Self-Initiated Brief

Throughout this project, I am going to continue in the same direction as in the previous project as I feel like I have definitely found my strengths and would like to continue to develop this further by exploring new visual techniques. I will continue to build my strengths within Resolume, Photoshop, Illustrator and also on the Laser Cutter but I would like to step outside of my comfort zone within this project and induct myself in new workshops not previously used.

The main theme of this project is Microscopic. After coming across lots of inspiring images on Pinterest such as ‘Bev Shots’ which are photographs of alcohol under a microscope. These high-quality photographs of beers, wines, cocktails, liquors and mixers that were taken after they have been crystallized on a slide and shot under a polarized light microscope. As the light refracts through the beverage crystals, this resulting in the photographs having magnificent colors and composition. And also a similar technique used within Jon Hopkins art work Immunity, a favourite producer of mine, which involved a stunning time-lapse photography of crystal growth and chemical reactions by art director Craig Ward and Biochemist Linden Gledhill in the form of a visual experience.

I believe that this sort of visual imagery would be perfect for my projections, as I like to work with a lot of bright and vibrant colours in an abstract sort of way. This has encouraged me to carefully think of a way in which I will be able to re create some of my own microscopic imagery first hand using a polarized light microscope and will do more research into how I can go about this within my project.

I aim to achieve a strong body of visual work achieved through drawings, photographs and other creative techniques that I feel are good enough to take forward and use within my collaborative project in which I will then create a  final piece.

James Turrell

Inspiration: 

“I make spaces that apprehend light for our perception, and in some ways gather it, or seem to hold it…my work is more about your seeing than it is about my seeing, although it is a product of my seeing.”
— James Turrell

For over half a century, the American artist James Turrell has worked directly with light and space to create artworks that engage viewers with the limits and wonder of human perception. Turrell, an avid pilot who has logged over twelve thousand hours flying, considers the sky as his studio, material and canvas. New Yorker critic Calvin Tompkins writes, “His work is not about light, or a record of light; it is light — the physical presence of light made manifest in sensory form.”

Turrell began experimenting with light as a medium in southern California in the mid-1960's. The Pasadena Art Museum mounted a one-man show of his Projection Pieces, created with high-intensity projectors and precisely modified spaces, in 1967. Mendota Stoppages, a series of light works created and exhibited in his Santa Monica studio, paired Projection Pieces with structural cuts in the building, creating apertures open to the light outside. These investigations aligning and mixing interior and exterior, formed the groundwork for the open sky spaces found in his later Skyspace, Tunnel and Crater artworks. 

“Ganzfeld”: a German word to describe the phenomenon of the total loss of depth perception as in the experience of a white-out. Turrell artificially creates a similar experience through the controlled use of light, coved corners and an inclined floor.

Turrell’s medium is pure light. He says, “My work has no object, no image and no focus. With no object, no image and no focus, what are you looking at? You are looking at you looking. What is important to me is to create an experience of wordless thought.”

Carlos Cruz-Diez

Inspiration:
His artistic roots reach back to the Movimiento Cinético [Kinetic Movement] of the 1950s and 1960s. As his thinking on the visual arts has evolved, his ideas have changed attitudes on how colour is perceived in art. According to his artist’s statement, colour is an autonomous reality, devoid of anecdotes, that evolves in real time and space with no need of form or support.

Carlos Cruz-Diez’s artistic proposal is based on eight research projects that reveal the myriad ways in which color behaves: Couleur Additive [Additive Colour], Physichromie, Induction Chromatique [Chromatic Induction], Chromointerférence, Transchromie, Chromosaturation,Chromoscope, and Couleur dans l’espace [Colour in Space].

Aeolian Light Installation - squidsoup

 Squidsoup is an international group of artists, researchers and designers (UK/NO/NZ) working with digital and interactive media experiences. Their work combines sound, physical space and virtual worlds to produce immersive and emotive headspaces where participants can take an active role in their experience. They explore the modes and effects of interactivity, looking to make digitally mediated experiences where meaningful and creative interaction can occur.

Their latest piece to use arrays of light in 3D space is a new commission called Aeolian Light. The piece, commissioned by Quays Culture and University of Salford, is a 10m x 10m piece, 5m high and comprising around 12,000 individually addressable points of light suspended in space.

Inspired by the windy location, the piece visualises the wind as an illuminated chaotic force. Virtual debris and imaginary fields of energy pass through the work, carried on the wind in gusts and blasts. The strings and lights also sway physically in the wind, and people add a layer of illumination and turbulence as they walk through the piece.

As the weather had been terrible over the past few days, I was relieved it had finally stopped raining whilst I was at the installation therefore I was able to get some great photographs!

