Inspiration sought from Brains Exhibition at MOSI

The opportunity to attend a display at Manchester's Museum of Science and Industry was intended to  provide our team with some inspiration, particularly around our theme chosen for the Dialogue project and Dreams.  The stimuli for this inspiration was a new exibition by MOSI on the brain. It was an exhibition created by both scientists and artists working together, and the resulting combination provided a worthwhile trip.  I was a little dissapointed that only two others from our team of five decided to show up at the agreed time outside university, for me to drive over and collect them, take them to Manchester and then return them back again. Nevertheless, the two students who accompanied me were clearly grateful and I hope inspired in some way by what they saw.

I am still working on what to prepare and present within the Dreams / Dialogue project as I have struggled to successfully remember the dreams I've experienced over the last few nights.  My task was to research the scientific theories around why we dream, and I have started to gather sufficient material for that to be evaluated by the team to chose what we include in our intended publication.

Meanwhile, my artistic output has been a little slow overt recent days as I have perhaps been thinking rather than doing a little too much. I must keep in mind the latin phrase that I found earlier, which tranlates to 'never a day without a line'

An open mind...

It's been a strange week.  I've been very anxious for the other students a little too much this week, and this has had a bearing on my own concentration and output.  Unfortunately, it's something I have to accept that sometime my empathy is a little too strong, I just automatically start worrying for others.  It's a habit that locks me down so often, which caused me to ruminate and hence loose time and some creative enthusiasm. It's a schema that I would benefit from changing.

Anyway, to summarize where I am... The contemporary practice in context (i.e. the theory part) seems to be raising a lot of concern and fears in the group this week, as to what needs to be done, and what is right, and what is wrong.  It has meant that there has developed a conversation and notion of rightness and wrongness, which when thought about deeply, doesn't actually exist.  What has been set for us to do, is really quite open and whilst there is guidance, there are no hard boundaries that might hold us in.  We are free to explore where-ever and whatever we want to.  The only output (or products) at this stage is for each of us to create a mind-map of a philosopher / theorist, or a favoured artist's or even an art movement's Manifesto.  Once this mind map has been created, we then should be able to create an image (in what-ever format we want, so it can be a drawing, painting, piece of sculpture, electronic representation or whatever), that captures some key identifying component(or components) of the chosen theorist or manifesto...

To repeat the phrase that I keep coming back to, which Shakespeare wrote in Hamlett act 2...
  "Nothing is either right nor wrong, but thinking makes it so"...

(I shall keep coming back to this wonderful phrase again and again, I am sure of it...:-) )...

This notion of "nothing is right or wrong but thinking makes it so" is really part of the essence of post-modernism I suppose.  Almost anything goes... This is reflected very much not just in our contemporary culture but also in our art too.

So, onto a more focused reflection my thinking...

Having decided to consider the artist Jean Tinguely, for my choice of theorist for study in Contemporary Art Practice in Context project, I've been gathering references to his material.

The choice of using Jean Tinguely as both a theorist, practitioner and artist (someone whom I had never come across before), has given me a greater challenge to gather research, simply because records of him and his work seem a little harder to obtain, if compared with a more generally known artist or celebrated movement...  I see this as a positive thing.  It has meant that I have to research in a much more focused way, but in so doing, has caused me to touch and review very many unconnected sources of inspiration and resources of study.

Tunguely, perhaps a lesser known artist within the UK but much more celebrated in Europe (especially in Switzerland, his birthplace), created the Manifesto "of Static" and from it grew the movement itself and corresponding manifesto;  he has probably become most famous for the creation of the theme and idea of "Meta-matics".

Project 2: Collaborative text & publication on the theme of "Dialogue"

We are now into week 5 of our degree studies; the first project on the theme of Identities is now beginning to crystallise into a proposal for a final piece.

Our next four week assignment will be to conduct an in-depth and disciplined approach to help us develop a collaborative product.  This will be a publication of some sort which explores the theme of dialogue in some way.

The brief given is that it must be cheap to produce, we should aim to create between 25 to 50 copies, more if successful.  (2 copies will be required for assessment and additional copies will be required for an end of term exhibition).  We have a free range on materials / media / size etc.  We were told to work in collaborative groups of 4 people, preferrably with two students who we didn't know and had not worked with before, so we quite quickly formed into a group of two males and two female students.

My initial instinct, (after many years of conditioning from being a Project Manager), was to think of an approach, just like any other project or task... That is, to create a plan.  My thoughts were almost automatic in Establishing an "OST"  (Objective(s),  Strategy, and Tactics....  Collaborative - delegation of duties, i.e. What needs doing, by whom and by when.  Creating a timeline of sub-products to bla bla bla.....
-  I immediately stopped myself from taking charge and putting my views forward, and I allowed  the group to evolve it's own ideas before committing any of my own rather regimented preconceptions.  This was a good thing to do, as it allowed for a better cohesiveness between the team members.

We adjourned to the relaxed atmosphere of the SU bar;  discussed potential topics for the publication (not), and then after generally chatting and getting to know one another briefly, coming up almost spontaneously that a good topic, which we had just been chatting about for a while, might be "DREAMS"...

We returned to the studio.  Three different exercises were presented by Bob, Jill and Christian, our degree tutors to help us with our dialogues project.  These exercises were all focused on achieving the act of dialogue.  Each provided a concept or vehicle to start a conversation, or to exchange images, or movements or an ongoing process of creative meaning, through sharing.  i.e. "A dialogue".

Reflections on Personal Identities

So the time has come to round off this project on identities for the time being.

My next planned piece of artwork to represent personal identity has been forming...

I think a great metaphor to represent Personal Identity in a contemporary way would be to use a subtly recognised symbol of identity, that being the finger-print, but formed from the shredded personal information that is held on our behalf, but also with which we are bombarded with throughout our daily lives.  By this I mean the reliance on the use of physical copies of Bank Statements, Utility Bills, Council Rates, Mortgage Statements, printed emails and personally addressed junk surface mail...

The current 'safety' messages constantly played out by our western societies' major authorities, (i.e. the creators and keepers of all these records and references to our personal identity), is to "SHRED IT"...

