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…
