I have moved to substack and all new content will be posted there, not here:
https://tomgrey638462.substack.com/
As well as being a more popular, modern platform, substack also allow you to subscribe by email. Annoyingly, setting up a custom domain costs money, so I won't be doing that unless I become wildly popular!
Leaving blogger feels weird, like leaving a house you grew up in, but everything comes to an end, sooner or later.
This will be the last post on this blog, after this, I'll be moving to substack:
https://tomgrey638462.substack.com/
As well as being a more popular, modern platform, substack also allow you to subscribe by email. Annoyingly, setting up a custom domain costs money, so I won't be doing that unless I become wildly popular!
Fittingly (and by design!) I want to use this last post to analyse the feedback on my 5-minute video. Overall I was very happy with the video, and very flattered by the feedback, comments, and praise it received.
A number of people alluded to the slight uncanny aspects of the video, and the juxtaposing of conflicting emotions and messages. Someone described it as being "fairytale like" which was an interesting comment as I hadn't seen it that way, but I agree, and I actually really like the idea - maybe it's something I should explore further.
Several people commented on the AI voices, and their effectiveness to promote the uncanny feeling through the tension between the 'inhuman' and the human emotions, and between the perceived age of the female voice, and the complex emotions she describes. Someone wondered who the female voice represented - it's an interesting question as I felt very sure she needed to be female, but I'm not sure why.
A few people complemented the narrative, which was lovely, and someone said they liked the use of technology in a subtle and balanced way to tell the story. Someone said it was "complex but considered" which I really liked. Dee said they thought it was actually a very positive message about enjoying and embracing life, which I was very pleased by.
as a ...maker I need ...to know if you have considered using what you have been able to construct using technology to the build something in a real world setting based on the digital environment in the work.
as a friend I need to say how interesting your journey has been. The video reminds me of where you started from and that you have stayed true to yourself whilst wandering in the woods!
as a fellow artist I need you to show this film at the grad show please. It is so poweful.
as a ... Curator I need ... I need to see more of this work. I thought it was Brilliant as a stand alone piece too
as a ...curator I need ..you to show this film maybe to other people who grieve or who have grieved. It is a realists film understanding the process of death without sentimentality
as a friend There is a quiet strength in how you approach such a complex subject. Rather than turning away from the unknown, your work leans in, asking meaningful questions and holding space for both pain and beauty.
as a lover of the countryside and children's voices - I love the marriage of these voices, the gorse, the use of yellow against grey - the wobbly camera along the footpaths, is unnerving, with the voiceover - in fact I find all your video unnerving (in the most positive way) - unsettling, dark - but light - the different voices really brought it all together - it's clever - your use of digital is very clever. I need ...nothing more from you.
as a ...fellow artist this was an absolute finale. I loved everything about this work and hope you got more peace from making it. I need ... more films
as an artist I appreciate the way you use technology in your work as part of the concept and in relation to the content, it's integrated not just being used for the sake of it
as a ... gallerist I need ... it is both your wide ranging practice as a maker of things, of objects, of material stuff AND the digital, the technical innovation -- this is excitign and I want to see more
as a ... art viewer I need ... I wonder what you would title this film if it was seen in a gallery - the title could give direction, a hint to the audience
as a ... curator I need ... to see this and more films in a gallery setting, the way it combines elements of you r art practice into a poetic structure is amazing
as a viewer/fan of your work I need to see your films (two or three different films) projected on a large scale onto multiple walls in a 'white cube' room where the viewer can curate their own experience while being immersed in your work.
as a ...? I need ... to know where people go to discuss grief - between themselves not monologue
as a ...friend I need ...you to consider creative writing to move alongside your other creative practice you obviously have a talent for it
as a ... grieving human I need ... to sit with this film for a long time - thank you
as a filmmaker I need to see more video work from you! Your talent in storytelling is truly remarkable (not just from this video, I've known that a long time :P). Fresh, original, sensitive, humorous, deep and very clever. SHOW IT AT THE GRAD SHOW!!!
as a fellow artist I need to say how pleased I am that you have found your way from tech into art and then combining the two! The art world is 'richer' with your contribution. Thank you!
Which made me think that a lot of the stuff I made last year was metamodern in it's sensibility... Flippant but with dark undertones, ironic irreverent language to describe earnestly felt emotions...