... The irony of identity theft is that it is because of the very nature of those same authorities' practices, by seemingly endless duplication, that makes it more possible for identity theft to occur.

Equally, those same organisations of power and authority, hold so much electronic data on the individual citizen that it is impossible to know 'who knows you'...

An individual is constantly leaving a trail of electronic presence through their very existence in this world, the level of which is hard to comprehend.  This trail is recorded in the exchanges we make with any type of electronic transaction, from the more intentional or conscious  "swiping" of an identity card, to payment transactions using a banking or credit-card, to the more insidious tracking of an individual's mobile phone, - each having it's own unique identity, which can be located through triangulation of mobile transmitter cells and collaboration between the organisational and authorities' databases.

We are in the Orwellian era, post 1984.
...  "Big Brother" does not need to watch you anymore, 
... he already knows were you are.

(Reference to "Big Brother" taken from George Orwell 1903 -1950. Book, 1984; University College London, Library Services,The George Orwell Archive.  As an interesting irony to this project of personal identity, George Orwell was not a real personal identity, the actual name of the author was Eric Blair, the name George Orwell was used as his 'pen-name').

Our electronic trail is left where we have been.  Likewise, where we physically touch any object through the skin of our fingers, so to we leave a trail of our identity through the finger-print.

The symbolization of a finger-print is often associated with that of crime.  The finger-print is regularly used to make connections between verifying an identity with the physical manifestation of an individual human being.  However, few people realize that this verification is not 100% fail-safe.  The accuracy of recognition and verification depends on many factors, in addition to the obvious transposition and mal-administration of records, to fraudulent manufacturing of identities.

The storage of fingerprint identity relies on mathematical de-construction of a copied image, (and possible encryption) for transmission (and storage) of a coded data set.  The onward transmission from the storage device to an authority is likewise coded (and often encrypted) to either be used to verify an individual by the coded form, or possibly 're-constructed' into a likeness of the original image...   At each point in this chain, there is that slight chance of adaptation. Either by accident or human error (such as incorrect mathematical algorithms within computer software that may miss out vital detail), or as a result of purposeful intervention to exploit authorities data records (hacking).

Concept Piece; - Identity-Print, Graham Hadfield 2013

The adjacent concept piece, made from shredded bank statements, utility bills and other electronically stored identity artifacts, on a granite base, is an allusion to our electronic identity, the throw-away culture, our ephemeral existence, the labyrinth of our journey through life, and finally the granite permanence of our identity left in records after we are dead.

Shortly after I created this concept image of cross-cut shredded bank statements, I simply blew them away into the bin. That event in itself is something to reflect upon.


Footnote;  - The image depicted above is merely an unfinished test piece to evaluate the concept. The final work should provide a more readily identifiable representation of a human finger-print, however, this concept-piece provides a visual assurance that such a final piece can be crafted.

More new inspired directions to view....

Some interesting inspirations received today.  I had a good 1-1 meeting with one of my course tutors, and he suggested that I explored a couple of named artists who have worked on very intensive research for their own creations... Off to the library now to look them up!

Langland & Bell - See http://www.langlandsandbell.com/index.html

Essentially, these two artists create work that is taken from the observation that our personal relationships are intertwined with the architecture that we use, and mixes it with the coded systems of mass-communications and our personal transactions whilst navigating through our almost chaotic progress of technology within our globalised culture.

Their material is copyright, so the link will provide an reference point to their work.



Another contemporary representation ,beautifully rendered with the iconic symbol associated with London Underground is;

The Great Bear - Simon Paterson

See
http://shop.tate.org.uk/the-great-bear/invt/82


Ultimately, my objective is of trying to capture a symbol of Personal Identity.  The linkage of personal identity with 'the current' is also of importance.   I wish to portray a sense of 'being in the digital age'.

The other conscious factor I am keen to include is representation of one that is an aspect of our current culture. Within this sense there are a number of identifiers that I could choose from; I may have touched on some of these in my sketch and allegory of Fashionable Sheep in an earlier blog.  However I feel that that image is a little bit too antagonistic though, as it may just provoke some people, but not others...

I want a universal representation of personal identity that is cognizant to  everyone.

My thoughts are turning to what happens to all the accouterments of existence we surround ourselves with, once we are no longer living in this world.  The throw away society.  Nothing really matters to some.

This was brought home to me by an unfortunate recent incident, where I was asked via a computer generated request to provide an endorsement for an old colleague of mine.  Unfortunately, the person had died three years earlier.  Upon investigation, his records on the web-site that requested his endorsement where still open and active.  I looked at two other colleagues who I was connected to, who had also passed away within the last few years...  Their records too where fully available to me as though they were still alive and active.  We are constantly leaving information about ourselves in the digital ether, but it seems that nobody cares, "polices" or verifies it's validity.

Our Personal Identity & The State.

Identities of individuals (in effect, personal identities) were, (likely as not) first properly recorded by the Egyptians, and since then, a long line of rulers have found it necessary to identify as many of their subjects as possible throughout the ages, most of the time so that they could gather taxes from them.

The doomsday book commissioned by William the Conquerer was not the first of it's kind as a means of record for tax collection.  However, it was perhaps one of the first consolidated records of all the subjects, citizens and more importantly "the booty" that he had acquired of England.

Considering that our modern identity is perhaps, particularly only over the last 30 years, so reliant upon what the state, civil and social authorities, or global businesses hold in data bases for us, I considered an alternative way in which that mental image of identity could be reproduced.  In this case, I am thinking in terms of personal identifiers such as banking details, account numbers, finger-prints and other digitized mediums that almost all the populous has...


How could I use this in an a contemporary illustration of personal Identity began to emerge...

Time to pause, check, evaluate and move on again

The past few days have been spent contemplating and researching the subject of identities via some alternative means, and what it means to me in particular.  I've been thinking about how to present an image as well as what an appropriate image could be.  I've considered and to some degree concluded, that the accessories that accompany an identity are not 'an identity in itself' and feel that such items are merely superfluous, in that, whilst such adornments are merely an extension of our desired persona, the true self is beyond the 'first appearance'.

A good allegory to this is the Holbein painting of the Ambassadors, that I referred in an earlier post.  As one can see in the painting, which was completed in the time of Henry 8th, where the two very rich men of European nobility, are dressed in all their finery, together with their latest and greatest accouterments, to portray them with a sense of identity that reflects their highly valued nobility.

