ideas into form: reflections on a piano

                 

'Reflections on a piano' 2016, Installation view. 18x30cm Glass bell jar, paper.

                          

what is it to be british
we're a nation of the faithless. in a majority.
the tv is bombarding us with horrific examples of barbarity in the name of religion. This turn it's in Allahs name. but defending christian values seems to need an equally pious but unforgiving military defense. in our name. in our interests.


bristol feels like a city of churches at times. if you're down low, the spires in an otherwise relatively low level rise city, stick out. 
many have been turned into flats, or offices or places bought by those with money. the irony. the pews are empty but the walls remain.
I was thinking of the idea of keeping your head up/spirits up and how if you literally do that there's the physical reminder of britains faith in faith.
when being an atheist is as common and accepted as being a bearded hipster, i feel it's a shame these buildings are sold to the highest bidder, a shame of our past, or necessity given no-one goes in there in significant numbers.
st michaels church on st michaels hill is on the buildings at risk register.
i've walked past in many times, wheezing up from christmas steps or passing at a pace heading to the waterfront. i've always thought, what a waste of a space, of a refuge. 
mindfulness is a buzz word. making the equivalent of a morning constitutional to settle the mind, big business in self-help books and apps. as a gp at one stage I was referring over 100 people a month to CBT and cousenlling services. some people recognised they were stressed and anxious, others needed more gentle persuasion after a raft of tests eventually confirmed that they were burnt out, not dying of a mysterious illness that google stated otherwise.
bristol is a city of cycling. but i walk. i don't trust drivers (like myself) to overtake fully concentrating. i don't want to breathe in fumes and get to work looking like i've just come out of a sweat lodge. i walk. when i can. and i'm lucky, i've chosen and am able to live where the buildings shape my security and love of this city. arches, stonecarvings, warm bath stone, missing railways stolen for armory, old style lamposts that still glow a nostalgic orange that i remember keeping my awake through my curtains as a child. carrots. that's what i called the wedges of light that would appear after dark on the ceiling by the curtain track. they made me anxious. i was a poor sleeper. did i mention i was anxious. but it was never fed back to me like that. if i could just shut the light out i would be able to go to sleep. but i couldn't. now i can sleep with chinks of white but i need ear plugs instead. still anxious. but less so now. because i walk. because there's something mindful and calming about putting one foot in front of another. i don't want to run to relax. why would getting out of breath make me feel calmer? i've never got that. walking, co-ordination, breathing, avoiding people on their mobiles, not getting run over, 'oh look i never noticed how fucking beautiful those old telegraph wires look against a cobalt sky, oh yes, life's good' these are the actions and thoughts that calm me down.
so, back to the church, on one of my wanders that was needing to happen every day at a time, when frankly, no amount of blue skies and beautiful buildings, kind friends, money in the bank, health or humour could buoy me up i came across a sign. the all saints church at about 7 in the evening was open for prayer. i don't pray. i beg i whinge i don't pray. this weird building, with it's weird phallic spire and it's blackened windows like the filthy depressing outside of the BRI. It intrigued me in.
A bit like a cop car behind you, i've always had an irrational guilt going into a church. but i went in anyway. pushed against some heavy glass doors, more like going into a Gap than a church and it hit me. heavy dusty fragrance in the lungs. you can't rush through that. it's such a weirdly odd but familiar smell it stopped me in my tracks.
in front of you a square glass quadrant with dull concrete paving slabs in the middle. you can see across to a garden beyond.
left into the main body of the church.
no-one there.
i sneak in.
i take a seat.
polished modern seats. pews of any age are never comfy.
it was so much darker than outside. i looked up right and suddenly felt like i'd been dunked under water in the med. bright blue windows. i say bright, they weren't letting light in, but underneath them on the ground floor level more light let in through translucent white windows giving a celestial additional otherworldly feel to the place.
Then I heard it. Gin and tonic on ice. Water under a frozen lake. Crackling a plastic bag. There are lots of things it's sounds like. But it's got it's own rhythm, it's not disconcerting like some unpredictable sounds can be. It took me a while to realise the building makes noises. Like water running down the outside, but it was a dry night.
Later on after many visits, i realised it's the windows. not obviously glass, but they don't appear to move in time with the sounds either.
They're fibreglass and they contract and expand with different temperatures. I now know on a warm day it'll be more of a frenzied crackling when i sit down.
smell, sound colour and calm.
behind the altar a huge join of two unadorned intimidating walls join to form a corner. it looks like a huge upended blank book. Bathstone, warm pale beige yellow depending on the time of day.
the ceiling grey functional concrete with round cornered square hollows in it. repeating across a diagonal. these are designed to optimise the acoustics in a building i value for it's silence but one that is known for it's music.
one of the last times i wondered in, there was an extra noise above the crackling. snoring. likely to be James, a ruddy cheeked, warly volatile scot homeless veteran that will often come in to kip on a pew.