The "metamodern methods" were interesting:
They are more observations than approaches - i.e. again, they are applied retrospectively, but a few of them could describe my work, especially "ironesty".
Am I excited to have finally found my true home? Nah. I think it's interesting that I stumbled into making work that fits metamodern, probably because I was aping contemporary work that I admired, but I don't think it's something to 'aim for'. I think my work is already moving away from some of these characterisations, and that's ok.
I feel an attachment to Blogger, and it's been a really great option for running this blog with none of the grief experienced by my classmates that chose Wordpress... But... People not being able to subscribe without an feed reader feels a bit 1990s... And actually the cool kids are on Substack now. I'm thinking more and more about moving to longer form content, like the stuff I used to publish on my LinkedIn. If I get one of the things I've applied for, writing might be even more front-and-centre.... Should I jump to Substack... Or something else? Or just stay here...
I think Open Casket and the animation are as 'done' as I can get them now. I think I'll called the sculpture "Gone" and the animation "All these moments" - a reference to the line from Bladerunner "All these moments will be lost in time. Like tears in rain". Tomorrow I bring the animation to CSM. On Thursday my sculpture is delivered. I'm really looking forward to helping with the show install.
As is often the way after finishing a "big piece", I feel weirdly lost. I guess it's like that when you finishing any sort of big project - you are used to all that focus and pressure, and suddenly it's removed. I used to call the weird listless lost feeling, "decompression sickness".
I have a few ideas for things I want to do physically, but they will have to wait for my sculpture to be removed, as it currently takes up all the space in the dining room that I use for making. Once that's gone, I have a bunch of projects I started and did't finish that I want to return to, and once the sculpture returns, I have the fun of deciding what I am going to do with it - currently either turning it into some sort of wall mounted cast, or perhaps using it as a mould to cast a concrete 'positive' of my body that I could install in the garden somewhere. My poor house...
I am more stuck on the digital side - I've always kept the two things quite separate. I'm still setting up my new laptop as I had quite a lot of 'fiddly' software that takes a while to re-install e.g. OpenVDB is not just a case of 'clicking install' - you have to download a bunch of dependancies, and the compile it from source - which is gloriously fast on my new laptop compared to my old one! Once I've done that, I might make a Volume based rendering of my Open Casket water. There's a bunch of other things I want to do with Volumes as I find the look of how they are rendered quite interesting...
But probably the thing I should REALLY do is to get the 3d printer going! I think that's what I'm really excited about - there are a couple of projects I REALLY want to do - one is scanning a river bank and making a model from it, the other is making plaster underground buildings - both will make more sense when I do them!
And I guess I will keep this blog alive, at least for now. I don't know if it helps me with no obvious readership, but it feels sad to just stop....
I've decided to make the ripple animation into a separate piece. I've cleaned up the shape of the body, and added logic to increase the amount of rain slowly, hold it, slowly decrease it, then hold it at zero so the water settles:
I've did a couple of simple test projections, and I really like it:
Next step is to do a few runs and stitch them together so you get a bit of variety in what you see if you stick around for a couple of cycles. I also need to think of 'real' names for this and for the original Open Casket... For the original I was think probably just "Gone", and for this, I'm tempted to reference a beautiful and famous quote from the movie Bladerunner - "All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain"
"I want to speak of fear. I want to exploit the word apprehensions for its associations with arresting, grasping, understanding and fearing"
I can't remember where I came across Hamad Butt - I want to say Insta, but I have a vague idea someone sent me a link. I really like his work - I love the mixture of science and art, and I love the way he plays with emotions, in a way that I like to - beauty, intrigue, but also apprehension, perhaps even fear. Assuming the vessels really are filled with Chlorine (and I feel sure they are), the risk is quite real.
The glass was apparently blown by technicians from Imperial College. I remember when I first joined Imperial, to study Chemistry, in the late 90s, someone mentioned that the glass technicians had collaborated with an artist. They were rightly proud. The timing fits. Funny how things come in circles.
Lastly, my sister sent me a link to the work of Jennifer Calivas. By taking the photos herself using a trigger release, she plays perhaps with the very ideas I describe above (or maybe she's just really paranoid about IP law?). It's hard to say, as all the material about her seems to be (and sorry if she ever reads this, but I'm confident she won't) breathless marketing slop about toying with the concept of the female body, the earth, and transformation... I don't know, it was a lot of stuff about the earth and feminism, which are both good things, but it wasn't immediately clear how they related to each other, let alone the image. Maybe I just like my stuff a bit less cooked? Maybe I just don't get it. Who knows, really? Anyway...
