proof of concept

i've decided that the mixer is not the best way to amplify the signal from the pipes, instead i'm going to build mini-amps for each pipe. that way each of the 4 speakers i'm planning to use will each be individually the sound of one of the pipes. one pipe, one speaker. 4 individual pipes, 4 individual speakers.

 i found this sound mixer, with 5 inputs, in the rubbish!

 this is a rig up for testing 

- speaker at left, mini-amp in the middle (circuit board),

power off to transformer at top, contact mic at right.

 close up mini-amp, built from an electronics kit

this contact mic was made by artist Riki-Metisse Marlow

drawing out some ideas, considered mounting amp on pipe

getting a feel for how the 4 pipes would look with the 4 amps and 4 speakers,
and trying to figure out how to get the power to each amp

decided here to run the power cables up the pipes and into the roof,
creating much cleaner lines in the 'system'

sequence of developed ideas through drawings (left to right)

i'll have to make 2 more mini-amps, as i have 2 left over from an artwork i exhibited last year. and i'll need to get 4 desk lamps. that should be all i need to purchase to complete the work.

bus projects at west wing

information about the next show for bus projects is here.

the return of painting?

just noticed how the black spray paint on this plywood looks quite interesting. i was using this wood as a backdrop for some spray-painting i was doing. the marks left behind make me think of really abstracted, blasted and blurry flowers.

possible future painting series?

re-charged

i wasn't completely happy with the presentation of charging at its recent outing. i think the plinth was just too much. i don't really enjoy plinths much at all anymore but was thinking it might be ok for a commercial gallery setting - some sort fo fetishising of the object.

once i got the work back to the studio i took some photos of it sans-plinth. 

so now that work can be put to bed, probably the last sculpture with living plants in it for a while i think. in some ways this work feels like a transitional one, as if it is a step into some new work. more system influence, as with the elements combining to build something functional; less plant oriented from now on.


there are some plant drawings yet to come, but sculpturally for now, plants are a concluded material.

studio play vs park play

found some carpet lying around that i can use as a ground for preparing this next sculpture.

this is close to the flooring of the site at west wing, so will help to get a better feel for how the work will look. 

also, i've been completely reinvigorated to go on long walks around my area again, what with my car being written off and all. plus the general joy of longer days and sunshine... occasional as it is in melbourne at the moment. i've been keeping a diary of some photos and making some videos which i'll need to edit down soon. the diary is on tumblr here.

 

new symbols of nature

it had to happen at some point, and i think the time was right. 

plants have been dropped from the installation.

plants have been a very regular material in my work for some time now. perhaps to the point of becoming some sort of signature, where occasionally i am being referred to as the 'plant guy'. now there's a whole variety of good reasons to use plants in art, and it is something that will always be part of my repertoire. but as i have come to realise that my work is about systems, and the plants i use signify just one symbolic evocation of natural systems, i feel more free to let them go and pursue some different natural elements that also evoke symbolic meaning for natural systems.

i had started with logs, way back in 2008, as the starting point of natural materials in my work. natural materials that connote 'nature' and the archive of information contained therein. then i transitioned from those dead and discarded living materials, to plants that were actually alive. this introduced issues like the biophilia hypothesis into my work and was a more direct way of engaging with the 'natural', living world around us, or amongst us.

this next transition goes back in the other direction, in a way, by pursuing natural elements that are even less 'alive' (or perhaps even, less 'conscious') than either logs, wood or living plants. for this next show, with its connections to the architecture of the site, i am going to use rock as a material to represent the natural.

rocks are as equally of the natural world as a tiger, an orchid or a cloud. some theories have it that the world is in fact one functioning system, where all these natural elements - from rocks and sand and dirt, to oxygen and nitrogen and carbon dioxide, to termites and kangaroos and humans - are all functioning together to make life possible on earth. they each facilitate the functioning of each other's collective environmental needs.

artist giuseppe penone describes rocks as liquid materials that appear to us as solid only because of our limited time frame of conscious awareness. in the grand scheme of universal time, a rock transitions through many stages in creation and destruction, only existing as a hard rock for the blink of an eye in the broad spectrum of time of the earth's lifespan.

also, i like the correlation between the rock as a natural element, and how we have unitised it into a cobblestone and used thousands to articulate our architectural environment - natural system coopted as cultural system. 

