New artwork - working title "Awkward Thoughts"

 Having been a bit disappointed by ControlNet, but also knowing I can feed it poses via images, I decided to plough ahead with creating a new piece in Blender to some semi-finished state and then transferring it over. I reused by rather scrappy human model and spent quite a while posing a set:

Next I need to start adding some environment - probably a sort of gangway. I also need to make it clearer that the chap with the idea is not a religious moment, and to change each of the blokes so it's clearer they are not all the same person in some animation sequence, but rather a shuffling line...

I was re-reading some of the material on ControlNet, and it occurred to me that I can actually trying using the image in lots of different ways - pose, but also depth, edge detection etc to see which gives me interesting style transfer while keeping close to the image above... I can also:

• Try adjusting the rendering to spit out some controlnet-friendly images directly e.g. no need to extract a depth map when I can generate an accurate one directly
• Try cutting the image up by removing elements that clash and then recombing them later

Stable Diffusion ControlNet

 I've been ploughing on with looking at ControlNet... I fed Google Colab some cash and installed ControlNet - once I'd gone through the initial pain of getting my head around the Colab notebook, adding ControlNet was pretty straightforward, although there's a minor gotcha that it won't warn you that you don't have any ControlNet models installed (you have to install them during the initial start-up of the notebook), it will just generate the image without adding the controls :(

Since I'm interested in pose, I started with that. What's cool is that the input is just an image - the pose is extracted for you. You can obviously find images with the pose you want, or, if you are trying to be an artist, you can use posable models on the web to generate the pose you actually want... Or even manipulate a real life person or doll and photo that.

I set-up this reference pose:

And applied it to a picture of a "worker" in a vector style:

What's interesting is that it appears to act like any other constraint on the model - i.e. image2image or the prompt - meaning that it's not 100% mandated that the model follows it, but also meaning that the model attempts to 'rationalise' (non tech term) the pose - the more unlikely the pose and the more at odds with the prompt, the more weird the results... 

I then tried with two people posed:

And got:

Again, interesting to note that the model attempts to 'make sense' of the pose by putting them on a beam. Also interesting to note that the tension between the wacky poses and the prompt is resolved via a compromise, not applying the pose as a hard constraint. In practice, I suspect this means I'll have to break the image up when there is a tension between what I want to see and how I want to constrain it - i.e. I'll have to feed it a set of requests that make 'sense' in the context of the training material and then stitch it back together again...

Sketching

Since Central St Martins gave me a lovely little sketchbook, I've decide to try sketching. I've always been a bit funny about it because I am (I think) getting quite good at creating art digitally, but I really can't draw... But then I figured if I try and sketch once a day, I'll probably improve - I can still sort of remember the day I first tried to make an image with pycairo and it was very hard so...

Who will we be in the moment of our death?

Who we truly are is revealed in the moment of our deaths. Beyond hope of reward, beyond fear of punishment, how will we spend the last moments and thoughts? 

My father died alone in a hospital bed, overlooked, perhaps afraid and resentful. My mother died unexpectedly, confused and upset, her mind and inner strength destroyed by dementia. My wife died as she lived, filled with strength, love, and concern for others.

We are taught to fear death, but if we lived our lives working backwards from the moment of our death, would we lead better lives? Perhaps we would see the small things in the world before death gently takes them from us? Perhaps we would be willing to wipe the slate clean, before death wipes it for us?

The things we leave behind

My home is filled with things that don't belong to me, that I didn't ask for, I don't really want. My wife's stuff haunts me, gently and sometimes soothingly, but I didn't ask for it. 

My bookshelf is filled with books I've never read, I remember her reading, but I probably never will read myself. My wardrobe is half-filled with clothes I can't wear. The corner of the sitting room is occupied by a piano I can't play, and piles of music books that came alive to her, but I can only flick through in ignorant curiosity. Her coat is still on it's peg, hanging unworn and unwearable. 

These are not things I wanted, I wanted her voice telling me about the things she's read, I wanted the sound of her hands on the piano keys, I wanted her coat hanging damp from a walk together. How can so much stuff remain, and yet these things be so irreparably gone?

