@daniel-howe - Tumblr Blog

MY BLOG HAS MOVED

as I am now focusing on my final major project for my foundation, i have moved my blog. you can find it here

Excerpt from Oscar Tuazon’s I Can’t See

Really interesting look into Tuazon’s process and it’s almost poetic nature. I have never tried to dramatise my thoughts on my own work but the concept of turning my work, or merely the process behind it, into a piece of prose is something I may experiment with. This could be presented alongside my work, perhaps a comment on the artist’s intention compared to the viewer’s interpretation (see Michael Craig Martin’s An Oak Tree)

FMP idea 1:

Film

Continuation of previous project and investigations into making films from found footage. Instead of reusing and recycling physical materials, I will manipulate and use found footage to create my own narrative, exploring ideas that I find interesting or experiences that I wish to replicate. This would benefit my practice by venturing further into relatively unknown media and improving and varying my skill set.

Artist inspiration: Mark Leckey, Peter Roehr.

FMP idea 2:

Sculpture project

Nature informing what seems like very unnatural work - sharp, harsh metal sculpture. Created from observational drawings of twisted forms, insects such as spiders and bees and taking interesting or peculiar features that can be turned into sculpture work. These sculptures can also be transformed and taken further into installation. This would benefit my practice as I will be exploring more ways to use industrial materials in unconventional ways, and put different concepts behind a medium and process that I have found great interest in and don’t wish to neglect.

Artist inspiration: Alberto Tadiello, Eva Hesse

FMP idea 3:

Continuation of Today project (sculpture/installation)

Continuation of Today project where I work exclusively with found objects and reclaimed materials. By using reclaimed objects and materials that are important to how humans go about their daily lives, but are overlooked, I will aim to create structures that make those objects the central focus: to celebrate the ignored and the neglected; to champion the things that are always with us as worthy of our attention. I will benefit from carrying on this project as I will inevitably be taken down many exciting and unexpected pathways, which will make me open minded about how to approach future projects.

Artist inspiration: Richard Serra, Osca Tuazon, Eva Hesse

FMP research

Artist focus: Alberto Tadiello

- Project “Adunchi”

- The project focuses on the different trajectories of birds’ free falling and swooping, activating a cogent dialectics between their own thrust and the ineluctable gravitational attraction.

- The portrayed figures, although delicate and transparent, allow the viewer to capture the restlessness of a telluric energy. The anatomic details in the prints acquire a particular vigour thanks to a reprinting and scanning procedure that includes mistakes and inaccuracies: cuts in the background, rips in the paper and strips of adhesive tape.

- The insistence and the repetition of the images make them become disturbed; the necks show extensions and compressions, the heads stretch to an inventory of hook-shaped beaks which are sharp and net like the representation of an evolutionary scheme.

- Nature informing what seems like very unnatural work - sharp, harsh metal work

How I can build on this:

- Twisted forms, spiders, bees etc - observational drawings

- Large metal sculptures that can be taken further into installation afterwards

come down to us

Short film exploring the use of repetition of pre-existing video clips to change and create narrative.

This film’s video footage was sourced from a 2014 Resident Advisor documentary about the Japanese government’s attempt to deconstruct Tokyo’s club/dance music scene. Watching this documentary I got an overwhelming sense of hope in all the people featured that although their whole scene is being crippled they’ll still resist in the face of adversity and that was something I wanted to play on and take further.

My film is split into two halves, the first documenting an oppressive police state where its people are forced to the edge of society if they don’t conform, and I’ve tried to make this clear with repetition and audio samples. Repetition here references repeat images employed in government tactics to suppress and alienate alternative opinion.

The second half, which is made up of many of the same video clips as the first, turns this idea in on itself and makes clear that the human nature that makes people conform, as in the first half of the film, can also be used for good and for change; a comment on the human condition and how we can use what we see as weaknesses in ourselves as positives and a force for liberation and freedom.

first thought

Through repetition and progressively shortening the length of found video footage I have manipulated this film to fit my own narrative.

Throughout the film the meaning of what the girl is saying begins to change and becomes more and more poignant at what seems an exponential rate. She becomes more and more detached from the idea that being alone is just something everyone shares at some point, and she begins to realise the real crushing weight of her loneliness. This has come from my interest in filmmakers such as Peter Roehr and Mark Leckey, and the chance encounter of film footage I have felt a connection with.

