whoa! here already!

 

Well here we are at the beginning of the 2009 art meets science residency at the vet school.

At this stage I have proposed two parts, or projects in the residency. The first relates to making 5 ‘secret portraits’ exploring the notions of public and private, fact and fantasy, part of my ongoing exploration of the practices of science. I envisage 10 digital prints on facing walls. One wall will have images of 5 volunteer’s empty offices or workplaces. On the facing wall, and not in corresponding order, are 5 digitally manipulated composite portraits generated from discussing with each person what they might (creatively or humorously) wish to be. The identities behind these creative portraits will not be made public in the exhibition, leading to a sense of mystery about our chimerical desires. So here I will be looking for people and offices!

The second project, provisionally titled ‘reverse animals,’ relates to a question posed by Dr Ken Richardson on how students (and everyone else) understand form when moving between 2D representations like X-rays into 3D realities. This is an interesting case, particularly when an animal’s skull, for example, hides a complex interior. I plan to investigate this, to see what might already be researched, but also to see if I can provide (perhaps) metaphoric answers to this question of perception and conception. I hope to  start by reversing the process by making 3D objects with ingenious interiors and X-raying them back into 2D – in effect ‘reverse animals’.

I also proposed to run a workshop on digital collaging in Photoshop or cyanotypes. At this stage I’m a bit unsure about this one as many people have said that people will be too busy to come to a workshop. Also either I need a computer lab that already has Photoshop or a lab that can handle cyanotpe chemicals. Maybe I would be better off spreading the idea of these digital chimera portraits as a bit of fun first? Comments on this most welcome.

And finally I also want to generally draw, photograph, video, sound record and interview(?) animals and people. Already this year I have set myself the task of doing one postcard sized animal drawing a day — mostly to get better at drawing — so having an excuse to do some at uni would be great.  More importantly a lot of the time the best ideas come from serendipitous discoveries when you are engaged in the process — and these are things that I hope to take out of the residency and develop into subsequent artworks.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *