this sculptural still life.. is made of iron based parts and arranged using magnets. It looks still.. but cannot be as without all the effort exerted by the magnets all the various bits would fall on the ground.
Magnets are amazing.
Having had an arrythmia diagnosed several years ago I am aware of the strange electric activity at the heart of existance. How electricity can be made using a magnet and a coil of wire has always struck me as amazing.
The purpose of all my experiments has been about how to move from away from a ‘killing time’ approach, to being more present in the present moment. In some experiments, such as watching paint dry, the kettle boil and on the lochside at twilight this has been successful. However sitting by the loch finding my mind worrying and going off at tangents was not successful in this respect. I have also noticed that certain activities are very condusive to being in the present moment: painting and making compost in the garden have turned out to be good examples.
What I have concluded is that an interjection or interruption is required, stopping the motoring on from one thing to the next. This interruption is often enough, even just for a brief time, to cause a change in energy and attitude that has a profound effect. So what I want to do is formalise this interruption in an art work.
Yesterday I started with putting together some ideas about how to make a constant motion device, either using simple harmonic motion, or more to do with mechanical actions and reactions maintained by magnets and weights.
I remember these meters.
Geoff, flying mate, has gone for a career break to Vancouver.. it looks like some of my relatives had got there first! Mucho thanks to the furry woofer.
I have had a lovely afternoon. Painting with oils on tracing paper, over the paint which originally was drying, so the wall showed through, painted myself watching it dry. I still find before I start to do a painting I prevaricate hugely, doing this and that bits of pointless flim flam, but once in position with brush in hand everything comes in to the point of the brush and it feels good.
Oils seem to work well on tracing paper as they do not make it pucker the way water based products do. Further more, being transparent, the painting will look exactly the same from both sides, a rear view looking inwards.
I recorded myself so as write moment over moment.. sort of. 
Alys was born in Belgium in 1959 and now lives and practises in Mexico City. I have come across his work before, in Paradox of Praxis, in which he filmed himself pushing a large block of ice around Mexico City until it melted, demonstrating the idea that sometimes making something leads to nothing.
Another piece of his which I love is 1-866-FREE-MATRIX. This was a telephone number that museum visitors were able to call, inspired by the artists own frustration at trying to contact a museum himself, and failing to reach a human, but simply being routed from one automated sequence menu to another. aargh! I can’t stand automated telephone answering systems. Alys set up his own sequences with disquieting options:
If you know where you want to go, press 1; If you want to know where to go, press 2; If you go where you are knowing, press 3; If you know where you are going, press 4.
and after that the choices get weirder and stranger, relating to existance, the destiny of mankind etc. I would love to experience this piece for real. It reminds me of a court case for criminal damage reported in the newspapers about 2 or 3 years ago. A man got so frustrated with the poor customer service from an electronics retailer he overwrote their telephone answering message.. he changed it from “your call is important to us, but you are in a queue and we will answer as soon as possible” to something along the lines of “we don’t give a shit about your problems, why don’t you just f*** off”. I have tried to find the article on line but as I can’t remember the shop or the date I haven’t had any luck.
Zócalo (Mexico City, 1999 collaboration with Rafael Ortega) is a 12 hour documentary following the progression of the shadow of the flagpole in the Zócalo (the main square in Mexico City) during the course of a day. The Zócalo was redesigned at the beginning of the revolutionary era as a setting for huge propagandist spectacles and became with time the ideal space to express public discontent. Alÿs’ film records how arbitrary social encounters can sometimes be perceived as sculptural situations. When I saw this I thought all the people were standing in the shadow as directed as part of the art work, but actually they are just taking advantage of a bit of shade from the sun.
There is an exhibition on just now at Edinburgh’s Embassy Gallery of artists associated with the SWG3 gallery in Glasgow. A definite with us from Telford was this painting by Benny Merris: it was called SOFT PARADE, from left to right VESTAS, CERAS, PALLAS, JUNO. Gordon is providing a sense of scale.
I was wondering about the names.. Vestas is a name I associate with Swan Vestas matches.. On the web I found on an astrology site that Ceres, Pallas, Juno, and Vesta are four major asteroids, named after Roman Gods, but the spelling is different from that chosen by Merris.
Working on the ‘Marking Time’ project and feeling a bit stuck with what to do next. I had the tracing of the shadows under the chair, the timelessness of the action of making a painting, the beauty of the autumn colours, and some amazing sunbeams.. a.k.a. Jacobs Ladders, all milling around in my head but not sure what to do with them.
So this time I painted the pattern of the shadows under the chair, using the colours of the sunbeams. I wanted the light to shine through the tracing paper, and to be well ventilated as white spirit gives me a headache. Ladders seemed the answer, and gave the illusion of other windows in addition to the stained glass window (frosted) I was painting.. along with other ladderesque symbolism.
while watching the kettle boil, for starters. I have spent a lot of time waiting with tetchy impatience for kettles to boil in the past, but this time it was very fast.. exactly one litre of cold water from the tap.
How long did it take me to eat the 4 oysters yesterday evening. I wish I had timed it but it was probably about the same time, especially if I exclude the pauses in between each one. (I might have to go and buy some more to experiment.)
I planned to spend 2 minutes 43 seconds just listening to the waves and being still, and then the same amount of time thinking about my brief for college. It didn’t work at all. Despite the serene situation my head was full of worry and stress about how to take my brief forward. It may not show..
When editing moving image pieces the cursor line presents a stopped moment.
Playing with this idea I have set up a stopped moment in the studio, using the sunflower.. with its associations of still life from Van Gogh, plus the fact this is dying plant, but full of seeds for the future. The unlit candle, time halted, and watching paint dry, meditation in the here and now.
and this is looking at the same frozen moment but from a different angle:
