Category: Projection Mapping

Work Programme 67 – JENNY MILARSKI

Architecure, Art, Collage, Failure, Fashion, Film, Filmmaking, Glitch Art, History, Hyper Masculinity, Hyper reality, Ideas, Live Art, Performance Art, Projection Mapping, Story

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© Huw Bartlett 2014

I have just finished an intense  3 weeks as Curator in Residence at the Community Arts Centre, Brighton. Despite a few suggestions against it I decided to start off the 3 weeks myself and invited two artists, whose work I admired and felt could benefit from the space and bring something different, to each have their own week. As I may have previously explained, the Work Programmes at CAC begin on the Monday with the ceremonious handing over of the keys to the artist and finish with an exhibition on the following Saturday.

I am particularly in love with the space and the freedom and inspiration that it provides and enjoy the thrill on a Saturday night of wondering just how differently people will interpret it. As I had already done a work programme last year (click here to see images from the previous year) I was quite apprehensive about how I would interact with the space this time, I was concerned that I would end up repeating things from last year and that it would pale in comparison. In actual fact I did end up mirroring (literally) certain things from the previous year as it felt like a progression of ideas in each room.

Whereas last year I had a physique bodybuilder performing, this year I performed myself. Following on from the confidence I had gained during the LADA workshop the previous week I knew that it had to be me and although this proved to be an extremely daunting experience, and in the week leading up to the exhibition and I constantly questioned if I was making massive mistake, but no matter how nervous I got I knew that there was no way that I wasn’t going to do it. Painting my nails pink, getting a spray tan, putting on the wig and then finally the bikini I covered up the ‘me’ aspects so that all that was left was my physical form, which could be any successful white body in terms that it is healthy, physically able, well nourished, not obese etc.

IMG_2185The performance itself took place over two hours and the audience where invited in for a one-on-one experience. My boyfriend was the bouncer on the door making sure that people waited their turn and I quite like the connotations that go alongside him being the one who allows others to look at me, there’s a kind of pimp dynamic and once inside the room has red lighting and a golden throne chair for the viewer to sit on, making it almost a peep show or lap dance type environment. The emphasis wasn’t on the sexual however, with farcical exaggerations of grandeur such as the ‘gold’ jewellery I was wearing, the clearly not my own hair blonde bombshell wig, the idea was more towards the failure of sexiness. I don’t have abs, so I had drawn them on with eyebrow pencil, I don’t have large bicep muscles so the bodybuilding poses that I was mimicking were exactly that, a mimicry, a parody or poor copy. The fake smile (which I almost lost quite near to the start due a twitching cheek muscle!) and everything about the performance was essentially fake.

 

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Images © Alice Tenquist

Bring Your Own Beamer

Antique, Architecure, Art, Fighting, Film, Filmmaking, Glitch Art, Hyper Masculinity, Photos, Projection Mapping

For this years Brighton Digital Festival I took part in Bring Your Own Beamer at The Corn Exchange. I was one of about 20 artists who were selected to have fixed installations at the show whilst in the middle of the venue the usual brining of your own beamer took place.

I exhibited my M E N projection mapped project, initially created for my MA show and shown also at my first solo show at Community Arts Centre. I particularly enjoyed displaying this piece in the Regency surroundings of the corn exchange and opted to display the work under the watchful eye of a giant ornate mirror. Mirroring (ha!) the reflective plinths that I used in my first showing of this piece.

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Inspiration at Towner Gallery, Eastbourne

Architecure, Art, Film, Filmmaking, History, Hyper reality, Ideas, Mythology, Projection Mapping, Story, Storytelling

From the 2nd of February until the 14th of April, the Towner Gallery in Eastbourne was host to the magical film works of Kelly Richardson.

Each room on the top floor of the gallery was dedicated to a different mythical landscape, with the large initial room showing Leviathon, 2011 introduced a sci-fi like lagoon scene, looking like something out of Avatar and Predator combined.

The epic scale of the works provided an intensely immersive experience and films became portals to these unknown lands. This cinematic transportation of the viewer perfectly captured the feeling I get when standing on a mountain top or when exploring a dense forest, the feeling that no one else exists.  The double sided hanging forest projections, The Great Destroyer,  and The Erudtition, shown below were my favourite pieces.

On a separate, later trip to the Towner I had the good fortune of seeing film-maker John Skoog’s first UK solo show. I was particularly struck by his film Reduit (Redoubt) which takes the form of dark, brooding slow shots of the home of Swedish farmer Karl Goran Persson. Persson built the house by hand and fuelled by his intense fear of impending Soviet invasion continuously fortified his home with junk and found objects. The voice over provides an insight into the character of this farmer, who was so mightily strong he would carry large girders back from town on his bike to add to his fortress like home.

I have always been drawn to film as a medium for my own work due to its ability to take you outside of yourself, and convince you of its reality. Both the exhibitions I saw a the Towner showed a different type of world. The first a mythical landscape, digitally created and the second a mythical landscape created by hand.

Glitch Art extravaganza at Furtherfield Gallery

Art, Film, Filmmaking, Glitch Art, Hyper Masculinity, Ideas, Processing, Projection Mapping

As part of the exhibition Glitch moment/ums at Furtherfield Gallery an online exhibition 0P3NR3P0, is asking for glitchy submissions.

I submitted the film below. It was originally made to be projected in to a book (this project is still under construction and will be in an exhibition in September so more info to follow) and consists of male bodybuilders trapped in their little boxes, forced to consistently perform their poses for the viewer.

My tutor Alex May (whose software Painting with Light I used for my film above) is also exhibiting:

Another favourite of mine from the online submissions was the one below by Lisa Cianci:

I hope to visit the full exhibition before it finishes on the 28th of July, but lets get this MA show out the way first!

The work of Robert Seidel

Architecure, Art, Film, Filmmaking, History, Ideas, Projection Mapping

As the days scarily pass by, with now only  two weeks to go till my MA show, Sequenced (Private View on the 28th of June at Brighton University) I am naturally procrastinating (I call it research) by means of the internet.

My project consists of projection mapping on to 3 plaster torsos and as nothing is original anymore I wanted to see if there were any examples of this sort of thing already out there.

Robert Seidel Triangulation Blog 5

Robert Seidel is a Berlin based artist who works with experimental film and is bloody brilliant! The work pictured above is entitled folds and uses projections to highlight the history of plaster casts and to bring them alive. The piece was created for the Lindenau Museum in Altenburg, Germany. The continuous replication of these Grecian statues lends to the fact that even when they are missing limbs and broken, they are still completely recognisable. Seidel talks about the way in which moving image can make a static object come alive. These are all things I am working towards in my own practice.

Charles Atlas: Glacier at Bloomberg SPACE, London

Art, Film, Filmmaking, History, Ideas, Projection Mapping, Storytelling

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Located on Finsbury Square, Central London, Bloomberg SPACE’s current exhibition is a collaboration between the video artist and director Charles Atlas, the South London Gallery and Bloomberg SPACE.

Within this busy district of London the space is a welcome retreat and offers a portal like experience as you enter through layers of curtain and are thrust in to Atlas’ 360 degree multi channel video installation. The height of the ceilings and therefore the projected films are impressive and lend to a completely immersive feel.

 

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For Glacier, 2013, Atlas has used footage from the Bloomberg digital archives and stock and found footage from other sources. The clear division of these different visuals is made all the more disorientating by the constant movement of them around the room. Using striking visuals such as underwater scenes, giant faces that look like they are from a commercial, a frantic looking eye and larger than life cows the space is transformed in to a cage which traps the shrunken audience members within its continuous loop. There is a brief respite from the moving images when the entire space fades to black, this is preceded by the whole room being enveloped with a projection of what it looks like outside the gallery when the windows are not blacked out. It is a if the viewer has been placed within a box which allows them to see it out but others to be unable to see in. The repetition of passers by walking around the walls of the room gives a groundhog day, claustrophobic feel. The use of sound within the space is also eerie as a continuous droning noise scores the visuals.