Beech And Clouds, hello and goodbye

 Quite a quick artwork, done in Blender for three reasons :- 1) to celebrate autumn 2) to get a break from the snot and tears of my MA art and 3) to experiment with outlining objects in Blender... I was thinking this is too simple:

But it met my goals, and I can't think what I would add, plus I often overwork my stuff (need to watch for that!) so yeah, done! I'm quite pleased with it in a simple way - it gives me the feeling of space and openness I wanted.

Our bodies and our art - reflections on Holly's blog

Managed to find and set-up FeedRabbit so I can more easily keep track of some of my peers' blogs. Which was great because I caught the latest excellent post, "She has a body of work, OnlyFans", from Holly. It's well-worth a read. I was stuck by the number of unexpected parallels between her work and mine, despite the subjects and approach be quite different at first sight. We are both:

• Considering how people react to images that are, in some senses, socially taboo
• Thinking about how we place ourselves and our personal lives into our art as source material, and both perhaps considering making art from something many people could consider 'off-limits'
• Making art that explores stereotypes around the body, and what it is acceptable to do with it

For me, it sparked some further questions I need to consider in relation to my own work:

• To what extent is everyone a performer? Is it unusual to make art from yourself? Or is it an extension of what we all do anyway? We are all using ourselves to make money/social capital in some way
• How do the audience relate to the work? Is it just for their titillation, be that sexual or voracious?How do you want them to relate? What impact does it actually have on them? In some senses there is the same thrill in seeing a glimpse of someone's private grief as there is in seeing a glimpse of their bare skin
• How do you create an experience that lasts with the viewer? To have an impact, I need to make a lasting impression - people might (one day!) engage with my art by hitting 'like', or pausing in a gallery, but will the then almost instantly forget it? If so, what can I do to bury a worm in their subconscious? I need to research how education helps plant ideas in the brain, and perhaps make art that is more than just a passive image to be viewed
• To what extent do our bodies/lives belong to us? To what extent other people? On what basis? To be a carer, is in some ways, to lend your body to someone else. I love my home and I don't mind my car, but neither would be the way they are if it was just up to me. How does money relate? What other ways do we transact? My kids show me love in exchange for the care I give them
• Pity and exploitation? I imagine people looking at my art and being moved to think again about difficult topics, but to what extent may they just feel pity? Worse, to what extent might that be hypocritical or even voracious pity - the same mixture of false pity and voracious enjoyment that makes people watch TV shows like Jeremy Kyle?

All in all, an amazing haul of ideas and insight, so glad I took the trouble to read Holly's work :)

Art experiments in Blender and Stable Diffusion

 All over the place a bit at the moment, as is often the way when I finish a piece... In practice it's the time I do some experiments, so it's all good... So working on two technical things:

Autumn Beeches: Woodblock Print-like Shading in Blender

Can I create interesting print-like non-photorealistic rendering effects in Blender? I've done a bit for previous projects where I use rgb nodes to 'colourise' a grey-scale render. This time I'm adding an outline using a hack where you extrude the mesh to create a 'hull' around the object, but then texture it with a black material that has inverted normals and backface culling - the backface culling removes the areas that have normals that point away from the viewer, but because the normals are flipped, the only faces you see are the ones that point AWAY from you... Which appear around just the outlines of the normal rendered parts... It works pretty well. I was testing it on a branch made using geometry nodes which was working great until it wasn't... which sadly seems to be a common issue with geometry nodes - they work great (albeit with some out of the box thinking!) until they hit some weird limit or bug... In this case after some faffing I managed to get material indexes to work (it's all one mesh so you have to apply multiple materials), and it was also starting to look half-decent when suddenly everything swapped to using the 'bark' material and wouldn't shift... So I need to come back to this and decide if I want to finishing, or what to consider it a complete experiment (it did work from a materials point of view!) and then either throw in the towel or try doing it it 2d instead...

Struck by an idea: Pose control using controlNet for Stable Diffusion

Was struck by a silly/funny/provocative image of a queue of generic workers trudging along and one is stuck by inspiration and has a look of delight on his face, and the rest are piling into the back of him and looking very pissed off... I wanted to use AI because it's mostly a bit of fun, and it might give an interesting style ... but I can't get AI to produce anything remotely resembling the pose I want... So I'm going to use it as an excuse to bite the bullet and get AUTOMATIC1111 and ControlNet working. Which I've been wanting to do forever... And this is a good excuse... After some Googling I have it installed in Google Colab, but Google wants money before I can use it for more than a few seconds... So I guess that's next, then get simple text2img working, and thence to pose control via AUTOMATIC1111, and then THE WORLD!!!

