Tag Archives: Technology

Gardens Project Seven: Progress of Sorts

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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

  • Draw Every Day – June 21
    Draw Every Day – June 21
    Draw Every Day - June 21 Continuing to draw every day, in a molskine sketchbook using a set ...
    See photo »
You can look at the other images here.

Garden’s Project 6: Bits and Pieces

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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

  • Draw Every Day – May 21
    Draw Every Day – May 21
    Draw Every Day - May 21 One drawing each day for May, alternatively drawn with right and ...
    See photo »

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.

Garden’s Project 5: Miro Deviations

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Garden’s Project 5: Miro Deviations

I’ve been working on the Garden’s Project for a while now, and as I’ve said before I worked a new world, ‘Miro World’ alongside it.

Garden's Project 5: Miro Deviations

Miro – I Work Like a Gardener

Miro, J (2017). I Work Like a Gardener. New Jersey: Princeton Architectural Press.

This book is a conversation between Joan Miro and Yvon Taillandier about his life and work. First published in a limited edition in 1964 I discovered this new edition last year and have started working with Miro’s paintings as a result.

‘Miro World’ is a 3d interpretation of a small set of paintings from 1924-25; The Hermitage from 1924, Catalan Landscape from 1924 and Dialogue of the Insects from 1924-25. The paintings are all from the time when Miro had just developed the language that symbolises his Catalan heritage and the mark making that anonomizes the imagery and brings it from a collective unconcious.

I made the worlds to test things I wanted to achieve for the Garden’s Project initially but it developed a life of it’s own. The journey starts in the landscape of the hermitage, at a campsite with the constellations of summer overhead, a woman at the campfire, a farmer in the distance with a bull in one direction and a river in the other. You explore the landscape to find doors which you pass through to the other spaces. The next is the hermitage, later in the day, and both these worlds have a sound track of ‘concierto de aranjuez’ by Rodrigo in an interpretation by Luis Manuel Molena and the Orquestra de Camara Musica Eterna, released under a creative commons license.

From here you progress to the Catalan landscape, facing the hunter with his rifle and a freshly killed rabbit, there is a sardine in the background and the soundtrack is a ‘sardana’, a Catalan folk dance – ‘Joves Ileons’. This reflects the writing in the original image that says ‘sard’, and may be a reference to the dance or to the sardine.

From the Hunter you progress to the dialogue of the insects, finding yourself in the long grass with strange creatures flying and running around you. The soundtrack is a field recording of a summer meadow, when you find the door you return to the hermitage.