Outcome planning/composition

Above is a collage of a possible composition for my next outcome. The materials I have acquired for this outcome are currently a stainless steel frame (as pictured), as well as glass and rusted sheet metal. For the other materials, I have used an image of Oscar Tuazon’s Wall, as it follows a similar aesthetic to the one I am trying to achieve in this piece of work.

I have used a frame for this piece because a frame around a painting for example implies the painting is to be looked at, or to be admired, because it is visually pleasing or beautiful. My work here will not be beautiful. My work will be made of old materials that were once unwanted and neglected. By using a frame, itself reclaimed, I intend to highlight the materials inside as something to be looked at. The frame will make the viewer look at the piece in the same way they would a painting; the materials will no longer be a product of our throwaway culture, they will be made something worthy of our attention.

Update on Today project

This project will highlight the neglected and ignored yet significant objects and materials that humans interact with every day. For example, the piece of glass that makes a windowpane is necessary for a person to look outside, look inside, and look through, but the glass itself is ignored. A table leg is necessary to make a table top the right height for a person to use, but without the legs the table would be useless; the table top is the central focus of the design, why not the legs? Why can’t a sheet of glass be admired for what it is rather than a tool for looking? By using reclaimed objects and materials that are important to how humans go about their daily lives, but are overlooked, I aim to create structures that make those objects the central focus: to celebrate the ignored and the neglected; to champion the things that are always with us as worthy of our attention.

“These things are with us every day even on beachheads and biers. They do have meaning. They're strong as rocks.”

- Frank O’Hara, Today

Oscar Tuazon

Oscar Tuazon is another artist who I have recently discovered and one that I feel is great inspiration for this project and my work in general.

Inspired by what he calls "outlaw architecture", Tuazon channels the extreme DIY and freethinking of hippy survivalists who decide to go off-grid. His use of industrial materials suggest a minimalistic stress on concept over actual making, but he's just as interested in the physical side of sculpture. I feel that in this moment in time I am interested in and follow similar things to Tuazon, and I am glad I have somebody like him to inspire my work, along with the likes of Richard Serra and Eva Hesse.

I also take a sense of ‘anti-aesthetics’ from Tuazon, in that his works often looked clumped together, unconsidered, or ugly. In this approach he highlights the beauty in the material and the art object itself, as opposed to the final outcome.

In response to Tuazon and the underlying themes of this project I will make my next outcome made entirely from reclaimed materials, such as steel and glass.

Sculpture/installaion ideas based on the work Stefan Schuster. This model is obviously very much like Schuster’s work and this is not a plan for my own work, but I am following his process in the hope that in doing so I will find my own identity and create something unique. I wish to create a large sculpture(s)/installation like this but reuse old materials in the process, in line with the themes of this project.

Notes on Specific Objects by Donald Judd

A few notes on Donald Judd’s Specific Objects essay and his ideas about translating and realising ideas through sculpture or found objects.

Most sculpture is made part by part, by addition, composed. The main parts remain fairly discrete. They and the small parts are a collection of variations, slight through great. There are hierarchies of clarity and strength and of proximity to one or two main ideas. Wood and metal are the usual materials, either alone or together, and if together it is without much of a contrast. There is seldom any color. The middling contrast and the natural monochrome are general and help to unify the parts.

Three dimensions are real space. That gets rid of the problem of illusionism and of literal space, space in and around marks and colors - which is riddance of one of the salient and most objectionable relics of European art. The several limits of painting are no longer present... Obviously, anything in three dimensions can be any shape, regular or irregular, and can have any relation to the wall, floor, ceiling, room, rooms or exterior or none at all. Any material can be used, as is or painted.

The use of three dimensions makes it possible to use all sorts of materials and colours...Little was done until lately with the wide range of industrial products...Dan Flavin, who uses fluorescent lights, has appropriated the results of industrial production. Materials vary greatly and are simply materials—formica, aluminum, cold-rolled steel, plexiglas, red and common brass, and so forth. They are specific. If they are used directly, they are more specific. Also, they are usually aggressive. There is an objectivity to the obdurate identity of a material...The form of a work and its materials are closely related.