Anyway, I like the images, whatever they mean. I also find the idea of taking the photo, without being able to see, a really interesting one. Clearly it would be a different image if taken by someone else - by 'breaking the 4th wall', Calivas re-enforces the sense that she is taking these images alone, which makes them feel intimate, lonely, and perhaps a bit dangerous. I guess, in a strange sense, it mirrors my own sometimes pathetic attempts to make Open Casket alone - a close friend pointed out that the act of making something ungainly, that I can't really move alone, is significant. In a way, the mark records my body, but it also records the undignified, unpractical, exhausting effort required to make it without the help and support that I so clearly needed.
I think I am pretty much 'there' for Open Casket. I added a 'head', which was uneventful - it looks like a bit of a weird fold of fabric, but I think it's enough to even up the proportions and generally suggest the right shape. I took some suitably moody photos for Insta, and I think it is ready to ship (literally)
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I don't think the projection is going to work with it any more, and I'm not sure it's necessary either - I think it looks old and dry and mummified, adding ripples will probably just make it look damp and soggy and putrid... I think the new fabric texture says enough anyhow, especially with the edges frayed...
I'm quite pleased with the ripples though, and I like how they form the shape of a person when there are lots, and how it disappears when they die away... It's an interesting metaphor for the transience of life in it's own right... So I'm thinking I'll take it along as a separate piece, and it can either get installed, or I can take it home again, it's no big issue to do.
Having left the cast for a few days to start to dry out and cure, I decided to be brave and remove the supporting material this afternoon. Plaster will harden quickly, but can take days to cure - the difference being an initial solidification when the excess water is removed vs reaching full strength as the crystal matrix forms eliminating yet more water in the process. I figured that the plaster wasn't going to dry out completely and thus cure with all the packing material around it.
Removing the foam and then the plastic sheeting unleashed an avalanche of polystyrene balls which took quite a while to collect and store back in a plastic bag where they can hopefully dry completely. As I suspected, everything was still quite wet under there.
Removing the surrounding material gave me a chance to get a much better sense of the actual shape, and the rectilinear shape was definitely part of what made the first iteration a bit dull. I was quite concerned that the upper layer of fabric was beginning to pull away from the plaster layer, so I decided to take a gamble that the upper surface of plaster was quite stable, and I gave everything a thorough coat of PVA. Stepping back once I'd done this, I was pretty happy with the result at last:
This is definitely closer to what I was trying to do. The semantics might not be quite as clear as the first version, but I think this version is better balanced with the aesthetics. I'm quite concerned that the whole thing may still be shifting, and I am prepared for the possibility that I will go down tomorrow morning and find it as flat as a pancake...
I need to leave the whole thing to 'rest' and dry out again for a bit, but the next question is really how I can stabilise this enough to transport - at the moment it is safe to slide around on the tiles, but I think it will collapse if I attempt to lift it, so I need to devise some way to support it from below. The shape is interesting, but I need to fine tune it - it looks a bit 'cape-like' at the moment. I also want to think about ragged edges. Oh, and it needs a head!
One interesting chance event was that I accidentally filled one arm with polystyrene balls:
I've toyed for a while with the idea of some sort of substance in the impression, but I was surprised by how much it made it 'pop'. I think I need to seriously consider what I might do in this direction... Dust seems like an obvious choice, but I think it would be impractical for a bunch of reasons... Maybe I put in the balls and then fix them with something and coat them? Dunno.
I'm going to continue to code the water simulation in parallel and so some experiments with the projector, so I can use the first version if necessary. I'm not sure how this version would look with the projection, but it would be something to experiment with if I can successfully scoop it off my poor kitchen floor...
As I alluded to in my last post, I made the decision to at least attempt a new cast from scratch. Getting home from my trip today, I couldn't get the idea out of my head, so I decided to just go for it. A bad idea, but one that ended up being ok!
