Out of Pictopoiesis

it is incredible how a call to action such as the Summer show in thirteen weeks time really galvanises.

For me this is all the more the case for the contrast of approach this represents relative to my normal practice; the painting being a painstakingly slow, absorbing production, each large painting maybe taking several months.

The projection mapping workshop during the residency has triggered my interest in projection: the ephemerality of the visual is all the more striking when contrasted with the material physicality of the surface/object on which the projection alights. In this, I see a poetic realm and as such, I have been experimenting at home with our basic digital projector* and countless items collected over many years which now present themselves as potential props that can be adopted as integral with my artistic trajectory. Each item was acquired for a nominal amount of money because of something about that object that struck me. I have not so far taken the opportunity to point to exactly what it is that has attracted my attention because I have not been able to specify because in identifying one reason, many other reasons instantly flood into my mind, so the thinking has been problematic.

Now I see the chance to rediscover some of these objects as components in an installation or two adopting the digital tool. It suddenly struck me that what I have in mind is a poiesis, a making which depends on the digital, unlike pictopoiesis.

This extension of pictopoiesis I can call digitopoiesis, and googling the word it seems I have invented a new word; so digitopoiesis it is!

I have additionally made a series of assemblage sculptures which adopt these items as components and these assemblages may well find their place in the digitopoietic installations I have in mind. I shall do some mockups at home with a view to transferring them to the Summer show.

I think this creative production will sit well opposite the paintings. The idea of digitopoiesis has evolved in consideration of the timelines I have been making for the paintings and more lately drawings (as in Slow Circle); so everything ties up and is traceable right back to source and origin, which is in itself a pictopoietic principle.

*I recall that our digital projector was also obtained at a car boot sale some years ago.

Notes to self:

The first installation maquette for my own reference – the end result to be an extensive refinement of this setup; working title Black Dot (Pictodigitopoiesis):

components: black dot animation, items from my studio (including earlier works in painting and assemblage sculpture) and digital tools

 

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