Platonic Solids and the Elements

I've been doing a little bit of exploration with a bit of possible content, Plato's theoretical connection of 3-D polyhedra with the 'elements'. I've spent a lot of time - probably too much - doing initial research, rather than exploring possible visual forms I could use to communicate my content, so continuing to read through Plato's theory's was the point of this task. What I need to start looking at is ways of delivering/making sense of the confusing mess that is the content i've looked at so far. Anyway, the point is, these are some experiments I've been doing with these ideas' as content. The first was some work on Photoshop and Illustrator. Using illustrator I drew out some of the elements, using them as a frame, I dragged the vector files into photoshop and used a generated .RAW file and experimented with levels to create the illusion of shading/three-dimensions. I used found images to communicate the ascription of all the regular polyhedra to their elements.

Altogether, these aren't incredibly successful, especially because it's easy to compare them visually with the thousands of other illustrations/work relating to the Platonic Solids. I can't imagine many people would understand the ideas behind the various shapes purely from these visuals. In fact no-one I've spoken too knew - without me pointing mentioning their relation to the elements - what they were related to at all. My main focus isn't trying to communicate this particular concept, the point is to engage with the idea of them being more than just shapes that are nice to look at.

Platonic and Archimedean Solids / Symmetry: The Ordering Principle

I got these for christmas, they're both properly amazing, not just visually, the content was/is really, really inspiring. Daud Sutton wrote and illustrated the first ('Platonic and Archimedean...'), and although I've had an interest in the way polyhedra looks, the connection between the content of the book - the ideas behind each shape, what they represent, and various three-dimensional mathematic theories - and the beautiful drawings, made it easy to engage with what the shapes actually mean and why they exist. I know it seems kind of lame saying we need pretty pictures to actually be interested in something, but I think as an artist, our role is to deliver content in a meaningful way. Without either of these books looking nice and being collectable/desirable to own, a majority of people - probably including myself - wouldn't have stumbled across any of the incredible theories and questions this work opens up. The second book was equally as good, how the author and illustrator - David Wade - manages to produce such a small and concise book on such a huge subject is beyond me. Again looking at the pretty pictures and reading through this work generated a huge amount of ideas, to the point my head kind of started to hurt. Attempting to produce a book of a similar calibre would be far too over-ambitious for me to even consider within the time constraints of this project, and I need to improve my time-management. But these needed to be commented on, as I imagine my exhibition piece/book will take a great deal of inspiration from these two book, in terms of their incredibly successful execution of content delivery.

Inroducing Fractal Geometry / The Fractal Geometry of Nature

I picked this up out of interest when I was looking at the Edinburgh Central Library as a collection, it turns out it's more than relevant to what I've been looking at. 'The Fractal Geometry of Nature' hurt my brain a bit at first so I have to admit I started of with 'Introducing Fractal Geometry'. In a wider sense it was incredible thinking about the relevance of the concept of fractals in general. I don't want to spend a lot of time talking about all the different ways that fractal measurements are used, but rather focus on it relevance in context of my chosen subject.

The point of fractals is that they can be used to understand even forms and measurements which appear incredibly random, like coastlines, blood cells and cloud formations.

Through ideas of self-similarity - which theorists like Koch and Sierpinski had already laid the foundations for - Mandelbrot discovered patterns in the most amorphous corners of nature. As a result fractals measurements are now at the forefront of Cancer research and cures for diseases like AIDS*. I'm going to continue reading this in an attempt to better understand the techniques he uses, but in terms of the time constraint of the project, I'd like to focus on the importance of the self-similarity side of things, by discovering patterns in nature, we gain a greater understanding of how it works. In a really, really basic overview; Mandelbrot found that although shapes varied in size and position they would maintain there original form. In terms of the importance of the regular shapes I've been looking at;

"The homogenous distribution on a line, plane, or space has two very desirable properties. It is invariant under displacement, and it is invariant under change of scale." (Mandelbrot, B, 1977)

*Lesmoir-Gordon, N., Rood, W., Edney, R. (2000) Introducing Fractal Geometry, Cambridge: Totem Books