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The exhibition is on until the 30th of March and I would encourage anyone who visits to go at a less busy time, I attended roughly an hour before closing and there was no one else in the space. This added to the immersive, other worldly sensation of the work.

In the lead up to our final show for the Digital Media Arts Masters that I am currently undertaking, this immersive and engrossing feel is exactly the sort of thing I want to achieve in my own work. I will update my progress over the next two months!

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Reasons to be Creative Conference

Art, Augmented Reality, Film, Flash, Ideas, Processing, Projection Mapping, Science, Web Design

At the beginning of this week, Mon, Tues, Weds, I attended a conference held at Brighton Dome as part of Brighton Digital Festival. The reason I was able to attend was due to a friend winning a ticket but then being unable to go. In return for the ticket I sent her sum up emails of the days speakers and I will attach that below in case it is useful to anyone else and it is definately useful for me to have all the relevant links and comments together and not in my appalling primary school child handwriting!

Day 1

Kevin Warwick:
Really interesting cyborg guy who looks very normal but was a pioneer in getting technology implanted into himself, such a copper implant that would act as a keycard when he entered his work building and it opened the doors and lights for him!

He asked at the beginning of the talk if anyone would like to have an implant of some technological extension of their body and asked for a show of hands, I thought I wouldn’t want something, thinking of some kind of Terminator situation but then he mentioned that most of us have our pets micro chipped and that these class II implants are becoming increasingly common with nightclubs even using them so customers don’t have to pay for drinks, just scan their implanted chip, say in their arm, at the bar and their account is charged automatically.

He also spoke about some research he and some of his students are undertaking into sensory substitution, e.g having magnets implanted in the fingertips which vibrate as you get near to objects and having electrodes in the shape of letters placed on the tongue and the shape of the letter gets transmitted to the brain, both would be beneficial to blind people for instance.


http://www.kevinwarwick.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzqssQqUvj4

Relly Annet Barker:
She did a presentation about giving presentations and metioned some interesting things like ‘barcamp’ where first time speakers can go to talk about a chosen subject. This talk was particularly helpful for me as I am, like quite a few people out there, shit scared of public speaking!

She also runs Supernice Studio, which I gather is about helping people to get stuff done and to have the confidence to it, the link below is to a project to help give people a kick up the back side over the next 30 days with regards to web content and there are still a few days left to sign up:

http://supernicestudio.com/30days/

Memo Akten:
Epic visual artist, links will do more justice than words – epic!!!! (This is what I wrote in the email to my friend and it still applies here)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tv1lrjA9UvA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcQJAlft1b0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cseTX_rW3uM&feature=list_other&playnext=1&list=SPDC836AFF792C013A

The above video is of the process of making Forms, 2012 and Akten worked with my previously mentioned favourites, Quayola.

http://www.quayola.com/

Stefanie Posavec:
Data Illustrator working with extracting data by hand, e.g. she goes through a book and counts the number of words and sentences and then represents it by hand or using illustrator. She was very apologetic about not knowing how to code and wanting to learn, I also often suffer from this feeling but really I think she has great way of doing things and I agree with her low tech approach. This is something that I will come back to in a separate, future post.

http://www.itsbeenreal.co.uk/

Day 2
Jake Archibald:

He did a talk about the Application Cache for html5, I dutifully sat through the whole talk but had no idea what the hell happened in that hour.
I managed to understand that it was something about making sites useable offline and obviously need to look into this!
Although he is part of the team that set up this site for tracking going to events:
http://lanyrd.com/
Bjarke Myrthu:
He brake danced onto the stage!
He was talking about the fact that people don’t use the internet to mix up genres of use, such as having a film playing with images over the top, he gave some examples:
http://moodstream.gettyimages.com/
http://stormingjuno.com/
He didn’t use this as an example but it’s that same sort of thing, a linkin park video that uses your facebook photo, it’s quite hilarious!
http://lostintheecho.com/
He also is making a website to help people be able to interact all of these mediums, youtube, still photos, sound files, etc together
www.storyplanet.com
Day 3
Gimme 5:
Which is loads of speakers coming on within the hour to talk about what they do or an idea for 5 mins
Will just list the most interesting ones
Luke Whittaker
http://www.stateofplaygames.com/blog/
Adam Onishi
http://www.onishiweb.co.uk/
Pete Hochkin
http://www.headloose.com/
Maikel Sibbald
http://www.yellowbirdsdonthavewingsbuttheyflytomakeyouexperiencea3dreality.com/
Then there was Simon Collison for the whole hour
Talking about less being more when putting out web content
He has a music website which the background images are inspired by found records in the street but then he set up these photos to get the ones he wanted
urgh can’t find the music site but thought it was called ‘rushmore’
here is his personal site:
http://www.colly.com/
He also mentioned that he loves art using found objects and said he likes the idea of ‘using what’s around and making more of what is little’
His twitter is @colly so maybe tweet him a link to foundism?

Foundism is the site of the friend I was emailing, it asks for submissions for found objects:

www.foundism.co.uk
Joel Baumann:
The best speaker of all!
Really funny and so enthusiastic about his work
Used to be part of:
http://www.tomato.co.uk/
Now doing random shit that he wants to do:
http://nnfenren.com/
http://noog.nnfenren.com/
noogs being the worlds first digital collectables!

NOOG #2 from Nnfenren on Vimeo.

Johanna Kollman:

She talked about collaborating and ways of re thinking the way you work.
http://www.slideshare.net/johannakollmann

Carrieres de Lumieres, Les Baux, France aka The most amazing exhibition I have EVER been to!!!

Architecure, Art, Augmented Reality, Film, Filmmaking, History, Ideas, Painting, Projection Mapping, Story, Storytelling, Travel

I have just got back from Provence and have to say the highlight, apart from the exquisite wine (I will now only drink clairette de die darling!), was by far a visit to the Carrieres de Lumieres in Les Baux. Luckily my mum had spotted an article in The Observer about the caves and so after convincing my partner to drive the two hours from where we were staying, wiggling up and down mountains, we arrived in, or I should probably say on, Les Baux. The video below shows the location and the stunning projections inside: Carrières de Lumières – Spectacle “Gauguin, Van… by culturespaces

As you will see it is a combination of Van Gogh and Gauguin’s work shown in the context of ‘Painters of Colour’. The soundtrack on the video is also the same as was played within the caves and had been perfectly mixed to convey the emotions through each era of the artist’s work.

The only thing the video doesn’t do justice to is the sheer scale and awe that you get from being in the space, it is literally gigantic and even before you enter the setting and the quarried cliff face is an artwork in itself! The fact that the floor and walls were being used and the way in which the paintings came to life nearly made me have a little cry! It was one of those situations where you wish you had thought of this, had been part of it, but also sheer joy that people in the world are out there creating these sorts of events. As I tend to mention a lot, I am interested in the ways in which digital media can enhance and compliment history and tradition and this was literally the most perfect example I have ever seen of this in action. You could see kids and adults alike with their interest sparked, perhaps much more so than would be the case with a static painting in a formal museum environment.

I should also mention that Jon Cocteau’s Le Testament d’Orphee, which was filmed in the caves in 1959 was also displayed within the caves, projected onto a stone wall, which provided an amazing viewing experience as the texture of the wall made the caves in the film almost 3d! And it was amazing to walk around and imagine the scenes being played out.

I shot quite a lot of film whilst I was out there so expect more from Provence to follow!