Evaluation

After starting the project with Sound and Vision, this really encouraged me to work more freely and on a larger scale. I wanted to continue with this theme as I had looked at a lot of visual artists and projection work over the summer that I found really inspiring. I also started to gain an interest for architecture whilst over in Rotterdam, and researched into one architecture in particular, Rem Koolhaas. I just loved his minimalist yet modern style buildings, and wanted this to be a big influence on the structure of my work. 

I had also been researching into audio visual artists, as this was something I have wanted to create for a while now. This was hard to achieve with the lack of technologies and software workshops provided by the university for what I am interested in, but did attend those that I thought were appropriate such as Maya: Animation, and also have a 3D mapping workshop at the end of the week. I really wanted to push the boundaries with this project in what I was able to create, so I did some research into a technique I had been interested in since doing Sound and Vision, which lets me manipulate a photograph in Audacity which is a Sound Editing software to create a glitched and distorted picture. This took me several attempts before I was able to achieve anything decent and was a really long winded process, but worth it. I also found it fascinating that when I opened the image in Audacity it would turn the photo into a sound ranging from around 2 minutes with some going up to 16 depending on the image size. This could have been a great idea for me to incorporate sound within my work by using that of an actual image, but I simply did not have enough time to do this but could develop this on within the next project.

              
After I had built up a body of work from drawings, Photoshop Manipulations, Illustrator files and Glitched images I then began to create visual imagery using Resolume Software, I have previously used this before so I wanted to push myself further by downloading the advanced version Arena 4, where I was able to create some really detailed video projections. Even though the artists work which I had been looking at were mainly black and white, when creating the visuals they all seemed to come out in quite bright colours, but I preferred this as I thought it would look better when I wanted to project onto structures. As I had spent soo long finally getting the hang of the software I just simply didn’t have enough time to do any Projection Mapping which I was looking forward to the most. but will definitely be including this in my next project as I will be attending several workshops to do so. 
                 

As I liked using the Lazer Cutter last year, I made sure to get myself booked in early this time round so that I was able to use it a lot. After creating some files on illustrator I cut them onto black acrylic as I wanted to combine them with the bright colours from my projections. I also began to take stills from my projections and print them onto acetate so that I was able to play around with the composition and see which worked best together. Not all of my Lazer cuttings worked successfully though, some didn’t cut right through or some started to fall apart as too much had been cut out. This made me really think about my illustrator files more carefully for next time.

                        

After several tutorials, me and Hannah noticed that our work was very similar and would work well together, so we decided to collaborate together to come up with a final piece. I was good at making the projections and she was good on the lazer cutter so it went hand in hand. For our final piece we wanted to come up with some sort of structure to project onto which would also include lights and mirrors as we wanted to work with reflectiveness. I was inspired by Daedelus' Archimedes Robotic Mirror Sculpture which I had seen in person at The Warehouse Project last year, this involved motor powered rotating mirrors which reflected of the light from the mirrors creating a fascinating visual experience. The context of this work was also very influential as it suited the audience and environment that I would have liked to use my final piece in, a club, venue or festival space. To respond to this I created mirror structures After gathering a good body of visual research, we then started to sample the final structure. Using Protopaper we started to build 3d models and test out new shapes which we hadn’t worked with before such as (INCLUDE SHAPE NAMES) in the end we ended up mainly working with triangular shapes. As having fewer sides to project on worked better. Especially now we weren't able to do projection mapping. After we had built the structures, I then recreated the triangles out of mirror acrylic on the lazer cutter and started to build up the structures, lucky enough the protopaper was strong enough to hold the acrylic.


             

With our final session on the lazer cutter, we created two large cuttings on mdf one of my hexagon illustration, and one of Hannah's mushroom which turned out really well. I then also created some triangle structures out of transparent green acrylic with some of my detailed illustration files on the inside so that the lights were able to project through. As we had engraved round some of the triangle though, this meant that some of the projection wouldn’t reach through, but I quite liked this detail.

              

Now our final plans had finally started to come together, we took all our materials to the basement and started projecting. First of all we started to mess around with the composition and arrangements of the triangles and then started to project onto them. We experimented with how the projector would catch on the mirror, and how it would project around the room. We then got a second projector involved so that we could project on different areas of the triangles so that it would almost look like we are 3d mapping. Some of the photographs of the triangles looked the they could have been tents, which also gave me some more inspiration towards the environment we would want to present our work in. we could either have the sculptures on a really huge scale at a festival with lights, projections and mapping on them., where people are able to go inside, Or even onto festival tents themselves making the campsite look really bright and fun. Some artists I have looked at who had also inspired me to come up with the shape and structure of the final outcome were Olafur Eliasson, who used lights and mirrors to reflect patterns back out around the room and also patterns textile room.

