Tag Archives: Garden

The Geranium Project (R&D) 02

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New Installation Drawing in progress

New Installation Drawing in progress

Three wall view of the new installation drawing.

Another week effectively lost because of extraneous factors – as much as you might plan for breaks for a variety of reasons, they have a habit of arriving at the most inopportune moments. This week a planned break to visit family clashed with the need to organise moving studios and with the progress of the installation which gains an extra patina of angst due to the ACE funding. The fact that the project is financially supported makes it obviously more important that it progresses and succeeds. The funding was paid into my account this week which makes the thing real.

So I only really got to work on Friday and moved the drawing on as illustrated.

I re-read ‘The Myth of Wu Tao-Tzu’ this week, Sven Lindqvist discusses the morality of seeking to live in art and his own efforts to do so and awakening to the retreat it represents. In the preface to the first English translation, published in 2012, Lindqvist talks about ways he has witnessed this imaginative leap, in Australian Aboriginal art for instance where the pictures are maps of territories that cross the boundaries of physical and spiritual and of his own experience of Fiona Banner and David Kohn’s ‘A Room for London’, a boat atop the Queen Elizabeth Hall. He recognises that “Wu Tao-Tzu had the courage for solitude[…]He had the courage to disappear and continue alone, on the other side of the visible in art.”

the other side of the visible in art.

I had a visitor a week or so ago who suggested that if your work is not about the imminent threat of our climate emergency then what’s the point of it? Lindqvist comes to much the same conclusion, and presents the same lack of hope.

A mental picture of the space;

The Garden is not a copy, or a description, is it an equivalence (obs.)

You walk in the space. There is a path through the space. There is an apparently impenetrable wall around the space but on closer inspection there are gaps. Any hole in the fence takes you to another world (.wrl sense). Through one gap you enter a vast field, at a distance is an object, you can go to it and see that it is a framework of right angles with an ordered tube curving through it. There is nothing else in this space. Yet.

I have not found a way to make roses, yet.

There is the sound of birds singing some distance away.

In the garden a bird hops from one fencepost to the next fencepost.

A cat crosses the garden, curls up under a tree, slows its breathing and disappears.

If you are here long enough you will the cat will reappear, uncurl and walk slowly out the garden. You may follow.

A bird perches on the fence, a female blackbird, she calls shrugging her wings and tail. The call is echoed from a shortening distance.

It would be good to have a secret superimposition of the real and virtual spaces – there are three spaces – REAL – INSTALLATION – VIRTUAL.

Can (shall) I play the sound from the real garden live in the installation?

The Geranium Project (R&D) 01

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Geranium Project

Geranium Project

Preparation:

Spent Saturday modelling a third drawing, subsequently loaded it and the previous two into a model of the garden and started rendering. It took twenty hours to render 12 seconds of video and I then discovered that somehow, I’m blaming the cat, the camera view had changed to perspective in the render window halfway through. 6 seconds of movement followed by 6 seconds standing on the spot watching the shadows move in the sun.

So I have a 12 second lead in to the garden, or a tenth of the 5000 frames, after 20 hrs of rendering. As things stand this means I’ll need to render for more than eight days if I could run the machine around the clock!

The initial render does give an idea of the feel I’m going for, a drawing realised in 3d, which you’ll be able to walk through and navigate out of towards other drawings from other gardens.

Today, Monday, in the studio I painted the boards with a coat of emulsion to be able to start the big drawing on Wednesday.

I spent my Sunday run thinking about how the space works as a garden, questioning whether the space needs to less abstract, or more abstract, how the ‘stories’ get told, what kind of navigation leads to the most interesting interpretations.

As this is the first ‘official’ geranium project post, this is the summary of the accepted submission, the what I’m doing for the next nine months statement.

‘Geranium’ is a room, approximately 5mtrs by 4mtrs, that depicts a garden as a drawing and by projection onto one wall. The audience can explore the drawn surfaces which include text and interactive elements, watch the filmed garden where shadows drift across the lawn suggesting people, and listen to the birdsong and poetry playing in the space. The interactivity works in two ways, some elements are to be touched and will speak to you, some will spring to life when viewed through your smart phone or tablet as AR birds or animals running across the space. It is designed for any audience.

