Low Residency: Climate Crisis – Art and the Future – Thu 27th Feb

A discussion with David Cross (UAL Reader in Art & Design).  David has been creating work that explores the climate crisis for many years and has been campaigning for UAL to make significant changes to structures, divestment from banks that profit from carbon fuel industries and the role of art in imaging alternatives.

Reflection:

• The campaigning that David has done at UAL off on his own back and putting at risk his own job pushes me to commit to a plant-based diet sooner than later
• Some really interesting points/information raised by Friederike  around the construction/real estate industry. Particularly how the existing stock is actually enough for our needs, if we think about the “downtime” of offices being shut at night, schools closed on the weekends etc.  This would require almost revolutionary political, legal and mindset changes though.  Not hopeful in the current climate.
• Critical thinking – not everyone was in agreement that art schools help facilitate critical thinking. However from what I’ve observed and my experiences, I think artists are a lot more resourceful and learn to problem solve a lot earlier than other disciplines.
• David actively engaged with differing opinions and challenges to his premise and took notes during the discussion – this reconfirmed to me that (hopefully most) artists are comfortable with/will not ignore complexity.

Notes from David’s presentation:

How do we bring in university, the world and our practice 

• How do you go carbon neutral 
• Zero waste 
• Divestment and procurement 

Looked at university’s business account

How is an art school a business ?

Looking at big landmark events at international level

1m species faced extinction 

‘Transformative change’

Technology social and economic factors including paradigms goals and values 

Revolution 

Key developments for a business model in a university 

Holds onto idea of democracy 

Not a business but a charity, by law to serve the public interest

Lose sight of how to serve public interest 

Respond rather than declare 

Slight evasion

Canada boreal forest because of draught

Tar sounds

To get fossil fuels

UAL – major new partnership with Canada

Flying backwards and forwards

Contradictions 

Best way to respond is to fufil our public purpose

Parameters of design – budget, brief, specific task

Paris agreement 2015

2 degrees for heating 

1.5 degrees

 

1.5 degrees is the danger line will cause massive problems 

Triggers of feedback loops – uncontrollable 

Lose control if we hit 1.5 – like big rock rolling down 

9 different typing points all spinning faster and faster

Co2 does not go away

Accumulation that doesn’t reverse or go away

Determines a carbon budget 

How do you share out the carbon budget?

Need to almost stop everything immediately 

Left it so late

Must stop, can’t stop,

 

As solar etc cheaply, mostly chinese industry 

Cheap renewable energy

Updated Oct 2019 – by May 

Need to be net zero in 10 years by 2030

A condition of justice

Uk invented use of coal on industrial level, steam engine

Spread across through empire 

Wealth in London from that

Using force to extract value from other places 

India, China, Africa

Accumulated debt by accumulated wealth

These people had their wealth taken into London

Poor infrastructure etc

Harmed their societies, 

Lots of wreck up

Wealth in London most goes back to empire 

Lloyd’s from slave trade and shipping insurance

Wealth has produced power and concentrated in small area

White men in charge 

Task force 

 

Capital raising – info – 1)how much carbon you will add, 2) how much business is exposed to factors, eg savings to pay bills in the future 

Unstable, dangerous 

Unusual

Pensions not functioning as should

Invested heavily in fossil fuels 

Trying to manage the risk that is coming 

Lines of effect come straight into our lives 

Will impact the way our careers develop

Greater uncertaint

• weather
• The level of certainty and extreme expanding 
• Need to be prepared 
• Cost of insurance and delays and disruption

 Companies must declare these 

What does it mean for university 

New buildings in Peckham, Stratford etc

Long term repayment based on international students 

In future aviation will be restricted 

Ultimately no more flying 

Hasn’t calculated what can go wrong 

Finance capital 

Laws very flexible 

London deregulated 

University can’t stop serve public interest 

Naturalist arguments used to 

Revision of Darwin – natural selection- survival of the fittest 

Antropocene 

New geological era

Feminist show that we produce in – 

Not fixed 

Some inherited 

But lots responding to environment 

Plan similar to China

4.7% on turnover – over 300m

Graham turner

Limits to growth

Modelled scenarios

Eg pop lu Latino, consumptions, minerals, energy

Simulation in 1972

Pushed back by establishment 

Symbiosis 

Roberto unger taught law at Harvard

Balance of state and 

Humans and nature 

Climate justice 

 