Someone being (literally) struck by an idea

Duel Study Statements

 I think my plan is now to have two study statements that reference each other in multiple ways - firstly each will incorporate the other as a sub-statement, secondly each will defer to the other being the main statement ;) Viz

Fucking Inappropriate: Expressing the Socially Unsay-able with Humour and Compassion, using open source technology - nb see the title below for the primary title of my study

Human and Expressive Mark-Making with Open Technology to express the socially un-sayable - nb the title above is the primary title of my study

Maybe I'll make it a bit less clunky somehow ;) 

Library of the Forest - Miguel Angel Blanco

 Interesting post about "Library of the forest", which is mentioned in The Old Ways:

https://territoriesofarttherapy.wordpress.com/2014/08/17/miguel-angel-blanco-library-of-the-forest/

I like the idea of merging a bunch of things that I'm passionate about - books, creative therapy, art, and walking!

I've finished The Old Ways, and started "Keep Going" by Austin Kleon

Study statementS... How do I unify?

Having reviewed a bunch of the old study statements, I have made a bit of a breakthrough:

1. The study statement is a study statement, not a research proposal - clearly my PhD is haunting me! In practice this means I was thinking that I needed to propose a clear, novel piece of research with a well-defined scope. NOPE, I just need to state what I want to study
2. The format is quite broad, it's not locked down, and it's about what I want to achieve

So with this new found freedom, I think there are two things I really want to study:

1. Fucking Inappropriate: Expressing the Socially Unsay-able with Humour and Compassion - How can I use my experiences with care, disability, and death, together with my background in sales, my tendency to compassion, and my tenancy to humour, to make material that speaks and casts light on the things that society doesn't want to hear. A friend of mine summed it up very well "...tackle and shine light these difficult subjects in a engaging, jarring way without being crass."
2. Human and Expressive Mark-Making with Open Technology - Everyone wants to install Adobe, but it's expensive and feels limiting... Can I explore and demonstrate the possibilities of wading into the 'guts' of technology to create images (and perhaps other things) that are human, expressive, and free (both as in beer and as in speech)

But what I really want to do is BOTH. So do I be 'good' and pick one while doing the other? Or should I be fucking inappropriate and choose both, but rather than try to merge them, literally make both study statements and somehow merge them so neither is obvious my actual study statement, and neither can be accepted without the other? I feel a bit of Godel, Escher, Bach and paired paradoxical statements coming on!

Playing with the 'trellis' from my earlier "Magic of Connection" picture as a 3d texture

I've been meaning to experiment with taking 2d art elements into Blender to see how I can mess with them there... Had a good play taking the 'trellis' from my previous pic and using it as layer in Blender:

I initially tried using it as a displacement map, but to get decent resolution I had to create a crazy number of sub-divisions on the plane, which was very slow, and most of them weren't needed anyhow since they were 'flat' (coplaner) in the background areas... I tried using the decimate modifier to remove these, but it crashed Blender... So instead I applied the picture as a texture on a simple rectangle, then used the alpha channel from the image to be the alpha of the texture, effectively 'deleting' the bacground areas.

"Everything is Fine" - MA Study Statement?

Possible extra refinement of study statement - explore the parts of life that we are socially obliged not to share, often to the detriment of wider society, like death, grief, illness, disability, old age, caring, depression... The things that when asked, we are expected to say 'everything is fine'... Maybe I need to focus being 'fucking inappropriate' on finding tough but compassionate and humorous ways to push those things out into the light?

The Old Ways - Robert MacFarlane - p284

" ....met with my own earlier footprints, raised up as footplinths. The uncanniness of such moments has its source in the encounter with the altered traces of an earlier self. The world has been slightly but importantly shifted between your first passage and your return..."

"Encounter with the altered traces of an earlier self", hum.

Update

Those words really caught my attention and I couldn't work out why, but of course, my life is filled with encounters with my earlier self. While I don't really think I 'died' (that way madness lies), it does feel like I am a different person, dwelling amidst the remains of that earlier me.