all saints
not the shop
but the building,
 is a church that was bombed in WW2 on pembroke road clifton

scratch and smoke

1. 

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

These are scanned A4 watercolour smoke drawings.
Starting point to my project.
Following summer work developing ideas and works for a residency at All Saints Church, Clifton.

THe use of incense in the church, spirtual connotations of transformation and the movement embodied in smoke and incense interested me.

Looking at these now and photos I took of the interior of the church I can see how these link in also to soot marks above the heaters in the church.

Traces of things no longer there.

I like the subtlety of the marks

Using the candle to paint like a brush was a technique that was initially tricky to master.
It had to be done outside. 
I soon learnt to use a face mask!
Tilting the paper at 45 degrees to the upright candle flame produced the right amount of carbon residue that would mark up the paper.

Marks like feather were produced by carefully moving the candle in brush stroke like manner against the paper.


The feathers seem the most obvious reference marks.

After a tutorial discussing these, it's become apparent, that they have a photographic type quality, I think the shape of the paper, aswell as the depth of the black references this.

THis isn't so surprising given I've always been drawn to black and white photos from the past, whether Ansel Adams and Sally Mann 
one a landscape photographer whose breadth of tones and scale amaze me, the other a contemporary photographer who usually uses human subjects as her focus.

Moving forwards I need to decide where to go with these.

My favourite piece remains no. 8, I love the depth and vertiginous sensation of this. I didn't recognise a possible suggestion of a face in the ring, which is entirely accidental. I'm not sure I like this as it detracts from the more stark abstract qualities to the piece.


numbers 1-3 were more like a graphic design and could see how they were referencing Emma McNally's large scale more intricate and intriguing works in graphite.

charcoal circle layers

layers of charcoal circles
made by twisting incense remnants
possible will do watercolour wash on top
not sure about the cross, too many references
aiming to have a circular paler area that glows in comparison to darker layers
makes a right mess, charcoal gets everywhere

Smoke circles

 

A4 smoke circles



 

close up on smoke on watercolour paper

The B's have it

                                                



B flat minor

slowed this down to 0.25secs
makes the whole tune even more frickin freaky and goosebumpy
trying to find a way to combine this with stop-motion footage of smoke and time-lapse of semi-opaque windows


time and time again,'le fil' by Camille keeps nagging at the back of my mind. One note plays through the whole album. A sustained B note.....


Play both of these together and I think I've had my herbal tea spiked with something a bit more hardcore than licorice.

Smoke circles and stars

charcoal works

 

incense charcoal 
rain
& watercolour

ordinary time circles

watercolour on incense charcoal

 

all saints abstract and blues

research photos taken for all saints residency summer 2015

murmuration

final cut of murmuration video

Project 3: work in progress

stills from Project 3

i think i've always been interested in shadows and subtle change in lights but these photos may have been something I would have taken in the past but they now more obviously reference the work of Uta Barth. She says the camera helped her see, it draws her attention to the visible elements around her. The process of taking a photo makes them more visible to her. 

