Megadoily

On Thursday I had a discussion with Aaron Gach, the artist in residence about my work photographing from above and  printing photographs on hyperbolic planes. He was complementary, but pointed out that I with each piece I had an excuse for not going bigger. This is a criticism I've gotten from others as well. I said that I needed to go life size with my stuff. The crochet models are nice to play with, but the paper models, without as much elasticity may end up working better on their own.  

I found a math professer at Madison, Gabriele E. Meyer, who crochets larger scale hyperbolic structures. Here's one below. Her website is at http://www.math.wisc.edu/~meyer/airsculpt/sculpt07.html

I also found Jean Lee, who is crocheting with rope. This is the only example I could find, and maybe it's the only one she's done. This kind of material could really allow me to go life size using crochet. Jean Lee runs a design studio/blog/vintage store with Dylan Davis called Ladies & Gentlemen. Here's one of their images of the megadoily.

Aaron Gach talked about getting a grant in order to go bigger. I just need a larger purpose...

Schuyler Duffy

Does some nice constructions

From her site schuy.bol.ucla.edu

Charlott Markus

I found this from Charlott Markus. I've been thinking about my presentation of the hyperbolic rock image. I like how this textile is framed, and the surface of it will look similar to what my image will look like (hopefully).  I wouldn't bust a hole in the wall, but this very complex figure protruding - almost oozing  from the wall is really appealing. It does a good job of bringing attention to the shape of the textile. On another note I think this is a good example of a piece of art that was made to be photographed (Sontag).

From www.charlottmarkus.com

Photo as an object proposal v.2

My original project statement was rather vague.

In this project I'm going to turn my photographs into three dimensional objects. This could be done by, for example, connecting 4 triangular photographs into a triangular pyramid. I will not do that, I will bring my photographs into three dimensional space in a sense, but really I will be changing the properties of the two dimensional space they occupy. 

My intent is to create hyperbolic photographs. They will not depict hyperbolic space, rather they will exist in a hyperbolic plane. The best example of this is hyperbolic crochet; it is very much like the form my photographs will take. 

A requirement of the project is that the photograph extend into the z-axis more than just the thickness of the paper that it is printed on. In our world, because space is linear, we will perceive these images as three dimensional objects. My interest in this form because these images will not technically occupy three dimensions, rather, they will occupy only two, but those two dimensions, rather than being linear, will be hyperbolic. That is my goal.

The subject matter will be rather simple for this project. One, a large rock, will be used for it's lifelessness. The hyperbolic form is unique in this world to organic life forms. it is not seed anywhere else. This rock makes sense also because it is space filling. The space filling depiction of it will reflect that volume.

Another image will be of a brick wall with moss growing out of the mortar. This image makes sense because it juxtaposes the hyperbolic form of the moss with the crystalline structure of the brick. Both these objects have volume, but for different reasons. The moss could be considered as existing on a two dimensional hyperbolic plane, while the brick obviously exists in a three dimensional linear plane. 

There are other images that may be included as well.

I intend to print these images either on canvas using a duotone silk screen process that will be sewn together into a hyperbolic form or onto matte photo paper that will be folded into hyperbolic forms. Both methods will consist of considerable challenges and will be the focus of this project. 

Photosnyth

As much as I dont really like Microsoft, this is a pretty cool thing. It's called photosynth and it puts tons of images together to create a 3d virtual object and a map of the space. Here's one I like

photosynth.net

Gwong Osang - Photo Sculptures

these photograph sculptures by Gwong Osang are very cool. I like how he's reproducing things with photographs - the limitations he encounters make what he's doing pretty cool. It reminds me of the faces from Golden Eye for N64. I keep thinking about doing something similar to this, but I'd like it to be more architectural, with more straight lines and 90 degree angles

Thanks to accidentalmysteries for posting these pictures

2D-3D

I found this work by Doug Aitken. For my next project I want to build something out of photographs.

I think I could do something along these lines, were the pictures come together to form a pyramid. I have this big composite of a rock that I want to make into a 3 dimensional object, but not so geometric as a pyramid. I have a bunch of interesting surfaces that i think I could put together into something.

Thought I'd post my images-just imagine they're lined up

Crit

Critique was mixed. I felt like I got everything across with my picture that I wanted to. The sterility, the sense of height, how it the perspective changed the perception of the space (going from creepy and claustrophobic to open and emotionless). Geffeler's work always seems a little strange to me - I'm not sure why; I think I captured that feeling in my image and maybe it wasn't well received. It's definitely not like most of the American photographers we study.

The three photographers I was looking to for information were all european, and the pure documentary style reflects that. I wasn't trying to evoke some strong emotional response with the photos, I was just showing the subject from a different perspective. Geffeler's work is not made to evoke strong emotions, and it's not made with any clear reason other than to show spaces from a different spacial and temporal perspective. It looks like it could find it's home in an archive, but it has little use there. His work (and mine as well) occupy this niche between blue print and building. The blue print is this sterile representation of a space. It has no dimension, no color, nothing left behind from human presence. The space has so much more character, dimension, color, texture; it moves through temporal space and requires a space many orders of magnitude greater than the blue print.

The transition between blueprint and building is one example of the transition of ideal to real discussed in philosophy and many of the sciences. One may have an ideal mate, who has A and B and does C and D, but the real mate who falls into these ideal categories will always have other characteristics that make him/her less than idea. This dichotomy of real and ideal is the reason I chose to pursue this style–because it falls in-between what is ideal–the blue print, and what is real–the actual space. It represents the space in a totally unrealistic way that is like the ideal in it's dimension and sterility, but like the real thing it shows signs of human presences - the worn paint, the graffiti , and the drawbacks of the transition from ideal to real - the poor lighting, the unnerving corners; all this without being in the real space.

I took a different approach than much of the class and because of that it wasn't appreciated. My use of text was criticized because it was secondary to my image. Some of the projects had far too much text that dominated the image; I was trying to stay away from this. My fear in this project was that it would turn out as text accompanied with photos. We talked about some photographs resembling post secret submissions in critique; this should hardly be taken as a complement because these postcards are only ever text accompanied by image. It was quite obvious that many of the images were made for the text; the connection was obvious and the art seemed pointless. Last year I had a conversation with David Opdyke, the 2009 Beloit artist in residence, we discussed the role of text in art. One of things he told me, why make art if you can just write it [meaning] on the wall. He made his art because he couldn't express his ideas in words. The idea's were complex enough that it was more efficient to build these huge models than to write it as text.

When text is dominant in a pairing of text and image, does the piece continue to be a photograph, or is it expressed as text equally well? Full sentences often seem overwhelming, and to pair a paragraph or an essay with image seems ridiculous to me.  maybe I didn't include as much text as I could have, but I was certainly not going to allow the text to consume my image.