Tuesday 9th of August 2016
The super talented artist Wuon-Gean Ho has invited me to be featured in an article she will write for Printmaking Today.
We initially met a year ago, when I was artist in residence at the East London Printmakers studio in Hackney.
I went to see her at the studio and had a long and very interesting chat about how screenprinting has become a part of my practice, about merging old techniques with new materials and about working as an artist in London.
The piece will come up soon at the beginning of September, in conjunction with a show I am having at Kristin Hjellegjerde’s gallery in London, together with American artist Jeremy Everett and just a few weeks before installing at the MoCA in Shanghai and Hangzhou, where I will be part of the second edition of the Triennale of Fiber Art at the Zhejiang Museum.
Pretty cool.
Thursday 4th of August 2016
Third journey to the Chinese Visa office today.
Every day got me a little bit closer to receiving the document.
Some signatures [missing], some addresses [missing], some apparently non-required signatures and copy of passports etc.
I am learning to appreciate the free movement within at least Europe.
So far so good. Got the stamp and I’m ready to go!
Thursday 28th of July 2016
The panels of the installation will be screenprinted with conductive paint.
Once dry, the print will act as an electrical circuit and more specifically, as a sensor.
I am planning to connect the sensors to a microcontroller in order to control the interaction with the audience.
There is a risk that the paint will crack if applied on a streetchy surface; to avoid this as well as to achieve the greatest results, I asked the amazing Faye McNaulty for help with her great talent and expertise. Faye will take care of preparing a special mix in order to allow the paint to be elastic enough not to crack and will also screenprint the panels of the artwork.
It has taken a little while to move from paper to fabric; over the course of the last few years I had enough time to work with paper. I am truly fascinated by the medium and the way it responds to paint.
When applied on metal it offers a curious striking contrast.
This time though, the artwork needs to take a different direction, the materic component of fabric, especially this beautiful neoprene coupled with jersey will convey an unusual mysterious layers to the final piece. I will probably be tougher to print but easily to transport and maintain.
That’s why these days I’m off to buy fabric samples.
Monday 20th of July 2016
Over the past week I have been working on developing the structural component of the artwork.
When I decided I would use extruded aluminium profiles, I chose to do so both for conceptual as well as for aesthetic purposes.
The profiles are often use to assemble temporary workspaces, cubicles in office spaces and factories as well as stands in trade shows. Often hidden behind panels which mimic the textures of wood or stone, coupled with acrylic and MDF, they convey a fascinating utilitarian language which is rather fitting to the purpose of the artwork.
By bringing this structure together, assembled and exposed, I intend to create a narrative for the idea of revealing hidden structures, such as those who pertain the essential components of the financial market, that is the raw data which feeds the financial movements of shares and which, at least in the case of this artwork, provide or words for the singers as well as dictating their score.
Moreover, as I need to obey certain standards relating to the transportation of the artwork to and from Shanghai, I will take advantage of the relative lightness of the materials and its ability to collapse into small custom packages.
The more I go into this project, the more I learn about practicalities and about finding a good way to meet the limits imposed by the budget without compromising on the production of my idea. Funny to notice how everything seems to be boiling down to financial and resource management.
Thursday 14th of July 2016
I am starting to receive some interest from Chinese singers based in London.
If all goes well I should be able to meet with some of them over a quick coffee in order to explain the nature of the collaboration, the concept and the technology behind the installation itself.
The artwork will function by sewing together individual recordings of each one of the singers; each singer sings a series of numbers and symbols commonly used in the financial world, according to her vocal range. Then the values identified through the database and the differences between each dataset will direct the voice of the singers.
When the recording is done, I will have enough samples of each one of the voices, to combine them together, in order to read the values contained in the database. It will be a way to synthesize the human voice, a bit like those voices tha are often used to guide us through the customer care experience or that are used in public stations top announce the arrivals and departures of the trains.
The sewing of different voices, will be done through a code I have written on MaxMSP, which reads from the financial database.
The final effect will be seamless and natural, thanks to adding a little echo which will blur out the apparent different recordings.
Despite sounding pretty complicated, this is a fairly simple type of work. Each recording doesn’t usually take more than 1 and a half hours.
Then it is all about having to clean and edit the recordings and a bit of additional coding.
