pix

Notes from my sketchbook.

Visual spectrum for animals?

Though the raw information is important in that it provides a basis for any further brain processing, once a picture is formed it moves on to the rest of the brain and is compiled with all the other sensory information that an animal has taken in. The end product is a perceived view of the surrounding world, otherwise known as an ümvelt… other sensory information! Smell? Taste? Touch? Hearing?… create pictures… How do I make that work?

Although all vertebrates utilize an eye that takes in images by focusing on an object in a camera-like manner, many have different eye shapes, and some do not possess all of the same structures (such as cones, which distinguish colors).

Light receptors… is the pixel the point where the light is received… the light receptor? X rays.

Painting the air. What would that look like? Air molecules = pixels… single colour…

Pure air……. Contaminated……. Variety of colour….. pollution…

In most Catarrhini (Old World monkeys and apes – primates closely related to humans) there are three types of color receptors (known as cone cells), resulting in trichromatic color vision. These primates, like humans, are known as trichromats. Many other primates and other mammals are dichromats, which is the general color vision state for mammals that are active during the day (i.e., felines, canines, ungulates). Nocturnal mammals may have little or no color vision. Trichromat non-primate mammals are rare… pixilation allows for colour changes…

Vertebrate animals such as tropical fish and birds sometimes have more complex color vision systems than humans; thus the many subtle colors they exhibit generally serve as direct signals for other fish or birds, and not to signal mammals… would mean what for the colours of a painting… justification?

Dogs, mammalian farm animals) generally have less-effective two-receptor (dichromatic) color perception systems, which distinguish blue, green, and yellow-but cannot distinguish oranges and reds… obvious colour selections for paintings?

Spectrum pixels… Snowflakes

Mutations are mistakes…..

The code is constantly changing.

DNA is a code written as A C G T……. Markers….. pixels… could use StitchSketch to create visual image of DNA… determine what colours represent A, C, G and T… shades?

Behind the scene conversations… Elena and I regularly debate late into the night and her questioning of me always drives my work forwards and in new directions… I think it important that some of these conversations are heard to help inform… for me they are relevant stitches…

ET.

I was wondering to myself why paint it? What does the paint do that the digital doesn’t? – in terms of the way it looks, and the way it is produced

Delivery system…

How are the pixels delivered digitally? what order do they arrive on the page? Left to right? Top to bottom? Or in some rgb colour order?

I remember you saying that you had to deliver the colours in a specific order because you had to wait for adjacent colour to dry.. How do you choose? Does one colour have more importance than another? Are you doing your “favourite” colours first or last?

Where would you start if all the squares were the same colour?

Texture: I can see the paint is textured… but obviously it isn’t on my screen, and wouldn’t be if i printed it.

I like the illusion of texture, and the fact that if you were to paint one of these squares digitally, you would require more than one pixel to imply that texture.

BJ.

Process…….. It’s all about process…….. Painting will get me to the next point…….. Logically……. Like stitching for you….. Doesn’t mean I’ve concluded yet……. And I would show the painting so the texture would be visible…… Like your material……. Which doesn’t translate in photos either…….

ET.

I know you like to paint, I’m talking about paint, but asking questions about it, and how you produce it and why,

And how the photons… the bits of energy that create the light and colour that we see….

How it might affect what you paint and think and how you see it… the implications of paint over digital images…..you’re the one that likes the research!

I do find it interesting that Bo thinks this blog has become just a description of what we are doing… and that he wants conversation. Well it is a conversation already. There’s us two, there are the other people we show our work to and discuss it with. There are the people that read this blithering on… we know they are there because we are in the top ten (thank you). The fact they choose not to speak at the moment is just as much part of a conversation as someone you can’t shut up (me). When we say something that strikes a chord with someone else as well as each other, that’s when we will get a response. At the moment, we just squabble amongst ourselves. People are watching to see what happens, to see if the police need to be called.

I suspect as we dig ourselves in deeper here, touch upon deeper topics, whether that is to do with the scientific angle Bo seems to be following, or the social/psychological path I meander along, we will enlighten (Bo’s favourite word?) each other at least, as we occasionally glance at each other, sending images to each other, finding that overlap, those coincidences and accidental bindings.

Over the last 2 years or so, I have come to recognise a pattern in the way I think about my work. If I can hear words rattling round in my head, sounds, rhythms that resonate with the visuals I produce, then I’m on the right track… there’s a groove to be had in more ways than one… and I’m starting to hear it. It involves a triangle. And possibly a bus bell. And possibly those pips you hear on the hour on the radio… maybe even a spot of heavy breathing, but don’t hold me to that.

So, no worries Bo, I’ve done a fair amount of crashing about in the undergrowth and now think I see a way through, and it’s nowhere near you.

