Writing about my practice after tutorial and crit

I feel like the original inspiration came from noticing the vivid colours of industrial materials, of course part of the attraction to these was their availability as being the waste of construction and so free to obtain or maybe even collect. The collecting process is however for me a means of research rather than a fetishisation of the object, although I feel very strongly about the objects, I am not interested in maintaining their context in relation to the situation they originate from although that might be a talking point that arises, instead I am interested in finding out about the material, how it can be altered and most importantly combined with others. Using found materials as the starting point in an investigation into the fabrication of my own materials is interesting to me, it has to be a very instinctive almost sensual experience of identifying with certain colours and textures, the way that a material can bend or how a material can be made to resist or succumb to gravity. So this relates to Phyllida Barlows work quite clearly but she was not the original inspiration since I had been working in this way for over a year before knowing anything about her, I was more inspired to work in this way by the materials themselves, I was interested in using expanding foam in conection to the artist Sterling Ruby, and perhaps it was his piece in a show at the Saatchi gallery a couple of years ago that originally inspired this approach to the use of materials. The absurdity of the sculpture was down to its construction from unknown materials, it is important that the origin of the material is uncertain in my current work. Talking to Karin Ruggaber about my work it became clear that the alchemy behind the plastic was important, the invisibility of its creation, mixing two chemicals is a much more unknowable process than the commonly established production of materials like wood and metal, we see trees growing and know that metal comes from the earth. This distinction between the recognisable process and the unrecognisable process is very important for me and I will be exploring this in some films soon hopefully. But it also connects to the way that sculptures are constructed, I have made it very apparent how the sculptures are held together and holding themselves up, the mystery is evoked by the varieties of the same type of plastic how it can be seen as part of a whole but jarring against each other, like the parts of different animals put in comparison, the leg of a chicken next to the leg of a cat, this also relates to my preoccupation with ideas of evolution. The evolution of material, the evolution of art, and the evolution of society. I'm interested in plastic in terms of its seeming newness in comparison to other materials, it represents the manmade more completely than any other common material and is perhaps the most common material in contemporary life. But then the expanding foam has a very organic appearance and it is this contradiction or apparent polarisation of plastic and nature that interests me and maybe connects my sculptural work with my computer generated work, thinking about plastic as the man made material in sculpture and CGI as the man made material in film, CGI seems very similar to plastic. They are also linked in production techniques which is something I would like to explore, with technologies like 3D printing. But also thinking about whether it is necessarily to actually make a form if it can exist satisfactorily in the computer model. Thinking about the use of CGI I relate to the work of Cory Arcangel as one of the most successful contemporary artists working with computer graphics, but having attended his talk at the Lisson gallery it is clear that his work is very purely conceptual in a way that my work isn't at all and so he becomes more of a counter point to my work than an inspiration. But this realisation has really helped me define a difference between a conceptual experience of art and a material experience of art, I described this to my friend as thinking about an object in terms of what you could do with it - the possibilities of the material, and what it could represent - the possibilities of the object as a sign. So for me conceptual work relies on signification to ideas that are not present in the work itself whereas material work contains its meaning within itself and is more focused with an aesthetic or haptic satisfaction or disruption. This could bring me into some discussions that were raised in andrew cheshire's lecture on the shape of behaviour. For example the question of what comes first the physical shape or the contextual meaning? I have tried to make work where the physical shape is the primary concern, but if meaning is simply what something is made out of then the work intentionally arouses a curiosity in the meaning of the material, what is this material, if that question is the primary concern then having shapes would maybe cloud this because it raises the question what does this shape represent or mean does it for example mean 'the human body on all fours without a head' perhaps my work does mean that on one level but it also means, whether more or less importantly 'expanding foam supporting pipe lagging with pink wire to make it stand up in a form that is not easily knocked over' that is the litteral meaning of the sculpture, it is something that is so unburdened with associations that the detail of the material becomes important and enjoyable, the way that it flexes over in an arch, the tautness of the string and the oozing gooeyness of the foam. But then the work also has a context other than its meaning as an apple is an apple it has the meaning of an apple comes from an apple tree and is eaten whole with the skin on or in a pie with pastry, each material I am using has a context of its own so I suppose the selection of the material is conscious of this and consciously isn't the material that has a context tied to art such as marble or bronze. The context relates the materials to construction work done by craftsmen who are thought of as unskilled in comparison to the architects who design the buildings. This can be related to the rise of outsourcing in art production, the artists that is often associated with this are minimalists particularly donald Judd who commissioned his work to be made by other people in order to remove the artists gesture from the work. I am in a way subverting or critiquing this outsourcing of art production by putting it in reverse, instead of asking craftsmen to use art materials I am making art using the materials of craftsmen. But then perhaps this is an incidental critique it is not one that I actually feel very strongly about and infect I think I relate quite closely with a lot of Judd's ideas about sculpture. I want to get to a stage where I am using plastic as an art material separately from the context of industrial production, I want the context of the plastic to be purely my engagement with it.