Nothing made is completely objective, purely practical or merely present...If changes in art are compared backwards, there always seems to be a reduction, since only old attributes are counted and these are always fewer.

New project inspirations

Richard Serra

Bruce Nauman

Eva Hesse

I very much like the idea of giving life to unwanted or neglected objects, and turning traditional ideas of how an object can be used on its head. Seeking inspiration by the US post-minimalist/process art movement of the late 1960s, I will work with reclaimed materials such as steel, wood and plastic and a variety of fabrics and experiment in how I can breathe new life into the materials and objects, also taking inspiration from the poem Today by Frank O’Hara (see http://daniel-howe.tumblr.com/post/138569029536/today-by-frank-ohara-oh-kangaroos-sequins.)

I will also look to the Czech "second avant-garde" (or "neo-modernism) to understand and be influenced by their radical DIY-art. I hope to create a series of sculptures and site specific installations that will reinvent traditional notions of how a material can be presented or used.

Transience film

Above are some screenshots from recordings of my installation I have named Transience that was set up to try and explore ideas of temporality and nostalgia.

I had hoped to create an environment whereby objects are momentarily frozen by the use of strobe lighting, which has come from previous investigations into how form can be manipulated by light and space, and a personal interest in UK club culture. This installation and film intended to mimic the poignant side of the modern cultural phenomenon of nightclubbing where memory and emotion temporarily linger, and the world outside of it seems to disappear, if only for a short amount of time. Transience was going to see how light and sound can create a deliberately disorientating space which explores the shift between permanence and temporality.

Rice, being one of the most consumed foods in the world, seemed appropriate to represent the human condition in this work; I hoped to use lighting to momentarily freeze it as described above. Despite this, my work was visually and aesthetically unsuccessful and I was unable to make a film from it. Because of this I was unable to use the soundtrack I had created and prepared for it as well.

Although this piece failed I will still pursue other ways to investigate the relationships between form, light and space.

Today by Frank O’Hara

Oh! kangaroos, sequins, chocolate sodas! You really are beautiful! Pearls, harmonicas, jujubes, aspirins! all the stuff they’ve always talked about

still makes a poem a surprise! These things are with us every day even on beachheads and biers. They do have meaning. They’re strong as rocks.

I’ve looked to the poetry of Frank O’Hara for my latest foundation brief which requires the involvement of some sort of literature as source material. Today is a poem I particularly resonate with because it gives life and meaning to objects and things that are often looked over, or in the very least never romanticised, such as sequins, chocolate sodas and aspirins. I very much like the idea of giving life to unwanted or neglected objects, and turning traditional ideas of how an object can be used on its head. I would like to continue my work with reclaimed materials and possibly venture into the ‘readymade’, and this poem in particular is a delightful starting point.

Milan Grygar

Milan Grygar is a Czech artist, one of the eight “second avant-garde” artists featured in Hans Ulrich Obrist’s The Czech Files, which I am currently reading. Grygar’s work is involved in recording sound through drawing, for sound to be spatial; visual art’s spatial element of sound. Learning and understanding Grygar’s work with and influence of sound has helped me to further understand my own work with sound, and see how a space or environment can be manipulated or heightened by it.

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xvczb5uFW4c)

This was Radio 1’s Friday night showcase which gave Jungle a platform on the station for the first time. It has been sampled by a number of music producers which place rave culture and this era of urban nightlife at the centre of their work, such as Mella Dee, Special Request and Jamie xx. Listening back I can only feel a sense of hope and excitement for the future, and therefore also temporality.

All Junglists! A London Somet'ing Dis (1994)

All Junglists! A London Somet'ing Dis is a documentary that captured the junglist movement as it was growing and evolving. It’s synopsis states: “Jungle is now starting to turn heads in the music business and although a Jungle act has yet to be offered a record contract, its compelling original sound has become a symbol of vibrancy, progress and urban expression.”

This vibrancy and urban expression is what I want to capture in my own work relating to youth and transience, this documentary has been a fantastic source material for understanding the feeling and emotion conveyed in my work.

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJj0lyr5R6o)

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