A Hard Singing of Country - David Reason

Nash's is a disturbing art, for its use of land-management techniques in the absence of an economic necessity can highlight that myopic reconstruction of the natural world that is indeed the aim and consequence of an agriculture that seeks to dominate nature with its unnaturing practices. 

This passage in A Hard Singing of Country by David Reason resonated with me, for his choice of words felt strangely accurate in describing my views towards the pillaging approach we often adopt in our practices in nature. While analysing artist David Nash's work, he seems to be implying that our negligence of nature stems from our desire to "dominate" nature in favour of our needs, and that once we have done so, there is no use in "protecting" nature anymore, since we are not economically dependent on nature anymore. I particularly like the phrase "a myopic reconstruction of the natural world", because I think it brilliantly captures an essence of what we have done to nature as both, a being and an idea.

Minimal Intervention - Lucius Burckhardt

"Friedrich Schiller remarked on this aesthetic awareness of landscape as a result of liberation from material constraints... From this we can see that the use of the word landscape is a very complex one. On one hand, it enables us to construct a unified image of the landscape from the multiple impressions that assail us. But, by the same token, we are imposing our selection of what we consider to be typical and atypical of an area... This leads in to the question of our reaction to the unexpected discovery of natural resources in an area where they do not coincide with our image of the place."

I found this passage to stir my thoughts quite a bit. The idea that we only really seem to appreciate landscapes as a result of being away from it really resonated with me, because it seems like we can never really separate our idea of a landscape from our lives in an urban world, which is a rather powerful thought to digest. To think that we never really gave nature its share of care and affection and understanding is quite an emotionally upheaving idea, because it's like telling me that something I have thought I cared about is actually a lie. However, I do feel there is some truth in this thought, albeit an unsettling one. If we were to conceive of landscapes apart from its relation to its counterpart, what would that be like? Upon consideration, another thought rose - if the only way we (as people who have lived in an urban environment) can appreciate landscapes is through having lived some semblance of an urban life, is it actually an advantage to be able to appreciate landscapes without having lived an urban lifestyle? Perhaps the question is about the "purity" of our appreciation and not our "depth" of appreciation, in which case living an urban life "taints" our appreciation of landscapes. 

Our awareness of a world environment may have increased through the mass media and global travel, but at he end of the twentieth century our actual experience of nature is often increasingly restricted. For the urban dweller direct contact takes place during the daily walk along a city street - the horizon line is rarely glimpsed and vegetation is limited to the occasional tree. During the rushed process of travel the landscape is witnessed as a passing blur from the window of a car, train or plane.

The idea that our contact with nature as "urban dwellers" is quite limited and even mediated is put quite succinctly in this passage by Gallagher. The fact that we experience the landscape as a blur can be interpreted in literal and figurative terms, as the blurring of the landscape could refer to our memory and experience of it in our minds getting less and less clear to ourselves. There is also the underlying idea that we don't really see things; it has become an unspoken custom to not linger on something for too long, and this mental practice has perhaps fed into the act of seeing things. We mostly forget to see the world around us properly, and so everything we see is never clear, only a 'blur'.

I absolutely loved this exhibition, because the exuberance and colour in her work is so playful and joyous. I love when a piece of work is able to make you feel like a child, because I personally feel a deep comfort in the arms of innocence, and Maurer's work 6 out of 5 seems to encompass a childish joy with the sensibility of a mature person, and this duality is reflected in the dualistic nature of her colour schemes. I also quite enjoy looking at the parts where the colours overlap, because you would imagine the work to be these two ethereal cloth pieces floating in the air when actually, she paints them with the utmost precision and carefulness. There is a great balance between tension and harmony in these paintings which I really enjoy and hope to use in my own practice.

I found Fisk's use of wood in this ball to be quite extraordinary. I kept wondering what I would do if I saw this object in the woods, and I kept "freaking out" over how absurd this piece looked, yet somehow the organic nature of the wood seemed to mellow the excitement down to a milder level. I felt intrigued in the truest sense when I saw these wooden balls, and how painstaking it must have been to arrange the bark layer on the sphere. If I did see this object in the woods, I would never have left it like that, and I think I would have stolen it in some way or another, just because of how naturally unnatural it appears to be. And in the simplest way possible, it literally is a ball of wood, but the complexity lies in the raw bark that is covering the sphere, and there is still a part of me that wants to believe that it was found like that and not made by hand. The use of wood in this manner seems to clearly draw a dichotomy between the natural and unnatural - something that I do want to explore in my own work. 

