projection of themselves.
So, that's what I was supposed to say, I suppose, so. That's in no way the complete picture but one tailored to appear to have relevence to the thesis topic I pitched. And tossed.
States and Affairs
I have an essay due this day next week for college, so in finding new and implausable ways to avoid doing that, I thought I would write something here instead.
I'm engaged at the moment in project 302, the second project of third year, which takes the shape of a body of research meant to identify an area of interest and, by implication, an approach to that interest. All this leads directly into our self-directed project, the big 'un, after xmas holidays.
After making what I thought was a rather nifty and very simple piece for the previous project, I decided to cast a wide net of experiments at the beginning of this one, in order to completely confuse myself. This I have managed to do most thoroughly. I've been mucking about with text, photography, video, electronics and (mostly) playing cards and paint.
From this period of experimentation, I have made a rough model of an editing process I'd like to use again later but in this case I've used all but arbitrarily chosen found-texts, where-as for a serious version, I'll be writing original texts and scenarios. Also, this is filmed very quickly with a problematically lone light source during the few hours available to me in a particular studio in the college and with almost no planning whatever, literally just to see what the colours would look like. Colour is, of course, not the issue with the work, it's a tool. The issue is still the behaviour of chaotic systems. Here's a little clip from what I came up with.
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