All so societies have common set of values

Move around 

Respectful to elders

At school it’s stimulation etc 

World of influenced – sometimes I’m motivated by power

Move, fluid, people can accept difference 

Money rules in public 

Slow violence

Depriving a whole community of clean water

Human behaviour is not linear

Contradictory 

Self actualisation could be self sacrificing 

James Baldwin 1960s

White person is fear of giving back what has been taken 

Decolonising narratives – series of text  – but over book

Psychological return of the regress

Modern progress – what this was built on 

Angela Davis – humanism 

Never let me go

Eco side 

Gov or company destroys a site

Crime against peac

Nature as landscape – history of knowledge 

Peerby 

IPCC

17 UN sustainable goals

Energy

Land

What level of magnitude do you scale the problem

More food or more pollution 

Recognising our choices as complex 

Gregory Bateson

Anthropology, psychology 

Depending on where we scale our vision

Move from car design to system design

Dynamic interactive within parameters- every context, Nests one another 

Meta discourse 

Problem boundaries

Scalable 

Zoom to the granular experience of the human body

Or zoom out to the planetary level

Or beyond

Beyond ability 

Disciplines divided up by western education 

Not one way of seeing a problem 

Doug Dodds 

Melanie lenz

Andy Lomas artist talk – 5th Nov

Andy Lomas came to speak about his practice on Tuesday 5th November.  I find these artist talks so valuable, as it allows us to understand their motivations, inspirations, research and process in a much deeper way.

Jonny Briggs – visiting artist talk – 21st May 2019

• subverting the “fake” photograph
• intensely personal, but themes of trying to connect and reconfigure are universal
• playful and generous

Low Residency: Day 9 – Thu 27 Feb 2019 Group Tutorial & talk by Rosalind Davis

Final day of the low residency in the morning we had a structured group tutorial and in the afternoon a talk by Rosalind Davis, co-author of “What they didn’t teach you in art school”.

Low Residency: Day 8 – Wed 27 Feb 2019 Intellectual Property – Striking a Balance

A really interesting talk by Roxanne Peters around intellectual property (IP), and really interesting discussion as some people (Alexis) have done a lot of research into some of the areas.

Reflection: I haven’t really given much thought to IP and definitely have not researched it in relation to my own work.

Lecture – The Anthropology of the object by Professor Christian Heath – Tuesday 5th February 2019

Background information we were given:

“Christian Heath is Professor of Work and Organisation. He specializes in video-based studies of social interaction, drawing on ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, with a particular interest in multimodality; the interplay of talk, bodily conduct and the use of tools and technologies. He is currently undertaking projects in areas that include health care, command and control, auctions of fine art, and museums and galleries. Project funding includes grants from the UK Research Councils (ESRC, EPSRC & AHRC), Wellcome and various research programmes of the European Union. Projects involve close collaboration with partners in industry, the public services, and academia both in the UK and abroad. He has held positions, including visiting professorships and senior research fellowships, in Universities and Industrial Research Laboratories in the UK and mainland Europe. He is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences (FAcSS), a member of the Worshipful Company of Art Scholars and a Freeman of the City of London. In 2015 was given the EUSSET-IISI Lifetime Achievement Award presented to scholars for an outstanding contribution to the reorientation of the fields of computing and informatics. His publications more than hundred and fifty articles and nine books including: – The Dynamics of Auction: Social Interaction and the Sale of Fine Art and Antiques (Cambridge 2013: Best Book Award from the International Society of Conversation Analysis), Video in Qualitative Research: Analysing Social Interaction in Everyday Life (Sage 2010, with Hindmarsh, J. & P. Luff), and Technology in Action (Cambridge 2000, with P. Luff). He is co-editor of the book series Learning and Doing: Social Cognitive and Computational Perspectives (Cambridge University Press) and serves on the editorial board of a number of journals.”

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Although a design focused talk, it encourages us to elevate the small and to take them seriously.  This in a way describes what I have been doing with the microscope based works.  Zooming in on everyday objects, to find perhaps something unexpected.

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Notes I took from the lecture:

How to use simple objects and artefacts in everyday activities 

Simple objects / 

Whole world underneath the log

Turn you into anthropologist

Treat the mundane everyday 

The intelligence of humanity 

Field studies 

To the everyday and mundane 

Business studies and management – his students 

The intelligence required to use the everyday object

Ethnography and field work

Important part on everyday practice 

Xerox – wanted socialogist and anthropologist to go out and study how people act

To inform the design of new technologies 

Markets and behaviour 

Field methods – principle – take systematic observations 

Use situations, activities and interactions 

Materials, documents, Manila

Drawings, sketches, diagram and the like

Photos and recordings

Discussions and informal interviews with participants 

Principals

Prioritising the participants means, practices and standalone / immersing yourself in these practice – how they use these things 