This particular piece of work by Fischli and Weiss, Kanalvideo, is a soundless hour long footage from a camera advancing through an empty sewer pipe. The dispassionate atmosphere of the imagery makes us focus on the hole and waiting in anticipation for something to happen or appear. This constant grappling with the tension of the unknown is something quite awesome in this work, and there is a certain beauty in that subtly horrifying environment of the sewer pipe. Its almost as though the greys, browns and blacks have come together in everyone's worst daylight nightmare. One particular aspect of this work is the use of time in relation to the viewer. Sitting through a mere 20 seconds of the video feels like half an hour, so there is clearly a stretching of time that occurs in this video multiple times. This aspect of speeding up or stretching out through the use of imagery is something I find to have a lot of potential to use in my own work. 

This exhibition was just insane - in the most nicest and respectful way possible. I was just in sheer awe of these works. Each piece took me on its own journey through its mountains of paint and I was just enthralled the entire way through. I feel a crucial aspect of why this was such an amazing exhibition is that each piece had its own space to breathe. Although it may be less important for other paintings, this aspect was particularly important for Bogart's work, just because the attention needs to be focused solely on the work and nothing else. The work demands the viewers attention, and this demand is a gateway to a lot more spectacular things about these paintings, but in order to make that demand, the work needs to be in a place in order to do so, and with success. Moreover, the quiet atmosphere of the gallery adds a certain sanctity to the environment, and as much as I wanted to run my hands over his work (gently of course), I knew I would be committing some sort of moral sin, so I think that further necessitated me to give all my attention to each work. I think that aspect of being able to demand the attention of the viewer to open them up to a gateway of questions is something I want to explore in my own practice. The most likely way is to work large and see what sort of effect that would have on the viewer in that regard.

Riley's and Milhazes' work both deal with geometric abstraction and composition, but in two different ways. While Riley adopts a more reductive approach to her compositions, Milhazes' work has a more busier and absurdist composition. I particularly like how they both use flat, opaque colours to fill in their compositions. Riley's colour scheme in this work is more limited, and sticks to the range of blue to red. By contrast, Milhazes' work adopts a much broader and diverse range of colours, and I think this is fitting with the more busier composition in her work. I think the idea of stripping gradients down to a single set of individual colours is a very interesting approach to take in the context of imagemaking. It is almost like breaking down a vision or perhaps even de-resolving an image into its colour barebones, and working off that to create an entirely different image altogether.

https://fadmagazine.com/2019/09/11/artists-writing-paul-winstanley/

‘I make representations, but I’m not interested in representation, only in confrontations with the objects, almost off the canvas into viewer’s space whereas you drop back… I paint the foreground you paint the background’. 

This was a really interesting line from the article, where Michael Craig Matrin contrasts his work with Winstanley's, and he addresses Winstanley saying that while he (Martin) is more concerned with the forground of an image, Winstanley is concerned with the background of the image, which I think is a very clever way to put it. WInstanley's work is really concerned less with making the objects in paintings confrontational, and more about making the background of the objects more present, allowing the objects to disappear into the background while the viewer is left confused as to where to focus on. This idea of not having a focal point is a very beautiful aspect of Winstanley's work, and perhaps something I can incorporate in my own practice.

