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

inspiration from the field

i am pretty much dying to get into the space at west wing gallery so i can get started on this work. all the amps are built now, all the contact microphones are made. i just need to get into the space, set them up, and decide how best to present the work. while i have decided to put aside living plants for this show, there is a growing desire in me to reconsider this idea and keep that possibility open. again, it's all really dependent on the conditions of the site and the way the materials function.

anyway, in the meantime, i stumbled on this great artwork by angelo vermeulen:

plan b

when working with living things, or kinetic things, i've realised it's important to have a plan b. plants die, batteries go flat, timers fail. since my soldering incident recently, my thoughts have turned to measures of secure efficiency.

there is the possibility with this next installation that:
 - the water rushing through the pipes is a rare event that i just happened to be fortunate to hear at the specific day and time i went in to visit the site
 - the microphones may not sufficiently detect an audible vibration (perhaps the pipes are too thick)
 - the amps may not sufficiently increase the intensity of the vibrations to create a loud enough sound through the speakers

these are just 3 main things i can think of now, that will effect the way the artwork exists in the space.

in light of that, i have to be prepared to adapt the plan to suit the occasion and specifics of the space itself. that is, i have to arm myself with the materials i think will be interesting, and then apply them effectively to the situation. the plan is always just the preparation of your approach to the site. once in the site, you mould the plan to the environmental conditions, in order to create the situation.

at the moment, plan b consists of double amping the mics, to increase the volume of sound (if required), and/or aborting the material of the desk lamps in order to increase the amount of speaker cones (which i have dozens of), such that the situation becomes more about sound and less about the connotations of materials.

if there's no sound to be 'harvested' from the pipes, then a more significant re-evaluation of the artwork will be required.

the exhilarating part of this process is the fact that i won't know how successful my plan will be in determining the situation until i actually engage with the environmental conditions. which will give me 2 days to adjust, customise and re-consider - should that be needed.

building some assemblages

after a rather frustrating error with some soldering that resulted in one of my amps being destroyed, today was much more successful. another amp built, this time successfully, worked on the first test and brings the total to 3 constructed amplifiers.

 this is the amp i messed up, literally, burning the connections into oblivion.

this basically breaks the chain of connections and means the circuit is broken.

 successful amp construction - testing

whilst i wait for jaycar to reopen after the holidays, i moved on to making the contact microphones. after some net surfing about these microphones and some youtube videos on how to make them i discovered you can take these sensors called piezo sensors, cut the plastic casing off of them, and extract the brass and ceramic disc from the middle. 

 this is how the sensors look when you buy them

this is the inner disc that you take out,

and these things are the microphones.

the inner disc is able to detect vibrations. the ceramic bit just moves very slightly, simply by pressure. you basically just connect the wires to an amp, so it makes the tiny fluctuations larger. then plug a speaker into the amp to hear what the vibrations sound like.

placing the discs against walls, glass, wood or really, any surface, means that they detect the sound waves hitting the material and the vibrations caused by anything else touching the material.

for this next show, 4 of these will be placed against the 4 pipes in the middle of the room. when i went to look at the exhibition space i noticed these pipes were each emitting a subtle sound of water, echoing metallic sounds and what i thought were human voices. so that experience led to the idea of amplifying those sounds to enable them to fill the space like liquid.

note to self:

the organicisation of foucault and the ecology of structures

 - essay or article idea

rock paper scissors

 assemblage as network

                   network as system              
 
             system as assemblage

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.