Study Statement Ideas Refinement

 Trying to capture some of the thinking I've been doing... I think I have narrowed it down to a number of possible areas:

• Open Technology for self-expression: Explore the limits of how open source technology can be pushed to facilitate different forms of self-expression and mark making
• Survivors not victims: Explore how those affected (directly or indirectly) by illness and disability are portrayed, and how those narratives can be challenged
• Art for Business: How can artist processes be applied to business? How can artistic thinking be better understood as innovative and commercial thinking?
• Artistic Expression for all: Dechamp broke the idea that only certain things can be art, can I break the assumption that only certain people can be artists? What is the world missing by segments of society not self-expressing through art?

But I also have some constraints:

• I want to self-express and tell my story in a way that's compelling
• I want to make art that people will see and which can be exhibited

I think 'art for business' could be the direction I want to go in to make money post-MA (assuming I'm not a wildly successful artist, ha!), so while it could be advantageous to do it as part of my MA, it could also be limiting and could derail my MA.

I'd like to combine some of the above, struggling now to work out how to do so... Feels like it's "using open technology to help those affected by illness/disability to tell their story", but I don't like the risk that I won't be making my own art! Plus the focus on technology and the focus on disability/illness don't sit together naturally...

Songs of Insecurity - for the "Within The Limitations" exhibition

 Made an entire piece of art this morning:

To be fair, a lot of the ideas had been floating around my noggin for a while... It's for submission to the "Beyond the Limitations" exhibition, which is seeking to reuse a massive collection of CD 'jewel cases' from a previous artwork, by turning them into frames for art pieces. Like my "Missing Worker" piece, this was pretty easily knocked out because I used standard tools - Google Slides(!) for the layout, and GIMP to turn the photo into half-tone.

Socially Engaged Art Practice

 "Socially engaged practice describes art that is collaborative, often participatory and involves people as the medium or material of the work"

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/s/socially-engaged-practice

What is the sound of one-hand clapping? What is the right Practice-Based Research Study Statement?

 Finding the process of trying to write a study statement almost impossible - it seems filled with contradictions and dead-ends... I feel like everything I think I know about what I want to do, and why, keeps shifting and washing around... Maybe it's designed to be this? Maybe this is like a Zen Koan, designed to 'break' the logical mind and open the pupil's eyes to new ways of thinking?

Or maybe I'm just not very good at it? ;)

Submitted to The London Magazine cover competition

 Submitted WAE by Night to the London Magazine Cover competition.

Submitted to MK Calling 2024 exhibition

 Submitted "One Summer Afternoon" to MK Calling 2024 exhibition

 https://mkgallery.org/2023/10/23/open-call-mk-calling-2024/

What the f**k am I doing for my study statement?

 I DON'T KNOW WHAT I WANT TO DO! I want to do so many things, but I can't unify them, and I can't formulate them as questions...

I know I want to:

• Use lots of different sorts of tech and push the boundaries of how tech can be used to make art, especially when mixed and matched
• Make conceptual art
• Share personal experiences and make people think
• MAKE art not ideas as part of my MA

I think I might also want to:

• Challenge the idea that artists are special and only they get to make art
• Challenge the seeming irrelevance of art to most people's lives
• Challenge the narrative that science drives value, but art is an indulgence

So there's maybe two divergent paths:

1. Focus on tech as the medium but with the goal simply of self-expression - pros: get to do my stuff - cons: no bigger vision, very focused on the medium for a self-professed conceptualist
2. Focus on tech as the medium but with a bigger goal of making art more accessible, perhaps even making a 'pure' platform - pros: big mandate, focus on ideas - cons: do I get to make art?!

But why DO I make art?

Starting to think about my study statement has me again thinking hard about why I make art. I suspect there's a (probably valid) school of thought that says "hey sweet cheeks, don't worry, do your thing, babe"... But I do worry. I worry because I think it's (probably) important to know what I am trying to achieve. If I don't know what I am trying to achieve, I won't know which direction I am trying to go in. Without a direction, I'll just swim around having fun, which might be fine. 

Should (my) art have a purpose?