This time I cut a very simple 'grave' shape in the foam, and filled it with polystyrene balls. I soaked a piece of a dust sheet - made I think from unbleached cotton - in 3kg of plaster of paris. I laid it out over the balls directly, and then laid a second piece of the same fabric (wet but without plaster) over the top to stop the plaster sticking to my body. I then climbed onto it, being careful to sit straight down. I lost a few of the balls when I put the fabric on, but I felt a promising moulding as I lay down.
I lay for almost an hour. It was very cold and damp at first, tending to warm and wet as time went on. My daughter came and stared at me like I was an idiot, which was fair, and the cat came and tried to climb on my chest, but my daughter kindly stopped her.
After about an hour I very carefully got up. The fabric felt reassuringly firm and kept it's shape as I flumped out onto the kitchen floor.
I'm much happier with the shape this time. It's a bit hard to make out from the photo because the right arm filled with balls as I got out, and because the balls below my hands are pushed out into little mounds, which makes it look like I have saddlebags! However, the same is much easier to 'read' in 3d so I'm not too worried - yet. One slight setback is that the head is missing - it's actually more 'missing' that it appears in the photo as the plaster material layer is significantly lower down my neck than the fabric covering layer was. I need to decide if I roll without a head, or more likely pull some of the loose covering material up to make a bit of a head shape. I might even attempt to 'mould' a head like a hood, but I'm not sure if that would end in tears.
I'm looking forward to getting my kitchen floor back, but I think I'll need to leave it for a few days to dry at least, before I dare to remove the supporting material.
Although this is much closer to what I was originally imagining, I am not writing off my last effort let - but I feel I've 'scratched the itch', and it's good to have options. I feel much more interested in keeping this version in my house after the final show, so perhaps that's telling it itself?
I had a long drive today, and as usual I used it to reflect on my art. I've now attached the cotton cover onto the plaster impression, painting diluted PVA onto just the areas that form the impression. I've left this to dry for a couple of days - I'm currently away from home, so I'll see what this looks like when I get home. I've also discovered that the impression looks better when loose sheet is thrown over the top.
But....
Driving and reflecting, I reluctantly admitted to myself that I am not happy with what I currently have. It might yet redeem itself, and if it doesn't, it's not awful.
But...
It's not what I wanted to make. I wanted something raw and indexical.
I think I'm going to have to have another go. I think I'll work in a much less planned way. I wont' attempt to make a 3d shape, I'll just cut a rough 'grave' slot in foam and fill it with polystyrene balls. I'll then lay rough cotton soaked in plaster direct on that, and then a layer of damp rough cotton on top of that. The idea is to see if I can make a shape that's more organic, more raw, more... honest and interesting.
And then I'll decide what I want to do next.
I'm sure I could come up with some really edgy double entendre, but my brain is too frazzled... I've been working on the digital component of "Open Casket" - essentially a very simple 2d water simulation of drops sending ripples, reflecting off the edges of the impression.
After a bit of Googling around, I found a very simple simulation that basically said that for each step, the height of the water in a 'cell' at a point x,y, is the combination of the heights in the left/right/top/bottom cells. I mentioned this in my last post on Open Casket, and suggested it was too simple to work with non-rectilinear containers. My assumption was that given the way it was presented [basically as if it was a 'hack'], it must be something someone had just come up with messing around. I did implement it, but it gave ugly results, so I went to look for a 'real' implementation.
After more research, I discovered that the type of simulation I'm after is typically referred to as height-field water. Essentially the water is modelled as a height-field, which allows ripples etc, but doesn't allow splash or tearing, since the water can only have one height at a given point. What was more interesting was that I saw the same implementation [more or less], but this time with a full explanation of the logic behind it. It actually transpires to be a real physics based implementation, albeit a very simplified one!
Essentially it is based on the fact that the force acting on a column element in the grid is proportional to its height relative to its neighbours. The velocity of the water interface can therefore be derived from that, and from there, the height at each point, for any given time. In other words, the taller any point is above its neighbours, the more it accelerates downward, and vice versa.
Buoyed up by this discovery [I love a good pun, you know that], I re-implemented the code. After a bunch of cock-ups because I forgot that I was reading the same array of heights as I was writing too, I got to something fairly well-behaved. Nevertheless, the ripples were still a bit weird and square, but I realised this is because I was perturbing a single element to initiate the ripple, so I wrote code to perturb a circular patch instead - essentially make a small bulge. This gave much nicer ripples.
