Gardens Project 9: Continually frustrated by my old brain.

Garden’s Project 9:

Continually frustrated by my old brain.

I finished the July drawings, one day left handed and the next right handed, and by the end the left hand ones have a delicacy that matches the right. The difficulty with ‘wrong’ handed drawing is the lack of muscle memory and/or development (strength) in the hand.

pair of drawings left handed and right handed

pair of drawings left handed and right handed

The example above from the end of the month shows that it’s hard to tell the difference.

For the first six days of August I continued with the left hand right hand to finish the sketchbook, then I started a new one doing double page spreads for each drawing, mostly right handed.

End of August drawing of kitchen

Kitchen Window, 30th August

I’m still sitting in the kitchen drawing from the same seat.

The finished July Gallery is here

The August Gallery is here

I’m carrying on through September and beyond. The drawings are posted daily to Instagram and Twitter, there are links in the side menu.

3d model of areaa around Glover Street

3d model of areaa around Glover Street

The last two months have been incredibly frustrating for the Gardens Project. I decided I needed to change the layout and the way the ‘news’ was encountered and had to relearn modelling for terrain to do it. Since then it’s been stop start, rebuilding and rejecting and I’m close to 200 hours into modelling chapter 1.

This post is only here because I need to put something up.

Gardens Project Seven: Progress of Sorts

Gardens Project Seven: Progress of Sorts

I’ve been trying to work out what I’m doing and all I can come up with are questions.

Do ghosts have girdling roots tightening around them over time until they stop? What happens when they stop? What does a stopped ghost feel like?

What about transcience? I have photographs that serve as the only memory of a place and time, everything else in my head is learned. The photograph is felt.

Hauntology? (‘a situation of temporal and ontological disjunction in which presence is replaced by a deferred non-origin’ according to wikipedia) another word for nostalgia in contemporary cultural discourse.

There is a sense that searching for ‘self’ in memory untethers the present and causes drift between the then and the now.

The garden is the liminal space in which all the questions are asked and none are answered. Now all I need to do is find a word for that.

Savick: Transient Landscape

Savick: Transient Landscape ‘the big match’

This image is the drawn from the photgraph that is the inspiration for Savick, the first transition scene in the gardens project. The outline idea is that the passage between gardens opens into these half remembered spaces. I remember little of significance about them, but I have evidence that I was there. Each garden grows the space so that, should you wish, you could go backwards but find things changed.

The video shows the space refined with a transition to the next scene (I’ve substituted one of the gardens here) where you come down the slide.

Drawings:

I’ve continued drawing every day. After I completed a year I moved back to ‘analogue’ drawing – I use a sketchbook now, and coloured pencils!

Draw Every Day - June 2021

Right Handed Drawing 1st of June

The interesting things about the processes is that digital is slower to do because you can correct as you go. Having to accept the mark you make encourages you to be bold about it and not get hung up on little errors. As a consequence some of the drawings are not all that to be fair.

The other interesting thing is that drawing left handed still requires more concentration, the movements you make when drawing are not as ingrained as for the right hand (or vice versa for your wrong hand) and seem to control themselves as much as you try to corral them, it makes the process more difficult but often gives a much better quality of line. The draing above is right handed, the one below left handed.

Draw Every Day - June 21 Progress of Sorts

A bowl of fruit drawn left handed on 6th June 2021

You can look at the other images here.

Garden’s Project 6: Bits and Pieces

Garden’s Project 6: Bits and Pieces

It’s a full month since I last posted, not a lot to report to be fair but here goes.

Garden's Project 6: Bits and Pieces

Garden’s Project 6: Bits and Pieces

I attended the Aesthetica ‘Future Now’ online conference, including a portfolio review with Charmian Griffin who is Head of Digital at Artangel [https://www.artangel.org.uk/]. I showed her the film of Miro World [https://www.ian-latham.com/miro.html] and got a favourable response and some useful advice about finding opportunities to show and gain support, funding or otherwise. The channels she suggested were Sheffield Doc Fest [https://sheffdocfest.com/] obiviously too late to enter for 2021 and the Copenhagen Documentary Film Festival, CPH:DOX [https://cphdox.dk] which has, like DocFest, an art strand. Charmian also suggested some potential funding/support sources.

As to the festival itself the highlights for me were the ‘Digital Ecologies, 3D story telling’ talk with Jakob Kudsk Steensen. [http://www.jakobsteensen.com] A really interesting discussion about his current project, based in the Camargue near Arles, and how the pandemic shutdown has affected his working process positively and negatively. Steensen’s work is classified as ‘slow media’ which he describes as using media technologies to foster attention and aid concentration. He seeks to positively use the way the technologies dictate the way you look at the world. There are really good examples of this on his website, ‘The Deep Listener’ [http://www.jakobsteensen.com/#/the-deep-listener/] the first Serpentine Augmented Architecture commission and ‘Catharsis’ [http://www.jakobsteensen.com/#/catharsis] which is a VR world, shown as a film, both indoors and outdoors at the Serpentine. The website has a conversation section where you can see Steensen describing his process and motivations, the Louisiana Channel “Our Middle Existence” is particularly interesting.

I also watched a really interesting interview with Bieke Depoorter [https://biekedepoorter.com/latest-news/new-book-agata] about her new book ‘Agata’.

Alongside this I’ve continued drawing every day,

Draw Every Day - May 21 - iPad drawing

Draw Every Day – May 21 – iPad drawing

This was the 365th consecutive drawing using the iPad, the May 21 Gallery is here

I changed tack after the year and I’ve moved into drawing in a ‘real’ sketchbook, with proper pencils!

A drawing of an iPad showing a drawing of a fallen apple blossom

iPad drawing – Moleskin sketchbook and water colour pencils

I’ve also been working on the Gardens Project, the Glover Street section, where I have a slide that can be climbed and some other playground furniture.