There is a purple or pink flower with five petals, it has long palmately cleft leaves that are broadly circular. Drifts of these used to grow in my mother’s garden and in my own garden now, and I’ve always loved them. For a long time I’ve had a blind spot about the name, when I see the flowers I’m suddenly at a loss but when I can’t see them I can remember. It has reached the point where my wife refuses to tell me what they’re called. This is why the project is called geranium, after this lethologica (an inability to remember a particular word) I’ve suffered from for a number of years. I have wanted to create a space that tells a story since I completed my MA in 2005 and became fascinated with non linear narratives or stories that can be navigated by the audience. My intention is that encountering this space, listening to the poems and hearing snatches of the narrative offers one or two clues that can be explored through an online space or using virtual reality. I see the project as an opportunity to find out how to best present the idea to an audience and to use that initial audience to help refine the experience so that it becomes coherent and strong enough for exhibition.

Starting here!

Wednesday, after emptying buckets full of water from the now (hopefully) repaired leaking roof, was all about reassembling the installation. I decided it would be better to draw the interior with the guide of a projection of the virtual garden.

As a result there is very little to show. The installation needed some strengthening to stand up straight and I should build a stronger roof!

reassembled installation

reassembled installation

It took me all of Friday morning to put a roof on the installation so I could see the new video. I need to build a solid ceiling for the space.

I then spent the afternoon working on the new drawing for the walls. In the end grabbing the bull by the horns is the best way, or in this case grabbing the graphite powder with the rubber gloves (second coat). The piece is underway, but…

New Installation Drawing

New Installation Drawing

New Installation Drawing

New Installation Drawing

New Installation Drawing

New Installation Drawing

I then had an email exchange about moving to a new studio! I’m picking the keys up next week and will then need to dismantle the installation and pack up to move the week after.

The video, by the way, runs to 27 seconds now, 55 hours of rendering, and it needs doing again as I notice parts I have to change.

NEW STUDIO Week Sixteen

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This will be the last general post under the new studio banner. It’s not that I’m stopping anything, it’s because I was awarded a grant by Arts Council England to develop the Geranium project. So from next week I’ll be posting Geranium Project 01 and should run up to GP40 by the end of the funding period.

fourdrawingscolour_blog

On Monday 3rd June I worked on four drawings that I began last week, working them together towards a larger drawing that I’d stretched paper for. The drawing process is still build up, break down, build back up. I enjoy the prospect of working to correct as the drawing retains some of the character of the erroneous marks when it’s corrected.

fourdrawingstranslation_blog

fourdrawingstranslation_blog

This is the translation to a unified whole, which is far too twee – I think that’s the word – and required some dissolution and retrieval. I dripped very thin black paint over it, took it off with more paper, dripped white paint over it that I allowed to dry and then worked over that with white conté.

ourdrawingstranslation_further_blog

This is where it was at when I had to stop for the day. The reds have had more pastel applied and the central block has been worked over with more charcoal.

Wednesday 5th June I went in to the studio to find there was leak, I traced it up through three floors to the roof, it damaged a sketchbook.

dripdrysketchbook_blog

This is the sketchbook drip dried through the morning, before I had to split it up to dry in the afternoon.

sketchbookdryout_blog

I concentrated on six drawings I had started on Monday by ‘mono printing’ off the big drawing.

sixdrawings_0506_blog

Obviously these are still in progress. I then did a little work on the big drawing.

junedrawing_blog

Friday was a day full of visits again, potential building purchasers, artists looking for studio space and collaborators for the Geranium Project.

In between these and talking to builders and property agents I managed to take down the installation so that I can re-paint and reconfigure it.

installation_blog

installation2_blog

I also managed to work on two drawings from yesterday.

 

blackdrawing_blog

bluedrawing_blog

So this weekend will be spent working out the schedule for the Geranium Project.