After the success of my first drawing in this new series at Gallery Aferro's benefit auction,For()Loop Meditation 0.1 (Prototype), I was eager to get started on the next!
For()Loop Meditation 0.1 (Prototype)
In the series, I use circuit diagrams from prototypes of an installation I'm working on as cosmological diagrams, reconfiguring them into mandala-like geometric arrangements. The installation consists of pushbutton prayer beads that will control a meditation on an image one pixel at a time, changing the light in the room to the color of each pixel. The QR codes in the drawings replicate a similar effect on the screen of the viewer's phone.
For the second iteration, I decided to try out a different configuration of the same circuit diagram, moving from the LEDs out to the pushbuttons, rather than the more vertical orientation seen above.
First I plot out the design, and then lay it over the paper I will use. I then trace the image, impressing the lines into the paper beneath. I like the sort of additive-subtractive there-not there push and pull it creates, emerging as the negative space of the charcoal rubbing (becoming positive space). It seems very apophatic to me.
Next I rub the charcoal over the surface to watch the lines emerge.
The next step was where I began experimenting a bit. In adding color, I first used fine markers, drawing right into the minuscule white grooves in the first iteration. However, that muddied quite easily if I wasn't careful, and also had a bit of a restricted palette.
I wanted to find a more versatile and reliable method, so I began researching liner brush techniques and studying master sign painters a bit (here's one of the more helpful [and endearing] videos I found). With the right solution of watered down acrylic paint, and surprisingly less practice than I anticipated needing, I was able to get pretty good results.
Then it was just a matter of pretending to be Isaac Newton, selecting the most cosmically harmonious and "complete" palette I could. Dividing the 360 degrees of a circle into 9 sections (for each "bead" drawn), I found the corresponding color of that degree on a color wheel, and painted accordingly. For the LED interior, each cluster of diodes contains an R, G, and B, encased by one of the 9 previously used colors, sweeping from left to right (to balance the warm and cool colors as they tended to run the opposite direction in the outer circle). Then each RGB color is followed out to its MOSFET transistor and terminating pin on what would be the Arduino.
Lastly I erased out the space for the QR code, gridded the square and filled in the QR pixels.
I'll probably try a few more configurations of this prototype before moving on to a new circuit diagram, but I'm also eager to do some related drawings of the pushbuttons themselves, or perhaps incorporating and image which would be cycled through in pixel form by the QR code.
After working on so many projection installations lately, it feels good to draw!
Greetings, art fans! As I endeavor to wrap up some posts on Fourfold, my collaborative exhibition with Christine Soccio and John Spano, I wanted in this final post to share some photos and videos from events during the show's run. I promised to be brief, so if you're looking for more explanation, you can mine all these good links of my other posts on this endeavor below!
The lineup of events began with a spectacular opening reception. Then, in the spirit of collaboration, Fourfold became the setting for a really superb original music/DJ performance by The Freq(uency) Show, featuring live beats, projection visualizations, and a hip hop tap dance collaboration that would knock your socks off (Seriously, check these guys out!). And lastly, we closed out our run with an artist talk. Enjoy!
David Oquendo lending some... inspired thoughts :-)
With that, I fondly bid Fourfold farewell, and I look forward to the next time John and Christine and I might get to work together again! I urge you to check out their work, and go see the Freq Show while you're at it!
This summer from May 20 through June 30, (2015) Christine Soccio, John Spano, and I embarked on a collaborative adventure. If you've been following this project, pardon a bit of redundancy, but if you're stumbling onto this post without context, this should be a pretty comprehensive overview. We decided to take philosopher Martin Heidegger's notion of the interrelated modes of being of the "fourfold" as an impetus for collaboration. Joined by the commonality of light as a frequently used medium, we decided to ply our otherwise very different practices together and see what emerges. This exhibition, Fourfold, at Solo(s) Project House in Newark, NJ was the result!
Fourfold Collaboration
The main attraction, as it were, was an entirely collaborative project, in which we used digital projection, laser cut plexi, acrylic rods, a custom hole cut into a wall, glow in the dark paint, an arduino, and some strategic lighting to compile the 5 layers of an Ammann grid. You can follow this link for a post about the backstory about its conception and installation. Here's the final project:
While the automated shutter is open, text imagery is projected through the plexi grid and through the window onto the back wall within the darkened room, casting reflected and refracted images as well as the viewer's shadow into various places in the gallery (the walls on either side of the window, the side wall, the wall behind the projector, etc)
Then when the shutter closes, turning off the projector, The phosphorescent panels inside the darkened room glow with a photographic memory of the grid imaged, compiled from the 5 distinct layers.
my automated shutter, powered by an Arduino
shutter open...
...shutter closed
view from inside the project
Individual Collaborations
Meanwhile, this main collaborative project sat in the midst of many other pseudo collaborations, in which we individually applied each other's practices to our own, funneling the concepts, materials, and subject matter of each other artist through our own modes of making work.
My projects were the following, a series of drawings and a projection negation installation, each of which you can read more about at the above links. Here are some final images.
Two drawings, one for each venue (for the first portion of the exhibition it was a multi site exhibition... more on that below). Each uses the floor plan of the respective gallery as the basis for mandala like imagery, with a functioning QR code that takes the viewer to a live stream video of that gallery. The charcoal is a nod to John's smoke usage, and the process of erasure (from my own practice) reveals Christine's Ammann Grid.
A little co-mingling between pieces - a collaboration of the cast imagery from "Fourfold" and my drawing
And my projection negation piece
The Threefold Fourfold, in Twofold Fivefold
John's individual works: an analogue projection borrowing from Christine's patterns and my use of stained glass, and a print conflating his hazmat man with Christine's Ammann grid and my QR code imagery
John Spano
John Spano
Christine's pieces, laser cut plexi with light projecting through them, one combining my QR codes with John's hazmat, the other with his Calvin Klein ad usage.
Christine Soccio
Christine Soccio
Christine Soccio
Multi-Site Collaboration
And finally, the last component of the exhibition was its interconnectedness with its sister space in NY, R.Jampol Project(s). We wired up several live streaming video feeds to connect the two venues together virtually, dubbing one wall in the Newark gallery the "Portal to the Lower East Side."
While on view, this "portal" featured live feed of the exhibitions on view in the other space, pictured below is Christine's installation.
a little mid-install live feed
our computer setup to project onto the wall, as well an extra webcam to enable the mobile-friendly live streaming of my QR code mandala drawings
our "portal to the LES" wall
testing out the live feed
Live feed screenshot of Christine's project in NY
After the NY run was through, we converted the projection to a recursive live feed of the Newark gallery, viewed from behind one of Christine's plexi pieces. This way it would view viewers as they view themselves viewing the view of themselves viewing.... and so on... as filter through the colors of the collaborative imagery of her piece.
setting up the camera
positioning it behind Christine's work
And that about wraps up this exhibition. In my next (much briefer, I promise) post, I'll share some photos and videos from the opening and other events, and then I believe we should be all caught up to speed!
A Directory of the other posts about this project:
