Installation // Bruce Nauman - Preston

Last week I visited the Bruce Nauman display at the Harris museum in Preston. The exhibition was part of the Tates's Artist Rooms project and heres what the Tate has to say about Nauman.

American sculptor noted also for his environments, films and videotapes. Born in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Studied at the University of Wisconsin at Madison 1960-4 (first mathematics, then art), and at the University of California at Davis 1965-6. Stopped painting in 1965 and began to make objects, performance pieces and films.

The display included his famous "Violins, Violence and Silence" piece made out of neon tubes that are illuminated sporadically. Here is an image I captured of the sculpture in full illumination. 

I enjoyed the way the colours bled into each other as well as the almost incoherent placement of the lettering. "L's" and "E's" are inverted or flipped so that the word isn't immediately recognisable, drawing you into the piece. This may be something I look into as I plan to use some text in the loops for my sculpture. 

This is a photo taken outside Nauman's Changing Light Corridor With Rooms installation. I enjoyed the interactivity of the piece as you walk into and around the corridor experiencing different shadows left from the seemingly random that the lightbulbs are illuminated. The choice of light and dark seemed to be random, I'd like to try and replicate that as well as the interactive elements.

Competitor Analysis and Correspondance - Steve McWade // Three Dimensional Tanx

Last week I went to see Three Dimensional Tanx as they launched their new album. The night took the normal expected structure of support acts after support acts, but when the Tanx were due to play - all the lights dropped and the light show began.

I liked the effect of the black white and grey colour scheme. The mono chromaticism played nicely with the colours of the band's instruments but also allowed the animation to stand out from the black backdrop behind the band. The simplicity of the colours allowed the animations to take precedence. These were kept to simple geometric shapes and patterns, swirling and contorting on the command of the visual operator , Steve McWade.

Here is a close up of the projection hitting the surface of the singers keyboard/organ. I was particularly interested with how the animation interacted with the instrument. The flat back of the organ created another screen effectively and was uninterrupted as no movement passed in front of it. I would have been tempted to use this as a separate animation surface through projection mapping software. I feel this would have allowed for more creativity and maybe look for other surfaces where mapping could be implemented. In this case, however, McWade chose to treat the whole stage as a screen meaning that the animation warped and wrapped itself around the objects and musicians on screen. This created a certain visual aesthetic, but I would have least tried experimenting with mapping to create a more three-dimensional visual.

I managed to be introduced to Steve, stating that I too am interested in learning about the art of projected visuals. Steve was actually a recently graduated masters student, incorporating his projections into his post-graduate degree at Lancaster university. I managed to record our chat, but unfortunately I cannot upload it due to high background noise, this is a transcript;

Chris: Hi Steve, well done on the performance tonight.

Steve: Oh thanks, went pretty much all to plan.

C: So I noticed that you have a Zoom interface (Audio device) in front of you. Does that mean you are taking an audio input into your work?

S: Yeah thats what triggers the changes between animation loops. 

C: So through audio signals?

S: Well when the audio peaks yeah, if the singer screams or if the drummer hits the snare loudly. Its set to a timer though, so will only work every 30 seconds.

C: I suppose thats so its not flickering all the time and giving us all fits?

S: (laughing) Yeah like that.

Chris: I noticed that your animations were all black and white, was there a reason for this?

Steve: Well when we were setting up I was worried about the black backdrop, I'm used to working with white or lightly coloured surfaces. All those animations are actually coloured but when we set up my cable wasn't in the projector properly and it only came out in black & white, I thought it looked better on the backdrop and the band didn't seem to notice, or care!

C: Oh! You couldn't tell they were supposed to be coloured?

S: Yeah well there were a few that looked shit without colour, so I just dropped them.

Chris: I spotted your projector, is that dome around the lens to help the throw?

Steve: Yeah its a wide angled lens

C: So thats what was needed to cover the whole stage?

S: Yeah, a wide angled lens. Wide, Wide lens.

