Building OpenVdb with numpy support

OpenVDB is a format for storing sparce 3d voxel volumetric data, and is probably very boring to anyone not significantly interested in 3d graphics. I want to see if I can generate these volumes procedurally to be able to create my own bespoke 'smoke-like' scenes... Sort of 3d procedural mark making... Anyway, it has to be built from source, which is really annoying and takes hours to compile... This is my notes on how to do it in case I loose my laptop. If anyone other than me is reading this far down, they probably deserve a small prize ;)

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Download src from openvdb site

install numpy and libboost-numpy-dev using apt (plus pretty much any other dependency it complains about)

mkdir build

cd build

sudo cmake -D OPENVDB_BUILD_PYTHON_MODULE=ON -D USE_NUMPY=ON -D Python_ROOT_DIR=/usr/include/python3.12 ..

sudo make -j2

sudo make install

Install doesn't appear to work, may have to copy pyopenvdb.so into directory with your code(!)

Viewer is vdb_viewer from package openvdb-tools

Could see if python lib path is picked up automagically, but seemed to need to be specified (probably because of python3) - found path using python3 itself (can't remember command, but should be able to find it)

"Reaching Through" accepted to Fox Yard Studio's "Small Works" Open Call - third time lucky!

 Yay! Third time lucky for "Reaching Through" - previous rejected from two open calls elsewhere, it's finally found a place in the "Small Works" open call at Fox Yard Studios. 

I'm awaiting further details, but guess it's going to be an expensive victory - £20 fee for an accepted work (very reasonable), but then postage and packing to Suffolk, and I'll probably end up driving there (it's about 2 hours each way from home). Still, always one to find a grey cloud around every silver lining ;) For now, I'm glad that someone likes it enough to exhibit it, and I'm excited about seeing, and being part of, the exhibition.

Embarrassingly, I can't remember which version of this piece I submitted - hopefully it's the one above, which I prefer to the piece with the sweet chestnut husks.

Weird Plaster and Epoxy Experiment(!) And boringly practical lessons-learnt

 I made this:

I was going to say it's weird and I don't know why, but that's completely untrue, which is interesting in itself as, actually, I know exactly why I made it! I made it as a test of mixing plaster and epoxy in the same mould, and because I thought it would be interesting/cool! A few pieces I've made I have wanted to have a block of plaster with an irregular cavity filled with epoxy - firstly because it adds to the possibility of the 'peering' aesthetic I'm exploring, and secondly because I have a love/hate relationship with epoxy, so the less I need to use for a given overall size of piece, the better!

The method was very straightforward (if a bit fiddly):

1. Cast the head
2. Put it into the cube mould and fill the areas of the mould that are supposed to be plaster with modelling dough
3. Fill the remaining space with epoxy and wait for it to cure
4. Remove from the mould and carefully remove the dough, leaving an irregular half cube of epoxy with the head stuck in it
5. Return it to the mould and fill the void (that was dough) with more plaster

So having ripped the veil of mystery and allure from this piece, these are the lessons it taught me:

• Epoxy will cure next to modelling dough, despite the modelling dough being a bit wet (epoxy has no love of water)
• The modelling dough is quite tough to remove from the block of cured epoxy, so best bet seems to remove as much as possible by hand, then resort to hot water and a pointed tool
• Epoxy dye doesn't mix with plaster! I was stupid to think it would because the epoxy dye is clearly oil based like the epoxy... Needless to say, I realised this a few seconds after I poured it in...
• Uncured epoxy soaks into dry plaster, giving it a lovely texture and beige colour, but it means the pure white head above looks DARKER than the grey plaster around it, because the grey plaster is added after the epoxy cures
• Cured epoxy floats in plaster! This meant that as I was pouring the level didn't appear to be going up because the epoxy was floating up with it! Squashing it down results in a fountain of liquid plaster and it bobs up again... So you have to keep squashing it down until the plaster starts to set, then top up with more plaster if required
• The top surface is quite irregular as it has the meniscus of the epoxy and the extra plaster top-up. It is therefore probably best to cast whole thing upside down so the good bottom surface becomes the top, and the crappy top surface is hidden at the bottom
• Modelling dough sags over time, which wouldn't be a problem except that the epoxy takes several hours to reach a point where it's no longer flowing. This means that the final shape left in the epoxy is much saggier and softer than the one that was there when the epoxy was poured - the interface between the epoxy and dough was much more angular and 'rock-like' when it was first poured

Much as I hate to say it, I should probably try again, but reverse the order - use the dough to block where I want EPOXY, then cast the plaster, remove the dough, and cast the epoxy. Doing so would almost certainly resolve a number of the issues above, BUT might cause new problems as the dough might dissolve in the water in the plaster... ALSO, if I follow this approach, I'll be force to shape the dough upside down AND in the negative - i.e. with the current approach, I can mould the dough to be what I want the plaster to look like, with the revised approach, I'd have to mould the dough to be what the CLEAR areas will look like.... Which is a bit of a head fuck...

