The Waiting Arrow.

The video that I talked about in my shoddy assesment talk, albeit sped up and with backing music that wasn't in the original version, hope you like classical music...

This will be a quick post so as to quickly catch up with what I've been up to the past couple of months.

I began with a shape, imagine a basic lampshade shape. I wanted to create some sort of structure based in this shape, with varying levels flowing down the middle, different halo's, platforms, I gave them many names.

Through various tutorials, crits and other talks with peers I was persuaded to use a machine in the workshops called the CNC. The idea of the machine is that you download the software onto your laptop, similar to paint or photoshop, and you design the parts you need, put the file onto a memory stick, plug the memory stick into the CNC machine, and it will cut out the parts itself, saving the user from having to do all the manual labor it would take, the good thing about the CNC is that it only takes a couple of hours and is very precise, as where cutting the parts out yourself can be very time consuming and inaccurate, the downside of the machine however lies in the software itself. For me personally, I am not so good with those types of software, the planning, the consideration of space on the wood, the diameters, the radius's, all baffle me, though not clinically proven I am 87% sure that I have Dyscalculia (Basically Dyslexia but with Arithmetic) and so began to get more and more frustrated with the software, after seeing the technicians multiple times about the issue, I slowly began to feel like I was becoming a nuisance to them, something I did not wish to be. After a couple of weeks I managed to get to finally print something.

Here is a photo of it printed out and put together:

I was pleased for a while with the build, and had this idea to cover the rings with a fabric material, block, so that they became a sort of platform with a bit of give to it, so as to place something on each level. But all the talk from the tutors about having many variations of the build, with more/less layers, displayed differently, further planted this seed of frustration in what I was doing. I lost motivation. Though I could see it being successful, all the talks of consideration to where I display it, what I make them out of, annoyed me, because somehow in the midst of being a sort of puppeteer of the creation of these things; I felt like I had no control.

So where did Entropy come into this. The idea was that each ring, each level, if covered in fabric, could be used as a platform. I would use this thing to provide a visual representation of an example of Entropy.

Say for instance a fire. You start with the raw wood, kindling, off cuts, whatever you use, as you burn it, it slowly crumbles and eventually turns into ashes. My intention was to have normal wood on the top layer, in the middle I would have charred and slightly burnt wood, and on the bottom would be the ashes in a pile. This would have been an example of Entropy, something going from one state of something having low Entropy, to converting to a state of high Entropy.

So I've been back at University now for a couple of months, and haven't written up anything I've been doing in terms of studio work, mostly because I haven't found the motivation for doing so, and didn't feel like I had much worth writing about. I was stuck, and so decided to revisit a past project from my Foundation Art FMP.

Entropy

The lack of order, and the decline into disorder. In terms of physics Entropy is a study into one of the fundamental rules of the universe, it describes that nothing can ever actually be destroyed, things only change. It describes how any spontaneous process increases the disorder of the universe.

To quote Professor Brian Cox "what is probably the most important law of phsycis for understanding the evolution of the universe, and the passage of time - it's called the second law of thermodynamics

Entropy explains, why left to the mercy of the elements, mortar crumbles, glass shatters and buildings collapse, and a good way to understand how, is to think of objects not as single things, but as being made of many constituent parts, like the individual grains that make up a pile of sand.

Entropy is a measure of how many ways you can rearrange those grains and still keep the sand pile the same. There are trillions and trillions and trillions of ways of doing that"

- Quote taken from Wonders of the Universe (2011)

And here's the full video with the quote.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQSoaiubuA0

We had our show 'At Least We All Turned Up' last week at the Camp & Furnace gallery on Jamaica street in Liverpool. Was a very cool show and a great experience.

Here's a photo of how my work was displayed:

In the Programme for our show read:

Kayle Fairhurst 'Brain Network'

So, again, been a long time it feels since I've posted anything, this is due to me being a busy busy bee.

Just to get everything up to date i'm putting my 2nd, 3rd and 4th paintings all in one post. Everything was the same process as my 1st painting.

Painting 2 (In Process and finished painting):

Painting 3 (In Process and finished painting):

Painting 4 (In Process and finished painting):

Okay so...went to the workshops, got 4 square pieces of MDF that fit perfectly in between the posts, measuring at 44 Inches by 44 Inches. Painted them black. My four voids.

Put one in the base, see how it fits nicely in between the four posts:

So I started with blue paint, watered down different shades and started pouring on top, took a minute or two to work its way through the wire 'brain' then it started to drip onto the board below:

I was about to add red to it, but the yellow looked more appealing, so I ended up with this toxic looking green. The yellow merged with the blue on its way down, but some lucky parts stayed pure yellow until it hit the board itself.

