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!