Processing

Initially I thought it would a good idea to Processing to generate shapes, considering it would be appropriate to have visuals generated from coding and numbers. It's become pretty apparent that - although throughout this project and afterwards I want to continue learning how to use this scripting language - its unlikely I can generate a books worth of content using this software, there's still a lot I have to learn about it. I would like to spend time documenting what I learn within the constraints of this project. The reason it's appropriate is it connects with the idea of collected data (the source code) as a visual form, and the point of visuals - engaging with a target audience. What's good is that I'm exploring geometric shapes which is a nice way to start generating imagery. I know the image above doesn't look like much, but by merely generating it I understand elements of the coding data a lot better, to a point that I can even start experimenting a tiny bit.

Book Forms pt. 2

Focussing on having a paper back I've been looking at the series of The Guardians' collectable 'The Greek Myths' booklets. I liked the fact that although there was a level of continuity within the books materials, binding and form; they came in a few different colours. I like the idea of the book looking a little like an old school jotter, in a nostalgic kind of way, everything I've been looking at online hasn't been quite what I've been after. Being back in Leeds means I can't spend time looking through all my old school stuff back home for examples, I picked up a lined jotter in the College's shop thats pretty similar to what I'm after.

I'd rather not just staple the book together though, so I'm going to look at a simple way of binding that I can pick up myself rather than spend time with the harassed Vernon Street print room staff.

Limn

Currently working on a website/collaboration project/night, with two friends. The monthly club night, starting the 25th March, will consist of two overhead projectors, with live onstage illustration being beamed onto two lengths of material on the end of the stage. We will host numerous guest illustrators, some established, some just students, all good. As well as guest DJ's and electronic musicians, with a similar forward thinking attitude to their work. Why I felt it relevant to mention this is the fact they we are building a company identity as well as curating work on several different platforms of communication. The website will host work by our guests, mixtapes and artist profiles, photos and videos from our nights, we will be screen printing t-shirts, making badges, posters and various other forms of merchandise. The night in itself, although fueled (hopefully) by a spontaneous synergy between the music and the artwork, will be a live exhibition of various forms of work, involving a lot of complex processes and potential calamities between transitions. We're currently working on contacting people we want involved and a midst a lot of organizing, but I will post further visual work as it unfolds. As a collective we are also going to be the next artists' to have work in A Nation of Shopkeepers 'Window of Opportunity'. Really excited about all this.

http://limnlimnlimn.co.uk/

More Microsoft Word Processor graphics, on a 2001 PC version. These are scans that were printed on quite an old inkjet, it gives them a little more character, you're best to click on the images to see them full size - you'll see what I mean. This particular graphic - before being messed with by me - resembles Maslow's hierarchy of needs pyramid, made up of trapezoid sections and a triangle at the top. The type at the top at the top if the first is the software's 'WordArt' tool, in a font that was it wasn't capable of processing.

Books and Book-Collecting

"The value of a well-planned collection is greater than the sum of its parts, and this is true whether we regard 'value' as meaning either usefulness or monetary value. In any worthwhile collection completeness is unattainable." (Brook, G.L., 1980)

This book was incredibly relevant in terms of some of the concepts I've been looking at, the idea of the 'value' of a collection or even a single book in consideration of its 'usefulness'. The way in which a book or library of books, through collected information of history, science, art etc., can provide a form in which this information can be consumed. I love the idea of a book merely being a medium in which to supply information of whatever the readers interest. I guess this kind of pushed my interest in the content of my book being quite a wide set of ideas, I've struggled to find a single physical collection of relevance to my visual practice and am considering the idea of collected information in the form of a book, even it is made up of information from other books. My point is, I'm interested in the form information is supplied in, I'd love to take something as mind numbingly boring to most like mathematics or graphs, nodes, networks, and provide enough visual stimulus for the relevance of this information to speak to say, artists or people who would otherwise find little interest in the particular subject. Because I'm aware that my book will most likely be lacking a great deal of information in my chosen field in comparison to an essay by a science student or professor or mathematician - G.L. Brooks talks of the idea of 'biblia a-biblia', a book thats not a book, a book that is relevant and valuable as part of a collection, it's presence rather than the amount of information contained - this must be admitted by any artist making a book, it is the artists/designers' role to supply the relevant information as the mode of transport, and I think that its fair to say that within the time constraint of this brief it would be difficult for me to thoroughly document any corner of mathematics or science. But I hope what I have time to document enough to form an informative as well as a nice-looking book.

