Projecting image of room within room
Projecting a grid within room
The projected light rays remain constant, whilst the screen is bent, twisted and curved in different directions. Subsequently the image is splayed over the surface. Interestingly, each captured image is a different colour.
Whilst working in Australia, I took a trip to Adelaide where, as part of the Adelaide Festival, seven of the oldest buildings on Northern Terrace were lit up with projections.
The display was put together by The Electric Canvas, who transformed the buildings into canvases for their art. Turning the buildings into book cases, candy houses and haunted houses.
Subsequently the display which was the largest light display of its kind in Australia, was taken to Sydney Opera House in 2009.
Sophie Calle gave a letter to 107 female professionals asking them to interpret the text, in which her partner breaks up with her, according to their profession. The responses to the letter have been transformed into a work of conceptual art, each is visible through the exhibition.
I found the exhibition extremely interesting and spent a long time looking through all the interpretations. Below are a few examples:
School Girl
‘A man is talking to a woman and telling her his feelings.
He writes to tell her that he would like them to split up.
Complicated words - irreplaceable and masquerade
He loves her, don’t know why he’s leaving her’
Sexologist
‘No, I don’t see any reason to prescribe antidepressants for you.
You are simply sad.
A distressing event is bound to hurt but the appropriate solution is not a chemical one.
I’m sure you are strong enough to move on and find within yourself the resources to act and react.’
Journalist
‘Why this letter will not be published in the newspaper.
- This letter hasn’t killed anyone
- This letter interests nobody
- This is letter is not a book
- This letter is not a letter
- This letter ended up in the bin
Riffle Shooter
Shot a bullet hole through each time the word ‘love’ was used in the letter
Graphic Designer
Folded the letter up into an origami form
Mother
‘Your “love” lasted only three or four seasons, and you didn’t even live together’
Parrot
Was given the letter and then crumpled it up and ripped it up, throwing it away.
The parrot then said two lines of the letter ‘I have never lied to you’ and ‘take care of yourself’
Thom Andersen’s documentary uses clips from over 100 film sets in Los Angeles to examine the way the city has been portrayed through cinematography. As the most photographed city in the world, few other cities are depicted more through film than Los Angeles. Andersen examines ‘The City as Background’ and ‘The City as Subject’, in cases where it is presented as it stands in reality and in cases where it is used for representation.
The documentary includes cases where pieces of architecture, such as the Bradbury building, have been used in numerous films to represent different purposes.
“One of the glories of Los Angeles is its Modernist residential architecture, but Hollywood movies have almost systematically demograted this heritage by casting many of these houses as the residences of movie villains....Hollywoods war against Hollywood architecture.”
“The ultimate insult to Lautner’s work came from Lethal Weapon II, the Garcia House on Mulholland is the home office of a drug ring organised by a South African Consulate. Enraged by the diplomatic community, Mel Gibson pulls down their house with his pick-up truck.” Not only is Lautner slick and superficial, he’s incompetant.”
Columbus explored new perceptual dynamics and visual and sensory fields of interaction for the viewer, through the use of light and movement.
Elastic Space, 1967, rubber & electric Motors
Neue Galerie am Universalmuseum Joanneum, Archivio Gianni Colombo, Milano
The spectator enters into a dark room which appears to morph and move around you, expanding and contracting
The film was simply made by placing the recording camera on a tripod in the position the screen hung and slowly rotating it to film the surroundings.
The effect this had was that of confussion between the physical room in reality and the room visually projected onto the screen. The eye would flicker between the projection of the untouched studio and the studio in reality which was animated by current happenings.
This reminded me of the Surrealist artist Rene Magritte, and his painting The Human Condition where the artist uses a painted canvas of the view, juxtaposed with the landscape in reality. The representation and reality line up perfectly. There is an underlying message concerning the fact that the ‘reality’ is in fact a representation in itself, and a questioning between reality and the image. Is the external world merely an image and not the reality we associate it with.
The following text was attached all the way around the lower frame of the installation to encourage movement around the form:
Encountering in motion……….
Journeying from one destination to another we immerse ourselves in a continuous movement of shifting orientations and crossed viewpoints, where peripheral vision envelopes us in the world around us whilst focused vision confronts us to the world. In perceiving space in flux the viewer is temporarily positioned in motion between a series of scenes, where the invisible becomes visible and the present slides into a memory that we have engaged with only in passing. We transport ourselves out of one moment into another, onwards and onwards.
