WOOFISM and beyond

Category: practice-based research (Page 3 of 4)

Studio Diary: June 4th: Mutt in Space

muttinspace

No drawing this week so far due to other matters. I did get to studio briefly but mostly I have been laying the groundwork for a busy summer. I have an extended commission. A paper on early cinema and the rest of M.A. to complete by October. To manage all this I am on a tight schedule and I already called in help with animating the DRN paper from my excellent animating colleague Andy Love. His initial experiments with R.Mutt in Space below 🙂 For the rest of his super work go to his blog here: http://recursiveworlds.com

 

R Mutt Experiment 2… from Andy Love on Vimeo.

Studio Diary: May 23rd – Cartoon Droodles?

My biggest inspiration 🙂 A book called Droodles which I got from a jumble sale when a kid ….most famous droodle is the cover of Zappa’s Ship arriving too late to save a drowning witch (below)..so now you know is not pop art, minimalism or a profound theory is DROODLES 🙂 These drawings are profound meditations on the hinterland and liminal spaces between inbetween-ness in a multi disciplinary meditation on landscape, time and sequentiality specifically ‘the first and second sequential ‘moments’ (my theoretical tagging of the invention of ‘cinema’ or was it animation? (1888 LePrince) and the second moment ‘youtube’ 1995….)..so now you know..then again it could be a droodle…

witch

M.A. assessment and DRN New York

screenshot

I finally had assessment for M.A. stages one and two ‘Research Proposal’ and ‘Development’.
Was a lengthy session which explored where the work might lead in terms of developing as both practice and research.
I also proved the age old maxim that any power-point created on a PC will not work on a MAC..it still true 🙁

DRN_logo_2013

I also had good news about my submission for the Drawing Research network Conference 2013 in New York. My paper was accepted which means I have a lot of work to do between now and M.A. show in October!

More info on DRN Conference here: http://www.drawing-research-network.org.uk/call-for-submissions-drn-conference-2013/

Studio Diary: 7th May – Burolandschaft?

A very hot day and studio a little cooler than expected which good. Still managed to create three drawings despite also reading photo related items specifically about early photography ( Lady Elizabeth Eastlake’s Review from London Quarterly Review).

Had a fascinating message from an architect doing a PhD at the University of Tasmania who picked up on the recent drawings. He said they reminded him of the German ‘Burolandschaft’ workplace drawings of the Quickborner Team of 1960’s.

history_burolandschaft_planarts_council_workspace_C-pr

I did some hasty research (Googled it) and came up with drawings he referring to which were fascinating (see below). The connection is not entirely strange as I have been regarding these drawings a s cumulative ‘memory’ maps of my hometown/landscape. I am coming at it from a fine art viewpoint which more influenced by artists like Simon Lewty (http://www.artfirst.co.uk/simon_lewty/) and Aboriginal Bark Painting (signifiers of place) as much as maps and graphic diagrams. The idea of linking this further to architectural diagrams/theory fascinating. I shall be delving deeper. Especially as the drawings above show Caruso St John plans for the new Arts Council offices…ironically 🙂

http://www.carusostjohn.com/media/artscouncil/new_national_office/introduction/index.html

lewty

For one of the drawings I sectioned the page into ‘staves’ or ‘cartoon strips’ to try out some sequential abstract narrative notions I have. This could lead to some large painted/drawn canvases for final show.

Studio Diary: 30 April. Home.

Strange couple of days painting…anything but canvas though. Front of house, bathroom , shed you name it if it didn’t move I painted it with white gloss. After that i finally sat down in home studio to do some ‘graphic’ work. The resulting three drawings above. First one I consciously trying to stay small in mark-making. Middle one I did ‘blind’ to see if it loosened things up and finally a very fast drawing to try and preclude conscious acts. Finally I drew the ‘country alphabet’ above which comes from a slightly different angle and refers way back to a ‘alphabet’ of symbols I built up in late eighties. I will scan some examples from sketchbook next time I in ‘proper’ studio to compare with image above which actually more aligned with Mariscal than abstract expressionism or Paul Klee.

A basic plan?

planB

 

Simplistic but this rough outline of new directions is kind of accurate.

Path One: Traditional practice-led craft orientated production – drawings not theoretical more instinctive. Crossing into surrealist/automatic and subconscious areas.

Path Two: Literary/Historical..orientated toward factual and historical research linked to a wide gamut of technology in early stages affecting a specific area of the Thames Valley – possible PhD subject area? Relating developments in 1850s to present day impact of ubiquitous media. Possible crossover with poetry/cultural geography. e.g. Charles Tomlinson’s borders thesis.

Path Three: Criticism as Research/Graphic Research. Cartoons as investigative art criticism. James Elkins and Mark Staff Brandl connection. Political edge.

 

Studio Diary April 9th

Finally back in studio after Easter break and torn between the reading required for the Film History paper for Amsterdam and keeping drawing experiments going. In the end managed both. Above are drawings I did as usual trying not to think almost automatic and the larger ones at bottom slightly different. Inspired by some recent text paintings of my friend Zenon I played around with notion of text as drawing. I then produced the strange calligraphy like ‘hill’ drawing. Not sure exactly where this going but does seem to be laying on borderline between cartoon, text and drawing. I was reminded a lot of the Abstract Expressionist drawings I looked at a lot in the 1980’s.

Also been flicking through a Marukami Catalogue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takashi_Murakami

Studio Diary: Couple of drawings

clover swifts

 

Continuing the ‘automatic’ drawings which I have started doing in studio when waiting for software to fall over or repair itself..or machinery to work…or when I not reading up about impressionist painting and photography I do these small ‘doodles’…..

I not thinking about them just letting them fall as they might and will analyse later.

 

Starting to look like graphic designer’s maps:-)

R.Mutt – Research Investigator

 

I started to plan out the next phase of the ‘Research Odyssey’ and here two drawings and below the proposal sent to DRN for this year (not expecting to get accepted two years in a row) but happy that last year’s Moogee V Frayling has appeared in the proceedings for DRN 2012:-)

Link to publication here: http://www.drawing-research-network.org.uk/drn-2012-proceedings/

DRN proposal 2013

2013 A Research odyssey: The art object in search of new knowledge

Parodying both Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Rake’s Progress (Hogarth mashed up with Hockney ) the paper will be a dual submission of traditional academic paper and cartoon strip.

Following on from the previous investigation of Frayling’s categories this time the focus of the research will be the character of ‘The Art Object’ . The paper will chart the rise of the notion of ‘The Art Object’ and search for examples of the ever elusive ‘new knowledge’ which presently beckons like the ‘final frontier’ at the centre of postgraduate artistic research .

It will draw on examples of a range of contemporary theories to try and understand where this ‘knowledge’ may or may not lie and its elicitation (if found) may guide future practice and inform pedagogic delivery especially at PhD level.
Interleaving graphic techniques and traditional academic paper methodology will in itself create a trans-disciplinary enquiry. This enquiry along with an animated sequential version of the cartoon forms the basis of a current M.A. by registered project enquiry into drawing, sequential narrative, animation and the current state of research methodology.

Keywords: Art and design research, PhD, studio art, methodology, practice-led research, final frontiers, new knowledge and woolly theory.

Shaun Belcher
Nottingham Trent University

Submission type:
• Drawn / Practice-based submissions + • Theoretical, philosophical or contextual papers

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