Analysing action and activities are situated and emergent – the context

What is the tacit knowledge, skills etc that allow us to use these simple objects 

But

Tacit knowledge – take it for granted, no longer aware 

Eg can speak, but have no idea how we do it, how do you coordinate, tell your tale etc 

Eg musical instrument – the moment when suddenly your hands just go

Only when masking it, gloss the way you do it 

Eg driving 

Eg pacing your walking onto escalator 

We don’t know how or why we do things 

Eg

Operations room in Victoria station 

Learnt on the job by observing others

8 monitors around the station 

Rush hour, most people north bound 

Banal Intervention – holding the barriers 

Set of skills to identify what is overcrowding 

Looking at these people – if they arrive 

Operating theatre 

Artefacts – very simple 

Hammers and drills 

Simple everyday object applied in skilled use 

Opticians 

Eye tests are problematic 

Not quite right 

Very hard to make reliable tests

Particular gestures – sweeping gesture, elaborate gesture, why do it this way?  Not taught to do it this way, why?

Skills, practices, competencies that people rely on 

How they use objects and artefacts to accomplish 

How use is shaped by the situations 

How use is coordinated with the actions of others: social

Interaction

How people use or even pass an object to others 

Done in routine ways

Never exactly the same way

The human intelligence – moment of its use 

The reasoning involved in doing the thing you do with the object 

Not interested in interviews / won’t find things out most of the time by asking people 

Gavel – the contract between the buyer and seller 

Normally take the handle off

Gains an interaction value 

A good auctioneer can add 30-40 percent to a sale

Uses gavel to extract extra value

Through time and manipulation – lives in the hand and situation, gain such significance 

Jason developing new forms of interactive installations 

Dwell time – how much time people spend at exhibitions 

Use margin to go back to what you don’t know – data collection and analysis goes hand in hand 

Constantly refine focus 

Initially document everything you notice 

• short periods of observation, note taking and reflecting 
• Remain unobtrusive: how 

Think about the ecology 

Position side by side

20-30 years ago

Position of the seating 

Visible access to the patient

Slide up with the chair, immediate access 

Swivel chairs 

How does the structure of the setting constraint and facilitate action

Hand uses as tool and measure 

Creating an economy of action

What are the skills and competencies to do this 

What kind of intelligence is required for this 

Billions being spent on scrub nurses robotics

Can’t get it to anticipate 

There is a notion that you are both holding – tug, hold

Summary

Convince you of you need to have the confidence to take the small seriously 

Doesn’t matter what you look at

Good if interactive 

The more specific more systematic you focus on its use the more powerful it will be 

Focus x3

A really deep understanding that feature on the use of an object 

 

Lecture by Dr. Kojiro Hirose – Tuesday 5th February

A talk by Dr Kojiro Hirose, a visiting Japanese professor about touch and accessibility in museums. He is totally blind and discussed the engagement with objects through touch.

Below are the notes I took from the lecture:

• Accessibility to museums 
• The senses beyond the visual
• Senses in relation to how we experience places 
• Involved in play production 
• Focuses on sound and voices 
• Will talk about his research and video format
• 10 min video / Japanese broadcast from 2 years ago 
• Visitors can touch the objects 
• Cultural anthropologist 
• Sense of touch – heavily reliant on it
• Society that is heavily biased towards sight to get information 
• Universal design 
• 3d signs 
• Hand signs means you are encouraged to touch 
• If you touch an object you can feel the presence of another person 
• Tactile character?
• Still developing concept 
• Ongoing report of developments 
• National cultural festival 
• Nara / old capital of japan 
• The art of the disabilities 
• Like the Olympic and Paralympic Games 
• Unprecedented / holding the festival together/simultaneously – people not interested in disabilities will gain access 
• Art festival of the disable and the cultural art festival 
• Touch can appeal to people with learning disabilities
• Bodily experience exhibition in Feb 2017
• Moma – social inclusion 
• Archaeologists- also museums involved in touching 
• Frequent damage – using consumables instead 
• Moderation needed

Guest Talk – Xavier Sole Mora – 22nd January

Xavier, a past student on the course came on Tuesday to talk about his work.  Xavier’s background is in adverting and currently teaches Advertising at Ravensborne, so it was very relevant for my project proposal (if I don’t change it) to hear how he applies these techniques to his work.  The techniques of seduction and humour and being easy on the eye are techniques that I have also used.  Instead of trying to shock viewers with horrific images, he lures them in slowly, he compared it to slowly increasing the temperature of a bath to boil you, rather than chucking you straight in, where your instinct would be to jump straight out.