My work involves a sense of what I'm intrigued and drawn to and the spontaneous capturing of that, instantly deciding with digital if I've captured what I want. The possibilities of instand images enable me to take a photo again. I rarely want to edit the photos apart from basic exposures or contrast, the composition doesn't get messed with as that's what has drawn my eye to start with. My eyes frame the world and the camera captures it, making real the way that I see things. It exists outside my mind then and no-one can question my experience or tell me again that it didn't really happen like that...

moving on, eclipses and timelinesindian

Indian ink, fixative spray marks on ECG paper

after the solar eclipse, thinking about cycles and spring and shrinking windows and biological clocks, wanted to do something with repetitive circles/cycles and using the photographic like burnt-on appearance of the black marks from the fiaxtive.

Stencil represents 1 year.

wanted to make more random circular marks,less precise and more spontaneous so used left-over hole punches and fixative

random marks highligted with drawingink, sepia tones working better and less harsh than black drawing ink used before

traces

ECG paper with fixative, acrylic and ink

after looking at various works the last few weeks certain elements have stuck in my mind

I've wanted to work with some drawings on ECG paper for a while.

It looks so innocuous and saccharine with it's pink hue at a distance.

Lots of my sketchbook doodles are repetitive scribbles often relapsing into heart trace like patterns that meander across the page.

After seeing some of Barbara Hepworths works on gesso covered board I wanted to re-visit a long held image of washing over the paper and using black ink on top.

Where most of my drawing work or printwork stalls is from not having a set image to work with in different mediums. Starting from using the stills from a shapwick heath trip, the bird formations seemed a good point to work from.

Whilst spraying the back of the paper with what I thought was spray mount, large darkened patches of bled blank ink appeared on the paper forming cloud like patterns.

These were like the monoprints I'd done the week before. I liked the watery/organic appearance and decided to work with these pieces instead of chucking them. The mistake seemed to provide as starting point I'd been lacking.

The first image seemed rather twee and tree-shaped so i set about outlining it with ink pen using the squares on the paper.

I've found it really useful on a wednesday morning to stick to drawing as it has helped me relax and stop ruminating about things happening at work, ironically incidents pop up whilst i'm making marks but they go again and it feels useful and therapeutic. Doing something different with paper that I've got ambivalent and negative associations with, a source of alarm or reasurance, is pretty darn useful aswell.

Obviously referencing's work, agnes martin's grids.

Evaluation: project1

Evaluation: Project 1




The aim was to produce upto 3 short videos of less than 5 minutes each using edited and altered footage of murmurations (flocks of starlings) taken at Shapwick Heath Somerset. A yearly winter phenomenon visible over the reed beds.

I was inspired by a video I had seen which showed the flock of birds forming unpredictable sculptural shapes as they settle before bed/at sunrise in order to fend of predators in the same way schools of fish form 'bait balls'. The footage was mesmerising.


The aim of the videos was to try different edits with or without sound, manipulating the footage where appropriate to elicit different moods that I associated with watching the birds in flight in-situ to produce 3 videos around the themes: anticipation/anxity, beauty and surrealness.

 I knew I wanted to concentrate on the shapes, movement and contrast of the birds against the sky. I was unsure about using audio.

The aim was to obtain enough usable footage that would not be too time consuming to view and edit. I used a digital SLR camera with a zoom and portable tripod. The footage was filmed over 2 separate dusks on locations in Shapwick heath in January. It was exceedingly cold, I had not filmed birds in flight before, the murmurations last only up to 20-30mins around sunset so timing and being responsive to the flocks was crucial.

 The most spontaneous part of the project was hoping that the tripod, film ISO and manual zoom setting would manage to capture some usable footage. In advance I knew I wasn't ideally looking to shoot traditional views of the murmurations in context, i.e , not with recognisable trees/clouds/colour graduations from the sunset.