for this site, in the melbourne cbd, the obvious rock choice is bluestone.  this highly recognisable part of melbourne's architecture, especially from the gold rush era, is actually cooled lava from a volcano flow.

in the interest of stripping the work back to its elements a bit more - in contrast to a habit i have of overloading my work - this sketch is exploring the speaker cone as stripped down sound producer. it requires some sort of armature to stand up, so loses some of its potency i think. 

the desk lamps still seem to have more impact for me, so they remain first choice at the moment. i like the way they imply that the internal infrastructure of an office environment appears to be interrogating/investigating/nurturing the architectural building blocks of its own habitat. building blocks which are made of the earth, are natural, and form the foundation of its existence.

process is evolution

ok, so i'm still working through the ideas for this next show. it has recently become more obvious that ideas about systems and the way in which they behave, as if of their own agency, is the foundation of how i approach an artwork in this series. 

i'm thinking that this phd degree is like a project - with a particularly defined territory of operation - that populates and articulates its terrain with multiple series of artworks.

so, anyway, with this next show i'm working through my ideas and trying to massage them into something interesting and a suitable contribution to the body of work produced here in melbourne.

here's some recent sketches of ideas. i'm enjoying how the work is starting to form itself, just through the process of drawing the ideas as if they were real physical things. i'm going to continue this approach until i'm happy with the last drawing i do, or i run out of time!

i was thinking here about where to have the seedlings going from, or in. i was thinking this is a good object to have in one's language. as an object, the container of the seedlings will evoke a certain interpretative meaning depending on what it is. and it's a great opportunity to introduce something unusual into the combination of elements. 

i have been thinking glass containers would be good, mostly based on the aesthetics of glass in combination with cables, speakers and microphones. in the picture above i was thinking about piles of newspapers. like the piles people bind together with string for their recycling.

seedlings growing out of the news, or out of piles of paper, is an interesting combination of materials - they are seldom seen together and therefore elicit something fresh in the viewer's mind. if i was writing a text book, i'd call that something like, the novelty affect. 
and yes, with the 'a' in affect.

also, there's an anthropomorphology being applied with this imbuing of the mechanical elements with some sort of apparent consciousness. the speakers have been merged with desk lamps. not sure about this, as it's a bit strong. but that might be a good thing. i can't tell yet.

i do like how the speakers emit sound from what is normally a source of light. that's nice slippage of meaning. if i was writing a text book, i'd call that something like, the slippage affect.

also, desk lamps are commonplace items in rooms like the one in which the installation takes place. that ties the materials back to the context of the space and makes the work more installation-y or site specific. and one of the important elements in this artwork is the extraction of sound from the pipes in the middle of the room, that connect to various other parts of the shopping centre building and infrastructure.

here's some other thoughts - drawn out.

originally i had intended to build robots made of plants and electronic parts that would be poised on the pipes, listening to the sound of the pipes with sensors in their limbs. i've since turned away from that idea because i was worried it would translate as too theatrical. robots can work, but they have to look legitimate.

i decided it would be cleaner if the contact microphones (which i am going to mostly make myself) were attached without any authority from an obvious source. the sketch above gives me a chance to better visualise what it would look like with clamps holding the contact mics to the pipes. i quite like it, it's dry and clean.

the lower image is getting a better look at desk lamps, the way they look. they are very anthropomorphic and bring pixar to mind. this could either be a distracting new meaning to introduce as a new element in the combination, or maybe it's good to introduce, acting as a catalyst to stimulate a broader set of possible interpretations. perhaps even interesting ideas. oh - and i'm also thinking about the seedlings growing in nests. maybe nests of shredded papers. maybe real nests.

not sure how many rounds this will go through, there's the sound mixer to think about too. how to present that. if that wave of transition from portraying objects with obvious or implied consciousness -  to -  making objects cleaner and drier, continues, then the objects will become less and less dressed up, and more and more become just the pragmatic functions they are.

what is synthesis?

so, it really only just dawned on me - the name of this project includes the word synthesis. obviously i chose it, but i never really thought about it. well, i mean, i did think about it. but i never really analysed it.

the reason i chose it was because it describes, quite simply, 
 "the combination of components or elements to form a connected whole"

really, that simple.