Finally I have implemented code to add obstacles to the grid - basically to allow me to draw regions that are 'not water'. These are held fixed at zero height, which is probably a nasty hack, but seems to give good ripple reflections anyhow.
There's not a lot to see, but please notice and appreciate the ripples coming off the blue blob, especially how they are distorted by the non-straight edge. Yeah, this is how I get my thrills.
Next step is probably to find a nicer way to render the surface - it's currently based directly on height, but that gives some 'meh' results, especially the white 'blips' which each bulge is initialised. Ideally I'd render it as something closer to reflection and caustics. I need to decide if I want to do that by hand [I have code I created before that could potentially do it] or whether I just export to Blender using Openvdb Volumes and render there with full ray traced sexiness....
I also need to consider if I need to make each drop a double perturbation to simulate tearing at that point - basically ripples from a drop spread in a series of ripples because the initial splash goes up, tears, and comes down as a second drop a few moments later, which in turn may throw up a third drop that comes down to make a third ripple... And so on... Kinda fiddly to code as I'd have to track all the drop positions and add the second/third perturbations a few simulation steps later... Right now that sounds too painful for the benefit [relative to things like nicing up the rendering] but we'll see how I feel later [plus I only have 3 weeks left... Eeeek!]
A residency announcement in Art Forum caught my eye this morning - not for the residency itself - that's a distant dream - but for the fact that it referenced 'wet conceptualism'! I wondered if it was a 'thing' so I Googled it, and indeed it is! I was motivated to read a very interesting article by Gary Ryan in CultBytes called "Interview with Warren Neidich About Wet Conceptualism".
Warren is the inventor of the term, and is championing the idea that conceptual art comes in two varieties - the conventional 'dry' variety, but also the less recognised 'wet' variety. The 'dry' being like 'dry humour' - abstracted, pared down, uninterested in the aesthetic, understated. The 'wet' being conceptual art that deals with more human and personal experiences, political positions etc. A nice example given being “Semiotics of the Kitchen” by Martha Rosler.
Given that I often refer to my work as 'concept-led', I was wondering how this distinction might apply. I'm not sure... But I find the tension between the more universal experiences and understated dry vs the more human, personal, wet, immediately familiar. I wonder if Tomgos makes 'dry' conceptual art and Tathos makes 'wet'? I my head, Tathos is laughing gleefully at the term 'wet', and is very clearly drawn that way...
I'm also wondering about Postmodernism vs Metamodernism - I managed to miss the talk the first time, and I am about to miss it again, but it feels like 'dry' conceptualism is quite postmodern, whereas 'wet' conceptualism might be more metamodern?
The other aspect of the article that drew my interest was the discussion of the indexical and non-material nature of conceptual art. It's again something I have also reflected on - is the object just the indexical mark of the 'art'? Ironically Warren relates the shift to 'wet' conceptualim as reflecting a shift from ford-ian physical labour with physical products, to post-ford-ian mental labour, with intangible results. I need to reflect more on that [right now my brain is just screaming about the PhD selection day tomorrow] but it feels funny and relevant given my previous work, and my potential future work...
Dedicated readers will recall that I made a pact never to paint natural materials, and that I regularly break that pact, with varying degrees of regret. I'm concerned that the contrast between the impression and the surrounding material isn't clear enough, and that it's therefore hard to see the shape, leading it to look distorted. I therefore experimented with painting one of my prototypes in a mixture of diluted PVA and black poster paint. The aim was to see how the plaster took the paint, but also to see how it looked when it was then covered by the planned layer of PVA-soaked fabric.
The 'point' of the picture above is that the painted areas do show through the fabric above, but do so in a subtle way. Broadly the fabric looks darker in those areas, but not in a way that screams that it has been painted.
I therefore decided to be 'brave' and paint the whole impression:
I actually think it looks way more interesting now! Clearly it's a bit 'over-cooked' but that's deliberate as it will be much more subtle when it's covered in the final layer. I am half tempted not to apply the final layer, but I think it will make the overall finish better, and it will also cover the annoying strip of exposed foam on the bottom left. That said, I feel like I might push the final layer a lot closer to the plaster layer, so it better mimics the shape, and I might actually paint the final fabric layer, albeit much more subtly... I think I need to do some experiments with a wet sheet before I commit - in particular I wonder if I want to have folds in particular areas, or to avoid folds at all. Folds in different areas might have different connotations - folds in the surround but not the impression might evoke the way luxury items are packaged in a silk lined case, whereas folds on the impression but not the surround might evoke the sense of a body removed abruptly. I suspect I'll end-up going with no folds, or rather, minimal folds.
