Thursday 31 May 2012

'In the twenty-first century, some of the most dynamic works of art are being produced not in the studio but in the laboratory, where artists probe cultural, philosophical and social questions connected with cutting-edge scientific and technological research...taking in everything from eugenics and climate change to artificial intelligence.' Wilson, S. 2010.


Art and Science Now, Thames and Hudson Inc.
The space looks great! Walls sanded and painted, plinth constructed and painted and sanded down four times, cabinet painted and in semi-situ (!) and floors scrubbed! Having some problems with projection but will deal with that later today.


STILL working on evaluation! Argghh! Succinct is NOT one of my attributes! Having covered so much it is like trying to cram it all into an eggcup!

Tuesday 29 May 2012

Physically shattered!!


Jack came in to help paint the walls while I sanded down minor imperfections on new plinth. This has now had it's first coat of paint...at least 3 more to go! Boys getting school bus home tomorrow, Eliza on school trip in France SO I don't need to leave the studio until it is all complete! Let's hope it won't be too late! Aiming to be in studio for 8:30am.

Monday 28 May 2012

Good day in the studio today - and really great having my husband in to lend me a helping hand with the construction of the plinth and storage unit. The walls have also been sanded down (oops, lots of dust!) so tomorrow will be devoted entirely to painting. Think my son will also be in to assist.






Note - NEW PLINTH!
The materials, the washing machine and the sea, have come together and by so doing have allowed a communication, a dialogue to occur between the two.
Tutor suggests I look into 'techno sublime'...on first glimpse this seems perfect....now off to the studio.
Trying to get my head around exactly what I am trying to convey.


While observing a sand sample under the lens of the microscope the image below struck me as 'dangerously beautiful'. A shard of intense blue. A plastic fibre. A toxic plastic fibre among many grains of sand. Planet earth is made up of many things and though many are foreseen on the surface as being toxic and dangerous can we allow ourselves to consider them as ultimately beautiful? 



When looking down at planet earth from space images present us with a sphere. This sphere appears as a projection and the projection remains within the boundaries of the earths form, this sphere.


The plinth therefore can be considered as a representation of the earth and this perfect projection within this form.
As humans we are obsessed with the possession and responsibility of planet Earth. We crave to prevent the destruction of the Earth and its species. We battle to apply the brakes in evolutionary development. Much evolving is occurring through mans increasing technologies. Can we allow ourselves to consider the Earth and man's technologies as a marriage and thus, as beautiful?


What gives us the right to allow technology to evolve yet planet earth must not?





Friday 25 May 2012

Yesterday all the materials were cut - B&Q, excellent!
Peter taking Monday off work so we can build the plinth and shelving unit together. 
Wall has now been erected - big improvement to my space and likewise to the other students sharing this area. Not sure they are currently feeling the same way but hopefully they will soon when they stop seeing me as a threat to their work. 

Thursday 24 May 2012

Heading in to the studio now....exhibition space begins!
Peter dropping up later and we shall be heading to B&Q to buy 9mm MDF to make new plinth. Keep pondering on the acrylic tank with sand...tricky, tricky. 
Have burnt video to dvd and am taking up dvd player to test this out...otherwise Apple TV here I come!



Wednesday 23 May 2012

'A phenomenologist should go in the direction of maximum simplicity', Bachelard (1994:107)


Likewise the work is calling to be exhibited in 'maximum simplicity'. 

Tuesday 22 May 2012

Things are rapidly going from bad to worse. Communication is breaking down. Cannot believe with only a couple of weeks to go a suitable space for my work has not been allocated. Feeling very angry about all this. Although the work has evolved the needs have always remained the same.

Monday 21 May 2012

A reminder of how this body of work began back in February 2012.


sub/supra ii


i am working with science. i am working with ecological issues. i am working as an artist. i am working as an artist. i am working as an artist....



fact: i am covering an ecological issue covering the identification of polymer fibres entering the sea through sewage outlets. the sewage outlet is a contributing factor. don’t shoot the messenger.


i am on a journey. a conscious journey and also a sub conscious journey. i am a traveller with this work. i am an adventurer. i am seeking to know more. to see more. to discover more. to witness. to investigate. to question. to interpret. to translate. to create. to tell.
Quick update. 


Video projection within a more open space - excuse the rear clutter! This work standing alone holds a statuesque presence. There is a modest calmness to the work. Elegance. There is no sound now, purely visual. To incorporate sound within a mixed medium exhibition is incredibly difficult, but also the visual speaks for itself. If I am able to have the work presented in this way then I will be really delighted. I need to really push for a suitable location. The tutor I need to discuss this further with is normally in on a Tuesday so I shall head into the studio tomorrow  and try and have this finalised - then perhaps I will be able to sleep at night!