Marcel Duchamp // Bicycle Wheel

I have been inspired by the 'machine' idea from Duchamp's Bicycle Wheel sculpture. His kinetic sculpture is from his readymade collection. I think the simplicity and combination of the moving wheel and the static stool is really interesting visually. And this was its purpose. Duchamp described the sculpture as "I enjoyed looking at it," he said. "Just as I enjoy looking at the flames dancing in the fireplace." It did not serve any other purpose than visual pleasure. This sense of aesthetic is relevant to my concept as I will portray the sculpture as a void meaningless visual pleasure. Serving as a distraction from the mechanisms of the 'machine.' Jean Francois Lyotard, a contemporary of Duchamp, describes this meaningless visual aesthetic as 'The Sublime' 

I began experimenting with creating a vector version of the Bicycle Wheel sculpture. I decided to use a simple colour palette of only a few greys and blacks. I wanted the animation to be simple and reflect the style of the sculpture, the palette and layout of this was key. 

Initially I plotted one vector in the centre of my canvas, this replicated the images i had drawn inspiration from but i wanted to had more vitality. Firstly I animated the wheel spinning, three rotations around a central reference point allowed for a smooth motion. I duplicated the layer and played around with scale. I wanted an unveiling, re-veiling kind of effect so I skewed and scaled some of the animations and placed a secondary animation of the arm pivoting at the base. I then set the keyframes to start or end off screen, making sure to return to the original points so as to create a loop. I was happy with the effect but wanted more of a main focal point, I applied the power of three to my thinking and created two accompanying sculptures either side of the main focal point. I then added another animation point to the arms in a similar vein to the scaled up sculptures.

I rendered out my animation from After Effects and into Premiere Pro, here I applied an old film layer style and reversed the footage to a negative to create a more 'vintage' aesthetic. Here is my final loop of Duchamp's structure 'Bicycle Wheel.'

Using Ableton Live For the First Time

Today I installed a trial version of Ableton Live to practice loading and triggering samples. This will be how my installation reacts when a key is pressed. I also looked into using a QWERTY-MIDI converter so that the interface can be a QWERTY keyboard. 

However, after experimenting and using forums from the Ableton site, I discovered away of mapping a trigger and assigning it with a letter key. This was a major revelation as it means I can eliminate a whole piece of software from the chain,

I am quite happy with my progress as I have never used the software before. It will be both a process of discovering new elements that I need, like mapping the input MIDI data to a video file, and also shaping my project around the capabilities of the software.

The Day We Fight Back

Today I signed The Day We Fight Back petition. The organisation is raising awareness and giving information to governments warning them against the power of the NSA.

"We'll use your signature, with thousands of others, to pressure governments and international institutions to forbid mass surveillance anywhere in the world."

I also installed this banner to allow you to also sign the petition.

Boxes Boxes Boxes

I work for a music shop so when I went home this weekend I stocked up on these. I will practice on them and use them to create the sculpture. Next I'll need to spray paint then white.

Research and Software Platforms

When looking into the area of drone technology I came across these notes of inspiration.

I already started to think about how best to include interactivity in my installation and what supplies I would need to make the projector sculpture. 

This is the work flow for the software system I am looking into using for the installation 

This model relies on using a qwerty keyboard as an interface. I looked into ableton as a live launching software platform, and I have experience using Madmapper projection mapping tool. I discovered Quartz Control as a medium for the two pieces of software to talk to each other and then relay to the projector. I will download free trials and practice with all of these platforms.

Well There's No Going Back Now

Having done lots of research, software tests and beginning to craft a firm concept ~ I took the next step.

It really was too good a deal to pass up!

I'm definitely going to have to get working now though.

Initial Planning and Brainstorming

I looked into the concept that I wanted the project to convey. I am keen to highlight the dangers that allowing technology to make it's own decisions, especially when the tech holds weaponry or lethal choices against humans. I developed this idea through the below mind map 

The NSA and GCHQ operations have been especially glaring for me. The concept of our governments extracting data and recording surveillance on it's own people raises many ethical and political questions and this is something I want to address within the project. This is another way I feel we should be wary of the powers that technology has in the current data age.