nonsite » 2008 » September

September 28, 2008 6:08 pm

September 28, 2007: Weekly Reflections

It has been interesting doing online only research related to my project proposal. I found myself looking at a number of open source projects and organizations. I’m amazed by how much energy has gone into making information available, and the number of images that are available online is phenomenal. The problem is the deluge of information! There is so much of it- and it is constantly changing. I went back to some bookmarks of sites I’ve been interested in over the past few years and some are still active, some have moved and some are gone. But you quickly realize as you look that the problem is how to be selective, how to focus and how not to get overwhelmed by the seer amount of information that is available.

Over this past week I have been thinking more and more about twilight hour- that time when daylight fades and artificial light slowly takes over. I haven’t timed how long that is- from the moments you realize that daylight is beginning to fade, and that nightfall has begun but I imagine it takes more than an hour and in that time I think it is a wonderful transition- that moment when they are equivalent and then as artificial lighting becomes more dominant and eventually lights the space- when night has fallen. Maybe it is more like two hours.

In thinking about some light controlled environments I’d like to make, I’m realizing several things.

Right now I am only interested in available spaces- ones that already exist
• with the possibility of changing the light conditions
• I am going to focus my attentions on existing interior spaces.
• I am interested in spaces with windows- where daylight dominates the day lighting conditions.
• fairly neutral spaces- white walls, not a huge amount of details, objects and distractions
• spaces with no set function- like say a lobby or waiting area.
• spaces that can be open to the public
• spaces with interior lighting that can be controlled or altered

September 24, 2008 1:00 pm

September 24, 2007: Wednesday Presentations

When I woke up Wednesday and logged in to hear the MA Digital Arts presentations which we were being recorded- all I could hear a great deal of hammering! In the distance I could hear someone speaking but the image was too small to read, then text began to appear- something about mobile phones in Japan- quite a lively discussion about a new book MIT has published: Personal, Portable and Pedestrian edited by Mizuko Ito, Daisuke Okabe and Misa Matsuda.

September 22, 2008 1:25 pm

September 22, 1975: John Torreano

John Torreano makes thick, jewel encrusted lozenge and cross shaped paintings. They are wild, decadent objects and I’ve never seen anything like them. While he shows us images of them, he talks about how he makes them: he buys lots of fake jewels- rubies and saphires then drills recessions into these long wooden armatures, he glues in the stones and then he paints around them with one colour of thick acrylic paint.

johntorreanocross72

September 22, 2008 10:52 am

Ideas of how much is enough remain an important component in many artists work. I think it relates to our ideas of authenticity and what’s authentic. We are fascinated by examples of excess. We have a greater tendency to believe that something has value and is authentic if a great degree of personal commitment is evident.

September 21, 2008 1:53 pm

September 21, 2007: Action Research

Reading over the transcripts from our Monday class chat, I’m struck by how much time it takes to say very little and the big differences of an online chat environment compared to classroom learning. I appreciate my colleagues humour and their patience. Reading the transcripts, I can see that Andy’s intention was to be certain that we were all clear on the Learning Outcomes of MADA OL1 Introduction/Planning/Research course that was were just beginning. The complication was that were had just been emailed the pdf of the Course Handbook minutes earlier- so we didn’t have much time to read or reflect on the document.

I was interested to read later- 2.10 Research at Camberwell and the reference to the university’s excellence at research level grade 5 in the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise. I’m not sure what that really means in terms of funding, but I appreciate that this may lead to opportunities for support. I was also struck by the number of acronyms that were used to name the research projects- SCIRIA, TrAIN, FADE, and MATAR. The Book Arts project seems to be the exception.

I have been looking for a definition of Digital Arts and how Camberwell arrived at this naming of the programme and was pleased to find within 3.1 Rationale for MA Digital Arts On-Line a description of digital technologies for artists and designers and digital art production as part of the Course Rationale, Aims and Objectives.

I look forward to the lecture and seminar outlining the history, context, methods and concepts of digital arts (p. 31) and still not clear when or how that happens. I would still appreciate hearing from the course tutors their ideas around the naming of this field and how and where they locate themselves within it.

I also look forward to further discussing “Action Research” and ideas around practice- reflection- amend practice. That sounds like what artists do with presentation added in at various points.

I did try to direct part of the Monday morning chat towards this and appreciated reading the thoughts of my colleagues as we started the discussion. My concerns are twofold- if the definition is so broad that we get lost within it- then it is meaningless; more worrisome for me is if Digital Arts becomes a subgrouping of art based on techniques and processes- with exhibitions defined by these processes and techniques- like printmaking for example, with international print biennials around the world that begin to define and legitimate their own existence in a parallel universe outside the larger international art world, then I think the naming is problematic. If it is just about some tools we use to make art- then I’m fine with that.

To date I am slightly frustrated at the lack of ideas discussed in the chat sessions, but appreciate that there are a number of start-up details that need to be in place and clarified before really getting rolling.

I don’t really understand yet how we can contact our tutors outside of the chat session. I am curious if there are office hours and how we make appointments for individual tutorials. I was pleased to receive an email from Jonathan Kearney introducing himself- I was wondering why he hadn’t been present in our weekly chats.