Brook, G.L (1980), Books and Book Collecting, London, Andre Deutsch Limited.

Microsoft Works Graphics

Visuals generated using various statistics in old versions of Microsoft Works programs. It was a simple experiment in engaging the input of data collection, and creating a visual output. I'm developing an increasing interest in creating different forms of visual interpretations of data collection - graphs, nodes and charts, in logical euclidian geometric forms, have for some reason started to excite me. I plan to explore the use of geometry as a reference point, visual interpretation of collected information/data, and perhaps numerically formed shapes and graphics. These were created using 2001 versions of Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, originally I input 'logical' data, however upon experimentation with chosen data input, number patterns etc. and customizing the colour settings I created some interesting patterns...

This was a pie chart created on a 2005 version of Microsoft Works Word Processor, again with customized data input and colour settings..

I couldn't really export these in any useful format, it was possible to export the graphs as PNG's, however I had to screenshot the chart, for some reason when I simply highlighted the chart and copied and pasted into another program to be saved as a JPEG, some weird communication error between the two programs resulted in the picture looking kind of strange in comparison...

Graphs and Networks

This was a book intended "for final-year undergraduate and graduate students in mathematics, computer science, engineering and operations research." So not second-year art college students, a few pages in my head started to hurt and I guess it would be a waste of time - within the constraints of this project - to attempt to go about having a full understanding of graph theory, as that was never the main focus or intention of this project in the first place. The relevance of this was its reference to the importance of the organization and categorization of collections - sets - of data/information. The use of graphs as a way of the non-mathematical number genius understanding the value, and contained elements of a set....

"The notion of set; a set is collection of distinct objects of any nature, which are called its elements or numbers." (Cache, B; 1979)

A majority of the book is an explanation of various forms of organizing sets in numbers and categories with no visual element, and as someone with a non-mathematic brain, I was obviously drawn to the visual elements. Here are some scans from the books diagrams/graph examples...

So basically, this books interested me in exploring a way I could use shapes to say, describe numerical elements or engage a non-maths/science orientated audience in some form of maths theory, however simple.

Edinburgh Central Lending Library / Aurora Books

Over the holidays I visited the Central Lending Library with the intention of lending some books out in aide of research for this project, and discovered the Library itself to be a worthy research tool. The building has various floors consisting of different categories, like the Fine Art library, and the Scottish and Edinburgh Libraries. The vast collection of books is divided up by code, a process that must've been incredibly complicated in order for the books to be accessible by the network on the computers, and for people lending from the library to be able to engage with and use in order to easily access what books they want.

What interested me in this respect was the comparison to a tiny second hand bookstore in the Cannonmills area of Edinburgh. It's not like this would generally be a place where people would go to hunt down a particular book, and always struck me as somewhere to have a kind of root around, like you would in say, a large vintage clothing store. I spoke to the owner briefly about his collection, and although he had categorized much of the books historically, the concept of narrative in a collection didn't seem to strike him as important. The shops been there since I can remember in quite an expensive area of the city, so it must be doing alright. This would probably be attributed to the owners' skills as a book collector, knowing when and what to buy and sell, and having a keen eye for collectable items or books of value. What's quite interesting is the fact that such a small store has its own online inventory, I guess even second hand book store owners have to move with the times.

National Museum of Scotland

This was incredibly uninspiring, however the collection on display at the Museum did provide another example of how an acquired collection can be used to benefit the public, in that it's place as a collection is to inform. There was a floor called 'Treasured" that displayed a number of artifacts from various cultures. These items acted as a visual aid to a short informative summary of the particular culture it had been acquired from, it gave me an insight into how valuable a collection can be as a gateway to an unenvisionable part of history.