Whilst enveloped on a train journey, although moving, we feel almost motionless, as fixed sites are viewed rushing by besides us, and those places become visualized as unfixed. This is then confused when another moving train comes into view, and we begin to make comparisons and question which is moving, which is stationary and which is going faster.
When advancing along the static fixed screen, the twists of the plane gradually open up and reveal, then steadily shy away from each other masking the adjacent space. Although fixed, the screen’s form is dynamic and moving to the eye.
The viewers’ journey is independent of the next, each has a conscious interplay with the work, animated by the current activities of the room on passing and the time frame of the film at that moment, tracing individual experience and continually revealing into the unknown.
This installation juxtaposes these confusing contrasting moments where movement and stillness become intertwined and questionable.
When thinking about what to project on to the screen I decided upon a film which encompassed a lot of movement.
I thought that a train journey was particularly relevant because when you are sat on a train, you are moving, but as the surrounding sites rush by besides you, you feel static, and the surroundings appear to be moving. This is confused when trains rush by at different speeds, are you moving are you not?
This is a juxtaposition of movement and stillness where the boundary between them is confused and the static appears moving and moving appears still.
I took a train journey from Clapham Junction to Waterloo and back to Clapham Junction. On my journey I held the video camera to the window and filmed the passing suroundings of the journey.
I thought I could then play this on a loop as a continual journey, backwards and forwards, projected onto the screen. I have speeded the movie up to exaggerate the fast pace and constantly changing scenes.
Which would flow from the wall or ceiling down to the ground, there would be parts of the sculpture which would be very still and parts which would be full of movement and flow. This would allow gravity to play a part.
The sculpture would be made from plastic or folded paper.
There is the possibility of the idea that when you move around the sculpture, its appearance changes from stillness to movement.
Perhaps part of sculpture reveals something underneath.
Do I take a journey and perhaps map that out in the sculpture.
The subsequent sketch models I made in trying to work out elements of the sculpture.
Infact some of these I felt were stronger in their own right and would just be confused within a large sculpture of lots of different elements.
The model above is supposed to embody this idea of stillness (the space at the centre of the wave) and movement (the flowing free strips surrounding).
This model was concerned with the idea of moving around a sculpture and as you do so, it would change from encompassing movement to that of stillness.
It is made up of a number of plastic strips, which gradually appear to twist as you view around the object.
The twisting elements show flow, movement and an element of chaos, whilst the straight elements are still, ordered and static.
I panned around the model and joined the images together to create an image of stillness flowing into movement.
3.
This model was also concerned with the idea of moving along a sculpture and as you do so, it would change.
The idea is a static fixed screen which has twisted strips cut into it, as your vision pans along the screen, the screen evolves and flows. Opening and closing up, revealing and obscurring.
This screen was fixed to a foam core board and I believe would be more effective if you could see through it from both sides, so that it reveals and obscures what is actually going on in the space around it.
I experimented with cutting the strips to altering thicknesses as the plastic is limited by how much it can twist before buckling or splitting. The shorter strips need to be thinner, where as the longer strips can be thicker.
I have decided that for my final piece for the crit I shall develop another twisted screen at a large scale which the viewer can therefore walk around.
I have considered either printing two juxtaposing images on either side of the screen
or
Printing two images and mounting them onto opposite walls of the room, which are therefore viewed through the screen
or
Projecting onto the screen
Exposed Painting by Callum Innes is created through the juxtaposition of chemicals.
As a starting point I walked around London looking for occasions:
Movement Through Space
The design of buildings based on predetermined routes
Examples:
• Mobius House (UN Studio) - designed around a flexible program where daily activities can take place at any point on either of the two routes
• Mercedes-Benz Museum Stuttgard - visitor is immersed in continuous movement of shifting orientations and crossed viewpoints
As we walk through a space:
• we engage with concepts and experiences of place, space and site
• we relate one location to another
• we rethink place as unfixed and as site performed
• the subject is temporarily positioned in motion between a series of scenes
• new connections are made physically and conceptually over time and through space
• past happenings and future imaginings are brought into the present
• understanding sites in flux
• encounter sites in motion and in relation to one another
• Spaces/places seem different on whether we are walking to them/ walking away from them
Focused vision confronts us in the world
Peripheral vision envelopes us in the world
• Gain an experience of the space
• Shifting perspectives
By intervening and moving though a site, walking proposes a design method that enables one to imagine beyond the present condition without freezing possibility into form.
• Pace, constant motion, moving from one thing to another, engaging only in passing
• Spatial stories - narrative relationships between spaces, time and subjects
Installation art and sculpture that needs and embraces human exploration and meandering in order to be fully recognised.
Journeys
