Psychic Derive Walk

Belinda Guidi, L'Avventura, 2005

Iain Kettles & Susie Hunter, Ladder, Fruitmarket 

Glasgow City Council, Nelson Mandela Place, 1986

Part social history, part art history, part pub crawl. A very informative introduction into some of the temporary public art works created over the last 25 years in Glasgow. All in all a fantastic way to spend the evening!

Ross Sinclair, We Love Real Life Scotland, 2005

Jim Colquhoun, Erection Piece, 2001,
George Square

Art & Architecture

I have been looking at architecture and how this discipline shares some similar features with art. Architecture can be seen as a form of public art albeit on a major scale that is generally of a more permanent nature. I really like the work of the architectural practice Klein Dytham. The images below are of Heidi House, a project which essentially involved designing a low-cost studio and office space. The building structure comprised a steel and glass structure with an internal plywood wall structure with cut outs to stream light in and out.  

All images from Klein Dytham Website

I have been looking at architecture because I see the projection work inhabiting its own space, as the work is also about creating a kind of constructed environment that interrupts the 'natural' environment.

Projection Materials

I would like to project the video onto glass but without any film on the glass the projection would simply go straight thorough. However, I came across a material called holographic rear projection film that can be applied to glass and would allow the projection to to be seen, whilst remaining translucent. It is quite expensive so I have bought an A4 sample to see how it fares. In the meantime, I will also experiment with other materials like tracing paper, plastic and fabric dust sheet to see which gives me the best results.

I found this video on youtube, showing the holographic film applied to a very thin screen. As this is a static projection, having the projection come from that back will not pose a problem. However, the project I have in mind involves an interactive element and so far the projection set-ups I have seen for this involve a front video-camera projection to capture the movement of the viewer. I am not sure how this will affect the projection so I will just need to see if the material can be projected on the front and back side or if there is another film that can do this.

Traffic Video Edits - 4 & 5

Traffic video 4 with tri-tone filter only. More colours registered i.e. blues, reds, white. However, background is still dark with shadow imagery showing up. I would like more colour so it might be the case of colouring each individual light spot or experimenting with creating my own animation using Photoshop and Aftereffects. I have also scaled-up the video to remove the vertical black bars present in video 2 & 3.

Video 5 was inverted in Aftereffects. Gives an improved background, in terms of lightness, but still registers shadows. Also, colour palette of the light spots is still limited. The overall effect is not far off from video 3.

Traffic Video Edits

Traffic video 2, clip rotated 90 degrees to change orientation of movement of lights spots. I think this works better than the landscape layout, there is more of a flow to the movement. 

I would like to create a white background for the light spots so that when the video is projected on glass the coloured spots create the illusion of actually drifting down in the space rather than being a video projection.  To experiment, I applied the x-ray and tri-tone filter to the video 3 in Finalcutpro. Although the background has changed to white, the dots have turned blue. I want them to stay coloured, so I will need to try a different approach.

Light Leaks

I came across an informative article on a guide to projectors in interactive installations on the website Creative Applications Network. The website itself is a useful resource on digital art. The work below was created by the digital artists Kyle Macdonald and Jonas Jongejan using three projectors directed at a pile of disco balls and computer mapping. 

                                     

This work reminds me of Kusama's Infinity Room but has the added element of motion and duration. The final work has the effect of a dramatic light show with the motion of graphical elements featuring in the work. I think I like the idea of the light effects having a more natural motion and for the movement of the lights to be 'interrupted' by the movement of people in the space. The room is also very dark so that the projected light really stands out. In fact most of projected light works I have seen  are set in relatively dark spaces but I am quite keen to have the work affected by the quality of 'natural' light in the setting of the work i.e. during daylight the work is very subtle but as the level of natural light falls the work become more pronounced. 

The Problem with Sculpture

Today I went to the talk 'The Problem with Sculpture' which was an event held in conjunction with 'The Second Life of Sculpture' exhibition at the Briggait. Unfortunately I only made it to the second half of the talk as my meeting with my 4th year overran...nevertheless, it was fascinating listening to the curator Patricia Fleming talk about her experiences working with artists and commissioning bodies, and then hearing John Calcutt summarise the problems associated with sculpture. The key problem areas he identified centred around the production of sculpture, the identity of sculpture and the issues relating to the exhibition, circulation and reception of sculpture. The discussions that ensued were also very relevant to the thoughts I have been having about my current project, specifically the kind of sculpture I want to make...do I want to make a permanent or temporary work? How will the project be funded? If it is publicly funded then to what extent should I be involving the public in conversation, especially it is a permanent artwork and if I do not do this, how would it be received? I suppose these questions are important but maybe because this is just a pitch for a hypothetical artwork it does not need to explored as fully.

According to Patricia, it seemed that despite Glasgow being a place that has a thriving experimental artistic community, it does not have the best practice model for commissioning public art. She also talked about how artists were losing out to architects in the public art stakes, with an increasing number  of architects getting in on the act. In this tough economic climate, artwork needs to show a 'return on investment' and just perhaps it is a bit easier to reconcile spending money on work undertaken by a professional body than an individual artist, never mind the £5 million public liability insurance that would preclude a lot of artist from being considered anyway.

Despite this slightly depressing note, it did get me thinking about the place of multi-disciplinary practices in art. In this increasingly amorphous world that we live in, surely it makes sense for different disciplines to work together to share expertise, and develop best practise models together. I like the idea of working collaboratively with different disciplines so I am considering how this might be taken forward in my own project and how it possibly might overlap with architecture and software engineers.