I think art should have a purpose. Without a purpose it's just a hobby. Without a purpose, there's no point. Things I think are important to me about my art:

• It shares a point-of-view, and reflects my opinions and emotions
• I'm proud of it and I like having it around
• Other people see it, and see value in it
• It makes a (small) difference in the world
• Other people are affected by it
• People will exhibit it (or nobody will see it)
• People will pay money for me to make it (or I can't afford to make it)

I guess, I want to make art for other people, not just myself. That being the case, it needs to have value to them. I think that value needs to be a message, a point-of-view, conveyed by the art, perhaps one that can't be conveyed by words, or not as easily conveyed by words. Having seen the art, they are left with a slightly wider view of the world. I want to make art that makes people think. Moreover, I think I am saying I want to make art that people will exhibit and pay for me to make.

Reading

Does Art have a Purpose or need one?

Should Art have a Purpose?

Is authenticity important in art? (Rambling and potentially offensive)

 It feels like there is pressure to produce work that is 'authentic' - work that truly shares what you feel - screw your eyes tight shut and squeeze the precious you-ness out into the world... But why?!

Does art exist for the artist? Or for the viewer? If art exists for the artist, do it in a backroom and keep that shit to yourself. If art exists for the viewer, why do they care whether what you create is authentic?

Perhaps because they are like you and they see the authenticity? 
Perhaps because they have been told that they should want art to be authentic? 
Perhaps because nobody likes to be lied to? 
Perhaps because art is inherently voyeuristic and everyone wants to see your blood and guts? 

Authenticity matters if art is self-expression because there's not point expressing something that isn't real... But people lie with their words all the time, why shouldn't they lie with their images? I think the question can only be answered by looking at why each artist makes art.

My answer for my own work

In my work, I want to share an experience and a point-of-view, I want people to be forced to recognise a way of seeing the world, but also be enriched by doing so. I want to notice things, and help others to notice those things too, I want to reflect on things, and help others to reflect on them too. In that context, authenticity is a tool (gasp!), a tool to help make work that is compelling, because compelling work will meet my aim. Authenticity should be wielded as a tool, and applied where it is valuable.

Totes going to regret saying this ;)

Oh, yeah, I was included in Bill of Health Exhibition

 Forgot to record that I was included in the Bill of Health exhibition!

I've also been told I've been accepted by the No Place exhibition, but I tend not to believe these things till they actually happen ;)

Autograph's Open Call: Becoming Visible - Call for Photographs

 Submitted DUI to the "Becoming Visible - Call for photograph's" by Autograph. Again, not because I expect to get in, but because if I don't apply, I'll never get in... Hopefully I am not creating some negative impression by making all these submissions? Hopefully it's ok and part of the process? Dunno... Fun innit!

DUI ?Part of Caught on Camera Series?

 Bit embarrassed to find I haven't written about this pic at all, which is weird because I've been working on it on-and-off since before my last pic... I think it was in very early stages then, and then finished in very little time... It seems a bit unsatisfying, but I think that's ok because it's part of a series (if I make the rest of the series!).

The inception for this picture was a real trip to help someone close to me who was having a mental health crisis. The situation was related to my wife's death, so I was quite distressed myself. As I was driving a little (like a tiny bit) too fast, with tears streaming down my face, it struck me that it would be funny/weird/sad if I were going a bit faster and got caught on a speed camera, what would they make of the image! It set me thinking about how grief is hidden, and only caught on camera by accident. So I decided to make an image of me on a speed camera.

I started by taking a picture of myself the next time I was crying - I was starting to recover so I had the presence of mind to snap a pic - being an artist is WEIRD!

I then cut it out and wanted to put it into a car, but there's not many good images looking into a car from the front from a speed-camera-ish angle... So I turned to AI, but that just gave me similar car magazine type shots... So I bit the bullet and did a very simple rig in Blender - just to give the impression of being a car:

Which I fed through Stable Diffusion:

I then composited myself back in, desaturated the image, monkeyed with the contrast, added some noise, a bit of vignette, and added some fake data, to give the final image:

Which is cute, but really needs more pics to make it make sense... Which gives me the slight logistical problem of getting some more pics of me to use...