In the meantime, keep dosing up with Xtra strength Lemsip, a hot steamy bath and then back to working on the evaluation, ready for assessment at the beginning of June.
 

Friday 18 May 2012

Jack Beall Photography: Paris October 2011When I travelled to Paris, I co...

A plug for my son!
Jack Beall Photography: Paris October 2011
When I travelled to Paris, I co...
: Paris October 2011 When I travelled to Paris, I conducted a photo shoot of the stunning architectural beauty of the city. This was the ...

Thursday 17 May 2012

Wednesday 16 May 2012

Have been working on the new website today - isendyouthis. Prefer the layout of my current website but the isendyouthis site is much stronger.

Tuesday 15 May 2012



Current plans for projection. Directly onto a plinth. What I wish is that the plinth stands within a space - not tucked away within a cubicle - so the viewer may walk around it.
It allows the work to become quite statuesque which I am liking. Current space is definitely not suitable.


Projection through 2 sheets of acrylic (image to follow) An interesting effect, especially if I am to consider having several more...BUT....what am I signifying? They are purely aesthetic, I feel they have no relevance to the work. Tough call.


UPDATE
Due to excess light within studio space I was unable to test the layering of acrylic sheets today.

Sunday 13 May 2012



Am really enthusiastic with this double imaging occuring between the layers of glass. If I use sheets of acrylic (also representing the plastic) to project onto a really interesting effect may be achieved. 


Looking forward to using my new studio space.

The Crate finally on board and ready to head home to Cornwall!

Saturday 12 May 2012

Love the way in which he is playful with a space with his projections and monitors. I feel now that it would be fine to go ahead with the projection of the video (need to name it) but to create the image as life size as possible. This may be hard to achieve within the given space. I will be asking for the end wall to be removed therefore leaving the work open for people to view. It cannot be confined within a space - hence why the Crate was dismantled.
http://www.exeterphoenix.org.uk/art/past-exhibitions/2011/marcel-dinahet.html


<iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/25138576" width="400" height="225" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe>

Attended this exhibition in Exeter, at the Phoenix Gallery, with a chum last year and she actually reminded me of it on seeing my work. It is so relevant to the work - it is brilliant. I had forgotten about it!...but perhaps subconsciously not!
Have avoided the blog since my last posting as, from what can clearly be seen, I was somewhat upset. There is nothing more to be said, I considered removing the posting but I have decided to keep it in. All part of the process.


Attended a fantastic dinner party away from all of this...wonderful medicine!

Thursday 10 May 2012

Well, studio space given. Sound may not be permitted as I will be next to another student using sound. The space will be fine.


I feel annoyed by the attitude that is given towards me and my way of working. My work is always in a state of development and flux. I know when something feels right and when something doesn't and I move on accordingly if required. 


Signing out!

http://josiecockram.com/

I really despise all of these! October 2011's work experimented with reflective surfaces and now I want something very simple yet effective.


Meeting this morning to sort out exhibition space. Much needed!

Projection through empty fish tank










Projection onto tank with sand.

 Emptying some sand from the tank and allowing tank to be closer to rear wall.

 Reflection from tank onto adjacent wall.


Wednesday 9 May 2012

Suggestion from fellow student K to start making some contact with the Press in relation to this story and my work...
Exciting news on Radio 4 today which fully supports my work.


'Big rise in North Pacific plastic waste'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17991993
Work is looking promising, just waiting for my husband to bring up some more sand for me in the studio! Having said that there were some interesting effects gained by projecting through the two walls of the empty tank. However, wishing to stick with this idea at this time.


Images to follow
Ahaa...I have a large fish tank in the loft...shall experiment with that tomorrow before spending out on materials!
Now to bed! So much for an early night!

Tuesday 8 May 2012

Maybe there is a possibility to return to this obsession with acrylic cubes!


Acrylic boxes filled with sand/water and then projected onto so the image only remains within the boundaries of the box

STUNNING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Sourced from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DqszYWULlw on eighth May 2012