I also made a start on the digital component. I found a very simple algorithm online to produce ripple patterns. It appears to work by making each pixel equal to the average of it's neighbours from the previous frame. However, it only considers pixels above/below/left/right (I'm sure there's a name for that, but I can't think what it is (apparently there is not, there's a whole reddit of people arguing about it with 'bordering' being a strong contender)), which means that I don't think it will handle reflections correctly from an irregular border since it can't 'see' pixels that are not rectalinear. I'm going to do some experiments and see - it might be that it's not 'correct' but it looks good enough anyhow...
I'm fast running out of time to get 'open casket' into a state where it can be moved out of my daughter's bedroom, as she will soon be returning from university. I therefore decided to bite-the-bullet and have a go at a full cast.
I did a couple of test runs using a wet sheet. I had tried putting a blanket between the foam and the final sheet, in the hope that the impression of the polystyrene balls wouldn't show through. This was the case, but the final impression seemed very shallow and a bit unclear so I removed it again. The final sheet impression was good, but at that point I sort of lost my nerve... Getting in and out is very difficult without causing big creases where I inevitable swivel my bum, despite my attempts to fire myself vertically upwards like a sandhopper!
The polystyrene balls are doing a good job of moulding to my body, so I decided to try simply laying a sheet soaked in plaster onto the existing impression
Handling such a large piece of fabric, soaked in 3kg of plaster (1l water and 2kg dry plaster) was tough, and not having to get into it made the whole process a lot easier, as it was already starting to harden as I was smoothing it out.
All that said, I can't lie... I'm not very happy with the impression. I am trying to tell myself that it IS indexical, in the sense that I've used the plaster-and-fabric to record the shape left in the polystyrene beads, but it's not rich, interesting mark I was hoping for. The overall shape is really weird with very rounded shoulders and a small head.
I think I have a frustrating decision - do I forward fix using some sculpting plus a layer of PVA-soaked fabric to hopefully smooth things out? Or do I attempt a true 'indexical mark' using a second piece of foam, cut to more of a 'grave' shape and filled with polystyrene balls? I guess the 'correct' but distressing answer is 'both'... Attempting a second piece of foam is complicated by the fact that I don't have a base-board, so I'd have to cut the shape into the foam as an outline, and then fill it directly on the floor, meaning balls will go EVERYWHERE when I lift up the foam (successfull or unsuccessful).
Of course, unless the impression above suddenly looks amazing, the perfectionist in me is going to force me to flood my kitchen floor with balls :(
So... Catching-up on a bunch of experiments I did for open casket... I've been busy in the evenings with the blog curation and with a job application, but during the day I have been able to do a bit more... Creepily dedicated readers will recall that in the last updated I did a full-body test using a damp sheet and got a pretty good impression. I decided to do a partial cast next:
The impression came out quite well, although the dimpling from the polystyrene balls showed through. Some lessons learnt:
To give me more control, and to smooth out the shape rather, I decided to experiment in covering the plaster impression in a layer of fabric soaked in a 50:50 water:PVA mixture.
PVA cover test - want to have more control over shape and smooth out marks from polythene. I made a small beaker of each, and that was more than enough to soak another pillowcase-sized piece. Again I pre-dampened the fabric, although I suspect it would be less important since the PVA is very unlikely to cure on contact.
This definitely to smooth out the fabric and give a more 'fabric' impression, so I think I'll do this for the final run - it also means I can position the fabric as I wish.
Present evidence of a body of work that demonstrates a systematic enhancement of your knowledge and understanding. (AC Realisation)
Although I feel that, in some ways, I am still at the start of a life-long journey, I also recognise that my art-making has been completely transformed over the course of the two years, in terms of the art itself, the way I make it, and the way I think about it.
When I joined the MA, I was very focused on the technicalities of image production. I thought of my work in terms of isolated ‘projects’ and those projects had a clear, quite linear flow. I was, if I’m honest, a little disapproving that everyone didn’t have a neat flowchart for how they made art! The work itself was almost exclusively landscapes, and was very focused on an application I had developed that allowed me to manage composition manually, while adding detail to elements algorithmically. My wife's death had disrupted this practice somewhat, but it felt quite ‘established’.
