Final Post

The work created during the time on Placement has been to Paris and been viewed by the EpiGeneSys group.  They liked what they saw and have given the go ahead for Paul to do an exhibition later in the year in Amsterdam! Very exciting and hopefully by then I will have completed my Masters and created some more animations that can be included in the exhibition.

This will be the last post for the Gene Jamm Futures blog as I am now returning to my Masters blog, which has been sorely neglected while I have been working on placement. I will however be continuing work on Wadd for the EpiGeneSys project, so anyone who wants updates please visit my Masters blog.  Thanks to all those who have given me input for my placement module, I have learned a lot in a short space of time and it has been great fun!

Global Illumination

Wikipedia definition – Global illumination is a general name for a group of algorithms used in 3D computer graphics that are meant to add more realistic lighting to 3D scenes. Such algorithms take into account not only the light which comes directly from a light source (direct illumination), but also subsequent cases in which light rays from the same source are reflected by other surfaces in the scene, whether reflective or not (indirect illumination).

Here are some examples.

 

Mathias Bengtsson’s Chairs

During my peer review session John McGhee thought the animation by Link looked almost like a retro chair.  Low and behold when I searched for black and white striped chairs on the Internet I found these wonderful chairs by designer Mathias Bengtsson, a Danish born, London-based designer.

Some other retro chairs……

Descartes – ‘Celestial Vortices’

Another scientist/philosopher seeking to convey concepts using visuals, Rene Descartes draws the sun in the midst of its own vortex (from Principia Philosophiae, 1644).  The black and white lines again synonymous with work shown below.

 

The Aroma of Tea

I liked this film by Michael Dudok de Wit, entitled, “The Aroma of Tea”.  The film was highlighted in the book,”Animation in Process” by Andrew Selby.  Selby writes, “The film leads the viewer on a mesmerising journey through an abstracted landscape of rhythmic topographical undulations and gentle peaks to the sound of Corelli’s Concerti Grossi.”  It somehow resonates with the work carried out during this placement. It really was drawn in tea!

Screen printing

The last day of the module has arrived and how quickly the seven weeks have passed!  I am still working on some animation shorts for the project, these are ongoing. We also started the screen prints which Paul will finish later this week.  Here are some pics from some parts of the printing process, including registration, test prints, fresh off the press and cleaning up.  We also got an unexpected “Moire” effect from printing one print on top of the other.  Paul is interested in this for work he plans for the future, so it served as a nice experiment (this effect is traditionally a bad thing in the printing world).  We were pleased with the prints and decided they had a nice simplicity and a hypnotic/calming quality to look at.

On the whole the project has been a success and Paul has invited me to continue work for the Epigenesys network, as and when I have time to do so.  He plans to make a mini-exhibition of the work created during my time on placement next month, when he will visit Paris to meet with the Epigenesys partners.  The hope of this exhibition is to encourage funding for a larger exhibition further down the line, within the funding period of the Epigenesys project.  I will look forward to hearing what the partners thought of the work and hope that it is a success!  This will not therefore be the last post as there will be a few updates within the next month.

Many thanks to Paul for his mentoring on this project and accommodating me at the VRC.  It has been a great learning experience and a lot of fun!

Last week – New Ideas

After last weeks trip to Edinburgh University archives, we now have a lot of new material to inspire further art works.  This project will be ongoing for Paul, and hopefully I will be able to be involved in the project from time to time, as it progresses, although my placement module has come to a close.

Prof. Macdonald kindly sent us two of his papers that discuss some of the work of C.H. Waddington, one of which is entitled “The Cube of Knowledges: Towards a Symbolic Library”.  In this paper he develops a very smart model based around art, science and the aesthetic, which consists  of a “cube” that expresses links and separations between disciplines or ways of thinking. One idea is to make an animation of his model.  Here are some tests below for the development of this animation.

