{"id":21668,"date":"2026-02-19T15:35:58","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T15:35:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ian-latham.com\/blog\/?p=21668"},"modified":"2026-02-19T15:35:58","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T15:35:58","slug":"more-birds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ian-latham.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/19\/more-birds\/","title":{"rendered":"More Birds"},"content":{"rendered":"

More Birds<\/span><\/p>\n

Another New Studio<\/span><\/p>\n

Having thought a lot about how and why I make work I came up with a rudimentary explanation. The process can be contrasted with an everyday activity like walking to work. If you do it a lot it can fall into a category of activity that fades from your consciousness. You complete it automatically because you start with an aim, know how to get there and you’ve done it before. The more you do it the less remarkable it becomes. If you apply this to making work you end up with repetition and formula. It is not that it is not possible to use this approach to creative work, it’s just that if you use repetition you need to maximise your awareness throughout the process so that you don’t get bored. If anyone reads this they’ll think \u201c10,000 hours!\u201d and other such bullshit, if you do the same thing repetitively for ten thousand hours without thinking you’ll be exactly where you were skills wise just a couple of years older.<\/span><\/p>\n

The way I work is to start without an end in sight so that the journey itself is always new. Not knowing where I’m going is fundamental to my practice and I’ve always found that when I explain it every word I utter narrows the concept. It strikes me that explanation becomes a form of prompt writing for an AI. That actually might be worth trying?<\/span><\/p>\n

I also had a thought when I was in a crit session with Michael Petry<\/a> through my CAA<\/a> professional mentoring course which was that teaching is a delicate act akin to challenging tightrope walkers while they’re performing. Some require very small nudges, some require the rope being vigorously shaken and some just need continual encouragement from the sidelines. The point is obviously that the difficulty of any form of teaching is that it’s about the learner and not the teacher. I don’t know where the relevance of this is but I’ve written it down now!<\/span><\/p>\n

From another CAA masterclass, this one with Rebekah Tolley<\/a>\u00a0 I’m trying to think about not finishing things and why I prefer things to be unfinished. What I feel about the work changes minute to minute never mind over longer times so it’s difficult to be sure that the direction I’m going in is a direction at all. I refuse to articulate intention is as close as I can get to answer to one of her questions, \u201c[what do] you refuse to explain in the work\u201d. The agency of the work should be inherent in the encounter with it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"More

Scaffold Birds<\/p><\/div>\n

I’m making more birds<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The first thing to say about the sculpture is that it doesn’t work entirely the way I want it to. I like the flowering of the birds at the top of the structure but the tower itself is a bit too decorative \u2013 maybe paint it black?<\/span><\/p>\n

I signed on to the ‘Willow’<\/a> AR platform and tried out a couple of options.<\/span><\/p>\n