[NB - research will be slightly less frequent this week due to my travelling and preparation for it] 

Letter to Laura - Fay Weldon

Nature in Australia is something external - humans live perched on the surface of an unfriendly, uncomfortable, wildly beautiful land: its flora is stark and ravishing, its fauna raucous and bizarre; South of the Wallacean line, in the hard bright sun, nature experiments; who can take an emu seriously? Or the koala bear, who lives his life altogether zonked out by the drug filled leaves of the eucalyptus tree he favours. So much so, he's for ever simply falling off, spaced out as he is. Here in the shadowy North [of England] nature long ago settled into sedate ways, incorporated human beings into its scheme of things. We are, here in England, part of the landscape. We have to be. Every acre of this tiny, densely populated land of ours has to be observed, considered, valued, reckoned, pondered over, owned, bought, sold, hedged - and there's a dead man buried under every hedge, you know. He died of starvation, and his children too. because the common land was enclosed, hedged, taken from him. We owe the neat patched hedgerowed beauty of our countryside to unwilling human sacrifice: that I suspect, its power over us. We owe it to the past to appreciate its beauty. It's the least we can do. 

This passage from Weldon's Letter to Laura seemed to stay in me and linger in my head for quite a while. What Weldon told me was how we have to be a part of nature when we appreciate it, both because of what it means to us, and of the sacrifice we have given to maintain it. This struck me quite hard, because I had never realised that we had a part in actually maintaining nature's beauty. I wonder what would have happened if we allowed nature to grow unbridled by our intervention - would it have made nature more or less beautiful than she is now? I really cannot say. Moreover, he does make it a point to say 'unwilling human sacrifice', implying that we must have done so not out of our own goodwill or desire, but at the behest of some corrupt landlord looking to progress in an increasingly capitalist society. 

He draws a very important distinction between the wildlife and nature in Australia, where Laura is writing from, to the seriousness of the English landscape. He remarks before this that its "dangerous, but hardly serious", when it comes to living in the Australian countryside, as there are a plethora of creatures and diseases that could harm you physically, but the English landscape concerns the "survival of the soul" rather than just the body. It is interesting to note how Weldon depicts Australia as a dangerously vibrant paradise, while he describes the English countryside with a more grave realism. This dichotomy between the landscapes of Australia and England is drawn in quite an aggressive manner, almost as though he resents the paradise-like atmosphere, but not to an extent where he is ashamed of the English countryside. In fact it is quite the opposite - if anything, he feels quite proud to be 'a part' of his landscape, sometimes coming across as slightly reprimanding when he is addressing Laura specifically. This tension between his resent and his pride is also very interesting to witness when he is writing, and gives me a deeper insight into what he feels about the landscape in England. 

The poor image is a copy in motion. Its quality is bad, its resolution substandard. As it accelerates, it deteriorates. It is a ghost of an image, a preview, a thumbnail, an errant idea, an itinerant image distributed for free, squeezed through slow digital connections, compressed, reproduced, ripped, remixed, as well as copied and pasted into other channels of distribution.

I find this introductory passage to be quite intriguing - Steyerl refers to the poor image as a "copy in motion", which I think could mean that the poor image is something that is imitating in nature, but is not still, rather it encompasses a sense of movement with its "copied" nature. I think this is interesting to think about, because it could mean that when an image deteriorates in quality, the blending of pixels creates a sense of movement with its merging. This idea of the image, which is fundamentally immobile, being brought alive/accelerated through its de-resolution is something I could begin to consider in the context of seeing landscapes - reproductions of landscapes, especially in memory are more or less "poor images", and the image of the landscape itself isn't moving, rather our imperception of its qualities give it that dynamism. 

Poor images are the contemporary Wretched of the Screen, the debris of audiovisual production, the trash that washes up on the digital economies’ shores. They testify to the violent dislocation, transferrals, and displacement of images—their acceleration and circulation within the vicious cycles of audiovisual capitalism. Poor images are dragged around the globe as commodities or their effigies, as gifts or as bounty. They spread pleasure or death threats, conspiracy theories or bootlegs, resistance or stultification. Poor images show the rare, the obvious, and the unbelievable —that is, if we can still manage to decipher it.

