VR Development Gardens Project – Four:

Progress has been slow on the VR Development Gardens Project as I freeze in my garrett and read around the subject. I was struck by a review of Donald Judd by David Salle in the NYRB.

Judd’s chief value as a critic was to point out the obvious: that art is a thing, something that is made. It is not inevitable and doesn’t exist in all times and places equally. There is an objective difference between art and non-art, and a given society will either view art as worth the trouble or not. For Judd, art had certain factual properties, and comprehending a work required first of all observing what is or is not the case, and also a knowledge of art’s history, of how we got to this moment. Furthermore, Judd reminds us that this history is often quite apart from whatever story happens to serve the cultural moment. People obviously feel very differently today: the question is, On whose authority is this history being scored?

Salle, D., 2021. Object Lessons. [online] The New York Review of Books. Available at: <https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/12/17/donald-judd-object-lessons/> [Accessed 8 January 2021].

Judd’s chief value as a critic was to point out the obvious: that art is a thing, something that is made. It is not inevitable and doesn’t exist in all times and places equally. There is an objective difference between art and non-art, and a given society will either view art as worth the trouble or not.

Everything comes with a qualification.

I’ve continued reding the Sissinghurst book, particularly struck with Vita Sackville-West’s insistence that the garden be allowed to grow for itself essentially and the aim for minimal intervention. You have to leave to one side the intervention that was done but I like the idea that plants were allowed to spread and the design for the moment rather than for all year round colour.

leaves macquette

leaves macquette

So since the last post I’ve continued to work on the Glover Street Model, firstly testing things out in Miro world and building models for the playground behind the house. I’ve built a slide so far, I need a roundabout and a seesaw. I’ve also continued to look at the paintings and built some sculptures.

lebrun_bather_two_corrections_a

lebrun_bather_two_corrections_a

The lebrun paintings are progressing and hopefully improving.

lebrun_bather_four_corrections_a

lebrun_bather_four_corrections_a

Although these pictures are slightly out of focus.

But it is difficult to get motivated enough to really press on, I’m wearing my woolly hat and gloves in the attic even with two heaters on from 7:45.

The sculptures have provided a breakthrough for the Glover Street Playground that will translate into low poly models.

VR Development Gardens Project

leaves maquette detail

VR Development Gardens Project

leaves maquette detail

As usual I’ve continued to draw every day.

Gardens Project One

In preparation for the effort that will go into the VRD Gardens piece – I’m increasingly against the ‘et in arcadia ego’ working title (too pretentious even for me) – I’ve been working on a small world I use as a test bed for learning about Unity and 3ds Max modelling. I found that the frustration involved in working with the technology is best spent on things that aren’t as significant, if it fails and I lose it all I feel less upset.

miro world map

This video takes a brief walk through ‘miro_world’ in it’s current state.

I’ve continued to research for the VRD gardens project, which has now been acknowledged as eligible for funding by ACE (this only means they will now consider it and, it being a resubmission, I would have been surprised if they hadn’t), and I came across the online exhibition at the Garden Museum – gardenmuseum.org.uk

“I walk in this garden holding the hands of dead friends…” i

This is the start of a poem in one of Derek Jarman’s garden notebooks. This page, and a few others are reproduced on the Garden Museum website as part of the first exhibition dedicated to his garden at prospect college. There is a nice reading by Julian Sands heading this page.

When you carry your past with you as any conscious creature must it helps to have a place to lay it down. This is what Jarman did with prospect cottage, creating a space defined by the horizon geographically and physcologically, allowing patches of memory and the ideas they spawn to seed and grow as they could in the shingle.

There is nothing for me as dramatic as Jarman’s motivation but the desire to contain an essence of oneself in a space is palpably universal. The garden serves of course as itself and has a personality that dominates with its presence when you are present. It causes you to contemplate whether you wish to or not and visit and revisit aspects of yourself. Whether working or relaxing the space is redolent with shadows cast by your thoughts and memories.

i Garden Museum. (2020). Derek Jarman’s Sketchbooks. [online] Available at: https://gardenmuseum.org.uk/jarmansgarden/derek-jarmans-sketchbooks/ [Accessed 28 Nov. 2020].

VRD Gardens Project – Preamble

New Blog Post:

Before I get really into this new piece I’ve been tying up the ‘geranium project’, I started with a map and plotted the pathway through the different spaces now that I’ve rendered them as separate with their own weather, and introduced doorways to the next level. I’ve also registered as a developer on Viveport and submitted the VR world as an Art & Design App for review. If it’s accepted it will be available for free to anyone with a Vive and will also allow me to point people somewhere to get it when I enter competitions and look for exhibitions. I had to develop a visual identity and supply all sorts of images as well as filling in lots of forms and uploading a zipped build file. Fingers crossed.

map of geranium

Map of the Geranium Project

geranium viveport thumbnail

geranium viveport thumbnail

geranium landscape image

geranium landscape image

Gardens Project: Preamble.

For a while now I have wanted to make work that explores the philosophy of the garden. Artists as varied as Joan Miro and Derek Jarman have had a strong attachment to garden spaces, not to mention Monet, Cezanne, or Ian Hamilton Finlay. It seems to me that as a person matures whilst they retain their breadth they can seek to contain or centre themselves in a more defined space. This is not generally a place to hide, it is rather a high point from which to view the world.

I have begun thinking about a mixed reality artwork built around a series of gardens and hung around an autobiographical framework. The piece will present a ‘player’ with a pathway through different locations in a virtual world built for HTC Vive and Occulus(?) that represent particular times historically; 60’s, 70’s, 80’s etc., and particular times of life; early childhood, teenage, young adulthood and onwards. The separate gardens will contain evidence from my history and the wider world in the form of photographs and headlines, and be soundtracked by contemporaneous music and news sources. Each garden will be accompanied by a physical sculpture developed from these sources and each of these will act as a trigger for an Augmented Reality piece elucidating the sources.

I am interested in the way we build ourselves into our spaces and our spaces into ourselves as we age, and through this what the environments we choose lead us to and from.

I’ve been reading for background and I’ve put a bibliography at the end of this piece.

This is a video of a draft I made to put forward for exhibitions and funding.

Reference list

David Edward Cooper (2011). A philosophy of gardens. Oxford Etc.: Clarendon Press, Dr.

Jarman, D. and Laing, O. (2018). Modern nature : the journals of Derek Jarman, 1989-1990. London: Vintage Classics.

Miró, J., Yvon Taillandier, Lubar, R.S., Lippert, K.C. and Reeves, J. (2017). Joan Miró : I work like a gardener. New York: Princeton Architectural Press.

Young, D. (2019). Philosophy in the garden. London ; Minneapolis, Minnesota: Scribe Publications.