Roland Barthes Plastic

Roland Barthes

Plastic

'' Despite having names of Greek shepherds (Polystyrene, Polyvinyl, Polyethylene), plastic, the products of which have just been gathered in an exhibition, is in essence the stuff of alchemy. At the entrance of the stand, the public waits in a long queue in order to witness the accomplishment of the magical operation par excellence: the transmutation of matter. An ideally-shaped machine, tubulated and oblong (a shape well suited to suggest the secret of an itinerary) effortlessly draws, out of a heap of greenish crystals, shiny and fluted dressing-room tidies. At one end, raw, telluric matter, at the other, the finished, human object; and between these two extremes, nothing; nothing but a transit, hardly watched over by an attendant in a cloth cap, half-god, half-robot.
So, more than a substance, plastic is the very idea of its infinite transformation; as its everyday name indicates, it is ubiquity made visible. And it is this, in fact, which makes it a miraculous substance: a miracle is always a sudden transformation of nature. Plastic remains impregnated throughout with this wonder: it is less a thing than the trace of a movement.
And as the movement here is almost infinite, transforming the original crystals into a multitude of more and more startling objects, plastic is, all told, a spectacle to be deciphered: the very spectacle of its end-products. At the sight of each terminal form (suitcase, brush, car-body, toy, fabric, tube, basin or paper), the mind does not cease from considering the original matter as an enigma. This is because the quick-change artistry of plastic is absolute: it can become buckets as well as jewels. Hence a perpetual amazement, the reverie of man at the sight of the proliferating forms of matter, and the connections he detects between the singular of the origin and the plural of the effects. And this amazement is a pleasurable one, since the scope of the transformations gives man the measure of his power, and since the very itinerary of plastic gives him the euphoria of a prestigious free-wheeling through Nature.
But the price to be paid for this success is that plastic, sublimated as movement, hardly exists as substance. Its reality is a negative one: neither hard nor deep, it must be content with a 'substantial' attribute which is neutral in spite of its utilitarian advantages: resistance , a state which merely means an absence of yielding. In the hierarchy of the major poetic substances, it figures as a disgraced material, lost between the effusiveness of rubber and the flat hardness of metal; it embodies none of the genuine produce of the mineral world: foam, fibres, strata. It is a 'shaped' substance: whatever its final state, plastic keeps a flocculent appearance, something opaque, creamy and curdled, something powerless ever to achieve the triumphant smoothness of Nature. But what best reveals it for what it is is the sound it gives, at once hollow and flat; its noise is its undoing, as are its colours, for it seems capable of retaining only the most chemicallooking ones. Of yellow, red and green, it keeps only the aggressive quality, and uses them as mere names, being able to display only concepts of colours.
The fashion for plastic highlights an evolution in the myth of 'imitation' materials. It is well known that their use is historically bourgeois in origin (the first vestimentary postiches date back to the rise of capitalism). But until now imitation materials have always indicated pretension, they belonged to the world of appearances, not to that of actual use; they aimed at reproducing cheaply the rarest substances, diamonds, silk, feathers, furs, silver, all the luxurious brilliance of the world. Plastic has climbed down, it is a household material. It is the first magical substance which consents to be prosaic. But it is precisely because this prosaic character is a triumphant reason for its existence: for the first time, artifice aims at something common, not rare. And as an immediate ronsequence, the age-old function of nature is modified: it is no longer the Idea, the pure Substance to be regained or imitated: an artificial Matter, more bountiful than all the natural deposits, is about to replace her, and to determine the very invention of forms. A luxurious object is still of this earth, it still recalls, albeit in a precious mode, its mineral or animal origin, the natural theme of which it is but one actualization. Plastic is wholly swallowed up in the fact of being used: ultimately, objects will be invented for the sole pleasure of using them. The hierarchy of substances is abolished: a single one replaces them all: the whole world can be plasticized, and even life itself since, we are told, they are beginning to make plastic aortas.'' 