There seems to be a double meaning behind Steyerl's presentation of the poor image - the image is poor in terms of resolution, but also in its status of its societal reception. People seem to want the "better" or "cleaner" image - even editing softwares are programmed to "correct" an image, as though it had a fault to begin with. What Steyerl is saying is that societies have been geared or hard wired to look down upon or just even dismiss poor images without any consideration for what they can tell. The comparison drawn between the poor images being some sort of refugees or slaves really stood out to me, as their treatment is quite similar to that of slaves and refugees - they are never considered for what they are, and if they are considered, they are only seen as commodities or goods to trade. We also don't seem to understand poor images, as they refuse to reveal their content by default. Perhaps the fault is not in the image, but in how we see it, and that I think is what Steyerl is trying to convey. Also, if I were to consider the poor image for what it appears to be, does my mind really do that? Or does it try to "piece the image" back together? Despite Steyerl's clear indication of the flaw being in how we perceive the poor image, are we still conditioned to see the poor image as a reconstructed, "better-resolution" copy from the way we have been raised or because of our biology? 

Wallpaper*: Would you say your work is related to the outside or inner world?
Olafur Eliasson: The world we live in is relative; we are guided through it by our senses. I want the visitor to be the producer rather than the consumer of (a) reality. The works shown here amplify the perception of the space and objects in front of us; they reflect on ‘how’ and ‘why’ we see things this way rather than ‘what’ we see.

I really like Elaisson's philosophy of audience here - instead of seeing his viewers as mere observers of his work, he invites them to add meaning to his work in their own ways. Also, I do like the focus on how we see things rather than what we are actually seeing - the 'how' seems to naturally lead to the 'why', because when you are able to figure out how you are seeing what you are seeing, but it doesn't still make sense, it makes sense to question why it is like that, and I think that's a really clever way of evoking questions in the work.  

For example, the Wavelength lamp (2018) breaks the light into a sequence, and The we mirror (2017) forces the eye into a 3D geometric composition, yet both play with the perception we have of their structure. All that to say our perception of the world is easily fooled: I want to reveal the tricks, highlight the way the media or politicians wrongly address certain issues. I want them to act as advocates for transparency.

Eliasson draws a comparison between the illusory yet revelatory nature of his work and the nature of politics as being shady and questionable actions of politicians with certain issues, and I think this aspect of 'fooling' the viewer is a really fascinating concept. Letting the viewer in on the 'trick' and yet keeping them in disbelief is a very powerful phenomenon, because I think it gives the artist a much higher degree of control over what they want their audience to experience, and it is a very honest way of communicating to the viewer, which I think is important in the context of making work.

W*: You often speak about ‘embodying the work’, what do you refer to?
OE: I always try to work with and around physical elements to create emotions and sensations that stick with the viewer. Social media, on the opposite, generates disembodiment. With the fountains exposed on the lower floor – Objects defined by activity (now), (then) and (soon), 2009 – water and strobe light play together to create a form of timelessness. Perception shifts, a new horizon comes to life: it isn’t a line; it can’t be grasped. The strobe light makes the invisible visible, and the piece itself creates a ‘space’ where simple rules are challenged.

When you combine data with action, you start to influence the viewer: the later becomes the producer of his own reality rather than being the victim of it. I know it is very much a Scandinavian ideal, but these works hint at our capacity, and ability to change the world. All of my work is based on the process of turning a ‘thinking’ into a ‘doing’!

There is a strong element of physicality in Eliasson's work, and he makes it known that he wants the viewer to recognise and interact with this aspect. I also think there is something fundamentally fascinating about engaging and stimulating the senses. Sense impressions and physical phenomena are much harder to forget than abstract ideas, and in that respect, they have incredible potential to be quite powerful in how they evoke a response from the viewer. 

 W*: How do geometry, perspective and direction inform your work?
OE: I love the eclipse shape. Did you know that unlike a square, it doesn’t deform in perspective? Confronted with it, in perspective, you can’t sense the depth of the space. I like to play with the idea of challenging perceptions, or reflections, and geometry offers endless possibilities. Many might think that when you enter the art world, you step out of the ‘real’ world. But it is very much the opposite: with amplified sensations, one can connect even closer with the world and its current issues. The geometric and colour spectrum compass (Everywhere compass, 2017) hanging above the staircase it there to orient us in a precise direction. The same goes for the Day and night lava, 2017 in which a dark lava stone half painted in white rotates before a concave mirror: it projects the reflection of the white side when the viewer is faced with the black side. You start looking with intensity, questioning what you are seeing, going back and forth.

