This is the end of the unfired stage of Enshrinement. Unfortunately, the work will not be fired in time for July, but I have made a miniature model of it and I can still use the unfired pieces to reference the work in video format.
The images below show the opening being made for the insertion of audio equipment. This will now not be possible for the show but the opening, a small thing in itself, gives me ideas for future works. The portal-like structure makes me think of the original idea I had for Shrine.
I find it interesting how as the deadline approaches, small things resonate and acquire particular significances.
This morning, under the ever-present auspices of the linden tree, I completed the restoration of over two hundred posts plus the remaking of the entire blog which was lost on 15 February. All I had to work from was an XML file (just a very long list of HTML) and the images. It has been a long task, but I am pleased to have completed it by around the time I had hoped to.
I feel this is a moment of release when I can now concentrate fully on the completion of the MA and curation of the blog. The process has given me a deep insight into what I had done up to and until the Low Residency, and a clearer understanding of the development of my skills, thoughts and methodology during this period.
I am tidying the studio for another phase of work and these three little lumps keep coming up on the work surface. Funny how the development of Logos started from such a small and unformed beginning. Only a few centimetres across, I think of it as the equivalent of making a sketch on a napkin. However, at the time I rejected this attempt as clumsy, unclear and inadequate. What it did, though, was to set my mind working on the problems and solutions that presented themselves when translating a projection in the mind to physical reality.
Soon after the start of the MA, I began writing about ritual; how the notion of it would be embedded in the work. But these notions lay outside the process of making.
The process of preparing for the show, now online, has made me reflect on this in a different way. The act of keeping a journal and thinking of the online show as referencing physical work and these references becoming work in themselves, I now see how the process is the ritual. The theme itself is no longer the ritual, it is the thematic context. The process has become the ritual as I embed ideas, thoughts and feelings in a repetitive set of actions that accumulate and accrete into final works over time. The final works become reifications of ritual in the context of a theme. The works have become way-markers in the development of a philosophy.
Things are moving quickly with planning the virtual show. I sent Aristotle sketches, and as I did so it seemed to be that the work was being suffocated with the idea of placing it in a circumscribed virtual environment. This is the sort of thing I might do when preparing a site-specific proposal for a physical show.
Often, circumstances dictate that I keep preparations for a show as fluid as possible. That fluidity can be an important part of the curatorial process. The online environment is not the same as a physical one. To fix things is to diminish their potential in what could otherwise be an unbounded conceptual space, perhaps analogous to the mind’s eye.
I have been concerned that the work would be ‘coloured’ by fixing it in the virtual context built around it, and to an extent a priori when it need not be so. As I am referencing the work rather than representing it as it is, I feel more comfortable not ‘contaminating’ the viewer’s interpretation by something as non-existent as a non-existent scenario. As far as possible, I want the context to be coming from the work itself and not a stylistic construct.
Aristotle reminded everyone in the forum that less can be more. This aphorism works both ways, for him and myself. The last two sketches – chalk and pencil – showed the works delineated by the confines of architectural boundaries. Despite this, I had the sense that the objects themselves were floating in space. ‘These boundaries need not be there’, I thought. The boundary of the screen is enough of a disruption of reality.
I want the viewer to feel that they are moving in a metaphor for three-dimensional space as they encounter the works; floating together with the objects, the direct spatial relationship between the viewer and the object being reinforced. To this end, I have thought of designing a ‘virtual gallery’ in which only the works exist in a relationship with the viewer: space, or rather the sense of it, created by the illusion of linear perspective alone.
The physical show at Camberwell would have offered the visitor something concrete and real. The virtual show is conceptually a very different experience that cannot replace the physical one. This is something I want to take as an opportunity rather than a trade-off, physical shows can come later, but this involves someone who can do this work.
There is also a practical dimension to this approach. I do not yet know what I will be showing. To fix the content of the show at this stage is to negate the fluidity of the process. It makes things simpler for Aristotle and a straight forward placing of objects in ‘space’, transformed according to a linear perspective, I believe will help make the dialogue much simpler and the process more responsive: I can give more consideration to the placement of each work in relation to others and the overall sequencing of ideas unconstrained by architectural concerns. This gives the online show a raison d’etre in itself, not just as a substitute for the loss of the physical one.
The various components for the small scale model are completed. The work has shifted from the ancestral vertical Oracle to is horizontal descendant. I know that the actual large scale work it is modelled on will not be finished before the summer. It does not have the incised words and was much much easier to make and assemble. The large scale work is going to be quite a beast to complete but I am nearing the time for tackling it as I complete other tasks.
Logos has fewer components than Oracle, and its coherence and simplicity is a function of the way it will work once completed. Oracle was an ensemble of disparate pieces that as such creates an interesting collection, However, assembled it would have presented a distinct incoherence and inbalance. Not an imbalance by choice, imparting a dynamic articulation of parts, but one where the consideration for each part takes precedence over the whole. I think the synthesis that has arisen in the form of Logos, the simplicity, is the result of over a year’s process of distilation and understanding.
Following my initial thumbnail sketches – see post – I decided to clarify the idea. First roughing out an idea in white chalk.
Chalk on black board
I then transferred the sketch to pencil on paper. The arrangement of images, videos and plinths (each carrying different views or videos of work on its facets) is at yet undecided as is the number of works. Clearly, I am going to have to be selective but I do hope that the idea of three separate yet connected ambiences is doable.
Pencil on paper
I then uploaded the pencil drawing onto the drive folder set up by Betty for everyone to input their ideas.
A few days ago arrived the green screen cloth, all 3 m2 of it. The piece is quite unwieldy and I shall have to build a frame for it. The resaon for such a long screen was to cover a wide field of view and ground area for filming and photography.
There a lots of tutorials on how to use green screen. In photoshop using the colour range filter is very simple and straight forward. However, the green screen does tend to distort colour in the image (see above) and this has to be accounted for. If shooting in RAW this can be done post production but it can also be done by adjusted the white balancen in-camera. As always, there is more than one way of achieving a result.
The above example is a very rough mockup. Lighting is all important to give a realistic collage matching the background with the object.
With respect to video, the process is not that different but I suspect it will take up a lot of memory. As I aim to shoot and post produce a number of short clips, this should not be a problem.
Finally, I have done the same sort of thing without a green screen before but this process is vastly faster and easier than anything I have done before. Additionally, it is clearly better for complex shapes and scenes in which I would want to isolate a number of objects.
The change from a physical to online show has altered a lot of things. How will the work be represented when it was conceived to be experienced in person? Do I give priority to expressing underlying ideas or representing the work as faithfully as possible? These are just two of the many questions that have arisen during the process of transition.
Alternative forms of showing can give rise to many solutions. I came across this one in Hyperallergic about a woman creating a Art Gallery for her pet lizard. It is both hilarious and pertinent to how I am thinking about the online show. I am working with the idea of making videos that reproduce how the work might appear in an imagined physical setting (see this post).
The tone it takes is one of complete seriousness showing what you can do with a cardboard box, some paint and a lizard for critic.