A fragile but unbreakable stillness (null point?)

 I've been seized by an idea, without really understanding what it means... 

The last couple of sentences from my last blog entry keep coming back to haunt me:

A kind of gentle light of death? A stillness, not a horror.

I've been thinking about "The Pensive Image" referenced by Jo Love in her guest lecture. I need to read the book to properly understand the idea, but just the phrase is very evocative, and it's lead me to expand on the idea above. 

Basically, I'm sensing/feeling/imagining a quality of property of an artwork to somehow evoke a feeling, and that feeling is one of stillness. But not just still in a moment, somehow still in a suspension of time itself. But not a suspension, rather a perfect equilibrium, as though the universe came to a point of perfect balance, and was left just poised there, still, stuck, but at rest.

I think the idea relates to death, but also trauma and shock.

What's interesting is 1) it feels so important but I can't say why and 2) it seems to pull a lot of my previous ideas together in some intangible way. It's also a quality that some of my previous work seems to possess (more or less deliberately), but others don't - clearly a cleaving plane for further reflection and problematisation.

I pondered the idea as I (consequently very slowly!) completed my morning tasks, and wrote down thoughts that come into my head. I described it as

A needle balanced on its point, unable to fall, undisturbed by the air that cannot circulate

Which feels like a good visual representation. I also described it as:

[23:29, 22/11/2024] A stillness, a gentle calm, an abolition of time, not a suspension. Death as a suspension of time, but filled with calm stillness, not horror. A ceasing to be 

[08:19, 23/11/2024] A needle balanced on its point, unable to fall, undisturbed by the air that cannot circulate

[08:25, 23/11/2024] The universe at rest, not frozen, perfectly balanced

[08:26, 23/11/2024] Unstable but unbreakable equilibrium

[08:39, 23/11/2024] Perfect equilibrium not stillness 

[08:25, 23/11/2024] A null point 

 The timestamps are because I WhatsApp myself, I'm not some crazied cataloguer of my thoughts ;) 

I think 'null point' is a good name for the idea because it has an emotional connection (the position where my daughter's nystagmas least effects her eyes is call the 'null point') but also a science one too (the "zero point" in Quantum Mechanics is where all the particles are at rest).

I wonder if it's like the timelessness I used to get when I meditated?

The strange idea of "The World as it is" seems related somehow - in the moment of the thought, time seems suspended - like I'm snap-shotting the world as it is, somehow.

Some of my work that seems to have this quality already -  "Reaching through" with brittle plaster fingers forever reaching, encased in unyielding epoxy, the Waiting Room for Bill of Health, the secret life of spaces series, and the floating face in water (which was never really an artwork so never got a real name, doomed to be forever known by my 'working title' of 'floating face'!)

And yet, many images that SHOULD have it, don't:

Further thoughts:

[23:34, 22/11/2024] Is it a quality of the image, of what the image invokes, of my relationship to the image?

[08:20, 23/11/2024] Past, future, life, death as a quadrant centred on 'now'

[08:29, 23/11/2024] An image that makes the viewer pensive? Or an image that is somehow itself pensive?

[08:41, 23/11/2024] Art is the byproduct of the squeezing of the nut, it's the flashes of colour you get when you squeeze your eyes shut

The last thought is interesting because it brings in "The Squeezing of the Nut", but also suggests a very non-Tomgos approach to art, dangerously close to the mystical! Essentially art as a product of contemplation on an impossible question.

So this idea (if it's even formed enough to deserve the title of 'idea') seems to pull together a lot of strands in my work - death, trauma, science, meditation, balance, the world as it is, the squeezing of the nut, the urge to encase things in resin

So what now?! I'm not sure... I think I want to try to make a piece of abstract work that embodies this quality, and see of that gives me further insight into what the quality is, and why (and if!) it's important. I wonder also if I should ask for a crit on it?