Just as things were going really well, I devastatingly lost my 150 page online presentation which i had been creating due to a corrupted file which i was not able to recover. This set me back dramatically as i had to try and restart again. This therefore meant that i was not able to achieve what we set out to do, as for our final piece we wanted to stick all the mirrored structure together to create a huge abstract sculpture which would be spinning and reflecting all the projections off it. I then wanted to edit all the videos together and add sound to create the finishing final piece. But obviously what happened could not be helped. I do believe i have done enough sampling, experimentation, and risk taking to not let this effect the outcome too much but i would have really liked to have done this. 

I believe that I have come along way since the last project and clearly shown that I am able to experiment an risk take. For the next project I would like to continue and develop this work further by making sure I really get my head down and learn the technologies I want to use within my work such as projection mapping and audio visual software. Over the period of this course, I attended the Creative Multimedia exhibition where I got speaking to another student who is interested in Audio Visual art also and was up for collaborating with me in the next project. I think this has great potential because not only do I already have a huge body of work to now use within projections, but this will also help me to pick up how to use new software related to audio visual art which one day I will eventually be able to use myself.

Final Videos

Projection On To Structure

Neon Glow

Here are some more of my lazer cut designs. I created more triangle structures, this time out of green transparent acrylic with one of my previous illustrator designs. but this time instead of cutting all the way through with the lazer, I also etched into the acrylic which i think gave it a really nice effect. in the photographs below i was experimenting with mirror and reflection and also used a UV light which worked really well with the acrylic, giving it a lime green glow almost looking like it lights up in the reflection. I also attempted to project onto the structure but didn't work as well as I thought it would. it seemed to just project off the green instead. however I did capture some quite cool effects in the photograph. i started to play around with the composition of the triangles, and I think these definitely turned out well. I could imagine these being made on a really big scale and used outside at events or festivals like huge teepees. 

Photoshop Manipulation

Here are some final photoshop edits of combined video stills which I am now going to print onto acetate to use within the final installation. 

Final Lazer Cutting Designs

Using both a mixture of mine and Hannah's lazer cut illustrations that we had previously used throughout our work and liked, we then cut these onto large pieces of MDF board. I think that these have turned out really well, and both the hexagon and mushroom designs go hand in hand. I cant wait to play around with the projector on these! 

Daedelus' Archimedes is a Robotic Mirror Sculpture

Archimedes is a robotic sculpture consisting of 24 square mirrors on a motorised frame, which are controlled in conjunction with the music by visualist Emmanuel Biard. It makes for a live show that plays with light to create a spectacle that emanates from its source on stage, seeping into the crowd and enveloping them. And that’s without using visual technology any more advanced than a mirror.

I had previously seen this sculpture in action at The Warehouse Project last year, and really influenced me to use lights and mirrors within my work. i like the way the mirrors create a sense a never ending visual experience. obviously i would not be able to create anything motorised or on this scale, but would like to use the lazer cutter to create pieces of mirror and then make a small installation from them to then project and reflect light on to. 

            

Shape Composition

once we had decided on the final shape that we wanted to use, which was triangle like structures, we then started to play around with the composition of the shapes and projected onto them. the paper and also sides of the shapes capture the projection in really clear detail, and i like how the gap in the middle of the triangle is blacked out as well as around the shapes creating a 3d mapping effect. now i know that the projections work well on this shape, we will now continue to make more on a larger scale. 

 

Projecting on to Shapes

After having made several different shape structures, I then started to project different videos and images onto them, and as you can see some worked better than others. with some of the shapes having a lot more sides, without using the proper software to map onto it didn't look as effective therefore using simpler shapes with less sides would be more appropriate for the structure. 

Overlaying Projections with Lazer Cutting

After creating some new Resolume videos, I then explored layering up the projections in real life, over lapping some of the lazer cut designs and moving them about to create more visual effects. I think this worked really well and I like the colours captured within these videos. 

ProtoPaper Lab

Having discovered Protopaper in the A4 and more, we experimented creating new structures from this. It was perfect for what we wanted to do as it was easy to bend, but also strong at the same time. We started to explore different shapes such as Triangles, dodecohedrons, Icosahedron and just simple folded paper structures which we found on the protopaper website. I also found some insipration of the website as it had included other students work which shown the paper with foil on which looked really cool, and we did want to include mirror in our final piece. Also the structure designs made up of loads of different shapes, and also just the plain paper with lights projected onto it. We will now continue to sample the shapes until we are happy with the one we would like to use. And then begin to build a structure.

 

Creating structures from the paper