Notations 2008
January 20, 2008
Tim set up the drawing machine at the Notations conference, a week long series of image/sound experiments and performances celebrating John Cage’s collaboration of the same title 50 years ago. This time the user could not see the paper, so audio feedback was the main sensory feedback for drawing. Touch also becomes important when sight is eliminated. The user could fel in front of the stylus, paint stick or graphite.
More images available on Flickr.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/artsmedianet/
Relay of Joy film: proposal for Open Ear
October 31, 2007
Proposal for ‘A Relay of Joy” drawing. Tim Long, October 2007
Outline
A twenty minute live performance, creating a drawing of a figure on paper mounted onto a wall. The marks and motion of the stylus will generate sounds via midi triggers and a computer, played into a PA system.
The live action of the drawing is intended to be relayed via a video camera to a data projector.
Description of proposal
A relay of joy. Creating a drawing of a figure for the duration of the performance and a unique, graphically defined soundtrack determined by the position and intensity of the marks.
The live performance is intended to open a dialogue with the audience, through their engagement with the physical, aural, and graphic assembly of the work. The physical movement of the ‘artist’ will be aligned with the aural responses of the marks as they are made, eliding with the graphic properties of the marks themselves.
Further details
A new subject will be created within the performance, represented by the drawn figure, the duration of the work, and the shared experience of ‘artist’ and spectators. The network will be represented by the entire assembly: computer, drawing, sound, audience, duration.
The subject-image assembly will be relayed through the technology, physical movement, a development of graphic marks delineating a human form, referencing haptic sensations, and related physiological and psychological responses:
Haptic of or relating to the sense of touch, in particular relating to the perception and manipulation of objects using the senses of touch and proprioception.
Haecceity the property of being a unique and individual thing. The sound track uses recorded loops and samples of the human voice and other textures.
Equipment I can provide
Mac laptop, midi interface, trigger box, triggers, paper, drawing board
Equipment I would like to borrow for the performance
Amp and PA for sound
Video camera for relay to data projector and for recording the performance.
Other requirements
Lighting
It would be helpful to have local lights shining on the board, preferable from two sources, to eliminate heavy shadows.
I would need to position the equipment to the side of the work space, so there are no tables or obstructions between myself and the audience.
The paper will be pre-hung on a board I will provide, which may be mounted to the wall, or may be stabilised somehow so it does not move around. The triggers will be taped beneath it, so the bottom height of the paper would be about four feet from the ground, so that my body or shadow does not significantly obscure the work.
If the performance is filmed, I would like the video to be relayed live to a data projector. The audience with then see a duplicate of the live action drawing on screen.
Sketchbook Snapshots
October 17, 2007
This post is my opportunity to share my thought and images as they are being developed in my sketchbook. I invite you to comment and respond particularly through images. I am also interested in exploring this strategy as a way of sharing ideas – would you be interested in contributing via flickr?
I am currently exploring the C18 story of Peter Schlemihl a story of a man who sold,regretted and reclaimed his shadow – as the basis for a series of paintings, prints and an animation. I include an example of an illustration for the book by the book’s first illustrator – Edward Cruikshank – a marvellous English artist who illustrated – amongst other books – the tragical Comedy of Mr Punch. This connection is beginning to influence the drawings !!
Thinking Through Art
June 15, 2007
I have only just started reading Thinking Through Art as a sort of introduction to some of the issues surrounding arts Phd’s which are largely or solely practice-based so this is not a review, far too early for that as I’m only 20 pages in.
This publication, pricey at £75, only with black and white illustrations and very difficult to find apart from on amazon, seems to be spot on. It asks all the right questions and rather than providing clear cut solutions provides detailed case studies of approaches to doing and completing a practice-based Phd. It starts very well and defines the what Christopher Frayling’s paper on Research in Art and Design identifies as the differences between research into art and design, research through art and design and research for art.
There are countless books on doing Phd’s out there but these are largely useless for understanding how art can function as research and whether research can or should function as art to be exhibited. This seems to address that issue.
On the 26th of May I will be giving a master class for the Ma Fine Art programme in the Department of Art. This post is primarily for the students who will be attending to familiarise them in advance with the topics I hope to cover and by way of that introduce myself and what my practice as an artist consists of.
The main topic of the master class will be the use of new media (particularily networks) in contemporary artistic practice and how it continues a change in art, in its simplest definition the change from art as object to art as idea, occuring for almost a century. The origins of this lie in the work of Marcel Duchamp and are continually progressed and developed in Happenings, Fluxus, Conceptual Art, Video Art and most recently New Media Art and Net.art. I will show some of my work, talk about it, the themes and focus I repeatedly return to in a cross section of technology enabled online / installation / performance works. I will also talk about where my ideas come from, notably the ideas of Roy Ascott, Net.art and possibly touch on Conceptual Art. Below are a short selection of my works followed by links to the rest, my research and an interview I did a few months back.
Just to let you all know I am currently organising a performance piece for Snd:arc- (Sound and Architecture) taking place Friday 11/05/07 at Broadstairs Campus 8pm so please feel free to come along, its a free event. More details about the event here.
Above: Stills from the internet / installation piece Perpetual.Portrait.
Perpetual.portrait is a software based art work based on the portrait in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. It attempts to simulate what a portrait can never really do, evolve, age with or independently of its subject or as in the novel accumulate visible signs of mis-deeds performed by its subject.
Above: A still (taken 05/05/07) from the internet piece “Quote me!”.
“Quote me!” is an online piece which uses live headlines from a selection of newpapers worldwide to generate short quotes and catchphrases so that I as an artist don’t have to and can focus on my work. In a sense it is my own personal automated spin doctor.
Above: 10 seconds of no video.
10 seconds of no video is a video piece created specifically for websites like Youtube, video on demand web sites, as a site specific work. The video is created through a webcam application with no connected webcam. It is a paradox, a video which states that there is no video, an error as video resulting from a video capturing application which has no input video signal.
Above: Extract from Open Ear performances 06/10/06 .
Open Ear is a loose collaborative group of like minded individuals creating audio-visual art and organising live events within club, gallery, open air or site specific venues. Our principal interests include collaboration, live performance, generative audio-visual work, hybridised art, DIY soundart, circuit-bending and networks.
Links to some of my work and research:
Work – http://www.asquare.org/
Research – http://www.asquare.org/networkresearch/
A recent interview about my work and practice (in Italian and English, scroll down for English version) – http://www.noemalab.org/sections/arte_focus.php?IDFocus=208
Some references / reading:
Sterling, B. (2005) Shaping Things. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. (ISBN: 0262693267)
Baumgärtel, T. (2001) net.art 2.0: New Materials Towards Net Art . Nuremberg: Verlag Moderne Kunst Nurnberg. (ISBN: 3933096669)
Ascott, R. Shanken E.A. (Ed) (2003), Telematic Embrace: Visionary Theories of Art, Technology and Consciousness. Berkeley: University of California Press. (ISBN: 0520218035)
Bleecker, J. (2005) Why Things Matter. Available at: http://research.techkwondo.com/files/WhyThingsMatter.pdf (Accessed: 25th November 2006)