I agree with Eliasson's point about geometry offering endless possibilities for playing with perception. I think one way to exploiting perception in the context of geometry is trying to re-visualise and reimagine the visible boundaries of shapes to be something different than it was. For example, if I see something in front of me but stays the same shape when I move around it, there is a sort of play with the linear composition of the shape to be completely invisible when viewing it from different angles, thus producing the illusion that the object is the same from all angles. This links back to what Eliasson said at the start about the viewer reflecting on how and why they are seeing what they are seeing - the disconnect between the visual outcome and rules of "ordinary" perception begin to produce questions that challenge that notion. This is something I am extremely fascinated by, and I would love to explore in my work.

 Full interview: https://www.wallpaper.com/art/olafur-eliasson-interview-espace-muraille-geneva

In the absence of nonlinear effects, the superposition principle can be used to predict the shape of interacting waveforms through the simple addition of the disturbances.[50] This interaction of waves to produce a resulting pattern is generally termed "interference" and can result in a variety of outcomes. If two waves of the same wavelength and frequency are in phase, both the wave crests and wave troughs align. This results in constructive interference and an increase in the amplitude of the wave, which for light is associated with a brightening of the waveform in that location. Alternatively, if the two waves of the same wavelength and frequency are out of phase, then the wave crests will align with wave troughs and vice versa. This results in destructive interference and a decrease in the amplitude of the wave, which for light is associated with a dimming of the waveform at that location. See below for an illustration of this effect.[50]

Constructive interference in thin films can create strong reflection of light in a range of wavelengths, which can be narrow or broad depending on the design of the coating. These films are used to make dielectric mirrors, interference filters, heat reflectors, and filters for colour separation in colour television cameras. This interference effect is also what causes the colourful rainbow patterns seen in oil slicks.^[50]

 The unique optical properties of the atmosphere cause a wide range of spectacular optical phenomena. The blue colour of the sky is a direct result of Rayleigh scattering which redirects higher frequency (blue) sunlight back into the field of view of the observer. Because blue light is scattered more easily than red light, the sun takes on a reddish hue when it is observed through a thick atmosphere, as during a sunrise or sunset. Additional particulate matter in the sky can scatter different colours at different angles creating colourful glowing skies at dusk and dawn. Scattering off of ice crystals and other particles in the atmosphere are responsible for halos, afterglows, coronas, rays of sunlight, and sun dogs. The variation in these kinds of phenomena is due to different particle sizes and geometries.[99]

https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/9/16751832/daniel-canogar-echo-art-exhibit-madrid-environment

In his latest exhibition, Echo, Madrid-based artist Daniel Canogar is trying to make a point about how we interact with the world. The project, a series of abstract LED sculptures that react in real time to changes in the world, explores issues like deforestation, climate change, and pollution.

The exhibition consists of five sculptures. Each sculpture receives real-time data dedicated to certain environmental topics: air quality data, volcanic activity, wind changes in the city where a sculpture is installed, active fires, and rain data from 192 international cities. The sculptures are made of warped sheets of metal fitted with dozens of magnetic LED tiles that follow certain algorithmic patterns based on the data they receive.

I find this to be so fascinating - the pieces are brought to life through being fed information. The stream of information verily becomes a source of life for the work, and I find this reliance on external worlds and realms to be such an exciting concept to incorporate in one's work. 

“My entire project as an artist is always about the impact that technology has on us,” Canogar told The Verge. “About how we communicate, how we see the world, how we experience ourselves and our bodies and how’s that’s constantly being shifted and modified.”

Canogar says he spent two years finding flexible LED tiles that would be able to conform to the warped and twisted sheets of metal. After the tiles were affixed to the metal sculptures, Canogar used an algorithm to pull real-time data from various scientific websites that would determine how each piece would light up and display different patterns.

Each sculpture has “a personality,” Canogar says. The rain data sculpture, titled Basin, is molded into a concave shape, while the LED lights create blue ripples that are meant to “mimic the aesthetic qualities of a pond.” Ember, the sculpture that reacts to active fires, is shaped like a bonfire.

