Artist Christina Guggeri uses digital photo manipulation to create a series of heads of state in a way we wouldn't normally see them. I love the idea of things out of usual context and have been thinking along those lines for my own work. These will bring a smile to your face, well they gave me a giggle, but then, I am funny like that.
http://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/artist-doctors-images-to-show-world-leaders-on-the-toilet/story-fnjwubk7-1227185799129
Sunday, 25 January 2015
Tuesday, 13 January 2015
Man who can hear colours
Really interesting article about a man who can hear colours. Ties in with my recent synaesthesia and perception post. The guy can actually only see in black and white but uses technology to allow him to experience colours as sound.
http://thespiritscience.net/2015/01/12/this-man-can-hear-colors/
Sunday, 11 January 2015
Egg Tempera
After looking at certain artists that use
egg tempera I have become really interested in this medium. Traditionally used by mixing pigment with egg
yolk and used mostly on wood panels as not flexible enough to use on
canvas. My initial trials (avoiding
expensive outlay on pigment) involved using tubed water colours and egg,
although the recipe I’d seen online also recommended clove oil, which I did use
and my sketch book has stunk ever since.
I think that is used to stop the egg going off although I have the
feeling it slows the drying process too.
Egg tempera normally dries quickly.
I think that a drop of vinegar can be used instead to stop it going off.
The pigments do seem fairly expensive and in theory anything that can be ground
down to a fine powder could be used.
Turmeric has to be a good one as when it falls out of my chaotic
cupboard it seems to stain everything!.
I’m sure though that a lot of things are not particularly fade
resistant. (Maybe I should investigate
the things in school dinners that my daughter has permanently ingrained on
school tops). I have been made aware of egg tempera in tubes though quite
expensive but I must admit I do like the idea of mixing my own, although some
pigments are quite toxic apparently. But then, putting that into perspective, is
that any more toxic than the occasional lung full of Mr Sheen, Fabreze or other
household substances not to mention the dog’s constant methane emissions. I
wonder if organic eggs are best. I’m not
sure what they do to un-organic eggs but I know I can’t stomach them so they
must have found a way to adulterate them. Well thinking in terms of powders etc
my latest trial was to use graphite powder as the pigment just to see how it
feels. Using a photo as reference I had
a go. The egg binder acts like a varnish
and seals the graphite so it doesn’t come of on your finger if you rub over it.
(I wonder if it could be also used as a spray fixative - that would eliminate another household toxin,….in
my house anyway). As I understand it egg
tempera is quite a transparent medium that is built up in glazes or
layers. That was the case with this
graphite mix.
Wednesday, 7 January 2015
Evaluation. January 2015
Evaluation of work over Introductory
modules:
At the moment performance art and moving
image feel alien to me as a means of expressing art. Sometimes even unsettling.
The act of producing art has always been a
physical act to me involving dexterous manipulation, a direct brain, eye to
hand expression that gives me more of an immediate personal and intimate,
spontaneous outlet. Maybe I find comfort
and control in physical contact with my medium, whereas performance art and
moving image take me out of this comfort zone.
Having said that I have always been
fascinated by the prospect of animation, the idea of bringing something that
isn’t organic to life, the possibilities of it’s form. The only barrier would be my lack of
knowledge in terms of the technology needed.
I have a love of making things and a love of detail and the prospect of
creating little sets, scenes and imaginary worlds in which to stage my
creations I find really exciting.
When I could I have always made things and
my attention had moved to learning to paint during the last couple of years,
but the sessions in sculpture have re-ignited my passion for this subject. I can’t honestly say I learned anything in
the session as I did have some prior knowledge but I enjoyed making the head cast
which, being figurative, is my main sphere of interest. I do find that I think very three
dimensionally, usually figurative, and more often than not my artistic ideas
are thought in terms of sculpture as a means to put form to them. I have been limited in materials for
practical reasons whilst doing the occasional thing at home but I am now hoping
to expand my experience, actualise my ideas and use other materials and also
different mould making materials and methods of casting. I’ve been made aware of installation as a
separate subject but to me it’s an off shoot of sculpture and another potential
medium.
Printing was quite a revelation to me as I
had no prior interest if I’m honest and not any experience either. These sessions I found the most engaging and
interesting as I was gaining knowledge for potential future use. We covered some basic but effective processes
which had successful outcomes in themselves but can also now be adapted and
built on for further experimentation, and as I see it, another medium I can
utilise as an outlet for ideas. I like
the fact that print allows you to also think in terms of layers.
I particularly enjoyed doing an etching
which is similar to line drawing, something I have always enjoyed in pen and ink,
it allowed me to work in a more detailed way which I love and discovered a
print has a unique quality of its own.
Painting had become my main focus when
starting the course. Discovering
painting a couple of years before, I had been learning to paint in acrylics having
discovered techniques like glazing. I
had been really excited about starting these sessions but they had not been at
all what I had expected. In my opinion
there was no successful outcome and I did feel quite despondent, this was for
various reasons including the fact that I had no real experience of using oil
paint and the painting module was very short with no time for suitable
preparations. At this point I don’t
think I had been aware that these were short introductory sessions either. I still
have a passion for painting and want to not only get to grips with oil but also
gain experience in painting from life.