The floor up from this was called 'Communicate!' various collections of objects, acting as a chronologically curated visual history. For example, a large display of telephones showing the changes and adaptations the phone undertook over the years. Again, non of this was particularly enthralling but a majority of displays were interactive, directly engaging and questioning the audiences relationship with the collection.

Book Forms

It's way to early for me to say what form I'd like my book to come in, I'm terrible at the practical side of this so I guess I should work it out as quick as possible so there's room for mistakes. I put together a plain soft back today...

I'm not particularly interested in creating any sort of flamboyant, ridiculously shaped book, feel like that would lack any kind of relevance to the project and I'd rather spend more time on the content. These appealed to me a lot, simple in terms of the format of the book, the strength in the content.

I'd rather put more thought into the content, but definitely swaying towards a soft back book, I kind of appreciate the delicacy of them.

Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art - 50 Years exhibition

It's the 50th anniversary of the National Gallery of Modern Art, so in celebration the galleries' entire collection is currently on display. Being that I've been considering ways of visually referencing collections in a manner that audiences can engage with that are non-ocular, viewing this exhibition kind of gave me an insight into how a collection works thats primary purpose is to be engaged with by an audience. The curation of such a wide collection of work, even in something as ambiguous as modern art spanning over a 50 year period, was undertaken logically and categorically. Works were divided into groups, some as simple as 'Heads' or 'Things', others included 'Still Life' or 'The Artist as a Subject'. This kind of provided a loose narrative to the exhibition, if it were somewhat chronological, in terms of when the objects were either made or acquired by the gallery, I feel it would have felt a lot more broken in this sense. Some of the groupings seemed to clash a little, particularly the more simply named, I felt like they were kind of placed together with such a vague connection, the content of the works so wide it felt like the shouldn't be in a room together.

A trend I noticed, which has encouraged my choice of media for the exhibition, was that pieces utilizing light were given there own space, if not it was much easier to be drawn towards those particular pieces.

Light seemed in general to have a great deal of influence in the curatorship of this exhibit, some rooms allowed natural light in, particularly the monotone and more greyscale works. Other rooms were in complete darkness apart from the works' themselves, the centre piece - commissioned for this exhibition - was made up almost entirely of abstracted lamposts. What's bad about this is if I want to use light as part of my piece in the exhibition, I have to figure out what light I don't want as part of piece, I don't know if this will require building some sort of booth or just choosing a space - if there are any available - where the use of light can be used to a worthwhile extent.

Lauriston Castle, Cramond, Edinburgh

Lauriston Castle was left to the Edinburgh City Council, a lot of buildings like this still exist but are now used as hotels, offices or flats. The complete interior and collection belonging to it's most recent owners - the Reid's - are still intact, providing a rich historical reference point. The novelty of this collection to me was that, rather than having clear categories or narrative (a visitor would find it very difficult - without any knowledge of Edwardian history or antiques - to intuitively understand what the collection was about or for), the visitor is provided with a tour guide and expert on all the particulars of the castle. This sort of engagement with the collection allowed the to be generally untouched by signs, reference points, categories and instead a narrative is provided by a guided tour, and any questions I felt I needed to ask could be asked directly.

William Robert Reid, the last owner, was clearly an avid book collector and a mildly obsessive collector of Italian furniture. When asked, the tour guide (Mike), attributed this to Mr. Reid being brought up in the Victorian era wherein a gentleman of the time would likely collect things as a symbol of ownership. The owners before Mr. Reid built up an aristocratic collection, ie. consisting of items handed down through their family, as Mr. Reid acquired most of the collection himself, I felt it far more insightful in terms of that persons interests and passions.

These photos kind of provide a visual guide to the castle and the collection within...

The part that interested me the most was Mr. Reid's book collection, these shots were taken by me...

A great deal of the more valuable books were given to the National Library of Scotland, so the collection as it stands in the castle is not as say, complete, as it was before Mr. Reid died, but this struck me as perhaps another purpose of a collection, a useful service for others who otherwise would not be able to afford a collection themselves. (I've explored this part of the collection a little more here) As the castle itself is a historical reference point, everything that the collection contains, and the collection itself, allows the visitor to understand not only the life of Mr. Reid himself, but the culture of his particular class at the time.