Rows of houses in a fictitious metropolis are overflowing. The facades of high-rise buildings and bizarre constructions are reflected in the water, the streets seem empty and deserted. 2027, the title of this video installation of Haubitz + Zoche relates to the year of the plot in Fritz Lang�s film Metropolis, which plays exactly 100 years from it�s publication year. A distance that, facing our temporal closeness, attends to the negative futuristic visions we have now approached.
Maybe the slow, dreamily blurring recordings of the various house models can be read as distorted reference to current experiences of Langs urbanistic dystopia. With them the scope of ideas between revolutional architecture, modern functionality and post moderness is measured; But only to eventually dissolve in the diffusely moving blue water far from time or space. In the same unreal and upside down picturesque scope the swimmers enact with one another, seemingly searching for support in weightlessness and control in mayhem.
In all allusions Haubitz + Zoche avoid direct relations to current ecological, social or cultural problems. Instead topics such as dissolution, destabilisation and decentralisation are encompassed � in both form and content. Equally important are the specific locations and their conditions. The aesthetic value also counts: Pictures of suggestive beauty; Pictures, which create such hypnotic suctions, that it is forgotten, which horizon reigns and what levels must still be overcome.
The Artist Duo Haubitz + Zoche
Haubitz + Zoche (Sabine Haubitz, born in 1959, and Stefanie Zoche, born in 1965) have been working together since 1998. Sabine Haubitz studied at the Hochschule der K�nste Berlin as well as at the Akademie der Bildenden K�nste Munich and was Andreas von Weizs�cker's assistant from 1993-96. She received the Kodak Award for Young Artists in 1988 and a project stipend from the City of Munich in 1996. Stefanie Zoche studied at Middlesex Polytechnic in London. From 1995-97, she had a stipend from the Bavarian Ministry of Culture and was assistant for the Klasse McBride in Munich from 1999-2000. Her photo and video work as well as her installations have been exhibited in Sweden, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Portugal, Switzerland, the Netherlands and the USA. The artists display their work in Munich's Museum of Photography, the Galerie Walter Storms in Munich, and in the Museo Carrillo Gil in Mexico. One of their most recent photography projects is called Sinai Hotels. The photo series shows unfinished hotel resorts in the desert of the Egyptian Sinai peninsula. The photo volume Sinai Hotels won Haubitz and Zoche the German Photography Book Prize 2006/2007.
Haubitz + Zoche's works in public space range from space, photo, and kinetic installations to sculptural work. Spectacular photo installations were displayed in Rotterdam in the Maastunnel and in the Munich subway system. In addition, the artist duo has created location-specific installations for public institutions as well as for companies like the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, the Deka Bank, Luxemburg, and Allianz, Munich.

Concept and realisation: Haubitz + Zoche
City views:
Underwater studio and technical implementation:
Uwe Steckhan, Filmyard, Berlin
Underwater camera: Stefan Lindenau
Model construction: Julie Goll, Haubitz + Zoche
Synchronised swimmers:
Carole Rausch, Bettina Wrase (Isarnixen, Munich)
Underwater camera: Haubitz + Zoche
Location: Olympiabad Munich
Video cut: Haubitz + Zoche
Video editing: Toni Maroni

http://www.osram.ec/osram_ec/Informacion_Corporativa/Proyectos_Artisticos_de_OSRAM/SEVEN_SCREENS/Previous_Installations/Haubitz_%2B_Zoche/index.html            
sourced 8th May 2012

These are beautiful....if only I could!! 


The thing to consider is that I can't BUT what can I achieve instead?

http://www.osram.ec/osram_ec/Informacion_Corporativa/Proyectos_Artisticos_de_OSRAM/SEVEN_SCREENS/Previous_Installations/Haubitz_%2B_Zoche/index.html

http://www.osram.ec/_global/img/Misc/About_Us/E40_Reference_448px/SevenScreens_Haubitz%2bZoche_sm.jpg
All very frustrating. 



I have the possible support for building the Drum, but is the drum really required? But, using the projector is not working for me. I still prefer the monitor.The monitor has a far greater image...this, for some reason that I need to understand, is so vital to the work. Using a projector against a wall is so relative to last years work...I despise the idea of it now. Using anything to accompany the video is too fussy - this needs to be sharp and clean cut. 

An earlier piece of experimentation from last week. Bringing the doors into the foreground with the possibility of sizing up the monitor slightly to allow the doors to be in scale and a continuation from the video. A section on ideology in This Means This This Means That.  Hall, S. Laurence King Publishing, 2007, has been very interesting. If taking the readings into account I could suggest the placement of the video being at the top of this photo is idealizing, what could be the case and the doors in the foreground, the realistic, what is the case. Visual Structures, Chapter 4, greatly interprets, 

'Objects, images and texts are given structure through composition. Composition has two dimensions: space and time.' Hall (2007:73)...more to follow!

Greatly looking forward to tutorial this afternoon. Really need to discuss things.


Still very unsure as to whether there really is a need to build a space for this work. I am observing from onlookers either an immediate reaction, and they are drawn in OR they simply pass by the work because they see the image and that is all.


The question is 'How do I want people to see the work?'


Yutaka Makino, The Conditions of the Process, 2011. I visited his work in Berlin in January of this year at the DAAD Gallery, and this has encouraged a desire to build the Drum. (see image)
condition_1.jpg  




I rather like the idea of the work to carry on being somewhat subtle. I am drawn to the idea of the work simply being present in a space where perhaps it is unexpected - so subtle yet also seeking the attention of the observer once noticed. There is a stairwell leading up to the studio that shall be used. It is quite a dingy dark space that visitors will be using. I need to test this out later...not sure if there is an electric supply nearby though!! Hmm! Could be an issue!!