The main obstacles to producing a final video were, my inexperience of editing and using imovie and my patience.

I used an instrumental video piece of music by a friend that had a variable pulsing rhythm and varying crescendos and pace to use as a skeleton to start putting video footage in order, practice editing using varying speeds and reversal of film footage. This enabled me to play with the options available. No usable audio was obtained from the original footage as there wasn’t a technical microphone available.

It soon clear how mindboggling the number of editing options would be. Without a narrative or storyboards (I was reliant on the footage I managed to get) I decided to concentrate on using the most visually pleasing footage. This was shots that I cropped to make sure only the birds movements were visible, nil horizon or landscape features. Short clips were used, this was down to creating a short piece but also due to the small amount of usable footage that wasn't blurred/camera shake.

My patience was limited due to usually being energised by chance results from spontaneous image making whether drawing/printing or photos. Once I reminded myself that the spontaneity/creative side had been influenced by my choice of location/viewpoint and filming then I felt less frustrated by the need to be so controlled and decisive about the final cut. After discussion with tutors, paring back the number of possible editing decisions meant that I could concentrate on just using exposure/saturation, speed, and desaturating the footage, to produce monochrome abstracted video showing initially unrecognisable moving forms that at some points are more obviously wing shapes.

The main hiccups were deciding transition speeds, I filmed short segments with lens cap on to produce usable black footage that I cut and pasted in between shots. Having not edited before I had to guess from viewing the footage, what length of breaks in between felt right and didn't detract or distract from the main footage.

Setting footage to music was constrained by accidentally shifting the music out of synch with footage I had 'lined up' with the changes in tempo and music and was a frustrating time consuming process that I felt wasn't moving my project forward, so I concentrated on an abstract piece.

I'm happy with the final footage that has lasts just over a minute and a half, comprising of 5 separate views of flocks at separate speeds and zoom. I felt I created a video that is a bit unnerving from it's initial shot that does not clearly reveal it's context. The speed and zoom of some of the shots can be disorientating but hypnotic. The lack of colour and landmarks adds to the abstract quality.

I don’t think that obtaining more footage to edit would have improved the final piece and would have made the whole process more time consuming and complex. I've learnt how to edit and more about the possibilities of using video, it feels limitless, requires patience, planning and clear idea of what the end video should look like. By keeping a video simple I think I got more interested in manipulating the visual effects with different types of projection/installation. Exploring this will be my next project.

projection stills

installation experiments

25/2/15 
ok, so i've done the starling video to death.
Now to try and work out the best way to project it.

• Initial trials in FdA room using wall, felt a bit like a power point presentation that had stalled and gone into screen saver mode.
• trials against moving blinds was more interesting and still visible, but again, the projector is there and cumbersome and keeps the viewer at a distance, still not sure that's what I'm after. The blind movements is causes even more motion sickness on some of the shots...
• liked the projection against a plain white A1 sheet bulldog clipped to an easel. Obvious more painterly references which go with the patterns and abstract parts of the video, again, the viewer blocks out the projection if they wanted to get up close to the paper
• next trial was onto tissue paper, the crinkly surface distracts and detracts from the projection
• Next try was using new projector: improved as can use USB stick so less cumbersome set-up and easier to try different projection distances/alter size of image more easily for experimenting
• found a concave white polystyrene shape to see if a curved surface added anything to the movement and appearance of the projection, however the size didn't really work and think i will abandon this idea
• next was to tape a tracing paper to toughened glass, stood this upright and reverse project the image onto the screen. This worked well, the lightbulb initially gave a strong glare through the screen. I altered the brightness and this then gave a diffused circular glow that looked like a weak winter sun which added to the projection. Issues with this include how to stand/suspend the glass but as a very basic attempt at reverse projection it worked and would allow the viewer to get up closer to the screen without interrupting the image.
• After discussing with John, all round purpose caretaker, he suggested using the darkroom space as an installation area. Whilst looking in here, came across some unused large frosted flexible sheet of plastic. It had the same opaqueness as the tracing paper and decided to try this instead of frosting a larger piece of available toughened glass (this would have issues of safety and needing a very sturdy made to measure frame that would distract from the projection.)
• I realised i wanted a simple, plain larger scale projection piece that would link in aesthetically with the concept of a monochromatic projection. The viewing space and the way the projection screen medium need to be considered in this context.
• I tried suspending the plastic with bulldog clips but it was too heavy. So after discussion with Jan, John and Bridget brainstorming, wondered if possible to create a suspended curved reverse-projection screen. This seemed to work well as the movement of the birds moves around the curved screen and makes you want to move with the image and follow it which makes the viewer less passive.