Tutor seminar session 1

what are the main possibilities of art?

numinous experience, thought provocation, inspiration to make more art, relief from stress and worries, empowerment, feeling of self acceptance, feeling of communal agreement on symbolic meaning, arts main possibility can be seen as a catalyst for social cohesion, the agreement on a form of art that accurately represents the society then strengthens it in that agreement.

what has changed socially (recently)?

the internet has changed the way that society exists physically and conceptually

what issues are being raised by art?

Ai Wei Wei is raising issues around artistic freedom in china

what is still changing?

New media is still under represented by most art institutions, perhaps because it has yet to find a function within the conventional art institution, is it art or an imitation of art for the virtual simulacra and if it exists solely as a solution for an alternate world then it has no place in the world that already exists.

what is the relationship between artists and other contemporary thinking?

artists that are most interesting to me draw my attention to things I didn't know about within the art world or outside of it, art can relate to other areas of contemporary thinking but this isn't necessary for a work to be valuable, but having a knowledge of and relevance to contemporary thinking is very important to make work that is original and more broadly accessible

why study fine art rather than just doing it?

studying fine art rather than just doing it is important because art is now much more about collaboration and working with a community of artists, it is so important to meet other people who are interested in the same things so that you can help each other to achieve the best work possible. It is also important to know about the wider context of the art world because it is so large and complicated and without that knowledge you are much more at the whim of chance if you are lucky enough to be propelled to success purely by the talent displayed in the work. Also it is important to get confirmation that what you are doing is good so that you have the confidence to keep doing it.

Material Culture Session 1

Toy Story was the first full length feature film to be made using CGI technology. Roland Barthes had the idea of the indexical relationship to the real meaning that although films might be fictional they have a physical connection to reality through the process of photography. This is a new kind of materiality where there is only a connection to the idea of the object rather than a direct interface between object and representation. But I'm not sure that this is unique to computer animation since any kind of animation works on the process of imagining how an object would move and then drawing it, furthermore this could apply to still images not just moving ones. I suppose the point is that Barthes was arguing against the idea that fictions are unreal because the fictions presented in film are bound to reality through photography but then any kind of representation that doesn't draw from a direct reference is unreal, so I don't think that toy story is a unique example. It is however unique in that it generates an entire world of fictional space, unlike traditional animation where characters are independent of the background in 3D animation the background and the characters are all part of the same environment and constructed space. So perhaps this invention of space does not come from a physical connection to the real. Space in computers is created out of a necessity for space to behave in a certain way, walls contain interiors and the sky contains exteriors, therefore it does not come from a real world visual reference it comes from a reference to the physics of space. Also it could be argued that the process of animation is dependant on the photographing of the cells so it is still tied to reality in that way whereas there is no process of converting a real object into a film in digital, it starts in the computer and it finished in the computer.

What is the difference between Taxonomy and Typology?

taxonomy (plural taxonomies)
1. (systematics, uncountable) The science of finding, describing, classifying and naming organisms.
2. The classification in a hierarchical system.

typology (plural typologies)
1. The systematic classification of the types of something according to their common characteristics.
2. (archaeology) The result of the classification of things according to their characteristics.

So Taxonomy is a science whereas typology is a way of carrying out that science by grouping things together according to their similarities, so what would be a taxonomy without typology? Perhaps classifying things by their context rather than their content.

Is Taxonomy a good thing? What is the use of classifying things? One of its negative implications is that it can blind us to the connections between things, because apes were classified as separate to humanity we failed to realise that we had evolved from them. Because we categorise a chair as different to a work of art we might fail to see its true beauty. Because we sometimes classify art as different from popular culture we can end up looking past things that are actually more significant in favour of things that are less accessible.