Notes from Group Crit today

 People seemed generally engaged with the topic. Some interesting discussion and points to consider:

• Why stage the backgrounds? Why not just use real pics?
• Why stage at all? Why not just take pictures of your real grief in the moment
• Hidden grief, caught on camera

Potentially a series?

Update

• Feels like maybe two series - one "caught on camera" about how grief is hidden in society, and is only shown when 'caught' perhaps with fun titles relating to situation e.g. supermarket "Clean up on alse 1". One a series of 'grief moments' with different 'classifications' - not showing me, but rather showing a melting figure?
• Why am I staging these? Maybe some discomfort in creating a 'raw' image, but mainly desire for them to carry a meaning beyond just recording what happened - they are not a record of my grief, they are a commentary on how society approaches and talks (or doesn't talk) about grief

Hello Conceptual Art, you beaut!

 One of the challenges of being an MA student, in my 40s, with a PhD in theoretical chemistry, is that I know sweet FA about art... While that could be argued to have some merits, it's also a massive liability... For instance, how did I not know about conceptual art? Ok, I sort of knew it was a thing... But I've been reading a lot about the motivations behind it, and it makes SO MUCH SENSE! I hesitate to remove objects from art completely, but a lot of what I read matches things I have felt myself especially that the production of art is less important than the ideas that motivate it -> the means is a means, not an end. I feel an increased freedom to focus on my practice, not on my techniques, which are largely pragmatic anyhow. I need to read further, and I need to think more about how I feel about conceptual and post-conceptual art - I don't want to just pigeon hole myself, but I definitely like that there's a recognised thing that aligns much closer to how I want to practice.

Music Therapy Book Illustration - Done (Project queue = 2)

 Last night I moved from using the 'real' background to drive the connections, to using a simplified version, I also cleaned up the code a lot, made the branches thinner and fainter towards the tips, plus messed about A LOT with weights to get a good balance between the foreground, the background, and the different weights of connections.. So after all that, I eventually landed here:

Which I am pretty happy with! I think if it wasn't for the book, I'd go a bit more abstract, but I think this is a good balance for something that needs to be clearly linked to online music groups!

Music Therapy Book Illustration - the picture (Project queue = 3)

 Having got a reasonable algorithm for the connections, I started to build up a background image, initially in Inkscape. I updated the code so the pattern would be influenced by the value of a layer below:

However, when I started trying to draw the 'real' image, it became clear that the connections themselves didn't give a good enough impression of the image, so I added a layer to represent the image through a noisy stipple effect. However, this gave too good of an impression of the background, rendering my hand-drawn graphics laughable... So I bit the bullet, and moved from a hand-drawn background in Inkscape, to a photo-collage in GIMP. I also added some warp to the image, so the connections were less straight. After a lot of faffing, mostly lost to history, I got to this:

Which is... ok... ;) It's not quite as abstract as I wanted, but it's a good place to refine further. So tonight I need to pushing the cycle of refinement and review. I want to experiment with making the branches get thinner as they go out, but also use a separate image to drive the connections from the background image, hopefully giving me more control over them...

Music Therapy Book Illustration - self-avoiding random walk (Project queue = 3)

My daughter attends weekly music groups online, and the music therapist who runs them approached me and asked if I would collaborate on a book chapter that she has been asked to write. Given I am trying to be an artist, and trying to express myself visually, I thought it would be appropriate (and interesting!) to do so in the chapter, so I am trying to create an image that represents my experience attending the groups. After a lot of noodling, I decided I wanted to represent the connectivity they give my daughter and I (which is also a key theme in the book chapter). To do that, I decided to revisit an experiment I did a while ago to create branching organic shapes that fill a given space. My previous attempt struggled because the code to determine if branches overlapped wasn't reliable, and the algorithm also worked recursively, so it drew one whole 'branch' to the tip before moving to the next one, giving a result that looked like this:

So I decided to try a different approach, using instead a grid of 'cells' which can be occupied or unoccupied. Starting at a random point, I do a random walk selecting an adjacent unoccupied cell, until there are no unoccupied adjacent cells (typically because it has looped back on itself and got 'painted into a corner'). I think pick an occupied cell at random, and repeat the process. Over time I get a pattern that looks like this:

I am writing this up retrospectively, so it's only fair to say I spent a good few hours ironing out kinks, especially diagonal crossings - the basic algorithm didn't consider diagonals as 'blocking' so there were a lot of places where the line entered on one diagonal, crossed the top, and exited on the other diagonal, creating an 'X' shape. The solution being to consider diagonals as a special case, and forbidden one diagonal if the other was already 'occupied'.

