For the start of this semester I was a bit lost I had lots of ideas but i didnt know where to go with any of them. I started as I always do, by doing a brainstorm
the key outcomes from the brainstorm where:
- would love to expand my musical repertoire
- would like to focus on the juxtaposition of the immensity of the world and the minutiaea
- excited to work in many mediums, video, sound, projection, print, spoken word, writing/poetry
- nature
- being honest, unpretentious, and accesible to non art world audiences
Truthfully i then got quite overwhelmed with pressure (mostly self inflicted) and with some great free counselling from the uni, finally started getting somewhere.
I decided to try my hand with words an element in art I enjoy. In my process I would try and find something that was distressing me or found interesting and write everything about it until i said something that could be considered noteworthy. These were good brain storm sessions to get interesting angles and ideas flowing. I also had the intent of using some of the words as lyrics. or atleast a starting point for them.
in the same vein of generating ideas/angles/aesthetics I created a process for my music making. I am slow at this side of the art world. I feel visual I can come up with interesting things in my sleep but musically i have been working lots to try and get something sounding good, not so sure i have achieved that. but it is all about the trial and error, and for me I spend lots of time in the error stage.
I started with some small musical experiments “noodling”, creating sounds from a synthesizer and then playing what feels right.
dont feel the need to pay too much attention to them, imagine they are the scrappy drawings in a thick sketchbook. The intent is to warm up my ears and start getting the hang of making so i eventually can be critical and grow.
This one is a collection of synth noodles.
This one I my pallete was unconventional drum sounds, i attempted to slowly change them throughout the piece.
this was another beats practice, where it changes each bar.
Now i got myself into a pickle. I really wanted to give vocoding a try, inspired by musicians like Laurie Anderson and Bon Iver. It took me a couple of weeks to figure out, with almost no success. I was trying to figure out how to use it so i could play it live, in the hopes of being able to do a live performance at the end of the semester. No such avail.
I found the interface really glitchy and also the actual sounds were hard to manipulate into anything other than completely spacey. If i want to get something presentable from that technique I would need a lot of fiddle time. Which i didnt have so i pushed that to oneside.
I collated some of the sonic noodles and word noodles and created this
I found this hard to work on, its not very interesting and i recorded it in free time which meant putting it in time to work on it and sing to it would be a lot of work.
I decided to start thinking about my art as a transportation. I wanted the viewer to feel transported within the music. but on of the most exciting ways to do this is with installation work.
I then had a brainstorm.
my plan from then on was how to make video art interesting spacially without it looking like the Lume, https://www.grande-experiences.com/permanent/the-lume-melbourne . Which I personally have not seen but has been described to me as seeing a large screensaver.
I wanted to keep to a nature theme, but also wanted to project without it be projecting out onto walls. centralising the projections, and creating many angles so that someone could move through the room and get a different experience.
i was thinking about the spaces between tree branches. this is when i had the idea to project onto fabric hanging off of a tree.
Next step, finding a tree!
this one was pretti perfect, it had been accidentaly coppiced by the council since it is under a powerline. The other trees this size were only 2-3 centimeters thick.
I cut this down and then carefeull cut all of the limbs off. I measured the boot of my car with the seats down and figured I needed to shorten it about a foot. I then got a large drill bit and drilled a hole where each limb was. I then wittled down the branches so they could fit back into the hole they were from. this took many days of fiddling and labour as it had to be precise enough so they would fit and be safe. Lots of whittling.
I had some spare white cotton fabric just to see if the fabric would be interesting to lok at or lok like laundry on the line. I think it looked okay.
I then went fabric shopping to Rathdownes fabric, were I was specifically looking for some semi-translucent fabric. I wanted it to appear almost like clouds, and for the projections to overlap slightly.
This is where I was also testing how to position the projector. I borrowed the mini-short throw projector. I put it on its side with a little angled mount I made out of corflute.
I then attached it to a christmas tree stand to keep it upright. everything worked so i drove it to uni. (i went in the service lane and it was so scary driving in the cbd)
Tree in my studio! It just fit and was being pressed up against the walls. This was quite exciting, particularly since people really like looking at it. If it is bizarre enough to be considered a spectacle at least people will look at it. I did find people very happily would just stare at it and all it little details.
My intitial plan was to have one projector per panel and I was to have around 6 panels.
Turns out AV loans only has two of these projectors.
video of a dusk I filmed from my bedroom window
I bought 6 metres of this white polyester chiffon, for $10 a meter. very good deal.
I measured and cut the fabric, careful that the grain of the fabric stay horizontal to the ground. I cut along the curve of the limb and momentarily fastened it with tape.
This is the tree in its “Ikea” form, so that I could get it in my car and through doorways.
I was able to get three panels ready, with two mini-short throw projectors and then a regular sized short throw projector.
I put it up in the drawing room for the group presentations. I regret to say i planned to sew the fabric to the tree but then i found out there would not be very many students coming to the tutorial so I didn’t. Turns out the lecturers were all free so I showed Peter, Ruth, Ian, Adele and later at lunch Mikala. They all said the tape was ugly and I felt very silly.
Sand bags were required as without the support of the studio it became a bit lopsided.
I had three projectors going all sitting on the ground on angled mounts I had made out of corfelute. People could walk completely around the piece with the help of some cable covers.