Over the course of the MA, I have come to think more-and-more organically about the artistic process, and to see each piece of art as being part of a bigger practice, and that practice as being an extension of my everyday life. My research paper clearly played (pun tots intended) an important role, as did direct experimentation, especially around the time I created “Awkward Thoughts”. It’s also interesting to notice how angry I was when my own success deviated from what I considered the ‘correct’ process! Ironically the image in question is still one of the best things I have done, and I am proud to feature it in my 5-minute video. This more organic approach has particular born fruit around what I loosely term ‘Rivers of Silver’, the work that relates to my face casting. The largely speculative decision to make a mould of my face directly enabled ‘Undeliverable Letters’ (my submission to the RA Summer Show), ‘Beneath the Frost’ (the ‘frosted face’ I included in my UAL portfolio submission), ‘Mask for the Bereaved’ (which I exhibited locally), and the melting ‘ice faces’ that I included in my 5-minute video. I have many other ideas for it, including continuing my project to photograph it outside!
Looking at my early posts, I see myself expressing a strong need for external validation, and for feedback on my art. Although I pushed myself to take risks when I created “Wish You Were Hear” for the interim show, and I was very happy with the result, I still clearly felt a deep unease around how it might be received by UAL. Although it wasn’t, in some ways, a major work, again I feel like “Awkward Thoughts” was the start of a turning point where I began to focus more on what I wanted to say, and less on whether it might be judged to be ‘correct’. ‘Mask for the Bereaved’ took this one step further, where I created something that I feared might be considered ugly, but I stood by my belief in it. I not only exhibited it, but observed some very muted reactions to it, and was excited to discover that I didn’t ‘care’. I think I need to explore this further, but I think that while I care about the viewer in the abstract, in some senses, I only care about myself as the viewer. The final show is a priority right now, but I am looking forward to getting back to my plaster cubes, despite knowing they are weird, ugly, and perhaps unfathomable!
Related to the discussion above, my relationship with meaning has changed over time. I would like to tell a neat story, but I feel that it is still in flux, and is one of the areas I am most keen to develop. Some of my pieces are ironic but still quite literal, some lean heavily on symbolism, some tend to magical realism, some are quite intuitive and profess no meaning. I don’t feel this represents a lack of awareness, really the opposite, it represents an on-going struggle to establish what feels ‘right’ for me. The struggle between the rational ‘Tomgos’ and the emotional ‘Tathos’ has been a huge part of my journey, and one that feels more nuanced, but less resolved, than ever.
Coming into the MA without a BA, I acknowledge a real vacuum around technique. Most of my art prior to the MA was digital, and mostly focused on algorithmic art. An early recommendation by JK to read ‘Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ triggered an unexpected interest in making physical objects. Somehow ‘unleashed’, I have sampled many different media over the course of two years, both physical (plaster and epoxy, wax, print, book art, paper mache, glass, sketching (kinda)) and digital (rendering, 3d scanning, AI). I am increasingly interested in the idea of making art that blends the digital and the physical, for instance scanning a physical fabric mask to virtually set it on fire for my 5-minute video, laser cutting a design based on a real hole, or my final-show piece where I plan to project digital ripples onto the physical surface. I’m excited to also play with the 3d printers I was given by a friend!
The area that I am most actively developing, is one I almost fear to name: aesthetics… Although I showed an awareness of the term as early as May 2024, I considered it almost synonymous with beauty. The book “On the Aesthetic Education of Man” has begun to give me a broader, more nuanced, sense of what it can mean, although it is still something I struggle with. I feel I have developed steadily from mere awareness of aesthetics, to the aesthetic being something I want to control, albeit I struggle with how to do so. I no longer equate beauty with aesthetics, and believe that there is no absolute standard for beauty or taste. I feel I still have much to learn in this area.
Synthesise and critically reflect coherently on your process whilst providing evidence of an active, independent and/or collaborative practice. (AC Process)
Although I would have strongly rejected the suggestion two years ago, I think I have been trying to make sense of what happened to me when my wife died. My job, and my status as a co-parent and a husband, were core parts of my identity. Losing them destroyed a lot of what I thought I knew about the world, but also enabled me to see things that had always been there, but I’d been too busy to notice. The world is impossibly rich, and most of the things we worry about don’t really matter!
