OTR_Nursery

cover version

install

today was all about getting all the materials into place, testing all the wires, the microphones and the amps, the lights and all the amount of powerboards and extension cables needed.

setting up the first speaker-lamp;

connecting the contact mic, the power, and the speaker to the amp

setting the component elements into place

one of the necessary environmental conditions to consider is the lighting. often something easily overlooked. most times, galleries are very well lit, sometimes with track lighting or spots. for this installation i wanted the lighting to be a bit dramatic, a bit like a fractured infrastructure, as if the lights have either not yet been put into their place, or had been taking away from where they were meant to be.

 sitting the bluestone cobblestone on fluoro lights

placing the lights on the speaker-lamps 

seemed to elicit the best effect in the space

butterflies are thoughts

all the bits and pieces of the artwork, like the component elements of a mini-system, are all constructed, soldered, drilled, tied and taped.

all four speaker-lamps built:

starting to look a lot like a system now

once constructed i needed to tested out how the lamps are going to look when i set them out as an apparent grouping of behaving objects.

first i set one up and just looked at it, to get a sense of its feeling, or effect/affect.

of course, there's a particularly anthropomorphic element, 
not least thanks to a particular digital animation

but then once they are grouped, another dynamic comes into play. a structural, systematic, amplification of the repeated behaviour, however that 'behaviour' may be implied to any given viewer.

   

 starting with 2 speaker-lamps 

(the log here will actually be a large bluestone cobblestone)

 

a third speaker-lamp, increasing the sense of implied power and implied network

introducing the slightly different speaker-lamp,

the one directed at the cobblestone protruding from the wall of the gallery

all four speaker-lamps, 
all mounted on structural pine (another infrastructural material reference)

the last image is taken from down lower to try and describe the feeling of intimidation that i feel like i'm getting from these objects that seem somehow to be with some sort of agency. the brick in the middle has replaced the log so i could get a better feel for the materiality of a rock.

here's hoping that there is a decent sound coming from the contact microphones on the pipes. even if not, i think the sculptural form of the work still carries some of the desired feeling i had hoped to evoke.

happy with this layout prototype i'm now all ready to take the whole lot of pieces into the gallery space and set them up to suit the dynamics of the architecture with which it will exist. tomorrow is install day.

  
this is everything all sorted out so i can pack it all up and take it into the city on the train

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 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)

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.