These twisted sheets of metal helps to give the artwork what Canogar calls a “creature-like,” appearance, each piece curved into a pose with exposed data cables hanging down like tails. “I want [viewers] to be almost sensually attracted to the work,” Canogar says. “Then once I have people’s attention, I’m hoping that they’ll think about the content, the data-driven information that’s gathered on the screen.”

The data isn’t necessarily meant to change anyone’s minds, or to take a political stance, he says, but rather to encourage viewers to spend some time thinking about what these data sets mean on a global scale.

Each sculpture in the series becomes a lifelike representation of our world, and humanity’s effect on it. Canogar said he wanted to see what would happen if we stopped seeing screens as screens, and instead as something more sentient. “Screens have taken on a new presence in our everyday life,” he says. “We tend to think of screens as this framed device, that we watch TV on, or a computer monitor. But it started to occur to me that it would be interesting to think of the screen as a membrane.”

I really agree with Canogar here when he talks about the screen acting as more of a membrane than just a plane. This has really inspired me to think about the screen in a different way. 

Canogar is best known for large-scale public art installations, the largest of which was 2014’s Storming Times Square, a participatory video installation projected onto Times Square billboards. At the time, Canogar said of the piece, “Filming in Times Square has changed the way I think and feel about ‘the crowd.’ I have studied each and every one of the video captures of the participants, over 1,200 of them. They feel like friends and collaborators.”

With Echo, “the crowd” becomes a more intangible thing: sometimes responsible for changes in the environment, and sometimes just experiencing it. As for why he called the exhibit Echo, Canogar says it’s about the way the sculptures interact with the environment they’re representing. “I feel like they’re kind of listening to the planet. Of human phenomena but also natural phenomena,” he says. “They’re not really answering back, they’re just listening to the echoes.”

https://thespaces.com/balenciaga-evoked-the-end-of-the-world-for-its-aw20-show/

This is a film that I resonate with me deeply whenever I watch it. There is such a large amount of respect and reverence for nature by the na'vi tribes which the people from the military just brutally ignore. There is this sacred and real connection between the na'vi people and their environment which imbues their existence with meaning and purpose. I feel like this connection between nature and individuals is something that must be respected, because if it is destroyed like it is in the movie, its force will strike back, and will protect those who maintain and uphold that respect and understanding for nature. They treat their forest like a living being, which I find extraordinary as in our world, the plants and wildlife we see is merely for spectacle, as a means to a certain end, which is the complete polar opposite of how the na'vi treat their nature. I feel there is something to learn from them, and this idea of believing in nature as an end in and of itself is something I personally want to try and uphold not only in my work, but in my life too.

"They say the past is etched in stone, but it isn't. It's... smoke trapped in a closed room, swirling, changing. Buffeted by the passing of years and wishful thinking. But even though our perception of it changes, one thing remains constant. The past can never be completely erased. It lingers. Like the smell of burning wood."

This was just a quote I found interesting in regards to my concerns. I feel like the past is indeed something that lingers, and by it lingering, it never presents itself to us in its full form. We only see glimpses of it, and depending on how good we are at seeing, we may see more or less of the past than we choose to. In the experience of landscapes, we can sometimes say that the experience of it never presents itself fully to us, rather we may have to remember it by the sensations that make up the place. It is often difficult to remember a landscape as a complete idea, because we rarely see ourselves as a complete idea - like a landscape, we are made up of many different parts, and it is not satisfying, at least for me, to be defined by a single thought or idea/part. We see parts of ourselves in the landscapes, and we thus, in some strange way, become the landscape as well. Like any defining experience, it will linger in our beings amidst the amalgam of other 'things' in us, perhaps waiting to rise up at some other time. It is never forgotten, because it only requires the smallest change in surroundings to evoke the memory of a certain place, in my view.

https://vimeo.com/222200361

Prodger's film BRIDGIT, especially this excerpt, is quite reminiscent of my times in India where we used to go on this particular road from this airport to our home village. It was this seemingly endless flow of landscape, in constant flux, but with a palpable calmness. You either see everything or you see nothing, and in both instances, I feel like this flow slowly causes the viewer to become momentarily disconnected from reality. I find there is something very curious about the concept of continuity and disontinuity in this instance as well, because it challenges the viewer to question the nature of what they see and not simply what they are seeing.