Tag Archives: Art

Same Old Same Old

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Same Old Same Old

Same Old Same Old

torus maquette 1

During January I continued work on the lemniscate/finitude/tori path, moving the tori drawings into sculpture through a series of five maquettes. These are conceived as large scale works, eventually around five feet tall so the standard view is across the apex of the lens that tops, in fact ‘is’, the form.

Same Old Same Old

torus 1 detail

The photographs above give an indication of the presentation.

The idea behind these is discussed in Stepping Aside Occasionally, a blog post from August last year where I talk, briefly about the notion of the absolute presented by the form. It’s not original but is a way into making things again.

I started to work with styrofoam (expanded polystyrene) from packaging and eventually bought some blue foam to build the structures solid parts. What I want is for the sculptures to be spatial translations of the tori drawings.

Same Old Same Old

torus 2 maquette

torus maquette 2 detail

torus maquette 3

torus maquette 3 detail

torus 4 maquette

The fourth maquette was actually the first to be put together but fell out of sequence with repairs and repainting – I’m considering the addition of graphite elements.

torus 5 maquette

The fifth maquette is the one that uses the blue foam on its own to layer the lens that you look across.

torus 5 maquette detail

As well as carrying on with these sculptures I’ve been painting, just to keep my hand in by stretching myself with technique.

Glassware – Oil on Board 10″ square (wip)

The glassware and the table are from photographs I found so I’ve started to use views of the house instead.

Table – oil on board 12″ square (wip)

Like this view of the kitchen table.

kitchen table – oil on board – 12″ square (wip)

All of these, as you can see, are works in progress.

I put together a round of 2022 as a mini website https://www.ian-latham.com/2022/ linked from the front page of the main site.

Drawing

I’ve continued to draw every day, including reaching 1000 consecutive drawings on 30th January, and you can see the January images  here

  • Draw Every Day – January 23
    Draw Every Day – January 23
    Draw Every Day - January 23 Continuing to draw every day, in a new sketchbook using ...
    See photo »

and the December images here

  • Draw Every Day – December 22
    Draw Every Day – December 22
    Draw Every Day - December 22 Continuing to draw every day, in a new sketchbook using ...
    See photo »

There is a link to the previous month’s Gallery on each page.

The drawings are posted to Twitter and Instagram each day.

Being Sidetracked (continued…)

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Being Sidetracked (continued…)

This is the first post since the end of August and I’m still off track. Pottering I think. About six weeks ago I saw a competiton for VR work that matched the geranium project

In preparing for entry I reconfigured parts of the project and added some effects in the rain garden and the painted garden, storm effects and shadows, and also did a lot of work preparing the piece for Quest 2 as well as The Index and Vive.

Although you can easily build for both platforms you have to switch the platform in Unity to do so. I now know that while it switches without a problem it won’t switch back without causing all sorts of glitches.  I’ve spent far too long building two versions of a very big Unity file. The advantage is that I’ve now got the file updated to a more recent Unity and I can use some better effects in the new work.

The submission got no traction at all, nothing after the acknowledgement, but my own analysis and discussions with colleagues led to the idea that I need to develop a narrative that guides you through the VR world. So that’s where I am now, trying to write a story that I can take through the process.

I’ve not been entirely idle alongside this, a few months ago I started a drawing of a fox

I’ve done some more work on that and it looks like this now

Being Sidetracked (continued...)

Dark Fox

I’ve also been working on some found or accidental images, the first is from a piece of plastic acquired from my last workplace, that I thought suggested an interior.

Found Interior Chesterfield

Found Interior Chesterfield

Drawing

I’ve carried on drawing every day and you can see the October images  here

  • Draw Every Day – October 22
    Draw Every Day – October 22
    Draw Every Day - October 22 Continuing to draw every day, in a new sketchbook using ...
    See photo »

There is a link to the previous month’s Gallery on each page.

The drawings are posted to Twitter and Instagram each day.

Stepping Aside Occasionally.

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Stepping aside occasionally.

At the end of my last post I highlighted a gallery of new drawings based on my explorations of lemniscates, or at least the idea of lemniscates.

  • Lemniscate Explorations
    Lemniscate Explorations
    Lemniscate Explorations A series of drawings based around the idea of the lemniscate    ...
    See photo »

I started to think about how to see a lemniscate while I’m waiting for funds to be released to make the large version of the clear resin cast that I posted in Gardens Project 12 , and thought about the idea of two circles and how they might be interfered with to suggest a continuous movement. Essentially viewing a pair of toruses such that they act as Möbius strip.

first leminscate maquette

first leminscate maquette – paper, thread, piano wire – 42x10x23

second leminscate maquette

second leminscate maquette – paper, thread, piano wire – 42x10x23

I built the maquettes above to see if I could find a quick way to explore the concept through physically building rather than constant drawing or virtual modelling. I needed to step away from the virtual for a while after working intensely on the gardens project.

Finitude Large Drawing

Finitude Large Drawing – ink, guache, floor paint, charcoal, gesso – 100×80

From the maquettes I made sketches and then a smaller series of drawings (most of the drawings for this project are done on Amazon delivery bags) using limited colour. The rest of the images can be seen here

finitude three drawing

finitude three drawing – guache, gesso, floor paint – amazon bag

Another deviation from this was to build the torus form from comfrey leaves and observe the drying of the form over time.

Some sources found while I was searching for solutions to the transition between finitude and infinity. The Postmodern Peripatetic, Christopher Brinkley’s philosophy blog gives a background to infinity as a concept.

https://brinkley.blog/2021/03/10/infinity-finitude/

The prolight+sound (Frankfurt based entertainment technology trade fair) has a brief review of Refik Anadol’s exhibition “Temporary Immersive Environment Experiments” from 2015.

http://prolight-sound-blog.com/perception-experience-finitude-infinity/

Or take a look at the very impressive website https://refikanadolstudio.com/

Park Youngjin discusses Badiou’s “L’Immanence des vérités” in which he rewrites Plato’s allegory of the cave suggesting that “Truths are absolute, in that the dialectic between finitude and infinity leads to the creation of the œuvre endowed with an index of absoluteness.” in this article in Nature from July 202. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-021-00864-0

Stepping aside occasionally.

comfrey leaves and thread – 22cm dia

I use a trail camera in my garden and make films from the footage captured, this film is from 13th August when my camera fell from its stand and faced the sky capturing the movement of the trees and the sun for the whole afternoon. I’ve got a full two hours of clips assembled as a film and I made this fast forward version as well.