However, the "coded" image, which perhaps may not be understood to the viewer without explanation, which looks like a grey smudge at the bottom of the painting, is in fact a representation of a human skull.  It can only be seen properly by viewing the painting from a specific angle; by standing closely to the image, far to the low left of the painting and it is then revealed.  This may have been put in by Holbein as an allegory to both the subject's and our own human mortality.  Basically, in simple parleance, I think he was making the statement, "You may be rich, with all your fineness and ornaments of wealth, but you will still die like the rest of us and have nothing!"....  

(see Double Portrait of Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve ("The Ambassadors"), 1533. Oil and tempera on oak, National Gallery, London. )

Anyway, further pondering has, I'm glad to say given me a different view again...

What is identified in a Personal Identity?

Generally, the first  identity of a person is almost always thought of in terms of their facial features.  Here, I'm thinking of Passports, ID Cards, Warrant Cards, Driving Licences (modern) and the like.

However, we also have a deeper, inner identity which is not displayed.  By this, I mean our history, heritage, desires, goals, thoughts, attitudes, secrets, et cetera.  These are all subjects that could be used to illustrate personal identity.

Evaluate and move on... 

So to evaluate;  I have so far gathered some ideas, some good, some rejected and some to be shelved for the time being.  I have thought about the ephemeral and transient nature of identities, and introduced isolation as a theme.  I wanted to take a moment to jump slightly sideways in my thinking and consider other sources for ideas...

Amazingly, this was triggered after receiving a small present from a friend of mine, who had bought it whilst in Ethiopia.  The gift was wrapped before being brought back to the UK... Whilst I loved the gift inside, I was also struck by the wrapping paper and the designs printed on it.  The designs were clearly inspired by Chinese and Oriental images of people either in traditional dress or more current attire.  The fact that it was likely that the wrapping paper was probably even made in China, used as decoration in Ethiopia, and had arrived into my hands in the UK illustrated for me the international identities it had gathered along it's own journey to me.



This international theme got me thinking again about identities in a different context, - now I considered the permanence of identities again, and what better metaphor to combine permanence and national identity could there be on  a contemporary level than the carved images of the presidents on Mount Rushmore...

Quick reference / Pencil drawing in HB and 2B Graphite, with water for shading.

Maybe I could translate the grandeur of these famous personal identities to some other innovative representation?

Time for another mind map perhaps, but without any pre-conceived boundaries this time...

Recursive Loop Mind-Map of identity... - Without Man, there would be no identities...

I attempted to create a mind map with no boundaries!... Big mistake maybe, or maybe not.  Whilst the exercise was very fruitful in providing new possibilities to illustrate and hence add to this body of work, something struck me.  If I recall, it was Linnaeus (Carl Linnaeus (1707 – 1778) who attempted to catalogue every living thing on earth, no mean feet at all, but it took him a lifetime and he was still (by modern comparisons) only at the beginning, by the time the poor chap passed his mortal coil...  So rather than start something that can never be finished, I chose another branch of the mind map to pursue....  Our Personal Identity & The State.

Representation, a theoretical study based on Immanuel Kant, 1750s

The following reflection is taken from an introduction to the exploration of Representation based on the later works of Immanuel Kant, circa 1750s to 1780s.

Immanuel Kant was a truly amazing thinker.  It was through his work that set the ground and seeds of thought for the modernist movement to be established, perhaps some 100 years after his work was published.   Modernism arises from the cultural dimensions of the period between the 1850s to 1900s.  The modernist style almost es the cultural context of that period.

The impact of Modernism clearly had a further influence on later culture, in particular, the advent and stylisation of advertising in the 20th century.  We shall explore the theme of advertising later, but modernism's influence, through the exploration of new ways of achieving representation, its emphasis on clarity, clearness, and elegance on this essential part of our current culture in 21st century, can all be traced back to the almost epiphanic moments in late 19th century art.  What is interesting however, is that Modernism itself evolved from a culture that was entirely opposite, almost a chaotic situation, fed by war, revolution and extreme civil unrest.

Why is Modernism so versatile and able to manifest itself during this almost chaotic background?...  We will centre on Kant's innovation in that moment of history which took the form of four categories...   Those of  Noumenal, Phenomenal, Beautiful and the Sublime.

 Noumenal is the category used to represent the physical things that we know exist, but we cannot see.  Phenomenal is the perception or experience of the world that we see around us.  The beautiful being what we see and finally, the sublime being the world that we neither see nor touch, but which we think of (or in particular, dream of).

The Phenomenal perception is almost structured on the design convention of Kant.  He stated that we (humans) all perceive things in the same way.  This is  the geometry and mathematical rules of what we imagine as reality.  It is sometimes considered as the notion of the lens framing and structuring what we see as the real.  It is the interplay of our ideas with some mathematical blueprint or formula that kes our brain think of it as being real.

Along side that of the four categories that Kant had defined, he started a deeper look (in around 1790) in to the notion of ''creativity''. He tries to suggest that the stable views that Philosophers had been abiding by for years, based on 'experiences' start to change.

What Kant says is that the idea of Beauty changes.  -  When there is something appealing in an aesthetic object, he argues that it reflects our individual notion of our human system or pre-defined blueprint (he calls it a schema) of what is beautiful in the world.  It is beautiful because it models our perception of what is beautiful.  i.e. 'correct'....  This pre-defined schema is actually based on what we have learned.  It is not something that exists in our brain on its own...  It is a summation of what our parents, our grand-parents, our cultures and previous cultures have learned and influenced through each generation.

In Contemporary Art we move forward from beauty, into the area of the sublime.  The feeling (or inability) to capture something, like the sense of infinity of space, or at the opposite, the sense of the sub-atomic level.  So, in the sublime encounter or zone, onsider the enormousness of a cathedral perhaps, or the continuous reference of me of the minute details, but not the enormity of it... eg the wooden pughes or the woodcut of the figurines on them, or even the wood splinters which make up the seating.

Identity, Isolation and Permenance...