Context in art (social and physical) - calling things out as meaningful

 In "Playing to the Gallery", Greyson Perry states that putting something into a gallery is one thing that makes it art. This has bothered me for a while, because the object is unchanged. However, on reflection, the context is vitally important too, and the context has changed. By putting something into a 'special space', you are calling it out, you are saying "look harder at this thing, there is meaning to be taken from it", you are literally putting it on display and inviting people to use it as an object for personal reflection. There are clearly analogies to religion here - galleries and churches are both special spaces, that are intended to push people in them to look beneath the surface of the things they find therein, bread in a shop is for eating, bread in a church is for reflecting on people's relationship to the divine. A urinal in a toilet is for pissing into, it pretends no deeper meaning, a urinal in an art gallery implies/teases/promises deeper meaning that will reward inspect and reflection.

How have other people used context to 'sell' meaning? How can I use context to sell meaning/ideas/experiences?

Submitted to the "No Place" exhibition

Submitted "Waiting Place" to the No Place Exhibition. Not really expecting too much, but it was free, and there's some implication it will be shown in a physical venue.. Plus it's good practice!

The brief was to photograph a piece of work that represents your identity, in a space that you consider 'home', so I photographed "Waiting Place" on the wall of my study/home office. Well, actually I photoshopped "Waiting Place" onto the wall of my study, because I am an ar*ehat, and because I'm not going to kill the planet printing it out, just to photograph it again!

Tutorial 1 - 1 Nov 2023

I really enjoyed my first tutorial. I used the time to talk about two topics that had been troubling me.

Process art suggests that art should focus on the process, not the end result, and several people on the course have been advocating it, but I find myself fundamentally rejecting it 

I spoke about my frustration that, for me, self-expression and meaning are central to art, and that the means of expressing those ideas is just that - a means to an end. Jonathan asked if I felt meanings were created or discovered. I expressed that they are (to me) discovered - sometimes they are discovered more 'upfront' e.g. something will strike me primarily as an idea e.g. my missing worker poster. Sometimes they are discovered as part of the process of experimenting with a more technique/medium-focused idea eg. my Britain 2050 - I wanted to play with the tree root, I didn't expect to create a piece of environmental satire, but was pleased that it had decided to be that. Jonathan suggested that what I had just described was my process! I laughed and agreed - but further pushed that my process was independent of the medium. Jonathan said he thought my direction and thinking we sound, but cautioned against:

1) Instrumentatisation - treating art as just a means to an end, devalued in the process

2) Loosing track of what I stand for, and myself in my art - which lead nicely to topic 2 below

3) Failing to keep reflecting on how this process can evolve and letting it evolve naturally

My take away was that my process is my process, and the proof it is in the art I do (or don't) create. However, there are two extremes to balance:

• Over-focus on process over production "doodling": Just doing whatever feels right and hoping great art emerges, but such art will potentially lack meaning - it will be just pleasing lines... Allowing the medium too much control at the expense of the artist
• Over-focus on production over process "diagramming" or instrumentalisation: Removing the medium from the process to the extent that you produce something dead and over-crafted. Allowing the artist too much control at the expense of the medium
  

However, I recognise and respect that some people work close to these extremes, and if that works for them all power to their elbow. I need to push ahead in the direction that makes sense to me, but recognise (as I think I do) that it may just be a phase!

What is Jonathan's reaction to my fucking inappropriate manifesto

Jonathan said it was interesting, and worth exploring to see where it takes me. I said I hoped to be a pain in everyone's arse in a good way!

Other thoughts

Jonathan suggested I check out:

• Walter Benjamin's- "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"- especially his thoughts on "aura". Just be aware of the context and time he was writing in
• Ryan Gander - understand the way he uses theory and deep thinking to unify a very diverse portfolio
• Lubaina Himid

We talked briefly about Jonathan's PhD, and student-led learning (my phrase), and the work of Carl Rodgers.