Tag Archives: Gardens

Being Sidetracked (continued…)

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Being Sidetracked (continued…)

This is the first post since the end of August and I’m still off track. Pottering I think. About six weeks ago I saw a competiton for VR work that matched the geranium project

In preparing for entry I reconfigured parts of the project and added some effects in the rain garden and the painted garden, storm effects and shadows, and also did a lot of work preparing the piece for Quest 2 as well as The Index and Vive.

Although you can easily build for both platforms you have to switch the platform in Unity to do so. I now know that while it switches without a problem it won’t switch back without causing all sorts of glitches.  I’ve spent far too long building two versions of a very big Unity file. The advantage is that I’ve now got the file updated to a more recent Unity and I can use some better effects in the new work.

The submission got no traction at all, nothing after the acknowledgement, but my own analysis and discussions with colleagues led to the idea that I need to develop a narrative that guides you through the VR world. So that’s where I am now, trying to write a story that I can take through the process.

I’ve not been entirely idle alongside this, a few months ago I started a drawing of a fox

I’ve done some more work on that and it looks like this now

Being Sidetracked (continued...)

Dark Fox

I’ve also been working on some found or accidental images, the first is from a piece of plastic acquired from my last workplace, that I thought suggested an interior.

Found Interior Chesterfield

Found Interior Chesterfield

Drawing

I’ve carried on drawing every day and you can see the October images  here

  • Draw Every Day – October 22
    Draw Every Day – October 22
    Draw Every Day - October 22 Continuing to draw every day, in a new sketchbook using ...
    See photo »

There is a link to the previous month’s Gallery on each page.

The drawings are posted to Twitter and Instagram each day.

Stepping Aside Occasionally.

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Stepping aside occasionally.

At the end of my last post I highlighted a gallery of new drawings based on my explorations of lemniscates, or at least the idea of lemniscates.

  • Lemniscate Explorations
    Lemniscate Explorations
    Lemniscate Explorations A series of drawings based around the idea of the lemniscate    ...
    See photo »

I started to think about how to see a lemniscate while I’m waiting for funds to be released to make the large version of the clear resin cast that I posted in Gardens Project 12 , and thought about the idea of two circles and how they might be interfered with to suggest a continuous movement. Essentially viewing a pair of toruses such that they act as Möbius strip.

first leminscate maquette

first leminscate maquette – paper, thread, piano wire – 42x10x23

second leminscate maquette

second leminscate maquette – paper, thread, piano wire – 42x10x23

I built the maquettes above to see if I could find a quick way to explore the concept through physically building rather than constant drawing or virtual modelling. I needed to step away from the virtual for a while after working intensely on the gardens project.

Finitude Large Drawing

Finitude Large Drawing – ink, guache, floor paint, charcoal, gesso – 100×80

From the maquettes I made sketches and then a smaller series of drawings (most of the drawings for this project are done on Amazon delivery bags) using limited colour. The rest of the images can be seen here

finitude three drawing

finitude three drawing – guache, gesso, floor paint – amazon bag

Another deviation from this was to build the torus form from comfrey leaves and observe the drying of the form over time.

Some sources found while I was searching for solutions to the transition between finitude and infinity. The Postmodern Peripatetic, Christopher Brinkley’s philosophy blog gives a background to infinity as a concept.

https://brinkley.blog/2021/03/10/infinity-finitude/

The prolight+sound (Frankfurt based entertainment technology trade fair) has a brief review of Refik Anadol’s exhibition “Temporary Immersive Environment Experiments” from 2015.

http://prolight-sound-blog.com/perception-experience-finitude-infinity/

Or take a look at the very impressive website https://refikanadolstudio.com/

Park Youngjin discusses Badiou’s “L’Immanence des vérités” in which he rewrites Plato’s allegory of the cave suggesting that “Truths are absolute, in that the dialectic between finitude and infinity leads to the creation of the œuvre endowed with an index of absoluteness.” in this article in Nature from July 202. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-021-00864-0

Stepping aside occasionally.

comfrey leaves and thread – 22cm dia

I use a trail camera in my garden and make films from the footage captured, this film is from 13th August when my camera fell from its stand and faced the sky capturing the movement of the trees and the sun for the whole afternoon. I’ve got a full two hours of clips assembled as a film and I made this fast forward version as well.

 

Gardens Project 15: Weeks of Dithering.

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Gardens Project 15: Weeks of Dithering.

There are eight videos tracing the development of the gardens project so far.

The first shows the introduction of the trees and bushes and ends with the errors around the second church.

The second shows the slide and the difficulties with climbing that made me seek a different solution.

Then there is the solution and some of the adjustments.

Followed by the speed adjustments that I needed for the locomotion to work more reasonably.

Then a run around the area when all that was worked out.

This was followed by a digression into the canopy scene – using one of my apple trees as the backdrop for a model of a branch with flowers.

and a video showing the resolution of that into a working scene.

The final video, necessarily at a lower resolution shows the current run through of the project, starting with the cave of the sibyl and running through the oak leaf, through Glover Street, with the falling toy, and into the canopy before returning to the oak leaf. There are still parts to be added to Glover Street and a few tweaks to be made to the canopy digression.

I also decided it was time I updated the webpage for this project how I remember myself

Drawing

I’ve carried on drawing every day and you can see the July images  here

  • Draw Every Day – July 22
    Draw Every Day – July 22
    Draw Every Day - July 22 Continuing to draw every day, in a new sketchbook using a set of ...
    See photo »

The drawings are posted to Twitter and Instagram each day.

Lemniscate Explorations

A set of Lemniscate Explorations

I’ve also started a series of collage drawings of lemniscates that can be seen in this gallery Lemniscate Explorations