I really enjoyed it, he has inspired me to reach out to more organisations that I may want to work with.  I was wide awake at 4am last night and started researching materials made from recycled/waste products and bio materials.  After a bit more research today, I’ve decided to put this aside for now, and instead focus on more immediate experiments and readings that will help me decide which direction my research proposal will take.

Here is Xavi’s website: https://xavisolemora.wordpress.com

Below are the notes I took:

Quite playful and some hard hitting stuff 

Background in advertising and fed up with it

In the background doing art project

About communication, art and advertising 

Artistic statement on his website 

Scanned faces – one of the most successful

Started scanned his mates faces

Unsettling and absorb

Rolled the faces 

Emailed him in an exhibition – an I squeeze your face

Because of him doing that 

Fun but grotesque 

Really squeezing and splashing their face 

Scanned 80 people in 4 hits

The action of doing was part of it

But conceptually stuck

Knew there was something 

Did by instinct 

Had to hold their breath

After the pub – sent it to bored panda, went to another media, metro to daily mail

Email from Italian producer

Asked him if he wanted to be party of Japanese tv show

Came here with this project

Currently researching the Rs between power and the ones who have to obey

And what happens when they challenge this

Portraits of the deans for ravenborne

Ongoing project that never ends

Politics, topics interested in include 

Change of roles 

What happens when rationality disappears

Enlightenment to rationality 

The cycle

The time we are living now and Goya – parallels of the time 

More political stuff

Laser engraved onto ham

IMF 

Merkel

Jesus Christ appearing in toast etc 

Experimented with audrino 

Always considered the audience a lot because of advertising background 

Lots of artists like chapman brothers

Their connection with Goya was very strong

They do that he does not share – not into shock images

Background in advertising is about attractive playful seductive not about shocking them

Change the interface 

That they will otherwise 

Maria Penn has a very gentle discourse 

Don’t look like fascists 

Sets of bum – different types of sounds

Punishing a kid

Very interesting reaction of people on gallery

How to get people to touch 

Kids are great 

If a kid understands it then that’s right 

And drunk people 

Second version of it with more durable mums

The gift of the gab

Pez dispensers

Pop up show at the Barbican 

Made at the end of first year 

Living in east London 

Random encounters 

Took a long time to do

Emailed pez – can I have them in the shape of birds 

Now that nobody sees us 

Final show

If so many people likes weapons then there must be something 

Wanted to make it like a murder

Glow in the dark ink 

Found paint ball company in Germany 

The room is covered in glowing ink

Did it before, did it late 

Better to ask to forgive rather than to ask for too much permission 

Program with Barbican 

Met people where he started working together 

Tom – coder

X animator

Conceptual and visual 

Tom modelled the turbine hall

Scanned faces and Goya

Second work showed at camberwell 

Based on 3 paintings – one very optimistic, 40 years later – celebration of witches and goblins 

Created a dream that turned into a nightmare 

Experiment with VR / 

The dizziness – because it’s a nightmare doesn’t matter 

Instead of continuous, like cinema – cutting everywhere 

People getting lost

6 months to make 4mind

Experimented with themselves and then 2-3 releases to test the embodiment 

Tilting and losing the sense of the base

Would be controversial 

Research process was give people their experience

Then how they behave, less interested than what they say

Pulling it off like it was a nightmare 

Research process started with Goya paintings 

Wanted to give an opportunity to viewer to engage with violence

After some tests, scrapped the interactivity 

A journey no control 

Wanted something that less time consuming 

Poverty

Unseen war

Squeezing the south of Europe for north of Europe 

Economic crisis 

Democratic crisis

Lots of things we take for granted 

All the lefts fault,

Slavoj Žižek- knows how to win media attention 

The only time the left organises themselves is when the shit hits the fan 

No left since 1989 – Berlin 

Where are the socialist parties in Europe ?

Driving idea and concept for you as the artist 

The frustration and anger that drives the work

Grew up the internet would save us all 

Chose cage in google headquarters 

Started working in 2004 in digital advertising 

Journalism gone down

In the wrong hands 

If 20 years ago – libertarian in google founders

The repetition of events – something that seems great, then turns out it’s not so great

His catharsis 

How the outlaws are teaching us to have a more private internet 

Unclear who is the good versus who is the bad 

Most interesting factory of pop culture 

By trying to destroy – actually really interesting (trolling website)