Simple Conceptual drawing in HB pencil

The notion of using Dunstanburgh as a backdrop to illustrate the concept of identity and isolation, together with the expectation of the sea to wash away any temporarily rendered images of faces I intended to paint onto the large spherical boulders found there (I shall refer to these as beech boulders, to distinguish them from any other stones or pebbles of this region), provides a wonderful allegorical metaphor of the ephemeral nature of identity.  - Not just in terms of the short timescales of the tide washing away the identity of the faces through the sea regularly rising and falling twice every 24 hours, but also on the longer term view of identity, with the ever-present reminder of the ruins of Dunstanburgh behind the works, reminding us that over the last 1000 years the castle's original identity has been worn away stone by stone, either by human interference (i.e. removing the dressed ashlars and stones to build alternative structures or even other edifices with their own iconic identity, possibly, such as Lord Armstrong's rebuilding of Bamburgh Castle a short drive up the coast).  This concept, interestingly, was underlined by a lecture from Spencer Roberts which ostensibly discussed or place to view the universe, from the macro level to the micro level, - from the infinitely sub-atomic size to the infinitely huge scale of the universe and beyond.  Both are encapsulated in identity which is in constant play with time itself.

Close-up Conceptual drawing, 2B Graphite Pencil & Water

This sense of timescale and it's effects on identity is then brought into another context, of identity being a transient state, via the possible proposed work at Dunstanburgh, through the actual beech boulders' own physical identity, altering over the millennium through the erosion of friction by the gentle rubbing against each other and the effects of the wind, sea and rain.

This in itself is not dissimilar to our own encapsulated story of existence, that being completely transient, and our identity being 'weathered' and worn through our short lifetime on this earth.  This is an elegant image of our existence in relation to nature, time and space.

Looking at Isolation within a context of Identity...

My sheep and cows sketches got me thinking about the fact that as individuals, our identity is quite meaningless and lost when in a crowd of people.  I thought of an image I had started to sketch (and barely captured) some time ago, while stuck on a train during a long commute to London.  I was caught by the anonymity of the people, the fellow commuters, all standing in a silent row.  Their individual identity was unimportant, it was just a fleeting image of humans all burdened with the toils of labour, starting yet another day.  It was this collective identity that I wanted to hold on to.

Anonymous Intersections
[Quick Pencil Sketch inspired by Exploratory Drawing sessions]

I started to explore the concept of this ephemeral view of identity, and the thought of the isolation I felt whilst commuting in earlier times.

One of my passions is to find alternative places of isolation too, and I recalled the image of isolation that I find during my regular trips to Northumberland.  A favoured place is the beach near Embleton and the dramatic view of Dunstanborough Castle, an 'iconic' old ruin of an excellent example of early coastal fortress built during the conversion of the indiginous British population to Christianity through St Cuthbert and St Aiden.  It must have been buzzing at that time but is all but deserted (except for few tourists) in the present day.    This image appears many times in our psychy, and I even spotted it recently superimposed into a BBC children's TV show...

[Photo Image of Dunstanburgh Castle from Embleton Beech]

Simple HB Pencil - Illustrative / Concept Drawing

The thought of isolation together with the very roundly formed boulders found at the Castle end on this beach, lead me to speculate about a possible piece of work that could represent both the qualities of identity and isolation... At low tide, simply by painting a water based human face (with it's own identity) on some of these rocks, then allowing the tide to wash it away, would make a good allegory / metaphor for our own every day images of people that we see come and go, ebb and flo....

New ways of looking for inspiration

Another quote I recently stumbled upon, in a number of the research books is also a great affirmation for an Art Student...

                  Dies non transeat sine linea,     or,     nulla dies sine linea

Which roughly translates to

                                "never a day without a line...."

(Whereas the latin word 'linea' can mean both drawing and writing)

So...  I put my books away, watched and listened to an inspiring lecture from Professor Ryan Gander today, who uses many types of media to explore and create his work.  He is interested in the unseen things sometimes taken for granted in our every day lives.... the triggers and links through language that link to new thoughts for identities, IDs - pictures - drawings... you get the picture? (heh heh)

His works since 2003 have been prefixed with the title of Loose Associations"... so, as 2013 is his 10th year, this he calls LAX... Which happens to be the abbreiviation for Los Angeles International Airport in California.  and so another thread of associations develops...

It seems that a lot of Ryan's work has been influenced by the thinking of a 20th Century American sociologist / psychologist, Erving Goffman, and his books such as "The Backstage Language of Behaviour" published in 1959.  In fact, this book was cited in Ryan Ganders' lecture on 3rd October.

Further reading of some of Goffman's work helped me to explore the ideas and notions of identity in human behavior from an alternative perspective too, which Professor Gander also exploits to the full.  Goffman's work was inherently linked to human identity, another good reference would be "The Presenting of Self in Everyday Life".  A helicopter view of this provides a reference that his work emphasised the use of symbols in the performance of their social roles. i.e. Paraphrased very simply, this is "How people 'appear' to others."   Geoffman talks of a repertoire of symbols that actors develop to manage their social identities and to defend themselves from unwanted scrutiny or negative views and appraisals from others...  This sometimes leads them to act in a similar way to each other, hence establishing a common "stigma" or collective identity.

In this sense, I pursued my observations of groups of people together, which is most evident in larger assemblies of people, such as the environment I am in now... the university.  For fear of lots of controversy, I'm rather guarded about my next statement, however, I think it's very pertinent...

(Quick Water-colour Pencil Sketch)

Many people seem, particularly in a western culture, to be preoccupied with their self image.  They try to be unique for uniqueness sake... To be individual.  However, the symbols and signs used to create this seemingly individual identity generally all come from the same sources, based on whatever the current vogue or fashion might be...  This is sometimes described as the herding instinct, which I make (to me as obvious) link to herds of sheep, all trying to be different, yet ostensibly remain the same. With that in mind I made a number of thumbnail sketches of sheep wearing bling jewellery / baseball bats / driving new Range Rover Sports cars / Wearing Ralph Loren or Polo or Boss / having Tattoos and body piercings etc.   So it's almost like a rather limited vocabulary, just repeating the same symbols (or words) in a different way... A bit like the famous Eric Morcambe (TV Comedian of the 1970s & 80s) quote regarding Ernie Wise - his comedy partner's horrendous Piano playing; to a famous concert pianist (Andrte Previn)...  He said, "All the right notes are there, they are just coming out in the wrong order"... I feel that this is sometimes how it appears in our current culture.