that's what art is, of course. regardless of medium, method or conceptual content, the process of art is exactly just that. 

process insights

so, for the upcoming show at west wing i started off with the idea of plant robots. 

you can see a pot plant robot clinging to the pipes in this sketch

but after some thought i decided to drop the whole anthropomorphic element and just let the system of interconnected parts speak for itself. i'm always keen on evoking a sense of intelligence in systems, and i think producing robots is a little too didactic - in terms of that evocation of articulated thought.

 just mapping out the parts - you might be able to see i thought about building a pipe that i could tap, drawing water out from it for the seedlings, but i think that is a bit too much trickery for my work now.

there's a few elements i need to consider now:

 - what sort of seedlings should i use (i'm contemplating weeds at the moment)

 - how to build the speakers to elicit a sense of nurturing (i'm thinking about building the speaker cones into desk lamp shades)

random sculptural event

pressed flowers 

+ 

a book about indoor plants 

(that i'm using to appropriate some instructional drawings from)

= 

sudden unplanned sculpture.

 

units

transition alignments

in a movie i saw recently, a conversation something like this:

reporter: So, Yoko, what are you working on now?
yoko: I'm thinking about scissors.
reporter: What? Just thinking about them?
yoko: Yes

and so it is with any art that takes conceptualism as a fundamental component of its makeup. thinking is much of the work.

with the new year coming (an arbitrary signal marker of time) and the continuing refinement of the direction of my work, i've been thinking of using this next show at west wing as a transition process. my initial intention was to construct some sort of installation of hybrid organic robots made of plants and electronics. my first sketches were rather literal robots. but with the focus of my work on systems, i feel i can start to be less literal in my material creations.

i feel like i should make the systems (machines/robots/hybrids) more abstract and ambiguous, even less heirarchical (eliminating who is 'boss' in the system) and more mysterious.

how this will manifest itself is not yet certain. but i'm going to embrace this exhibition opportunity as a platform for development. the first step is to move back from a literal hybridisation of plant and electronic, in the form of robots with 'plant brains', and to move into new territories of ambiguous systems. materially, for this installation, that means no plant robots listening to the pipes, or moving about the space like living things. instead, the system of functioning parts will simply be there, and the viewer can decipher their relations if they choose.

day in the sun

sunshine brings synapse realignment and exhilaration.

 
the city is walking distance to the right of this photo, just slightly north-west along the yarra river, which itself is about 300m behind the camera. a microcosm of a forest or bushland setting, cultivated within an inch of its life not withstanding.

as a system of traffic flow, suburban planning, electrical wiring and sporting endeavours encircles and interconnects with this park, so to a system of interrelated activities within the park reach out and interconnect with the cultural systems. collectively, the living entities of the park, including families of birds who feed on the flowers of the gum trees, the beetles that live amongst the micro-tenement towers of the grassy canyons in the lawn, the semi-forested accumulation of the large trees - and indeed the whole functioning eco-system itself, as manicured and orchestrated as much of it is - all contribute to a participation with the broader external systems within which they lie.

system overlap. system relationship.

hybrid robot plants in a shopping mall

a very exciting opportunity has just come along - to be a part of a group show at west space gallery's offshoot, west wing. this came about as a result of the unfortunate closure of the bus projects gallery earlier this year - where i had been booked to exhibit in may. the closure meant the postponement of that exhibition until new premises could be secured or an off-site opportunity presented itself. west space came to the rescue with their gallery space in the melbourne central shopping centre.

the show is in late january - more details soon.

the location offers a great chance to engage directly with the architecture of the site. i chose a small room to put my work into due to its suitability for a very real engagement with the building's functional components. a series of pipes runs vertically right through the room and if you press your ear against them you can hear the distant sounds of the shopping mall.

 the small room through the right door

 the pipes that pierce the room vertically

 an odd interruption into the white cube

the work i had proposed for the bus gallery show was very much designed to fit a very particular space - a long, skinny space. this new space affords me an opportunity to engage with the site in a different way, most especially because of the 'intruding' elements of the foundational architecture that break into the otherwise white cubical office-like space. 

discovering that i could hear water flowing and the echoing sounds of the extended building through the pipes was a key element in generating ideas for making work in the space. here's a small list of ideas that are getting the ball rolling:

 - the secluded, isolated nature of the space (office room, door) lends itself to being a microcosm environment. this makes me think of things like museum dioramas and zoo exhibits for reptiles or nocturnal animals.