How to engage with what is good or bad

Sunflower 

Short 

What if sunflower doesn’t follow the sun 

And how the sun would reach to that 

Where you look the sun follows you 

The sun gets angry and burns everything 

Reference – the dream of xxx, in terminator 2

Made it quickly 

Made sunflower with cardboard quite naively 

Everyone loved the one though it was 1/10 of the work

Easier to consume, pleasant, easier physically, not challenging, more gentle 

Would still show them together because they are related, same narrative 

Experience is crescendo, linear 

• Broke this experience in the other piece

The interface nice to look at

Child like, all of a sudden

Cook you in a slowly heating bat

JK – liverpool, VR, only 18 plus

Metal bar to hold onto

Very obvious cartoon, game aesthetics 

Jordon wolfson – real violence 

1 min 20 sec

Person repeatedly hit 

(Got mixed feelings about this artist but lots of money)

He found the 180 degree turn more violent than the continuous hitting 

Jk – it didn’t do anything

Can’t intervene 

No control 

Trying to distract yourself 

Snuff movies 

Reddit have now banned images of people dying 

Because VR is so new – means you can do whatever you like because less references 

South Korea

Germany 

Etc someone has already done 

Hippos

JK – selected a few of the students to go to the aspen awards 

Got paid to 

Aspen digital art award

Five female artists and xavi 

Obsession with hippos 

The represent something his work

They look very nice and gentle but one of the deadliest animals 

Pitch 

Etching by Goya 

Background / narrative 

All instinct 

Needed something theoretical to stand on

Paper by Kasperson – perception of risk framework 

Spend time and money to talk to experts

Fools feast

Mesmerising thing that was nice to look at

Wanted perception of risk to be up and down not linear

As hypnotic as screen saver 

Small tricks for pitch – 

3d printing hippos, have one each to them, did a big one

Prepared deck and rehearsed the whole pitch

You need to make them feel how they going to feel

Used his voice 

Won

Can pay your mates 

Did lots of research they move, textures 

More interested in hippos moving as whales 

Realised they are very closely related 

Movement 

Background 

Think about the very specific 

Good exercise 

Instead of just black 

He used what Goya used

And scanned the background of Goya etchings

Making nothing out of something 

Built his discourse on it 

The paper sounded better than it was

The social amplification of risk: a conceptual framework

Used in climate change 

Got in touch with people from the zoo

David Lynch films of pressure 

Lots of bass

Non sound atmospherical

Specific points of when he wanted the sound 

NASA has released the sound of Jupiter 

Dreamlike feeling 

Done in parallel 

Problem 

Aspen brought by another company

Doesn’t know who will own his piece 

Website is not responsive, needs rebuilding 

Used video instead of VR because annoying maintenance for the xx

Parobilc flight

Stick to cgi 

Wanted it shown in the offices 

Looks much better on a massive screen 

Doesn’t have the rights to show it

On line collection where design of website is very outdated corporate feel

Wanted a more global reference as oppose to Spanish or British references 

Common ground that everyone can get – otherwise will get old quickly

Topics around brexit but not about brexit 

 

Guest talk by Vic von Poser – 3rd December 2018

Vic a past student on the course came in to talk to us about her practice as well as advice she has from a student perspective.

I won’t talk describe in detail about her work as it is on her blog here:

https://vicvonposermfa.wordpress.com

What appealed most about Vic’ work, is her combination of the analog with accessible digital.  The ritual and ceremony to her work adds another level of complexity to work that exists in a digital form, as well as giving it a timeless quality.  It is easy to feel constrained by lack of funds/equipment/technological know-how, but Vic’s work reminded me that you don’t need the latest gadgets/technology to make engaging work.

Below are some drawing exercises we did in class, where we drew the person opposite us without looking down.  I probably felt more comfortable with this exercise than most, because I quite often don’t look and down take my pen off the paper, when drawing.  I started doing this during the foundation course at City & Guilds, as there was a big emphasis on drawing as primary research.  As someone who cannot draw well, it meant I felt more relaxed about my drawings being less realistic and more ugly than others.

The below are drawings of Will and Leah by me, and drawings by Will and Leah of me.  After the pictures were finished, we poured water over them to introduce ritual and also to remove control.  This was a lot of fun!

 

Coding class with Paul Abbott

Paul Abbott came to give us a class on coding on Tuesday 13th November.  I thought the content of the class was very ambitious, there was varying levels of experience in the class.  Despite having an Information Systems degree, where there were mandatory coding-based subjects, I struggled with the class.  I guess that’s what happens when you “learn” something and then never look at it again…

Paul’s work was really interesting (http://www.pauldouglasabbott.co), however I feel the investment needed to make anything remotely interesting, is too huge, and I rather spend the time using the workshops and working with the amazing technicians at school instead.