The urge to share this new way of seeing is what underpins my process. Consequently, my process is very introspective, perhaps claustrophobically so. It centres on thinking, noticing, and reflecting on things that are mostly happening in my head. Each thing I make is an attempt to offer a ‘statement about the world’ that feels true to me, and a way of seeing that goes with it. I do not claim to do this with any skill, but the recognition that I fall short is what excites me, it is the reckless thrill of recognising a task as impossible, and trying to do it anyway. The belief that I might improve slowly over time, is what keeps me throwing my heart against the wall.
My process is about balance. When we attempt to balance something physically, we decide how we want to place it, we attempt to place it, we feel if the balance is off, we adjust the placement, we feel again. Just like physically balancing something, conceptual balance is not achievable in a single attempt. Finding balance is about thinking, trying, reflecting, adjusting, and trying again. My process is therefore very dependent on prototyping and experimentation. I see experimentation is about exploring how things behave in general (what-if questions), prototyping is about exploring how they behave in context (solving for a specific outcome). Annoyingly, I haven't tagged my posts with ‘prototyping’ or ‘experiments’ as I’ve gone along, so I’ve just tagged some examples from unit 3!
One element that I am trying to balance in this way is the dichotomy between authentic personal experience, and relatable universal human experience. I explore these through the archetypes of ‘Tomgos’ (rational intellectual Tom) and ‘Tathos’ (emotional spontaneous Tom). Tomgos makes art that is cold, conceptual, but seeks greater ‘truths’ in the service of others. Tathos makes art that is hot, emotional, immediate, but also self-indulgent, cryptic, and self-serving. My process is to take advantage of their natural dispositions by allowing Tathos to lead and inspire the work, but allowing Tomgos to reflect, critic, and guide the work. The ideal is to create work that is raw and honest, but is also a clouded mirror in which others can see themselves dimly reflected.
Another element I am seeking to balance is what I consider to be three competing qualities of the work, that I term ‘semantics’, ‘technique’, and ‘aesthetics’ (note these labels evolved over time and they are referred to as various things at various times, but the characterisation is the same). By ‘semantics’ I refer to the meaning and motivation behind the work, essentially what the work is trying to express for me. By ‘technique’, I mean the physical and practical limitations on the making process. By ‘aesthetics’, I mean how the work engages other people, essentially what I want them to see, feel, and notice. For me, semantics is the most important, but the work must be feasible and engaging too. As I iterate, prototype, and evolve the work, I seek to make trade-offs between these different qualities to give the best overall balance between them.
The urge to share a perspective and way of seeing the world is what underpins my process, but it is not what drives my practice. My practice is driven by simpler, more quotidian, more self-ish, things: the meditative peace of deep reflection, the joy of making, the comfort of having my art around me, the thrill of sharing a piece in an exhibition, unexpected adventures excused by art, and interesting conversations with thoughtful people. I have so many things I want to try, so many things I want to explore. When I reflected on why I make art, I concluded that art was simply part of a life well-lived, and I believe that conclusion will fuel my practice for however many years I have left.
Summarise and evaluate your overall progress and formulate a constructive plan for continuing Personal and Professional Development. (AC Communication)
To quote Jonathan, I think I have been on ‘quite a journey’. I think he meant that in a ‘voyage of the dawn treader’/’The Hobbit’ sort of way, and hopefully not in a ‘stuck on the M25 for 6 junctions after a lorry spills its load of 4 tonnes of cherry tomatoes at rush hour on a Friday’ sort of way. I guess time and Waze will tell.
Overall, I have learnt a huge amount about myself, about art, and about what I want to do with it. I still have large holes in my knowledge of art history and the contemporary art scene, but I feel given my unusual background, I am closing them steadily. I have a much wider sense of what ‘art’ is now, and a much more organic sense of how to achieve it. I am still ‘young’ as an artist (although sadly not as a human) and I think my practice will continue to evolve rapidly for some time. However, I feel I have found a mature sense of what I am trying to achieve, and a maturing set of tools to help me on the journey.
I have formulated a plan for my immediate next steps. I am also surrounded by a growing ecosystem of people who can help me on that journey - "If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together". I don’t know where I will go longer term, but it will be fun to find out. Remember, life is a journey, not a destination, so wind the windows down and avoid the M25.
