Final Piece

This film is less busy than my previous ones. I think this is important as it hasn't involved too much editing to say what I want to say, which would have been 'unnatural' and even hypocritical in many ways. I have looped the films to create a sense of cycle, such as that of evaporation. In this way, I hope it summarises the formulae shown at the beginning as the product itself remains unchanged as it goes through the process.

As far as presentation goes I feel I have uploaded each of these films onto youtube as art is about audience and it seems the most appropriate way of getting digital art seen. In a gallery space I suggest it need only be shown looped on a large screen. Originally I was going to project this onto a white wall. The problem with this is that a projection always loses some of the clarification in an image, and as the details needs to be very fine, it would have ruined the effect of the film.

The sound on the film has come from the actual recording. As I set the video camera up to record this, the sounds that it collected are the environmental sounds around it. It picked up quite a lot of digital sounds as I worked on the computer which when speeded up on the film sound a lot like the cracking of the ice. I didn't feel music was necessary as music is a piece of art in itself and is not related to what I am trying to show in this project.

Drawings

Collage drawing: The idea for this drawing was based around the process concept of my project. I used the paper as the palette and incorporated food dye, pencil, coffee, paint, pen, ink, newspaper, canvas and charcoal to create the finished piece. I also tried to mix a variety of techniques from rough sketches to more detailed objective drawing.



Line Drawing: Here I used detailed cross hatching to created the tone of the rim of a jar. It was difficult finding a finishing point with this, but I felt that there needed to be some white or it would look too busy.



Tonal Drawing: This is a close up of a plate photograph. What interested me here was the different shapes the human mind pick out from a mixture of forms, such as faces and hearts.

Prep

Some of the prep filming done earlier in the project.

Plate

Stills of plates with porridge oats and food dye on. This was early experimental filming early on in the project, when I was interested in the very close up.

Plate

Lipid experiment

This was based on a basic lipid experiment, in which you use food dye as an indicator of the process of the break down of fats. This produced some interesting film.

Art

Useful Sites Relating to this Project

I have found Folly - a Lancaster based Digital Art company- and Greenmuseum - an Environmental Arts based website - particularly useful for this project. I have used Folly to research current new media projects in the area and also to develop a greater understanding of what it is to exhibit. What has been of importance to me is understanding some of the terms I have found myself using during this work and how my work really does relate back to it. I suppose much of what interested me initially was the sublime beauty of water as a universal symbol. However, I have taken a step away from environmental art, or at least ecological art, in the processes that followed. I am very excited by both environmental art and the digital age, and have followed on from my previous work in both print and painting in combining both disciplines.
I feel, however, that this project has shown me the importance of the natural world to us as human beings but particularly as artists. My video therefore is on some levels a statement about the importance of nature, but more so a statement about our interpretation of it. The science that we use to break down the natural world will help improve our understanding and respect for it, but our manipulation of the same world will induce greater thought.

www.folly.co.uk

www.greenmuseum.org

Jar on side

The macabre simplicity of the red dye in this really appealed to me. What was interesting about this was that it was doing what I had been trying to do all the way out this project. The beauty of the simple scientific process is conveyed really well in this piece, not too mention it is quite interesting to watch.

Looped Jar

Blog

The purpose of this blog is to act as an online accompaniment to my initial research sketchbook. It will hold most of the digital work I have created during this, my 2nd year sculpture project for Fine Art.

Jars

Photos from the process of filming close ups of jars with food dye in them.

Natural vs Manmade

Robert Smithson juxtaposes the natural and the manmade in to allow the viewer to question both ideas. Goldsworthy employs a similar technique in his sculptural piece 'Jack's fold' in which he presented a common Cumbrian stone wall internal and external to the gallery space.

Peter Greenaway

Issabelle Hayeur

Isabelle Hayeur

Montreal-based artist Isabelle Hayeur documents wastelands, urban fringes, abandoned industrial sites and modified "natural" environments and then blends the images together to create photographs of places that never existed.

(http://www.greenmuseum.org/content/artist_index/artist_id-101.html)