Unnatural light and science in 3d rendering

Artist Jo Love came to talk to the MA group about her stunning pencil drawings of electron micrographes of dust. Are they pictures of dust? Or pictures of micrographes of dust? Based on her explanation, they are perhaps neither - clearly the pictures are based on the micrographes, and the dust particles are real (and weird to think they are somewhere in that sample, but probably impossible to locate again), but they are deliberately changed to remove the 'cold' light. Jo clearly understood that the images were not taken with light, and that is part of their unworldly quality, but it's also a clear that a lot of that 'coldness' comes down to a palette chosen for easy interpretation.

Nevertheless, it got me thinking again about the odd quality of images illuminated by 'light' that is not actually 'light'. Of course, a place such a 'light' is encountered again is in 3d rendering. The 'preview' image offered by 3d software like Blender uses an approximation designed to make the shape of the object easy to see, and to be fast to rendered interactively, but I often find it as beautiful as the finished renders, with the same strange quality that Jo sees in the micrographs:

More generally I think of the non-photorealistic rendering I do - I think perhaps people don't understand the lengths I go to (and perhaps fail!) to make things LOOK interesting, rather than be 'correct'. Again, the play of light is often heavily manipulated. 

Building on the 'mark making' experiments I have been doing, I'd love to experiment with creating virtual 'sculptures' or 3d 'marks' and seek the same odd light that Jo renders so beautifully in her graphite drawings. A kind of gentle light of death? A stillness, not a horror.

Unit 2 Video

 Huzzah!

Unit 2 Assessment

Learning Outcome 1:

Develop and realise a self-directed programme of learning which draws from wide-ranging subject knowledge. (AC Knowledge, AC Process)

Overall, I would say that my practice has matured in two key ways over Unit 2. Firstly it has become more fluid, approaching each piece as a living part of a journey, rather than a project with a brief. Secondly I have become better at noticing, appreciating, and acting-on what I am experiencing as I make art.

Meaning (and thus, I guess, artistic purpose) has continued to be very important to me, but I have matured in my attitude towards it:

• Shifting from meaning-up-front to meaning as a dialogue with the piece (and here)

• Embracing meaning as something that is co-authored with the viewer and left for them to complete (and more prototypically)

• Moving from meaning as a message towards meaning as a process of searching (culminating in the squeezing of the nut!)

• The shift to embracing ‘irrational’ urges and finding meaning and ideas from them

Moving from thinking of a series of artwork ‘projects’ towards thinking of the work as a more fluid interrelated continuous thing (and here):

• Developing an appreciation for curation

• Developing a deepening appreciation for the importance of presentation in my own art, and in the gallery setting (and more aggressively!)

Becoming more independent in:

• Exploring and sampling different forms of art (book art from participatory art, performance, video art, digital art, sculpture, etc etc) but also taking control of learning (the power of light, working with resin)

• Embracing more experimentation and prototyping in my physical art

• Exploring different ways to explore ideas in art - tools for thinking about ideas e.g. thinking hats, projecting art through a persona, even different ways to document my experience

• Becoming my own critic (also here)

Moving from direct angry expression towards seeking more universal

• The slow process of moving from making art that metaphorically shares my personal experiences (“look-at-this art”) to art that uses personal experiences to explore more general themes (“consider-this art”) - culminating in passion vs detachment post

• Moving from quite an ‘angry’ aesthetic to something more coolly detached

Learning Outcome 2:

Articulate a thorough understanding of your research and establish an informed critical position. (AC Communication)

• I wrote a research paper on the relationship between fine art and play, which is something that interests me as it connects to my interest in play as art, and to my wider interest in the value and purpose of art. I also wrote a piece for the postgraduate community around my research paper.

• I have also been considering and exploring through research, what makes good art engaging, my emotional response to galleries, and the impact of AI on fine art

Learning Outcome 3:

Analyse and critically reflect on your practice and its context. (AC Enquiry)

I have enjoyed strengthening my powers of critical reflection in Unit 2, especially around a number of key topics below, culminating in writing a first attempt at a personal art manifesto to set-out the artist I want to be.

I have been reflecting on the how my work could relate to the world

• A new social role for the artist

• Whether art can influence society

• How CSM might view my work

I have been reflecting on the value of my work to me, personally

• Can a quick assembly of clothes really be art?! If not, why not?

• Is art a physical thing, or is the physical thing just a proxy for the intangible art?