“You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.” Nietzsche

(from Aristotle to Nietzsche… I’m just SO up-to-the-minute!)

I like it when Elena tries to pre-suppose my thinking and me. I like that she is nervous of my responses to her work… security blanket etc… and my want, nay, my MALE want, is not to bite or respond… She highlights “perceived view of the surrounding world” and kind of accredits this statement to me… yet these were not my words… I think she missed my point… or pixel…

I feel like this is becoming a record of what is being done, not a discussion. I want to draw others into our conversation’s… to seek their ideas and takes on what we are doing. I may stop writing formally here and just publish my thoughts that I record as I research. Does this have to be fluent? I know Elena and I have discussed this, but what if I was to pixelate the exchange and randomize it, as I do my work?

The purpose of this discourse is to question, debate, inform and progress alternative ideas, values, responses and developments, isn’t it? For my work to do this, I need Elena’s work to follow a separate thread… I need it to move in a different direction… I need hers to be different… and yet we need to keep that link… don’t we?

So… what are the similarities? Where are the differences? Are there any?

I get the security blanket thing… I really do… My comfort is painting… I love paint… Have started my first spectrum pixel in paint… am taking snapshots whilst I work and running images through some apps to create yet more work… ideas… to add to the pile already generated, but with paint I feel like a proper artist…

I am unpicking an earlier iPad development made from the original Wikipedia colour spectrum… re-pixilating it using a piece of square balsa wood doweling as my brush… it’s an obsessive, compulsive way of working, but by re-plotting individual pixels I am fulfilling Elena’s “The whole being greater than the sum of the parts”… a similarity! I prize the process… it’s links to tribal… aboriginal… history… evolution… there is a deconstruction – reconstruction within that itself… another angle…

I query the origin of the dot? When does a dot become a pixel? Presumably when placed on a screen? So is my terminology wrong then? Do we/I need an alternative word? Is Elena closer with her stitch? Does it depend on medium? When do pixels, dots, and stitches become images?

I like how the work can be read as braille… the raised dots allowing the blind to also see the work… I could play with the size of the dots to represent colour… or is that too obvious? An alternative then… It links to the research I am doing with regards to how animals see… gives me yet another avenue to explore…

So for now, I’ll choose to ignore Elena’s goads and let her pursue her own lines of enquiry…

This work, although I’m enjoying the conversation and the making, I must admit, hasn’t been going so well in my head, because I couldn’t seem to fit it in right. I was shuffling around it a bit. I couldn’t seem to find an emotional connection with it. I was finding that difficult. As an intellectual exercise it was fine. I was thinking, producing pieces of work that skirt around and inch towards, and look ok…

BUT…

Then, thanks to Aristotle “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts”… I had a bit of an epiphany. As is my wont, I returned to that which I understand: clothing. I zoomed off to the charity shops at 4.30 Saturday afternoon, with a clear idea in my head of what I wanted to make. Well I say make, but before the make is the un-make.

Now my question is this…

Is this going to get thrown into the air by Bo and shot, with accusations of “comfort blanket”?

Possibly.

(Now, if I could accurately predict which pieces of work would elicit this response, I would not need his criticism would I?)

But I’m doing it anyway. Because in my sketch books for a long time now have been explorations into the dismantling of clothing and the reassembling. So it fits me. I think it didn’t fit so well with the work I was doing towards my MA, because that was down a different emotional pathway/theme. But the deconstruction/reconstruction~degeneration/regeneration idea is perfect for it. So I have trawled through to see what has been said about it in my notes. To be honest, not a lot. I suppose this is what sketch books are good for. To park the fleeting idea for a while, see what happens and what connections are made between pieces of work. To enable a re-visit when the time is right. The idea I have now isn’t the same as those that were drawn and annotated. It is a new idea, but draws upon a train of thought not quite derailed.

I am happy that it fits, I can see it working in terms of the aesthetics. For the first time in a while I am content with this work. Just need to make it now.

Bo, I read below, is indeed looking at the pixel closely, he’s being very scientific, rational… dare I say it… male…?

My “perceived view of the surrounding world” is somewhat different, I am a different animal.

I’m zooming out again, having magnified and got closer, and finding frustration… my thinking about pixels is now more metaphorical, allegorical even. Blame Aristotle. I’m thinking of people as pixels, how we stand as individuals but our lives cause us to cling together: partners, families, teams, friends… the whole being greater than the sum of the parts. This is where the baby clothes fit in. The smallest person has an effect…. Change or add one pixel and everything is different.

Collaborate with another artist… everything changes…

To pinch Bo’s words, then deconstruct and reconstruct the sentence: “The artist defines a person as: – the smallest element with uncontrollable colour and brightness in a society or family group”

Now if you will excuse me, I have some baby clothes to destroy.