I then had the group tutorial, which is written about in my WIL form.
The group tutorial I would say was hard. There were obvious issues (tape and stand) that were addressed. I also felt the theme wasnt as clear as people had their own idea and just ran with it. My intent was for it to be a fractalisation of perspectives through the lens of living with nature. This is not what people were talking about, they said things about it being boring or frankenstein-y abomination. I chatted with Mikala after the tutorial and I wasnt sure whether i drastically changed my piece so that people would get the exact idea, or i stick to my guns and refine the piece so that it is clean and how i originally intended. But we figured out that one of the things I cared about was people having their own opinions and reactions towards the work — to be more open-ended.
So I went on the path of refining it, people can go in their own directions and its not really an issue. If I do it well it should be more of a phenomenological response anyway.
For the group presentation I had only filmed one dawn, so all the videos played one video. This isnt what i wanted, but i could only record one at that time. My intent was too show multiple, hopefully getting one for every panel. I then spent 5 more dawns filming all of which was for nothing, none of them were good enough to use.
I even drove to a different location, but trees were in the way. So I ended up getting my mum to film a dawn in West Australia where she works, much more sun there.
I wanted to change how i projected the dawns as having the wires on the ground alluded to some sort of wire/root connection as well as looking messy. So I was trying to figure out ways to bring the projectors in the air.
This was perfect as it meant the room was completely walkable and there was no safety issues.“` It also meant that since the projectors were at a greater distance the image was bigger and I could have larger panels.
I then had to figure out how to do mapping. I previously have done it on MapMapper with a free trial, but for this project I needed to learn how to do it on After Effects.
This is me learning how to set up the masking.
this is a video of my thoughts trying to figure it all out.
This is when I had a discussion with Michael and Faiza, where we figured out that I could hang two projectors on the rigging in the video studio and a ledge on the opposit wall, using a magic arm and a clamp.
I should mention one of my inspirations for this piece, and my commitment to creating a space was from my enjoyment of seeing Pippilotti Rist’s work Lungenflügel. I lay there for almost half an hour watching the video multiple times with my cousin, just seeing the world from a different perspective. Childlike my eyes followed the colours and the movement, I happily went on the journey having no idea where I was going. This state of exploration and calm was something I wanted to explore within my own work. So it was important to me that the work was somewhat seamless so that the creation doesnt need to be questioned and rather can just be taken for granted.
From this day I also figured out that I can only do the masking once everything is set up in its final position. Which means I would have to do it all in one sitting.
So I booked all the gear and booked the whole day in the space for the day before assessment.
Final set up
I then spent the next couple of hours cutting and sewing the fabric with fishing line onto the tree. I wanted it to like a bit magic, as if it was just growing out of it or it is a trick of the eye.
I did do a trial of including some stones, so that it looked like it was growing out of the stones. But it looked silly and there wasnt enough so I ditched that, and then spent 30 mins cleaning it up.
I opted for a half natural half real stand, where i dont hide the actual base but there is am almost magic possibility that it did grow out of the ground here.
It was then time to set up the projectors!
I started getting the tree ready for the day. I had driven into uni the night before and dropped off some branches to drill into the tree. Since the tree was so lop-sided. Just to fill out the space a bit more and for it to make sense from all angles.
For the base, some of the critiques were that it didnt look professional. Which I did agree with. So i thought of a few different types of bases I wanted to create. But I then realised a secret component of the work was the desperation of the artist to show people. The effort and the difficulty and absurdity of doing this is part of the work. Making a completely clean bass would remove that element of the story. So I decided to keep the christmas tree stand.
with some leaves from the tree and some moss from my garden.
while i was programming the masking i plugged in a long HDMI cord. For the final edit I exported the data and put it onto 3 seperate usb’s, unique to each projector position. Each projector loops on its own. there was no easy way for me to sync it so i set them all up and then ran round the room and clicked them all as quick as I could
Each one was edited differently with different videos. Because I had two dawns filmed and six panels, I cut each video into 3 vertical strips.
The last was the music! I initialy wrote a 30 minute song that would be the exact time as the video, but i realised it would take hours for me to master and pan to be interesting in the 5.1 studio.
so I wrote a shorter 8-minute version that was easier to manage.
It has three sections so as the room lights up the music follows.
I created each sound using Mini MOOG model D
for each section i split the high and low notes and then panned them using the surround sound panner. So the music moves throughout the room, around the tree and the viewer.
Reflection
I am very proud of this piece, it required a lot of finesse in technical components which is something i think has taken me three years to get to this point of capability. I am happy with everything physical with it. I dont think the music matches as best it could, but that just came down to time and working on a piece that is half an hour would probably take a good few weeks. I am also very happy that this piece was very independant, my dad taught me how to use a chainsaw and then from then on everything physical or technical I figured out.
I am worried about the conceptual side of it, I think possibly, it ran away from me a bit. My intent from the very beginning was for it to have an affect on people, a phenomenological response. I wanted people to feel. Feel weird, or disconnected, calmed, or seen. I find it challenging to discuss academically. How can i prove that taking something out of its environment and putting it into a gallery setting is meant to make people feel discomfort or yearning or memories. Thats not up to me, so i just have to trust that it will work for people.