Monday 7 May 2012

A  most interesting and highly entertaining read this A Rebours, Against Nature by Joris-Karl Huysmans, new translation by Margaret Mauldon. Definitely one to return to!


The anti-hero, hypersensitive neurotic and aesthete character, Des Esseintes, contemplates nature accordingly, 

'Nature has had her day; she has finlly exhausted, through the nauseating uniformity of her landscapes and her skies, the sedulous patience of men of refined taste....what small-mindedness, like a shopkeeper who stocks only this one article to the exclusion of any other; what monotony she exhibits with her stores of meadows and trees, what banality with her arrangements of mountains and seas!'


'There is no doubt whatever that this eternally self-replicating old fool has now exhausted the good-natured admiration of all true artists, and the moment has come to replace her, as far as that can be achieved, with artifice.' (2009:20)


Oxford World's Classics

Friday 4 May 2012

Feedback from 4 fellow students greatly appreciated!
Arghh! New ideas NOT GOOD!




                                      Through the lens onto image of sand.


However, have been placing doors before projector and these have a beautiful quality against the receiving support. Although I am not sure they work with this current video they may work beautifully with something less complicated.



Am sitting before the video - this time with projector onto wall. Although the size increase allows one to feel more dwarfed, which has an interesting psychology; amongst this futuristic landscape one suddenly becomes part of, the clarification of image is week and one still feels detached. Becoming part of yet detached...
Heading to Waterstones to collect A Rebours. 


Feeling frustrated at this time. Unable to make any further plans until I have feedback concerning support in building the Drum. If I had a large enough space to exhibit then I don't feel it would be necessary to build, but there will be 80 students exhibiting and space is very limited. The largest spaces already seem to be claimed by those who have been working in them throughout the year. As they say, Keep Calm and Carry On...!

Thursday 3 May 2012


http://www.artcornwall.org/index.htm


This morning's work, plans for The Drum.
Adjustment! Radius should read 2.86ft making the diameter 5.73ft..this may need increasing.
Well spotted SB!

Wednesday 2 May 2012

Black or white?
I am increasingly aware that by the possible 'simplicity' of what is to be shown, everything connected with its presentation is crucial to the semiotics of the work. It is valuable that I now take the next few days researching the validity of  the space and semiotics itself. To start with I shall be reading Gaston Bachelard's, The Poetics of Space - a book suggested to me by a fellow student today. I purchased it last year and have barely read it so now I feel is the time! Also, in relation to my work, I have just ordered through Waterstone's in Plymouth, A Rebours (Against Nature) by  Brendan King and J K Huysmans. A recommendation by MB (technician) on seeing my video. 
The entire Crate has been dismantled.
Feeling increasingly frustrated with how the work is sitting. Need a couple of days away from the studio! Shall be working from home and possibly hitting the coast for further inspiration.
The lower image demonstrates the larger screen but poorer image, the upper image demonstrates the smaller screen but better quality image.


Mock up of a white surround

Hmmm...am in studio now and really not sure about these side walls...don't like this feeling of being closed in like this....shall persevere with paint and see how it goes.
Back up to Plymouth now to continue painting the black walls of the Crate white! Have plastikote spray so shall try this out on a practice sheet of ply also. Must try and talk with MB (technician) today.
Knocking up a couple of tester videos based around the original current video, with a view to trying out several videos displayed together. Also seem to have a fixation with an acrylic box!...a long slim rectanguar box running 8ft long and perhaps 6inchs deep, along the rear wall containing seawater and sand. Visualising it as a floating shelf positioned about 6in below the monitor/s. 


....just an idea!

Tuesday 1 May 2012

Hmm, dilemma! Smaller monitor has a far better image than the larger. Won't make a decision today. However the white surround certainly seems to be favourable...paint time!
Returned to the studio last night to adjust the Crate for presentation of video. It now stands 4ft deep with a rear wall of 8ft. At this current time there is no roof. The original Crate floor remains but this will be going. Am considering alternatives, ie black carpet. Again, testing speaks louder than thinking! I am taking a larger TV monitor in today to test this against the original monitor. My only concern being the previous monitor seems to have clearer definition...this is really vital for this work, hence monitor as supposed to projector. Shall test with the white frame. If successful need to discuss with MB for assistance in cutting into the board a rectangular window so monitor may sit behind. 


If going for the white look then I shall matt emulsion to start. I am however considering sheet aluminum with white enamel paint or plasticoat. This will need testing on a smaller panel in the first instance.


Have been informed of moo.com for business cards from JM-B. These look a great possibility.