 - the sound element is most intriguing, making me consider encouraging the viewer to listen to the pipes. also makes me think that maybe plants could be listening to pipes, as if tapping them.

 - the ceiling is made of corrugated perspex, the kind of roof that is common as backyard terracing for verandas in the suburbs. with my work i automatically then think of hanging plants and outdoor lighting.

 - the rock that also pierces one wall suggests a hidden infrastructure, something more earthy and traditionally constructed than the more obvious shiny facade of white walls and other commercially oriented presentations of the shopping centre.

out of these thoughts i have been getting a strong desire to construct an installation of hybrid plant/robot machines that are clambering about in the space, listening to the pipes and using the sound they gather from that to stimulate the growth of new plants.

kindred spirits

as an artist, i find, you're looking to articulate a clear voice that resonates with other people, that hopefully can provide a catalyst for thought, stir ideas and generate interest in the world at large. part of that desire to have a clear voice goes to striking out a unique territory. to offer the world novel outlooks, unchartered explorations and fresh ideas.

sometimes, in that quest, you stumble upon other voices that share a similar pitch. that sing in the same register. with this comes both an excitement of shared expression, of finding other people engaged in the same explorations, coupled with a slight worry that you don't want to tread on someone else's turf. of course, this could be just me. but in my effort to attempt to add something original to the ever growing historical output of artworks i'm pretty keen to also ensure those in my field of interest don't have me stumbling into their own particular efforts and producing work that's already been done. i'm sure some of this concern comes about as a consequence of doing postgraduate research, where intellectual territories are well guarded. one must always site where an idea comes from, and one must always credit those that arrived into new territories first.

anyway, the reason i mention all this is that recently i stumbled on a work that i felt immediately connected to.  on this particular occasion, it is the discovery of an artwork that is similar to what i am about to commence work on. occasionally this happens and, again, it both excites you and makes you a bit hesitant. if only temporarily, until you realise the differences that exist.

here is a wonderful sculpture by mexican artist gilberto esparza, called nomadic plants:

gilberto esparza, nomadic plants

basically, it's a plant robot. the robot seeks out contaminated water in urban environments to feed the organisms living in it. amazing! 

my next sculpture is going to be a plant robot too. not as complicated and technically advanced as this, however, but a plant robot nonetheless. working with this idea of hybridising nature and technology, and confusing the power relationship in that coupling - is the 'natural' components driving the technology or is the technology driving the 'natural' components? or are they, perhaps, symbiotic? raising those ideas in the viewers mind is the driving motivation of my recent sculptures.

seeing this work by esparza inspires me to push myself harder to make work half-way as wonderful as this one, and it also keeps me on my toes to ensure my work is my own voice.

i'll continue to post documentation of the studio progress of this next sculpture and we'll see how it shapes up.

threads that run through

i have just updated my website - www.kentwilson.net - in light of this important show at dianne tanzer gallery. i'm particularly conscious of maintaining a professional archive of my work. as part of this process i dug out a few older works that i hadn't seen for a while and was struck by how consistent the theme of my work has been. the refining of my research project for my postgrad brought to light the common thread in my work of humans engaging with 'culturalised' nature, such as pot plants, gardens, street trees. a work from 2008, during my honours year, which also had an airing in barcelona this year, struck me as a clear illustration of that theme and reiterated this growing awareness in my work, that with time a clear conceptual thread becomes more apparent.

 

the animation is set on the campus at university. the trees represented are the largest eucalypts that grow there in amongst the buildings. the work aims to expose the power of those trees, highlighting their presence which is often overshadowed or hidden amongst the 'geology' of the built environment. the character in the work is my wife lucy james, who allowed me to film her making the necessary poses which i then rotoscoped frame by frame using a drawing tablet that connects to my computer.

this has also reinforced my desire to return to some drawing projects. i have been increasingly drawn into sculptural works over the years, having started art school as a painter. in reality i entered art school as a drawer, only converting my drawings to painting to demonstrate i could paint, at the time believing drawing to be something 'less than art', something preliminary. drawing is, however, a rightful and respectable medium in its own right and can be expressed in many forms, not least digital animation (such as this work). anyway, reviewing this work has reinforced my growing desire to pursue more drawing projects. additionally, to pursue some more video work.

