Reflecting on my findings and research for the dissertation, the theories of psychologists Richard Gregory and James J Gibson as well as the Gestalt are still in the back of my mind. I realise I’m trying to create within my practice an exploration of their ideas with the aim of clarifying how we perceive our environment and the space around us.
I’ve just had an idea that might be worth following up. The idea is to ask visitors who experienced my installation to take part in a simple survey/questionnaire that can be done via my website. I’ll think about it some more before I myself to it.
Changing the original plan and now having all the resin droplets and large colourful indexical trace paintings in the darkness of the Black Room has opened up a bit of a conundrum. How do I now light the Black Room to achieve the result I’m after?
After an afternoon of research I’m now looking at motion sensor activated spot lighting rather than the LED route I’d planned originally. This way I should be able to provide enough light to illuminate specific elements within the installation, but still maintain the integrity of the whole piece. Also, this will add another dimension to the installation because the lighting will be triggered inadvertently by the viewer(s) as they walk through and around the art work.
If this works I’ll have managed to achieve another goal of mine … that of viewer interaction in my installations.
I’ve decided to ditch the idea of having a White Space to go with my Black Room. The plan now is to have just one space and that will be the Black Room. This development is due to much soul searching and concern about the connection between the two different elements to the proposed installation. I feel the link between the two isn’t strong enough, but in particular the elements of the clear cast resin droplets and the large scale droplet paintings originally planned for the White Space will be better served if they too, are in the Black Room.
A secondary consideration for the change of plan is time. Building the 5×4 metre Black Room will be wasting of too much of my time and also resources that I feel will be better applied by using the entire room my art will be installed in as the Black Room.
I feel more excited now about the whole project as I’ve had more ideas to develop the project.
By using a true macro lens on my DSLR I’m planning on photographing tiny sections from my paintings showing the indexical trace of A Space That Once Was and projecting these images to a much larger scale. Playing with the perception of space with regards to scale I’m trying to highlight the fact that all too often we look, but we don’t see, or comprehend and therefore, don’t appreciate or understand what can be contained in all manor of spaces around us.
Rachel Whiteread’s negative space sculptures are prime examples of a space we may look at in daily life, but don’t actually comprehend that it holds a physical 3 dimensional space because there is nothing tangible there.
Similarly with the water droplet, there’s little comprehension that there is actually a space contained within it.
Using the colourful drawing inks to create abstract paintings via droplets and pools of water I’ve managed to create macro worlds of colour, shape and pattern. The images represent the indexical trace of the ink in the water droplet and, therefore, it’s the indexical trace of the space in which the ink was suspended until the water evaporated. This has made me think about how our understanding of, or acceptance of what actually represents a physical space is interpreted. The droplet paintings could therefore be seen as a space that once was. Similar to Kapoor’s definition of the negative space within his art when he explains to Charlotte Higgins of The Guardian: “I’m interested in the void … the moment when it isn’t a hole; it is a space full of what isn’t there.”