Other work comprises a film of the “epigenetic landscape” which is being completed with the help of Adam Lockhart from the VRC. Thanks Adam!

I am working on some other animations of the landscape.  Using the bagatelle game as a starting point, I hope to make an abstracted version of this.  I will update my Masters blog with completed works when they are finished.  I also hope to write about my experience during this project for the “Reflection on Practice” module that has been ongoing in parallel with this placement module.  This paper will be presented at a mini-conference at the end of term.  It is nice that one module can dovetail into another.

The Waddington archive uncovered

Yesterday we (myself, Paul and Dave, Paul’s PhD student) visited Edinburgh University library to delve into the archive of C.H. Waddington.  It was interesting to find out about the Epigenetics Research Group that he founded, and also to read some of his draft manuscripts on science/art topics. I also discovered he was inspired by the work of Len Lye, an artist known for his experimental films and kinetic sculpture.  One of Lye’s films, “Free Radicals” can be seen below.  I will write a separate post about his involvement with Waddington once I have done some more research.

We took many pictures from the photographic material that we viewed, however we are not permitted to post this on the blog.  Here is a picture of me with University archivist Arnott Wilson (who also happens to be my Uncle 🙂 ).  Mr. Wilson also told us of an ongoing project to update and digitise the Waddington archive in the next few years, which should be useful for Epigenesys.

The day of digging culminated in a visit to Sandy Bell’s for a drink with Professor of History of Art at DJCAD, Murdo Macdonald.  Prof. Macdonald is an expert on the relationships between art and science and has a vast knowledge of the works of C.H. Waddington.  He was interested to hear about the work being carried out as part of the placement module with Paul and hopefully we will collaborate in the future in relation to the Waddington story.

Quote of the day from Waddington,

“Dig down to nothing and come up with everything”………..

Separations and divisions coming together………

Today I worked some more on my animation of bagatelle.  I managed to add holes to the model by adding subdivisions and moving vertices. I also added a camera to the animation, but it started doing somersaults, so I have to fix that problem before I make a rendered version of the movie.

Paul worked on the composition of the screenprints and printed off the acetates of the separations ready to burn onto screens next week. There are 4 variations on the theme, and we will aim to make 10 editions of each print.

We had a meeting with Link, to thank him for his input to the project.  We are hoping to get a looping version of the motion graphic so it can be projected as a film at exhibitions for the Epigenesys consortium.  We also asked Link if he could make some high resolution renders (300 dpi) of stills from the animation that will be made into digital prints, the same size as the screenprints.  The screenprints and digital prints made during the placement module will be exhibited as part of the Epigenesys project.  Here is an example of one of the high resolution renders.

Week 6 – Screen Printing Begins

Today we discussed how the project was progressing.  Paul likes the idea of having several layers to the project i.e. screenprints, a film of the landscape and now an animation of the Wadd landscape, thanks to Link.  We have decided on 4 screenprints, which will have a different coloured ball in each one, though each will have a similar tone. We will also make some digital prints from Links motion graphic.  Finally we will film the landscape on the computer screen. All in all a productive day, and the project seems to be coming together. See the first separation for a screenprint below.

Paul moved this Photoshop image into Illustrator in order to strengthen some of the lines.  A vector based programme is better for this. The resulting image looked better with added contrast.

I also made a flip book prototype (see below) based on the images that were made in Photoshop. During this process, I learned how to batch process a sequence of images which is quite handy to know for the future.  The concept worked, but we decided the content wasn’t very exciting for the user, so we won’t take this idea any further.

On a separate note, I have made contact with Graeme Coleman in the computer department, with a proposal for a Masters or honours student to develop an app of the Waddington landscape.  There may or may not be someone willing to take this on as a project but it is worth a shot.

We also discussed an idea I had to make a small book from this blog using the Blurb software that can be downloaded for free.  It would make a nice memento of the project and would allow me to have all the resources I have gathered over the time on the placement in one place for future reference.