i've posted it to youtube for viewing - the quality, it must be noted, is quite deteriorated in that format though. you can adjust it to HD (720p) down at the bottom right to make it as good as possible for this sort of version:

invite

resolved and completed

charging is complete and ready for the show. 

 putting the plinth together

 test and configuration of electronics

 complete!

 plants rigged up with wires connected to copper probe inserted into soil, with aluminium probe on the other side of the plant

 this is the networked electronic detonation device - 

the plants are apparently running the clock device (at right),

which turns and breaks the connection on the electric eye (light bulb),

which triggers the voltage fluctuator (rear),

which also registers on the counter of the 'dynamite' branches.

water and walking

there's two situations that i find to be rich with the potential for inspiration - the shower and walking. as far as the former goes, i have heard that a flow of water generates some sort of atmospheric condition, something along the lines of increased negative ions into the air, that is conducive to improved concentration for the mind. i have also heard that due to this phenomenon, nasa, or some such similar entity in the usa has installed water fountains throughout its headquarters. when i had heard this it rang true with me as i find a great deal of ideas come to me in the shower. 

as far as walking goes, there have been an abundance of artists who attest to the mental stimulation that comes with that activity. philosophers too are famed for such belief. i often walk late at night and have found that on such occasions, when it is dark, scary and lonely, that the natural senses are amplified. always alert to danger, to simply seeing clearly and hearing clearly, sharpens the mind's focus on the reality of the present. in this condition, i find resolutions to problems, conjure new projects and feel a better grasp on contextual understanding.

i mention this because yesterday, struggling with a way to network a series of electronic devices for this sculpture i am working on, i stumbled upon the solution while out walking. and the occasion reminded me that this happens with notable frequency when i do walk.

in short - as far as the sculpture goes - i need to make the voltage fluctuator into a device for activating the electronic eye and use this activation to trigger a voltage fluctuation that at once triggers the voltage meter and activates the LED counter. i also need a regulator to modify the voltage flow to the LED counter to stop it jumping up multiple steps. 

no doubt that sounds like gobble-degook so i shall illustrate more clearly with images from the studio when i get there. but, for me, it was a eureka moment!

glitches and redesigns and thinking out loud

working with new techniques and unfamiliar technologies always creates the possibility of error or glitches. turning my hand to amateur electronics brings with it equal part exciting new discovery and hair-extracting torturous malfunctioning of sculptural potential. so far i've been successful at constructing component electronic circuits that function perfectly well - a flashing LED light, a variant voltage fluctuator, a counter and an electronic eye. that much has been fun and felt like quite an achievement. 

now, publicly declaring the difficulties one encounters in one's art practice is a risky undertaking, as it exposes the trials and tribulations the artist encounters in his/her creative process and lays bare their decision making acumen. this blog is designed to provide an insight into my practice, including the manner in which i think through my material creations, particularly for the benefit of current owners of my work and potential owners, and declaring my failures is a risky affair. however, i think it's important to reveal these inner workings, to show the dead-ends of studio research together with the successful achievements. whether these current glitches result in a cul-de-sac that i have to reverse out of, or whether they prove to be small hurdles to be overcome, only time and hard work will tell!

the tricky part in this particular construction has been combining the disparate electronic components into some sort of integrated system that serves to enhance the sculpture i'm working on. a network of components that is a functioning, interactive ensemble of circuitry that creates the illusion of a working detonation device for a homemade 'bomb'. one major issue is that the combination of the elements results in a substantial increase in consumed power and a resultant drain on batteries. the consequence of this is that the electrical parts of the sculpture function only for a day or two, before batteries need to be replaced. now this would be perfectly acceptable, if this sculpture was indeed a home made detonation device for a 'bomb'. however, it is actually an artwork and must last at least the length of a standard art exhibition which is 3 to 4 weeks. so further investigation/consideration is required in this area. 

the burning question for this particular work is this: how close to an authentic simulacra of a detonation device does it need to be?