[Sketch drawn in Manga Studio V4 - EX]

It is all basically (in my opinion) down to the fact that we are still just higher order primates! (I'm saying this, only slightly with tongue in cheek...:-) )

 We just want to belong to the group...  We want to belong to our tribe... - Just like 10s of thousands of years ago when we (as Homo Erectus, then as Homo Sapiens...) were moving from the jungles to the plains.

We as humans don't want to be left out. We need to be part of a group.  We get our primal needs of safety through this feeling of belonging to a group, but it seems very few people will accept that it is because of 'in-security'  - that may be one of the strongest motivators!...

So, as an experiment, just suppose, from an "Identity" point of view, what would a sheep or any other animal say about humans?

I wondered...

Project 1: Identity & Narrative. - Week 2 - Getting down to work.

Week 2 (w/c 30/09/2013)   Identity and Narrative.

Testing and playing with ideas about 'Identity' and how to create visual representations offered me a huge range of subjects to consider last week week.   I am beginning to move away from the set example of exploring this concept through super heroes though.

Exploring the theme again from scratch gave me the opportunity to re-set a personal mind map.  This will help me to identify and recognise a number of subset groups which again can be represented visually.

In psychology and sociology, identity is a person's conception and expression of their individuality or group affiliations. The concept is given a great deal of attention in social psychology and is also important in place identity.  We explored the relationship initially from a people centric view, but clearly, identity can be applied to any object, collection, city, plant, animal etc...

Meanwhile, with reference to my own journey of discovery,  after reading a quote from the book, Shock of the New, by Robert Hughes, (which was paraphrased from Tannhauser in 1860...)

      "Je Raisons de m'informer du pourquoi, et de transformer ma valupte en connaissance!"

      = I set out to discover the why of it, and transform my pleasure into knowledge!"

It seemed a fitting quote or affirmation, to help me in this journey to gain a better understanding of Contemporary Art in general...

.... Anyway, back to the plot!

To research the visualisation of identity, I thought that a simple review of the early 20th century artists would help to start some creativity.   So I make no apology for the brief free lesson in art history, over the last few hundred years....

I was initially caught by a simple statement that I found, - that prior to the Renaissance, almost all representations of people, objects and landscape scenes were "flat" and without perspective.  I simply hadn't realised this until now.  Recalling my limited memory of historically ancient images, such as cave paintings, Egyptian reliefs, and the religious iconography of the early progress of Christianity, it seemed an obvious observation, - all the images were indeed 'flat'.

However since the renaissance, almost all new paintings obeyed a wonderful new convention, that of having one point of perspective.  This was a geometrically new system, for depicting the illusion of reality. (Which is based on the notion of things that appear smaller, the further away from the eye it is).  This radical new convention was probably received with awe and amazement for the next few hundred years, however there was little challenge to this convention.  That is, until Paul Cezzanne started to question the concept that the "looker" affects the sight and that sight is affected by the memory of what the brain already knows, based on what has been seen before...

However, before I move away from the renaissance, perspective is a form of abstraction, and so it obeys it's own rules, to simplify the relationship between eye, brain and object.  This relies on a 'static' viewer or observer, and hence a stabilised or ideal field of view.  But this view is a separate single image of what light falls onto the retina of the eye, whearas the brain is free to indulge in separate contemplation....  An identity therefore, is merely a perception.

How we record the image in our mind, therefore constitutes an identity.

I was amazed that some of the most famous artists in history were able to capture an identity so immediately and so readily, and without the advent of photography, the ability to complete extremely quick paint sketches (i.e. contemporaneously) was vitally important for their craft.  We nowadays take for granted the camera and it's ability to freeze a moment in time that can be shared around the globe in an instant.

Since the establishment of the convention during the Renaissance, the method of capturing an image through the use of painting with perspective remained unchanged.  What the eye saw was translated through the artist's skill into as close to perfect a rendering of the subject before them, or in the case of a religious commission, the artist usually required models to pose for them with all the appropriate theatre and decoration.

During the 1800s, Artists continued to record generally what they saw.... We of course have the history of Constable and Turner as wonderful landscape painters, (plus too many others to name as portrait and landscape painters here).  At this time though, art was beginning to come into the reach of more ordinary people.


No longer did the heads of religious orders, nor extremely wealthy, nor the nobility have exclusive rights to own or commission new pieces of art.

With this slowly increasing availability of art, came a greater sense of commercialisation too.  Art was being compared.  Art was being valued (based on traditional institutionalised values of clarity, beauty, elegance, and of course skill). Art was being bought and sold, - particularly in the Paris Salons, which were the centres of congregation of the wealthy and 'trendy' from France and the rest of Europe.

These grand old institutions where all about conventions and rules and "how things should be".... This general stifling by the academias, salons and institutions of creativity must have been hard to deal with, especially during a time of huge social change, the industrial revolution, and the start of a cultural revolution (where Art, as that observer of such, was intrinsically intertwined. -  I wonder if I had lived during that time, I may have wanted to rebel?...  ).  The world was (especially in Europe) in a state of some turmoil, with regular national upheavals, wars and the Franco-Prussian war provides punctuation to that period.

These various factors may also be some of the reasons why the Impressionist movement of around the 1860s to 70s emerged. This group of artists wanted to record everything going on around them, all of what they witnessed in the new bright world, and in a new and colourful way.  Nevertheless, even the impressionists were continuing to create art, based generally on what they saw....  It was the representation of styles, colours and recording the images that was different and new.  (The title of the movement, "Impressionists" was not actually created by any member of it. It was in fact a label given to the artists, thrust on to them by an arty newspaper reporter & critic of 1874 who was negative and antagonistic to their work).

One of these newly inspired Impressionists, Paul Cezzanne, slightly outside on the fringes of the core Impressionist movement of Pissaro, Monet and Renoir, is generally recognised as the one who challenged the fundamental and stable conventions set in the time of the renaissance, (which was mainly that of perspective and painting a scene for the purpose of the viewer to gain recognition through copy and representation of the subject).  Cezzane changed his style to capture the viewer's actual participation in making perspective and perception of space through the critical use of colours and particular types of brush strokes to create the illusion of texture and shadows and hence space too as a viewer perceives the painting in itself.