• Art as part of a life well-lived

• Art as a life, not a career

I have become much more aware of my evolving aesthetics

• Recognising the desire to shock

• Recognising the desire to shock as coming from anger

• Starting to want to move beyond anger

• Recognising the desire to present my pain directly, and the potential to use it as a catalyst instead

• Understanding what I do want, by reacting to what I don’t

• Breakthrough in thinking about passion/anger vs detachment/reflection as a balance in my art

• Art as a way to explore the world, not present opinions culminating in art as the byproduct of a deliberately impossible task

I have been building the habit of reflecting on completing individual pieces of work art

• International Manly Crying Championships

• Rivers of Silver: Guilt

• The interim show

• A Month in my Head

• Pain and Acceptance

• Book of Wish You Were Hear

• My Hole (working title!)

• Reaching Through

RA Podcast - Tracey Emin and David Dawson in Conversation - Meaning as a process of discovery

 I listened to another podcast! Go me! I am a big Tracey Emin fan so I went for this episode where she is in conversation with David Dawson:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/0DHCRQnQvseUkwQV72mzqj?si=6SVIsL9cT1y6ebEFfmKgjg

It was generally very interesting with Dawson talking about Lucien Freud's work (he was his studio assistant) and Emin comparing and contrasting with her own work. 

However, I was particularly taken by this quote from Emin about meaning (at around time make 30:32):

...you would never go to a fortune teller and be happy if the fortune teller told you what you already know. And it's exactly the same with being an artist or a painter. You don't want to paint the painting you know, you want to paint the painting you didn't know ever existed

The transcript is a bit mangled, and I don't want to listen because it freaks the daughter out, but I think that's pretty close!

I think this aligned with my own approach of allowing my subconscious (Tathos) to drive a lot of process, while reflecting in the process as to what might be going on (Tomgos). It is a great made-to-stick way of expressing it. 

I guess Tomgos would say "well, maybe the process reveals things you didn't know that you knew" and Tathos would say "that's what she said!".

Tutorial 4 with Jonathan - 15 Nov 2024

Very interesting and enjoyable conversation with JK. I focused mostly on my approach to the end of the course, and the implications for my art. Essentially, I am trying to focus on the end of the course NOW so that I can have my crisis early while there's still time to actually do something about it... 

JK asked why I was thinking of it as 'the end' and I discussed that it is the end, in some ways... After the course, I'll probably have to go back to work. I gave up work when Carolyn died, so it's not the end, but it's definitely the end of the beginning - the end of a strange but potent time in my life - I feel I've lived more in the last 2 years than in the preceding 20. 

I said I would like to stay in academia, but I needed enough money to support the two kids and I, and JK explained that wasn't likely to be a viable option financially. I said that I have actually begun to consider what I might do next, and that actually I would give myself up to a year to sort myself out with either 1) writing a book that might lead to consulting work or 2) getting a qualification as a counsellor that might lead to flexible work.

JK asked around what I thought would be different when the course was over. I said I felt (having curated my blog) that the course had already delivered on the promise to help build the 'muscle' to develop my practice independently - I feel like I have the tools to keep building new tools. However, I said I thought I would miss 1) the structure that the course gives me and 2) the people to talk to and the feedback that gives me. 

We therefore explored ways I could get this:

• Dead Critics: I mentioned how helpful the DCS has been to me, and admitted that I probably would have quit the course if it wasn't for them. We discussed how hard it is to keep these things going, but agreed that smaller groups have a better chance of staying together. He suggested committing to a smaller target like meeting-up regularly for a year can make it easier for people to bow out gracefully rather than keep flogging a dead horse if it's not working (my words, not his!)
• Local art groups: I mentioned that I had made a great connection to the Chair of the Ashford Visual Artists, and that I had joined the Sevenoaks Visual Artists Forum - while they will be different from what I get at CSM, they are still a chance to talk art with people who practice it at all levels, including those that are significantly more experienced than me
• Professional Groups: Artists Network and ArtQuest have great resources
• Open Calls: Can be a good way to get your work out there, but only if you enter on your own terms (we discussed my 'rules' for open calls) and if you are prepared to fail (a lot!). He suggested that I think of the benefits broadly - not just reputation, but connections, experiences, and also deadlines to help to force work to happen - it's true that most of my finished pieces were for open calls
• Artist Collectives and your own shows: Something like the DCS can be a great way of creating your own exhibitions (we talked about the proposal Roz and I did). JK talked about his experience in an artists collective that ran extremely short exhibitions in unusual spaces like bars and discos - they eventually gained their own space and became a gallery in their own right that ran for seven years! 

We talked a bit about my recent blog post on "Useful Art" and JK mentioned that  also mentioned that Alistair Hudson (who JK knows!) was also involved in the "Grizedale Arts" project, and he suggested I check out their work, which is driven by the same 'useful art' agenda.

