Afternoon with Ben making parts for drawing machine
Meeting with Kel Portman and Suze Adams.
PhD Archive
Welcome to the Phd Blog
Keeping the blog was an important thread in weaving the research, the drawing practice and community facilitation. The degree of Doctor of Philosophy was awarded by the University of Wales Trinity St. David in 2018.
Abstract
The research considers why aesthetics, the subjective ways in which we
experience and value places, and nature’s agency are not readily included in
decision-making processes. This action research adopts a hopeful, participatory
and auto-ethnographic inquiry into the potential for developing and applying a
relational and environmental walking-art practice to overcome this disconnect; an
approach which attempts to reconnect art and life, cultural and natural systems.
Metaphor is used as a method to reflect upon an emergent art practice. The
research considers Felix Guattari’s ideas of transversality, developing an ethicoaesthetic paradigm as a critical framework, taking into account the work of relevant
practitioners and specifically Grant Kester’s arguments concerning reciprocal
creative labour. The framework is developed through a weaving metaphor and
applied to three community-led land-use change case studies; a canal restoration
project, caring for a community woodland and Landscape Character Assessment.
The weaving metaphor becomes both a process and an art work capable of
revealing and helping to incorporate subjectivity into traditionally objective
decision-making processes. As well as facilitating community-wide dialogue, the
research has, in some cases, lead to action being taken alongside nature’s
agency.
The research evaluates the transformation of the art practice and its impact, which
suggests the positive agency of art as a practical aesthetic in a social and
environmental context.
The thesis can be read here:
https://repository.uwtsd.ac.uk/id/eprint/1311/13/Keating%20R%20Landscape%20final.pdf#:~:text=As%20a%20part%20of%20post,with%20people%20in%20the%20Stroud
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Walking Festival, Weave
Nature and Nurture Walk. Led by Steve Roberts. Opportunity to make some work – video and sound – this work is the next phase of Weave walks.
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Walking the Land First Friday Walk
Led by Lucy Guenot and Valerie Coffin-Price (Ffin) as a part of the Stroud Walking Festival. Walk was at Critchley Hill Country Park and focused on the writing of Ivor Gurney.
Great that other people had led the walk. Also a stunning day and opportunity to make some work. Video and sound.
Aired the idea of a joint exhibition as part of PhD show
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Thesis, Weave, Animation, Festival of Nature
Preparation for Weave Advisory Board and Festival of Nature
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Making drawing machine
Meeting with Ben Prothero, artist blacksmith to make drawing machine – also more reading, writing and amending animation.
Interesting to work with Ben in the context of making; I was particularly aware of how much he relied on making fine judgements by eye.
As part of the process I bought some drive belts in a specialist shop in Gloucester (AC Belting) and had an interesting conversation with the shop keeper about standardization and deskilling of sales people – “they don’t know anything about what they are selling and just look at computers.” This thread of ideas about making, real/unreal, standardisation is reflected in the reading and writing.
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Thesis
22nd to 30th – Reading and writing plus numerous minor amendments to animation.
Also found a push chair abandoned on the edge of Gloucester which will make an ideal chasis for the Drawing Machine needed for the festival of nature.
Attachments
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Reflective Walk
Walk with Sue Porter around Lydney Docks exploring the liminal and other ideas of edges, boundaries and transition.
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The Weave
Wrting and circulating draft programme for Open Meeting
Making alterations to animation and uploading to Vimeo. There are still problems with the online version and I will need to review the way I either save the animation as a “movie” or the way I upload to Vimeo as the source material is as it should be.
In making the alterations I experimented with projecting my drawings onto live foliage and videoing the projection and also with projecting video of moving water onto my drawings and videoing this. My purpose is to emphasis the nature of being in a place, to directly portray the landscape. Technically the later approach was more successful but I want to develop the first approach as I feel it would be more direct and less obviously a collage or overlay, a real outside event in itself.
Large animations taking time to upload, useful reading time.
Attachments
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Corsica, Folly Wood, The Weave
Meeting with Tom Keating about developing projects in Corsica.
Drawing with Seb Buckton in Folly Wood, exploring the relationship between cognitive and subjective appreciation of nature – marking-out and drawing/surveying species in various square metres of woodland floor.
Meeting with Max Comfort about upcoming public meeting
More reading
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Weave
Drawing with Lucy Guenot near to the Heavens. Experimenting with using drawing machine so that the images scroll up and down rather than side to side so as to give a feeling of approaching something rather than passing by. It also rained and the drops on the paper are an interesting aspect for future exploration in terms of engaged aesthetic of place.