What Cezzane did that was so radical, was to shift away from simply copying the images that he saw. At a time through the 1880s, Cezzane had experienced a number of personal blows, his father had died,  and having had only little success as an artist he became quite isolated working as a virtual recluse to his vocation, despite being significantly influenced by impressionists earlier in his career.

During this period of isolation though, he was able to develop and progress his own unique style.  He captured various studies of a scene that clearly he identified with, and inspired him during each of the passing seasons, and even at different times of the day.  The scene was of Mont Sainte-Victoire and his painting style was altered in order to portray the "mood" of an image, as well as the record of the image in itself.

Cezzanne was almost obsessed with this mountain it seems, as, over the course of the next 10 years or so, he painted it again and again.

This notion of looking at objects in a different way, that Cezzanne established, communicated and socialised with his peers, influenced further work through the later artists and the establishment of the Cubist Movement, Pablo Piccasso and George Braque.  These guys experimented in different ways of seeing, i.e. " to represent the fact that our knowledge of an object is made from all possible views of it; Top, sides, front and back."  They wanted to represent an image of their knowledge of an object by compressing it into one single view...

This, concept, surprisingly, was aided by "borrowing" an ancient and possibly primitive style of representation used in African Art, and in particular, the woodcarvings made, such as the Mahongwe Masks from the Gabon region.

Looking at the African mask in the lower section of this photograph shows the similarities quite clearly.

However, the new way of looking at things did not stop there... By breaking down images to the minimal construction of squares, triangles and circles, any image can be rendered.  Piccasso and the Cubist movement also explored this in a three dimensional recreation through the use of corresponding cubes & cylinders, cones and spheres...

  Piccaso's iconic paintings which virtually kick started the 20th Century took the way of looking at scenes to a whole new level!

I hope this provides a very condensed introduction to the 20th century emergence of why the traditional or classical conventions of art has been challenged by contemporary artists ever since.

The style of creating identities in very new and dynamic ways continues to this day.  The example of a preparatory study "study for narnia" by Euan Uglow in 1999 demonstrates how identity plays a massively important role in contemporary Art.


ROLL ON TO WEEK 3!!!

Early steps - Thinking & planning about The New Journey

Week 1 w/c 23/09/2013 - Induction week to Huddersfield University

Well Here I am!...  My first week of a new direction.  After 30 plus years of working in IT management, production and services companies, I'm embarking on a completely new journey.

(Someone did say that the age 50 is the new 20)...

... So now I have to prove that, by a return to University (Actually, it's my first time at University, my HNC in Electrical & Electronic engineering and computing was completed 30 years ago, through a day release Technical College and an apprenticeship programme).

Well... The first week of Uni life went better than expected, even though I'm in a large group of around 45 students, some studying Contemporary Art, some studying Illustration, and some like me, studying both. All this, with the next oldest person being 25, - half my age!... Thankfully, with such a large number of eager peers, for our initial project we split our class into smaller groups of 5 or six students per team.  We were posited with a couple of questions...  It's interesting to ask yourself these questions too...

'What makes for "interesting" Illustrations or Contemporary Art'?

& 'What are your "values" when it comes to Art & Design?'

From that simple combined question we explored the two strands of Interest and Values, and then developed, through choosing to create a three dimensional style mind map, the two central themes formed by  “Interest” (which we felt was an open subject for the general discussion of everyone), we compared it with the “Values” theme, (which was considered to be a personal or individual choice type zone).

Having discussed the features of each theme, the mind map soon got populated with key words based on attributes that were connected to each theme. We then realized between us that some attributes or features were either 'connectable', or 'related' or 'opposing' from one another. In order to highlight these we used a colour coding system to try to connect the attributes. There seemed to be a weakness to linking everything - or - nothing, as the attributes can change depending on the audience, or culture or society etc. It was at this point that we considered a “cloud” type symbol which could be an attribute that can 'influence' any of the other attributes. I discussed with the team the thought of the concept of these clouds being Viruses as they could move throughout the three dimensional model...

A Simple 3 Dimensional Mind Map of What makes Art Interesting 

Interestingly, when our morning work was reviewed and discussed amongst the course lecturers, Senior lecturer Dr Jill Townsley even identified the cloud items on our mind map and came up independently, with the description of these clouds “Like a Virus” - which I'm glad to say, clearly suggested that the diagram was providing it's own message for interpretation, which converged perfectly with our own thinking too. This gave our team a great feeling of accomplishment for our first actual group exercise.


Continuing on with the Identities theme,  an exercise developed which would help to formulate our visions of the attributes to which we had identified. The exercise was


“ To pick key words (or a Key Word) and embody it within a genre of Superhero, and then to create a visual image to portray this character”.


The group spent some time discussing how we could create caricatures of the key words, such as “Simplicity Man”, Provocation Man, Point of View Man, Steadfastness (Lord Steadfastness), Purpose Man, Philosophy Man, Satire Man (Satyre-Man based on the Greek Satyre or Pan like creature), and later Originality Man. These images were generally drawn up and various caricatures evaluated. We came up with a general theme of a Pantheon of caricatures who are steeped in the midst of time and spawned from one another... (The group didn't like the word spawn for some reason, but for my own explanation I have included it here in my personal notes).

In order to help us share our visualisations we created some profile attributes and be-attitudes to describe the characters. The first items we tackled were Simple Man and Provocation Man, but I've put a narrative down in no particular order.... (See the following pages).

Simple Man

Simple Man was discussed as someone who is “intellectually challenged”, a bloke who wore his underpants on his head, not outside his costume, and rather scruffy and crude. Joe drew some great images of him, which seemed to be influenced by the view of a real person. However, this idea developed into a more elegant representation of simpleness, and we finally chose to portray Simple Man as a “stick” man. He's not got any special powers, but because he is simple, he can stand sideways so no-one can hit him. He doesn't know why he's a Super Hero, his real name is Dave. We talked through some of his likely escapades with Provocation man and others and how he might fight crime, or not at all, because after-all he is just Simple. Scott had an image of Provocation man trying to punch him in the face, but he couldn't hit him as his face is just a circle.


