Continued…
The majority of my work these days is made on an iPad. I have several of these in my art room that the pupils are permitted to use along with a suite of Apple Macs.
Art Apps produce an instant, surrogate image and enable pupils to see alternatives for their work, options that generally they wouldn’t usually consider. There are also a whole set of Apps that will randomize work and produce completely unexpected results that again open new dimensions and possibilities.
Apple TV and a whiteboard allow me to project my images on a large scale for pupil’s to engage with, I can also demonstrate the process to whole groups.
Initially, I only ran the image through one App – PhotoStudioHD – to play with the colours of the image. What would it look like in yellow or red, black and white? I then flipped and mirrored the image to produce new faces, then played with the colour of these, (image 2). But the image didn’t relate to futurism, as I wanted it to.
I have no problem with work veering away from themes… I positively encourage my pupils to see themes as starting points only, stressing that it’s the journey that’s important… the route and progression that their ideas take – if the final piece has no association to Olympic Futurism, that’s fine by me.
I wanted my images to look more like Marcel Duchamp’s “Sad Young Man in a Train” painting, to enable my pupils to see fragmentation and movement. I ran several of my new images through a second randomizer App – Decim8 – to show this, before framing, lighting and adding noise in PictureShow – a third App. (Images 3 and 4). One of the surprises of the first images that I produced was the backgrounds. Because the original image was produced on card, when I projected the images onto my whiteboard it appeared as though they had really been sprayed onto a wall – where the card had creased it appeared as bricks. With this notion in mind, I want to present my exemplar…
For my iPad, I have a laser projector that enables me to project my images onto any surface…The Futurist’s had a great interest in cities… combine the two and it means that I can light-tag/graffiti anywhere I chose, to a fairly large scale… churches, shops, buildings, vehicles; they all become my canvas, yet I cause no damage or harm to property.
When I demonstrate this to pupils in my classroom I also project onto my hands (image 5), walls (image 6), floor, ceiling etc.
As an educational tool then, where does this work sit in a contemporary art world? Can it be classified as Art or does the educational context prevent this? My audience is ready made both with pupils and passing footfall in the city, yet because the work was constructed particularly as an educational medium, does that imply it has no alternative ambition.
For now, the pupils haven’t yet started making their own work from this. For me the interest, the joy in my job, is to see if it has ignited their imaginations and inspired them to make work that challenges my own… I will of course keep you posted…