I am curious how we will present our work online to the class. I am planning to research ProfCast before next week.

September 16, 2008 1:24 pm

September 16, 2007: Been Up So Long It Looks Like Down To Me

Last night we went Been Up So Long It Looks Like Down To Me a large group exhibition curated by Mark Soo at Presentation House Gallery in North Vancouver.

The exhibition featured work by fourteen artists including Sam Durant, Rodney Graham, Bruce Nauman, Jonathan Monk and William Hunt. The exhibition also features screenings of Sam Durant’s Entropy in Reverse (Gimme Shelter Backwards) and Bruce Nauman’s Pulling Mouth at the Pacific Cinematheque.

The exhibition catalogue launch, Saturday October 13th, features a performance by London artist and songwriter William Hunt: where he sings and plays guitar after hoisting himself upside down to the ceiling of the gallery.

This exhibition “examines the context of inversion with works that are literally and upside down, turned over, or skewed off axis.” Highlights for me were Jonathan Monk’s Constantly Moving While Standing Still

an upside down bicycle resting on the floor on its handle bars and seat with some kind of small motor that keeps the wheels slowly turning and Rodney Graham’s Morris Louis like painting of four, long coloured gravity determined paint drips on linen- beautifully framed in a period gold framed shadow box- a prop from his latest photograph The Gifted Amateur, which he is showing in London as part of his Wet on Wet: My Late Early Years exhibition at the Lisson Gallery in London, October 10- November 14th.

September 15, 2008 5:09 pm

September 15, 2008: privacy and publicity

As artists we deal with dual stresses of privacy and publicity constantly. My impulse is towards privacy. I’m a private person, but as an artist I need the attention that publicity affords in order to get my research seen and my artwork exhibited. This tension has always been there.

As I read about and come to understand how sophisticated search engines have become in mining data with their search algorithms and as I recognize increasingly how exclusively we rely on these search engines to find out about whatever we’re interested in, I understand how impossible privacy has become.

In 1995 the architectural historian Beatriz Colomina wrote Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media and reflected on the difference between Adolf Loos and Le Corbusier and their attitudes towards the archive, and their impulse for destruction and preservation. As artists, I think we’re taught from early on to respect this impulse to save what we do, to preserve and to self-archive our work- with the subtext of preserving what we do until our genius is recognized!

We create projects as places for the reader to find themselves; place to help make sense of the world. Over the past few weeks I’ve been thinking about a project- a website that is complex enough to function like a novel. It would need enough breadth, depth and scope for anyone who wants to take the time to read it, to be able to find enough room to relax in. It would need to grow, develop and resonate with a reader. I’m wondering if this can that happen if it is written in the first person without different characters and without dialogue. It would be a monologue, but is it possible to do this and not get hung up on a cult of personality?

September 15, 2008 3:49 pm

September 15, 2008: an online MA at Camberwell

There could be a lot of reasons to go to back to university to do an MA. You don’t need a school structure to provide an extended time researching and reflecting on your art practice, however graduate school does provide a structured environment with other like-minded colleagues with outcomes and deliverables. I think you go to grad school primarily for the feedback from teachers and colleagues and for the connections you make while you’re there.

As an online student most of that is lost. In my experience at Camberwell, you connect with colleagues for an online chat once a week. Those chats tend to mostly focus on deliverables- what’s due when. I’m trying to recall when there was a discussion around ideas at a post-graduate level. Maybe a couple of times over the past two years- once a unit.

Then why an MA at Camberwell? For me there are two reasons. With this online structure for the course delivery, I can manage the course load while continuing to work here in Vancouver. The other reason is that I am trying to make sense of a practice-led research degree. I am trying to understand how the Brits are assessing practice-led research.

September 14, 2008 6:45 am

September 14, 2007 Week One, MA_DA Camberwell

We started the course work of the MA Digital Arts this week with a Week One online chat which got off to a rocky start due to technical problems with Blackboard, which still don’t seem to be resolved. Switching to Basecamp seems like a good compromise to get us reconnected. I haven’t found a way to post links in Basecamp as it is primarily a writing and editing tool.

There are eight online students in my course: Ayhan Oensal in Germany, Patrizio Spadoni in Italy, Brian Morris in Greece, Bob Milner, John Williams, Julian Jans and Susan Mortimer in England. I now know their names, but I don’t have much of sense of who they are.

I have started a weblog to record my research and reflections. The beauty of a weblog, is that we can post links to other online sources and references- which is a major advantage.

One of the challenges for me is that from Vancouver, I am eight hours ahead of London- that makes the live chat very early my time! Chat starts at 5:30 my time. I’m sleeping during the morning in London and when my alarm goes off and I’m doing my best to wake up, it’s mid afternoon there.

September 14, 2008 5:32 am

I remember my first studio class at NSCAD very well, maybe because it was such a new situation. We had a teacher who had just arrived from London- Central Saint Martins, I think he only stayed a year and then went back. There were probably about eight students mostly from across Canada. We met together for class three days per week- there was great comradarie and we got to know each other pretty well.

September 12, 2008 3:58 pm

September 12, 1975: tacit understanding

Part of what I have learned as a student at NSCAD is the tacit understanding about a larger world. We know we are part of a larger community of artists.