Point of View Man;
He is obsessed with getting everyone's point of view out and sharing it. He doesn't have any legs as he doesn't stand for anything. It also means that he can slide about and be everywhere... He is
omnipresent. He has no opinion, so he cannot make any decisions.

[OS came up with a great story] - The POV Man started off as just a simple child who visited an art gallery and exhibition with his parents. He was young and Naive and told his parents that he felt one of the exhibits was just crap and Sh£ite, which was very rude. Unfortunately for that little boy, the evil artist “Damianus Hirsticus” heard this, and put a curse on him, that he would never be able to miss a point of view in his life ever again and would be banished to the ephemeral world to seek all the PoVs forever...
The POV man's special power is that he can do a sort of “Vulcan Mind Meld”¹ , through his special eye, but he can both take others' PoVs and feed those views to everyone else too. The POV man also holds all of our historical views in his infinite storage inside (he has no organs or orifices as he feeds on views only), - his inner self (stomach) is a swirling mass of “stuff” like the Mathmus² . Whilst the original concept of Mathmus is a seething mass of the essence of evil, inside the POV man, its nothing.. (As in, 'Nothing is either good nor bad, but thinking makes it so'. (see Shakespere, Hamlet, Act 3 for that quote!)).

Side note;  As a further reference to this kind of omnipresent and omniscient Point of View kind of thinking way about art, I found a piece of narrative that seemed to be apt,  during recent reading³; a passage by Dziga Vertov, the Soviet Film Writer, in 1923 when he was a describing the power of the new Movie Camera” over the old static image of individual photographs taken with a static single frame camera (which were also relatively new at the time);  

He wrote about the completely new found freedom with which you have with a movie camera. Remember, prior to the end of the turn of the new 20th century, almost all art was produced to show the viewer a single image - as created by the artist (who would have generally been commentating on current affairs or cultural stereotypes).  Art was therefore usually posed for (if portraiture), or idealised by the artist to capture a "near perfect" rendition of a landscape, scene or other object; art was therefore generally expensive to both own and commission.

During the dramatic murmurings and startling changes of the Soviet revolution, through the 1910s-20s Dziga Vertov was being stimulated and fascinated by the huge developments in technology, and he often linked images of it by juxtaposing the old order (for example the horse and cart), with  the new order (e.g. an electric tram)...  His work was the first to show to the world this completely new form of communication, i.e. through the movie camera;

Of it, he wrote;

“I am a mechanical eye. I the machine, show you a world the way only I can see it. I free myself for today and forever from human immobility. I am in constant movement. I approach and pull away from objects. I creep under them. I move alongside a running horses mouth. I fall and rise with the falling and rising bodies. This is I, the machine, maneuvering in the chaotic movements, recording one movement after another in the most complex combinations. Freed from the boundaries of time and space, I coordinate any and all points of the universe, wherever I want them to be. My way leads towards the creation of a fresh perception of the world. Thus I explain in a new way the world unknown to you.”

This new way of communicating was received with amazement at the time, although now only some 100 years later, we take it for granted.  Incidentally, as Vertov was also commenting on Revolution at the time, it is worth noting that his name actually translates to "Spinning Top"... (or so I have been reliably informed)...

Back to the plot again...
Later as a result of some more drawings completed overnight, some of these images are with a Tolkien-esk type of image based on our peer student, Orestis S's preferred drawing style, such as follows;

Steadfastness;
- (originally I had conceived a pole type stick figure, unable to sway in the wind, but it lacked much character depth for the rest of the group), So, based on Orestis's idea, we agreed on the Tolkien-esk character “Lord Steadfast”

“Lord Steadfast”;
He is the son of King Bileaf ( a play on spelling... who in turn who was son of Lady Twist and Lord View born some aeons before). Lord Steadfast is a very proud dwarf (as all dwarfs are proud). He is stubborn, narrow minded, generally only has one point of view on any subject, he feels he is always right (He IS a Lord after-all). He has one purpose, to smash through the opposition. He is rooted in his own traditions and old history, A mystical, almost mythological character, totally commanding with a voice like the sound of walking on gravel. His special power is that he cannot be moved.

Satyre Man;
He is a Pan like creature, based on the Greek character Satyre... (He is also connected to Dionysus, the Greek god of Fun, Humour and Amusement). Satyre chooses other people to poke fun at, and he is always laughing at his best friend, Provoking Man (described below)... Highly strung and energetic, he is almost maniacle in never taking anything seriously. His bed mate is “Ridicule” (sister of Provoking Man) - who is offspring of the demi-god Greystone Perricule).

Provoking Man

He doesn't give a stuff about anything or anyone! He hates those deep thinking traditionalists who can't change their views, but then he doesn't give a stuff about them either. He just wants them to think differently from his point of view. It sometimes feels like he is trying to piss people off, but he doesn't care, because he is the son of Damianus Hirsticus and Greystone Perricule.
However, he has a softer side that we as mere observers hardly ever see. The importance of his extended middle finger is significant, as it is a tool, not only to poke people with and be abusive, but it can also be used to stimulate and arouse. The extended finger has a double meaning. It can also be used to beckon, to draw people in; or to tickle under the chin or arm pit to make you laugh, or even as a sexual tool to stimulate an erogenous zone! So this is where his older friend Satyre Man are linked through a common rapport.

Originality Man
He's quite a lonely character, but does work together with POV Man, who is very important to him, because through POV Man, he can connect to any other artist to not only understand if the artist's thoughts are pure, but also so that he can then connect through POV man to check with every other view so that it is not a simple copy obtained dishonestly. This then allows Originality Man to authenticate the work as an original thought, even if someone else has already had the same thought or point of view. So, as a Superhero, he allows convergence, and spends his time authenticating original thought even though there may be many sources of similarly developed ideas.

[ The image of Originality Man came to mind as a kind of Desk Clerk type caricature, and a subliminal image came in my head who was of a maniacal guy with wire hair and glasses, not unlike perhaps a young Einstein sitting behind a desk full of papers with a rubber “APPROVED” or ACCEPTABLE” stamp in his hand. It was only later after I had drawn this that I realized the character was in fact probably influenced by Einstein’s own image, particularly with a connection as I knew that Einstein himself had originally worked as a Patent's Clerk in Sweden, so this is sort of linked!]....