Next step: to try and source brackets that will keep sides of plastic straight and create a curved rigid base with the aim of suspending the projection.



26/2/15
ok, pillow case-tastic, 
see blah blah blah 

this is the cheese projector.

• like the light shines through the embroidered border
• like the double shadow on the wall behind
• harder to project to exact size, projector needs to be close (the samsung one), but spoke with Wes and the ceiling mounted ones can compensate for angle of trajectory so image remains rectangular (makes my head hurt thinking of this

Next step:

think i want to project one image moving around the room-the first clip as the others lose the definition, and then 2 projections one on each side of the pillow- the other side will be next project making a approx 2min film on the bedtime roosting theme.

murmurs and whispers

murmuration  [mur-muh-rey-shuh n]

noun

1.

an act or instance of murmuring

2.

a flock of starlings.

collective noun:

Starlings: Chattering, affliction, murmuration



i spent sunday dusk at Shapwick heath, trying to get some DSLR footage of the murmurations.
I wasn't prepared for the sounds. Minimally threatening whooshing in contrast to the hypnotic shapes and movements of the starling flock.
interested in maybe working with static shots of footage, using tripod. 

After looking at the footage on imovie and spending ages faffing with trying to isolate a freeze frame still to export and print, edited to B&W and changed exposure. Will also think about playing with the zoom and cropping all using imovie.
Interested in creating mood. REmoved all audio from original footage as it was distracting and erratic windblowing anyway.

Thinking about possible additional audio,music froma friend was too jarring and distracting and would be impossible in the time scale I have to edit footage to music which is what I had thought ofmore as an additional project.

moving through footage and moving backawards and forwards definitely highlighted the hypnotic element of the footage.

Liked easily being able to manipulate the exposure=>mood of the clips


Decisions to be made:=
-length of film ?90secs
-after d/w VBK ?3 different moods eg sinister, anxious, calm, movement
-need to decide, emotion, composition, use of stills, editing cuts

drone doodles and birds

1st quick practice doodles of drones, white ink on sugar paper

sketchbook invert drones vs birds practice, black indian ink

the drawings above are amateur, the black on white works better, I should have used acrylic but love the flow and controls from using the ink. Trying to paint geometric shapes takes patience, a steady hand, only one cup of coffee and my photocopies. it shut my head up nicely on a wednesday when my head creaks from the necessity of being non-judgemental, controlled and empathetic, to  suddenly feeling like i need to do/made/create because it's a wednesday. It's been a heavy week at work, going over a history of someone that died suddenly whom i was fond of and trying to find the words to write a coroners report about them in sharp succinct cool prose. death wishes, near death misses, 2 days that felt like a week. so painting drones and their sick associations was lovely light tongue-in-cheek relief.

i never got why people would paint toy soldiers or aeroplanes. think i it felt embarassing. a smack of regressive nostalgia to it or some such crap. but i've grown to love the concentration, and stillness that comes from concentrating on something and painting drones is mindless in its own way so who i am to judge.

slow copying somewhere quiet, how resentful voices would be drowned out, shouts of we'll start without out you, all the intrusive noise of others, meanwhile the slow silent dip of brush in ink and mark making away the racket.