Pseudo-science as art?

Working on "A month in my head" has made me think again about this urge to present art like science.

I really like the idea of making art that 'looks' like science - I think it's the aesthetic of 'Victorian' science - it reminds me of my childhood for some reason - wooden cases, brass label holders, little inked labels. It's weird because I think it's about the 'trappings' of science, not the rigour - it's not about the urge to approach the art scientifically, it's about the urge to present the art as though it's science. I guess for the topic of mental health, it can make sense, but it goes wider.

Examples and potential examples:

• A month in my head presents my mental health on wax heads each day for a month. The wax heads and the process of recording each day both evoke scientific method. I am making an oak case for them, and I'm tempted to label them with the notes I took each day
• The 'blank' guilt mask is like a psychology model
• "Secrets" (if I ever make it!) uses little glass vials like biological specimens
• ...

Maybe it comes from my science background? À la recherche du temps perdu perhaps? There is something interesting and engaging (to me) about documenting things fastidiously, especially things that don't warrant that level of fastidiousness. It makes an interesting statement. I also love maps and diagrams.

Let's see where it goes.

More 'secrets' and a Flyer of the Bill of Health Exhibition (project queue 1->2->1)

Exciting news... There's many a slip between cup and lip, but it looks like I will have my 'Missing Worker' poster included in the Bill of Health exhibition at Central St Martins! Very excited if it happens because I have never had anything exhibited before! I spent some interesting time speaking to the person who is curating, coming up with some good ways to show the poster. I also volunteered to create a flyer based on the poster. I eventually came up with this - which I am mostly happy with:

I'm really pleased with the weathering effect - I wasn't sure how I was going to do it, but ended up creating two almost transparent copies which I blurred and added noise to, the offset downwards. I also added fake stains, and used an almost transparent noise texture to make the paper looked crinkled. I'm much less happy with the stickers - it was a good idea to use fake pharmacy stickers, but I think they should probably be under the noise so they look less flat.

I initially went down the route of using a real photo of a copy that the curator has left in her garden, but it looked too crinkled for the labels to look even remotely convincing:

Lesson learnt was not to rush, and not to settle... 

Did a bit more to the bottles in Secrets, but mostly just tinkering:

I don't know if the process is slow, or I'm slow... I think a bit of both - I'm slow because I'm distracted, and the process is slow because the shaders for the liquid take work, and the wax simulation takes time and energy to set-up.

Adding more bottles and some dubious substances to secrets (project queue=2)

 Decided to have a break from my root(!) last night while I let the almost-done image marinade in my head... So back to 'secrets'... Made some good progress - I improved the cork texture from terrible to merely 'meh', I put some more realistic blistering into the label and added text, and I modelled a new bottle containing an unnamed cloudy white liquid... 

Mostly happy... I need to start thinking about some shelves for these puppies... Which begs the question of "What sort of shelves?"... Kitchen shelves? Lab shelves? Garden shelves? I was thinking it needs to be a fairly organic location to match the bees that I want to add (did I say I want to add bees?) and I starting thinking (out of nowhere?!) about suitcases and carry cases and I love the sense of portability since you carry secrets around with you... But that does beg the question of what's around the suitcase so you can see it's a suitcase... Ahhh! Maybe OTHER suitcases?!

Posted my remastered famous paintings to LinkedIn, along with some slightly crunchy commentary... Let's see if anyone nibbles!

PS Decided I have more of a queue than a stack for my projects - nobody will ever care except me, but I want to dequeue them at random, not pop them in order...

Let's melt some virtual wax... (Project stack=1)

 Currently working on "secrets". I want the bottles to be sealed with wax. Trying to use metablobs seems painful, but a liquid simulation seems overkill... But after a lot of frustration, I've gone with the latter. Making sure the 'viscosity' is ticked is important or it all just runs off ;) I start with a cylinder of 'wax' as a geometry flow object, just above the cork. After some trimming of the 'drips', and mindful the neck of the bottle is a terrible shape for this (too much overhang), I'm pretty pleased:

That cork texture makes me want to be sick into my mouth though.. So I'll clean that up, and try modelling some different bottle shapes.

Thoughts in car home:

• Liquids should look somewhat biological
• Could mess about with other spaces and materials too e.g. silver mirrored liquid, 'lumps' etc
• Initials and dates and/or places and dates
• Do not use real people or dates (life is too short and it's a shitty thing to do)
• Have some 'sets' of bottles e.g. 3 identical bottles with dates a few days apart
• Definitely embed everything in a bees nest, but where should it all sit? Shelves? A box? Something else?! Definitely meaning and interest to be had there too...