After a fun hour carefully plotting where to pour the paint I left my Toxic spill to dry. The next day I came back and found this below:

Before I post the first painting I did using my Brain Network I want to show these. Just some playing around with various shapes on Photoshop and the original wire paintings I did.

The aim was to showcase the way in which when a crowded detailed image is broken up by blocked shapes, such as Triangles, Diamonds, Squares and Rectangles the brain picks out more details then before, at least this works on my part. I may actually bring an element of this into my final paintings if I have enough time before my Exhibition.

The blackness further brings a representation of the nothingness and non-space between thoughts, they represent the darkness, the void of our inner conscious.

So I've been busy lately getting this thing built. It's now built though, and I've actually already started experimenting making paintings from it.

Speaking to the Technician again we agreed the wonky posts on the frame wasn't very realistic, it just wouldn't hold so we tore the whole thing apart and rebuilt from scratch, sabotaging the original posts and using them as shells for stronger wood inside them, very technical I assure you, a delay that was for the better as the posts are now solidly glued together, the frame is now strong. After strengthening the posts and letting them dry it was time to bring the wires into the picture.

Here's a photo of me attaching the wires:

The wires go from post to opposing post making an X shape with a giant wire 'brain' in the middle, the central hub of the piece. There was careful consideration of where every single wire went. I did mean to count how many wires I used purely out of curiosity but I was too concerned with how I was putting it together to keep track.

After I was satisfied with how the wires looked It was time to consider the Aesthetics of the piece itself. A happy accident that I found was that the white frame is the kind of material that paint easily wipes off from, so as to keep the piece pure the posts can be wiped down to their original state. The brown base though looked out of place, to bring the whole thing together I tested a layer of black paint for the base.

So I went down to the Technicians in the Workshop, I expressed my Ideas of building a frame to which I could uphold and maintain my network of wires, I explained it as a somewhat upturned table. The Technician suggested that I go to Ikea and buy a table, it's still technically building a frame as they come unassembled and besides, I'd need to alter them anyway so that they no longer become a table. Going down to Ikea I found these flatpacks:

The legs are too short, so I bought two tables with the idea of connecting the legs together to make them twice as long as this is what I had in mind. After taking the flatpacks into University, I went to the workshops downstairs to drill holes in the opposite ends of the extra legs to enable them to connect to the ones connected to the base, however after doing this, I became frustrated, see below:

It's obvious to see 1 of 2 things:

1. My Studio space is a mess.

2. The top part of the extended legs are wonky and also loose.

There are a few ways of correcting this, but it'll be difficult, there are double ended screws that act as the link where the two legs meet. I think the problem was that the holes I drilled were a little off centre, and too wide for the screws, hence the wonkyness. I will try to find brackets with which I can link the legs together in a more professional and straight way, hopefully the brackets will add to the piece instead of being an eyesore.

I played around with the three experiments on Photoshop, just quick messing around with the contrast/brightness levels.

So taking into account everything, from the V - Wire, to the first Wire Experiments on the black boards, I wanted to have a go at attempting it again, but this time on a white board, to see which worked best.

This time I used the opposite side of the same wire, with the actual plug socket being the point where the paint would jump down to the board. I also started this time, with Blue paint, then adding the Red afterwards, this still created the Purple drops but I expected that this time!

So taking in all I'd learnt from the V - Wire experiment I began to think of the next step, which in all honesty was to actually create something more visually pleasing than a V shape imprint splattered on a board. I wanted to create something more close to what I might end up with after building this wire Installation. So I decided to simply have paint drip down a wire (Finding out this worked best from my V- Wire Experiment) holding it above a board allowing the paint drops to react to the board in whatever way they chose down below. So that's what I did, I wanted to first try it on a couple of black wooden boards to see how the paint reacted to this.

I chose Red and Blue as they are two colours my brain seems to pick out most in the world, it's what I notice most.

I started with Red paint initially, as you see me above creating the piece. I  scrunched up the wire in my hand leaving a reasonable length for the paint to run down, simply watering down the paint I pressed relatively hard on the spot I wanted it to drip and simply waited for the paint to journey to the socket and drip off onto the board, as you can see it didn't always hit the board, and I kinda dig that, has an aimless quality about it. I had this square piece you see in the picture and a longer thinner piece too, they were what I just had handy at the time.

Here are the two final pieces, after the blue was added:

Now something happened when I added the Blue to the wire, the Red paint was still fresh on the wire, they merged along the way down and created a vibrant elegant shade of Purple before even reaching the board sometimes, this was unexpected, though completely obvious it was going to happen, just something I overlooked, but it was a pleasant surprise nonetheless.