Now here's the interesting thing...

None of these identities are real.    They are completely make believe.  We counjoured them up out of thin air.  Harsher words may define them as complete lies, which technically, they are.

However, as we have drawn them, recorded them and painted them, as well as providing a general description of them, the caricatures and identities transcend into something (or some-things) that are almost tangible.  We move just that little bit closer as human beings, to believing that they really exist in some form.

That is the power of images.  It takes us to the next step in believing in something.  This was the crucial message that I also found in Dziga Vertov's films.  This key ability to influence an audience forms the backbone to much of what we know.... or "believe" in our current culture.  Ancient paintings of cavemen on cave walls were no different when they were produced.  Likewise, the paintings of the Holy and other iconography prior to the Renaissance had just the same effect on the people.  They saw, and so they believed.

1 Reference Star Trek TV Series – Gene Rodenbury , and the First Lieutenant Spock Character)

2 Reference Barbarella from 1968 French-Italian science fiction cult film staring. Jane Fonda, based on Jean-Claude Forest's French Barbarella comics–

3 (from the book “Ways of Seeing” by John Berger, BBC & Penguin Books 1972 ISBN978-0-141-03579-6);

Week 2, here I come!....

Experimental Drawing

This is a sub-studio practice & lecture that provides an opportunity to experiment with Art, and drawing in particular.

I will endeavor to provide additions to this section to help me store some of the lessons learned from Experimental Drawing, together with providing a repository for some of the work in progress or finished work from my studies.

25-09-13  Our first excursion into the field of experimental drawing allowed us to experience the feelings of open, yet contained space.  This space could in theory be located anywhere.  In practice however, if I was to stand in a field, (i.e. an open space), I would still be within some sort of boundary, such as a wall, a fence or just my field of view.  There are also other boundaries to consider, such as where a particular type of grass grows, where it stops, where there are trees, or even notional human boundaries, such as what parish I may be in or county or property or so on.

For this exercise however, we used an old gymnasium / campus sports hall, which conveniently was in-doors and sheltered us from the rain!...  There were a myriad of boundaries to explore there. We were encouraged to look at lines and intersections, to create them, to reflect them, emphasise them, to reduce them; generally to interact with them in anyway and to  use our imagination to create something to help us interact with the boundaries that we saw.

We developed this by splitting into groups of 5 or 6 people.

I was immediately struck by a net within the sports hall, that contained a number of large exercise balls.


 The facts that the boundaries of the netting contained the balls together; not only to prevent them from falling onto the floor, but also for convenience of storage, was left behind. I was particularly interested in the lines and intersections of the netting and it's contrast with the perfectly round and spherical shapes contained within the netting, making the squareness of the netting, and it's intersections, contort, grow and shrink correspondingly to accomodate the objects.

 Thankfully, the group I belonged to, agreed that this would be a good subject for us to explore in our experiment.  We therefore re-created, not as a mirror image, but as a similarly sized representation of the image as a two dimensional rendering... Out of masking tape, stuck against the opposing wooden wall of the hall.

  

 


We then used some additional time to create a more three dimensional representation of it by extending certain features of the lines

09/10/2013 Continuing the exploration of spaces, we were encouraged in this session to consider how we can try to capture the feelings of space, within the boundaries and intersections that we impose on our views.



I was drawn again to the view I had in medium distance of the exercise balls contained within the netting in the sports hall.  I therefore captured a sketched image of a very narrow field of view, confined in the horizontal plane and elongated in the vertical.




23/10/2013 - Exploring how we consider primary sources and secondary sources, we looked at how we could dilineate and signify the Similacrum / Similarcra (worlds within worlds) and the relationships to post modern art.

Rather predictably, my attention was yet again drawn to the mid-distance view of the netted exercise balls.  This time however, I represented space and boundaries through a kind of twisted diptych. (I just love that description!)...

It was whilst I was drawing the general shape of the exercise balls that I begun a conversation with my tutor, Bob. It was a perfect moment for him to help me think differently about what I was doing and as a result, with his wise guidance, I virtually had an epiphany moment...  I realised that what I was doing was drawing and creating the mental boundaries that form the skeleton of all sketches.  We usually use an initial framework or guide to our drawings and then build on them.  In this case, had I not had that epiphany moment, I would have just simply continued with my drawing and would have eventually rendered another recreation of the spheres in the net.








However, what I did was to separate the boundaries of the net by omitting it all together from the sketch.  The next piece was to re-create an image of just the net (the boundaries with all it's intersecting lines) on it's own.  Wow this was difficult!...  Without the form of the spheres as a reference to guide me, I had to just use the lines of the netting alone to recreate the sensation that we were looking at some object contained inside it's boundaries. This reproduction I found very challenging indeed.  I had almost by accident come across a really good and hard exercise to help me practice my sketches and rendering.  I shall use this technique again and again, as it strips away the traditional way of defining a drawing and makes the whole experience of drawing much more challenging.   I'm sure that a seasoned practitioner may find the exercise relatively easy, but for myself, I really enjoyed the session and found it extremely stimulating.

So, the real exercise here was to produce a new image from an existing copy of an image, which is a Simulacrum (Plural is "simularcra").  In the two images drawn today, it would be impossible for the balls to either float in mid-air, nor would a highly flexible net be retained with a shape of the absence of the balls.  Both drawings are therefore simulacra.

20/11/2013.  Interestingly, the latest project for the group is the study of Liminal space...  Unknowingly at the time, I had drawn liminal space in the representation of the expanded netting and accompanying shadows.  This is by happy coincidence, a perfect example of liminal space.

Meanwhile, the sketching carried out today was forcing us to tackle liminality by studying the space and shadows created by an object placed into a beam of light (in our case, we used a projector, which interestingly displayed the makers brand name and an operational message, and the objects were gymnasium exercise balls).  The diffusion of light, together with the lettering and existing background court lines in the gym, provided engaging and ephemeral light and dark shadow space, which undoubtedly illustrated liminality.