To date I have mostly been limited to working from photos, which I will
continue to do to achieve the subject matter I require of people and life, but
I feel the experience of painting from life will be extremely valuable in terms
of furthering my understanding of colour light and form, a lot of which is lost
in photos as the biology of the eye means it sees things more enhanced with
more subtleties of colour.
My ponderings on Perception, Synaesthesia and Art
As an arty person I find it quite natural
to have an interest in perception. I
believe that any art I produce can only ever be subjective as no one else can
perceive the world quite like I do. That
is not to imply that my reality is any better than anyone else’s, not that we
would ever know of course. I believe we
all have a very unique perception of reality as this perception is a result
partly of our physical apparatus which must be quite varied as are our physical
appearances and also a result of our learning, experience and conditioning
which all affect the way we see an interpret.
For example CBT teaches how we have mental filters which we
unconsciously use often to reinforce deep rooted beliefs. It allows the mind to ignore and filter out
those things that don’t correspond to these beliefs. A simple example would be the difference in
several peoples’ eye witness account of the same occurrence.
I wonder how the artist’s perception of the
world differs from people who claim not to be artistic or creative. One condition that relates to a less than
average way of perceiving the world is ‘Synaesthesia’, (American spelling
‘synaesthesia’)
synesthesia, neuropsychological trait in which the stimulation of one sense
causes the automatic experience of another sense. Synaesthesia is a genetically
linked trait estimated to affect from 2 to 5 percent of the general population.
Grapheme-colour synaesthesia is the most-studied form of synesthesia.
In this form, an individual’s perception
of numbers and letters is associated with colours. For this
reason, in all the subject reads or hears, each letter or number is either
viewed as physically written in a specific colour (in so-called projector
synesthetes) or visualized as a colour in the mind (in associator synesthetes). Many synesthetes,
however, have more than one type of synesthesia. A number of types have been
reported, ranging from music-colour synesthesia, in which musical notes and sounds
are associated with colour visualization, to tactile-emotion synesthesia, in which certain fabrics and textures
conjure certain emotions in the synesthete. Examples of other types include
sound-colour, spatial sequence, flavour-temperature, flavour-sound, sound-smell, time
units-colours, and personality-smell.
Synaesthesia has been linked to creativity as it is purported to be 7
times more common in artists, musicians, poets and novelists than the rest of
the population. I do have a personal
interest and it’s a fascination subject.
It has been assumed Kandisnky was a synaesthete as his colourful
abstracts are a response to music, ( Kandisnky also had some interesting thoughts
on spirituality and art). Included in
the many listed as having synaesthesia is also Hockney.
Researchers have suggested that at the start of life all of our brains
work this way with interconnectedness and as babies we are all synaesthetes. Although they have located genes that they
feel are responsible for synaesthesia my own thoughts are that it is not so
much a ‘condition’ or ‘dis’ function but rather something that was there and
should still be there but has somehow got lost or overruled. Just like all children are artists and
growing up many lose that sense of wonder, curiosity, imagination and their
creativity.
To quote Picasso: “Every child is an
artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”
Maybe it’s due to learning language and the human desire to
label, categorise and pigeon hole everything neatly that shuts down these
connections in the brain. We are often
told about the neuroplasticity of the brain, so all brains potentially could
have the extra connections and make all sorts of connections depending on the
way the brain is used, and in anyway, a similar experience can be induced by
drugs. I think maybe the lack of synaesthesia
is due to education and conditioning and I realise an argument to my theory of
it being the normal way of perception would be that people’s synaesthesia
experiences differ. For example those
that have coloured numbers have different colours to specific numbers compared
to other people (although not the case in my family), so how can this way of
perception be correct? Well going back
to my original comments on how we perceive differently: how do we know that my red is anything like
the red that you see and so on. Also,
going deeper it would seem that in life and nature everything is connected. With my limited knowledge I believe that the
visible light spectrum and sound for example are both electromagnetic energy at
different frequencies. Maybe sound does
have a correlating colour? Just because
we don’t usually perceive colour with sound doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Different animals for example perceive the
world very differently. Dogs after all
hear things way out of our audible range, birds and some insects see colour
beyond our visible spectrum. Sound
vibrations have been shown to produce complex patterns and shapes. Science has shown that matter is barely
matter at all and everything is made of vibrating energy. Patterns in nature conform to numbers.
Well going back to art, isn’t appreciation of art in itself
a synaesthetic experience? If we look at
art it is not limited to our sense of vision, it often evokes emotions and
other sensations and reactions. We
associate colours with emotions and feelings not just in art but in everyday
language, ie, feeling blue, green with envy etc.
There is no real conclusion, just my own thoughts and ponderings and no
doubt my own bias towards a world as perceived through a creative brain.
Sunday, 4 January 2015
Can't seem to find anything about the artist but I love these sculptures:
http://earthweareone.com/dramatic-fairy-sculptures-dancing-with-dandelions-by-robin-wight/
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