I am much more pleased with these Experiments than I was with the V - Wire, whilst that experiment revealed that this method of Wire painting actually works, and I feel it needed to be done, I feel these pieces are much more what I had in mind, these are great representations of this idea I've always had of a Cosmic explosion happening inside our heads. They feel like my brain poured out onto wood.

Been a long time posting it feels like, but I've been busy, not just Uni wise, just Life in general. But I have been working the past few weeks. So, time for a catch up.

During the time coming up to my 30% Assessment point I started to think up a few ideas of what I could possibly exhibit, and whilst I settled on one of those ideas, there was one idea I felt needed to be done simply as an experiment.

I went down to the Workshops downstairs and asked if they had any large-ish Chipboards I'd be able to use for an experiment, they did so I primed it up and I attached a Wire to the board and secured it tightly.

From here I mixed up some paint and I originally just splattered some paint onto the board, then I started to re-think, what was the purpose of that? By doing that, what did I gain? I remembered wanting to see how the wires 'inform' the paint where to go, so starting from either sides of the ends of the wire, both ends of the sockets, I began to push my brush onto them, the paint ran down the wire creating a V shape, the movement of the wire by my brush occasionally allowed paint past the wire to drip to the floor, whilst at the same time brushed the paint upwards, the paint that made it all the way down started pooling in the centre then over spilling to drip to the floor.

I signed up to be on the Editorial Team for our cross year student lead Art Blog, named Studio 22 (In the process of becoming up and running) and we looked at different Reviews of the show Winter Sparks on at the FACT, on paper the exhibition sounded very interesting, it had me intrigued so I went down myself to have a look and see for myself what the fuss was about.

The exhibition consists of three spaces:

The first room is completely black, but overhead is a series of electrical currents running along the ceiling in a flashing pattern. The work sounds great but the irritable sounds of the crackling of electrical currents is startling, I couldn't bare to be in the room for any longer. The Installation was called 'Evolving Spark Network' by Netherlandish Artist Edwin van der Heide.

Leaving the room I head towards the back of the building, walking past some obscure cameras dangling down and entering a small cupboard type room I was met with a screen and witnessing a person walk past the door and seeing this man from a birds eye view on the screen as he walked under the camera's dangling from the ceiling outside I quickly realised that the feed was live. The Installation was called 'Impacts' by Canadian Artist Alexandre Burton

The third space was upstairs, when entering the room the Invigilator stopped to give me some Health and Safety information regarding the machines behind the curtains, warning not to touch them as they are live currents. This had me somewhat intrigued as to what was behind the curtains, entering through I was met with another dark room, inside were two installations, photographs were allowed in this room, and whilst I took photo's of both Installations the Photo's are difficult to understand. This Installation was called 'Wilberforces' by Netherlandish Artist Peter Bosch and Spanish Artist Simone Simons

Installation 1:

This consisted of two Devices pointing at each other shooting an electrical current back and forth, when walking closer/further away the beam of the current would get stronger.

Installation 2:

This is a bit more difficult to figure out. There were 3 screens each with currents running through them, the same principal of the currents reacting to your movement/distance.

So basically, our group exhibition is looming, April 4th - April 10th we'll hopefully be putting a show on at the Art Gallery 'Camp & Furnace' 8 of us will be showing, this fellowship will consist of a varying degree of works. Mine will be an end product of my work dealing with 'The Brain as a Cosmic Machine' 

As you read in the scribblings above I'm leaning towards pursuing the 2nd and 4th ideas, I created a more thorough rough plan:

I think what drew me to this idea more then the others was the fact that no matter what, these ideas cannot fail, my aim is to have the wires 'Inform' the paint/ink/substance and alter its direction/destination. By simply having contact with the wire this aim will be successful. The only thing is the expectation might not meet reality, the outcome might not end up being what I imagine it to be like. It could end up as a giant mess of colour but it would still have been the result of having come into contact with the wire network. Hence why this calls for some experimentation.

There are things I need to take into consideration such as:

The weight of the wires, needs to be held up.

The paint will add weight to the wires.

Looking back over my blog I realised I never managed to get round to uploading these pictures.

Back at the start of my project where the idea of working with the Brain came about I wanted to do a brief study of the Brain, I researched diagrams to get myself accustomed to the Organ itself, I drew a rough copy of one of the diagrams, this is the first picture.

The second image, which is an amalgamation of 5 scanned drawings is my way of actually getting accustomed to the shape and inner workings and different views of the Brain, I researched various Diagrams on Google Images and limited myself to 2 minutes per drawing, this allowed me to get the most basic of shapes/patterns and the limitation of time allowed me to get the most important parts drawn out. These are just a select few of the more successful attempts.