We finished by talking a bit about the end of year show itself, and JK explained the curation process. There is a dedicated space for the course, so there is definitely scope for groups of students (e.g. the DCS) to get together to lobby to have their pieces displayed together, and in a particular way. Obviously JK gets the final say, but he seemed positive about the idea.

All-in-all, I feel more positive about the end of the course. I need to get out and walk, and think about which of my current pieces I would want to show, why, and how I would want it to look. I should perhaps make a decision about what I will do next, and put out some feelers. I also need to visualise how my practice might look continuing after the end of the course.

Useful Art - RA Podcast "What is sculpture good for?"

Catherine recommended this podcast to the Dead Critics group. I have been meaning to "get better" at listening to podcasts, so I decided to listen to this one in the car when I had a long journey alone (L would simply DIE if she had to listen to Daddy's aaarrrrt stuff!). 

https://open.spotify.com/episode/3jJWa9CsOe5RqMFRFkBRmI?si=OcNkJqy4Sge2P_4uMYJmOw

I'm so glad I did! I've only listened to half but it's been really interesting so far. I've particularly enjoyed Alistair Hudson's comments. I've attempted to use Otter.ai to transcribe them (it seems to have a 30 min limit on the free version so I might need to try something else!).

Hudson was the director of the Whitworth and Manchester Art Gallery, which has the strap-line "Making art useful since 1889". I was amused but cynical... Can art really be useful? Is 'useful art' even fine art? But then Hudson went on, at time mark 14.57, emphasis mine:

...the short version is, of course, is that our last 200 years of history is one that's defined by this idea of autonomous art. We could touch here, perhaps upon sculpture and how that, you know, how we how we conceive of and think about sculpture, but it's really one that's defined in Western Europe, or centered around Western European thinking, the philosophies of Immanuel Kant, for example, about sort of isolating art out of the system and thinking about it on its own terms. This is really it kind of created the conditions that were very supportive of an art market. It was very support, supportive of the conditions that created kind of hierarchy, hierarchies within society, but it's one model of art. And what that model of art did, basically was push out the idea of use value within art itself, which for a long 40,000 years of human history, people have been using art in their daily lives in all kinds of ways for a very long time. So it was really about not necessarily doing away with art in its current form, but reintroducing this idea of use as a way to actually understand what's going on when we do art, or we look at art, or we employ art that process, and think about art as a process which is then employed in life practices. So that's sort of the underlying philosophy of it. But what it means, in practical terms is that I've become particularly interested in forms of art in which they are their very definition is defined about their use. So rather than prescribing meaning from the outset, which is dictated primarily by you know, an author or so on, the meaning itself is derived over time, through through processes. 

Mind. Blown. WTF! I had no idea about any of this. I had no idea that what I think of as 'art' is 'autonomous art', let alone that it's only one form of art. Of course, now I see how that could be so but... Wow. Reading more about autonomous art. 

I really like the idea of making art that is defined by it's use... It feels adjacent to some of my earlier musing on art as the 'fire' (event/process/experience) not the ashes (object/record). I am a bit of a meaning freak, and the idea of meaning being created through processes - not 'process', but processes, I think meaning the processes of use - the use develops the meaning, especially (in the context of the podcast) meaning to the community of people who use the art. You could argue that something like The Angel of the North has developed meaning not through existing as an object, or even though its form, but through the meaning it has come to have in the hearts of the people who have interacted with it.

What does this mean for my own art? Dunno, certainly it has renewed my interest in participatory art, but also perhaps given me a new way of thinking about meaning and how it comes to reside in a work... I need to get a good walk in, and ponder this further.

Happy Sun-day - Grotto Print Done

 Got three copies of my Grotto print gilded and ready to go:

Overall I'm pleased with how it's turned out, and it makes me want to explore a series of very constrained variations, preserving many of the original features (e.g. the size and position of the circle, the use of perlin noise warping, the use of gold), but seeing how many different variants I can make before I get bored and/or boring.

Instagram loves a regular 'feature' so, given they remind me of the sun reflected on water or obscured by mist, I plan to post one every Sunday with the tag line 'Happy Sun-day'.

My Article on Art as Play published in the Postgraduate Community Newsletter

 The Postgraduate Community were kind enough to share my survey on their newsletter, so I thought it would be fun to write-up the results and share them as an article, which they were happy to also publish:

https://www.arts.ac.uk/study-at-ual/postgraduate-study/postgraduate-community/stories/subjective-experiences-of-art

It was fun to be a small part of the postgraduate community, and I figure it's good publicity for the course, and potentially for me also ;)