Geometure

Freehand drawings narrating the defence mechanism of the armadillo.

Urino Genetalia

 

 

 

The illustrated highlights of my recent trips to the Hunterian Museum and the Grant Museum of Zoology.

Charlotte Whalen

Documenting police archives in Guatemala, beautiful juxtaposition between order and disorder.

http://www.charlottewhalen.net/

"Charlotte's work as a photographer combines images and text to bring sustained attention to under-examined political, cultural, and environmental issues. She is currently working on two long-term projects: one on development and the subprime crisis in the United States; the other on transitional justice and the aftereffects of Guatemala's 36-year armed conflict. To see more of Charlotte's work from Guatemala, and her work with undocumented Guatemalan immigrants living in the US, visit www.afterlaviolencia.org."

WHAT AM I?//EVIDENTIAL ARCHIVE

Hoarding badges

WHAT AM I? progress

 

A few mock ups for the shoot.

Providing evidence that my collections have existed.

BIBLIOMANIA

I feel that I will, not out of choice, become this man in later life.

WHAT AM I?

With the project being extremely open with regard to content and outcome, I endeavour to project myself as a collector/archivist. In this way, I felt it necessary to study order/disorder and instantly was attracted to the similarities between collecting and archiving.

The above prototype was following the method of constructing miniature models of some of the items I have collected over the past year or so with a view to collate them in a glass top cabinet as a series of artefacts. This is a comment on the witty archiving of George Maciunas, the founder of the Fluxus movement, who raised general objects to the stature of art, simply by definition.

Realising the outcome of the project would not cater for my need to my disorganised, compulsive nature. By taking the subject of collecting a lot less literally, I decided to compare collecting/archiving to hoarding. Hoardism is often wrongfuly portrayed by the media as a side-effect of laziness (read any Sun article with the words 'slob' and 'hoarding' in the title) when in actual fact, it derives from numerous obsessive-compulsive disorders.

 Red Room by Robert Therrien

"Some objects he uses are found, some are made by and for the artist. His use of domestic images might suggest an interest in the spatial world of still-life but his interest in the human body’s interaction with space is more connected to architecture. Therrien’s images and the objects he selects expose the hidden drama of the unnoticed, invisible, physical and mental relationships which exist in the world of human beings, between human beings and between the objects they create to help them live their lives. "

This is an installation by the French artist Robert Therrien, which comprises of 888 red objects saved, stacked and stored in a purpose-built room. This almost obsessive nature of this collection warps the viewer's perception of the boundary between archiving and hoarding, challenging their understanding of order/disorder. The act of collecting items to such a compulsive degree was a conscious decision by the artist and so this suggests the process was of much more socio-scientific relevance than the outcome.

SCAFFOLD SANS

UPDATE //

Following my drawings and subsequent digital mock ups of the specimen font, the obvious next step was to introduce another dimension. Using just straws and some ropey string, I recreated the forms looking particularly at geometry and trying to stay true to the observational drawings that began the whole project.

These are indeed simple mock-ups but, jeez, they took a fucking while. The finicky rope-tying was tedious but I think the results will help me to realize the prospect of actually creating the typeface from scaffolding.

I may make a few more of these but I don't want to dwell because it is now important I move onto perspective and perhaps a slightly larger scale.

TEST

test 2

TEST

test 1

LIQUIDS RESEARCH

Since Justine and I first thought about making a short film together, we have been putting our heads together to find a subject that is unassumingly mundane but can be transformed into a spectacle that arouses intrigue and beauty. These are a few of the films I have come across in the past few days after playing with a ferrofluid at the Science Museum last week.

Liquids, obviously are ubiquitous, but it is not the aesthetics of these experiments that really have us hooked; it's the unusual physical properties that they hold. For example salt water will not freeze until it makes contact with air and cornstarch paste possesses the appearance of a liquid but the impact of a solid.

Today, I bought cornstarch and began to play with the substance that is known as gloop, and Oobleck, which has been adopted by popular culture from a Dr. Seuss. It is scientifically known as a non-Newtonian fluid, which is an allusion to the ambiguous nature of the substance's viscosity. Oobleck and other 'shear thinckening fluids' are being tested on their effectiveness to stop bullets.