this question has played on my mind for years with these sorts of sculptures. at what point does illusion need to be overcome by actuality? specifically for this sculpture, it is never actually ever meant to be a 'real' detonation device. in fact, it is never intended to ever really appear like one. the 'dynamite' is clearly and obviously only cut up branch segments. the sculpture is always itself only a simulation. other sculptures i have made have been created to actually appear to be authentically doing something, that in actuality they are only 'pretending' to. in contrast, this sculpture isn't really pretending to be what it appears. it is very much propositional. as if to say, imagine the power of nature.

so, in that light, pursuing authenticity beyond a particular point becomes unnecessary. one must make a judgement call about where that point is. i do not wish to give up on some of my ideas - such as having the viewer trigger the detonation counter by their proximity to the sculpture - but at a certain point, the technicalities of achieving some of these elements becomes untenable or impractical.

such are my frustrations with the work at this stage!

visually - the 'dynamite' bomb section, consisting of wired up trees branch segments, LED counter of home-made electronic circuitry, the artificial grass covered platform/plinth, the pot plants as the detonation device and the overall composition of all of these elements is very pleasing indeed. i find myself now entangled only in the finer technicalities of the last few little fragments of the work, having to resolve minor glitches and making some important judgement calls. 

and this process of thinking through this final stage, has me leaning toward a more pared down expression of the sculpture - editing out the unnecessary and perhaps ornamental aspects of the work. in which case, interactive elements, overly complex networks of circuitry and additional configurations of electronics is not going to add to the sculpture's productive meaning. these things will have their chance in future work. thinking on it further, i feel that the interactive elements are more suited to installation contexts. this sculpture is very much a stand alone piece - one work in a group show of works, presented on a plinth and designed to evoke ideas of dormant power in nature. for that end, i'm thinking now that it should be simply and clearly produced as just that.

measurement lessons

today was the day to get the plinth together for my sculpture for the dianne tanzer show and i got straight into it with constructing the framework.

 just a basic rectangular number, woodchip panels and pine struts

now, the measurement lesson came when i rolled out the artificial grass i had recently purchased and discovered i did not buy enough! rather frustrating, of course, especially with a car at the insurance assessors after the recent crash. one must always check and recheck measurements!

so, on to the next step in the preparation, which was securing the bundle of branches (for the simulated dynamite) with some rope. in order for the rope to be secured permanently and to avoid knots that look messy and upset the way in which the bundle sits, i decided to sew the rope together. i'm always amazed with the new skills one must acquire in the pursuit of one's art production!

a few more minor adjustments are required for the electrical circuitry that makes up the detonation device, together with a series of batteries to power it - so that's the next step. here is a little test of layout:

the plinth will be completely covered in artificial grass, including the top. but you get a sense now of the complete work. i have to wait until thursday to get the artificial grass from bunnings but the final touches on the circuitry can be completed and i'll have it all ready to go to the gallery!

countdown

a slight delay in production this week due to a pretty heavy road accident - fortunately Lucy and I came through relatively unscathed, but my car is still being assessed for repair or write-off status. some idiot ran a red light on dandenong rd and plowed into us.

anyway, i always ensure my production process has certain time flexibilities, usually due to my sculptures having technical components that can be susceptible to glitches in the build phase. this flexibility has allowed for me to absorb a few days off to deal with the crash and stay on track with my sculpture for the 'Experiments on Plant Hybridization' at Dianne Tanzer Gallery.

a quiet saturday in the studio with the soldering iron.

today i completed a counter that will form part of the 'detonation device' in the sculpture. 

the plan is for the counter to form an interactive component in the work. it will be connected (hopefully, my amateur electronic skills are being stretched here) to a sensor that detects a viewer getting close to the work. the conceptual idea is that this detonation device will get closer to arming itself when anyone gets close to it. so, with live plants eliciting an energy that looks as if it is charging a 'bomb', any attempt to disarm the bomb only brings it closer to detonation. the implications or evocations of this idea are open for the viewer to consider.

i've selected some plants too - typical household plants, purchased from a large warehouse retail chain. the plants are little symbols of 'the natural' but really are quite removed from nature. propagated and cultivated via techniques of mass production more aligned to factory production than the natural cycles of life, these plants straddle both natural and cultural worlds.

the plants are pilea cadierei or aluminium plants. they work nicely in name as there is aluminium conductors in the soil of the plants for the sculpture and the foliage of the leaves echoes the patterns of the circuit boards of the electronics.