Tutorial with Doctor Robert Newell and Professor Andrea Liggins.
During the journey I was very aware of speed, passing through places in hours that it had taken me days to walk through the week before. The trees were out of reach, a blur rather than a world in which to slow down and become engrossed. A feeling of unraveling. A feeling I often get when driving over a route I’ve recently walked. Unraveling and somehow disrespectful. I’m not clear if its disrespectful of the place or the effort it has taken to walk.
Which ever it is, I seem to value the walking experience of place – whether I feel that the effort makes the experience more worthwhile or whether the value is increased because of the closer contact with what the place has to offer at a walking pace, I don’t know. Theoretically, I could value the car and train journeys as much as I do the walks; I could consider the preciousness of the fossil fuels being used for example and enhance my experience by being grateful, even bringing a feeling of pathos to the experience. This doesn’t seem to be a substitute for actual close contact with place. It seems as if this “knowing” is less immediate than the “sensation of place”.
This chain of thought coincided with the discussion in the tutorial about the nature of photographs; whether they are of a place or about a place. For me this also includes thinking about the relationship between photographs, drawings, video and sound, especially as all are combined within the animations. On the woodland pilgrimage, the photographs I took, or in some cases asked Tom or Kel to take, were of the activity of drawing/tree rubbing. Some that I took were also a record of how it felt to be doing it. In terms of slowing down and sensing place, photography and drawing can share the aspect of stopping and looking. Both can also be a record of a fleeting moment, not seen but nevertheless recorded.
Digital photography is really the development that enables photographs to be so much “quicker” than drawing. Previously drawing was instant whereas the photographic process was slower.
Useful discussion about applied art and artistic intention. How to balance the purpose of the work with the artistic intention? I feel that the role of aesthetics in participatory art is what distinguishes art from other participative, cultural situations and events. Its as if the artist “brings” this aesthetic consideration to the situation, or maybe more accurately, holds responsibility for incorporating the aesthetic in life. As with much of our “silo-like” organisational structure, art has been placed in its own silo. Which is tricky because aesthetics are often thought of as secondary to aspects of life such as finances and technology and the art silo has increased this separation between people and aesthetics and in some cases has itself suppressed the appreciation of beauty and nature.
One of the aims of my work is to try to develop an exemplar of how this aesthetic appreciation of place can be integrated with other values.
It seems to me that it all comes back to really knowing as well as knowing conceptually.
