Printing/Scanning Found Objects
I picked up a few things – the plants and stone because I saw them as defining features of Calton Hill, the piece of styrofoam because I liked its geometricality and because litter also defines Calton Hill. Although if I really wanted defining litter I would have picked up the tissues and condoms I saw (a feature of Calton Hill to consider/come back to).
- Dark and smokey lines – all shadow really, can make out bits of detail – reason for this was the stone wedging open the scanner lid.
- Turned off bedroom light to see if it would make a difference and it didn’t.
- Took the stone out and left the plants so was able to shut near fully. Defined and blurred lines overlap with the closest/hardest pressed the most defined. I like how some of the same lines come in and out of focus.
- I used the previous print-out as a backdrop with the aim to build-up/overlay what I’m printing. I introduced yellow wort flowers and seed pods. An ethereal/abstract quality – the areas hardest pressed to the glass break the surface of the otherwise grey page with their sharper detail. Nice highlights from the petals. Printer is running out of ink – stripes appearing.
- Did same again with using previous printout as under-layer. This time I introduced styrofoam and grass. Due to lack of ink an interesting striped pattern forms around white styrofoam – the printer strained it out.
- Tried one last print but was barely enough ink to make a mark – though enough of a mark to offer a minimal under-layer for scans direct to computer – no more need for ink.
Scan 1. Used 6. as under-layer and went for favourite found objects in styrofoam and gorse, which introduced a bit of colour to the white grey page. The green is weirdly jarring, like its intruding/shouldn’t be there.
Scan 2. Gorse and yellow wort with the lid left open. This created a strange grey rainbow effect with the plants seeming to float/drift. The vagueness of the background is at odds with the sharp details of the flowers.
Scan 3. Same composition, lid closed. Forensic, scientific, detailed – no grey rainbow.
Scan 4. Incorporated everything, lid open. A surreal contrast in detail, contrast between soft and hard lines and between the nature of the objects themselves – though they’re on the same page they don’t look like they exist in the same space.
They’re out of place but they are where they are – the site and non site (Robert Smithson and site specific art). I don’t know how relevant the printer is to theme yet but maybe it could be about turning a physical object/site into a virtual one? Worth noting the objects look trapped behind the glass – reluctant transit.
Ideas from looking at work together on mural: the journeys people and objects make – the plaques and some of the distances/places the people commemorated have come from – lines made by travel, migration – the movement of found objects from Calton Hill to the flat – displacement of stones, plants onto laptop screen.
Found objects, commemorative plaques, definitive objects, drawing with the body, observation, scanning/printing
DISPLACEMENT
SITE SPECIFIC ART
Tutorial Feedback
Cammy: Could incorporate photocopies into drawings of Calton Hill
Brooke: Really likes use of the body to create visual patterns. Likes that I’ve used found objects. The plaques are visually interesting. Suggests looking into the Observers Walks (an artists talk walking route which can be found online).
Alan: Enthused and encouraged. Interested by the site specific, which was a part of Alan’s practice. There’s scope for this becoming a long-term project. Would accept potential for a series of interconnected artworks (within one project or over multiple projects?).
Artist Research: Janet Cardiff (art walks), Book: Land and Environmental Art (can order books from library on click + collect basis), Robert Smithson, Dennis Oppenheim (transposed floor plan of galleries into environment temporarily), John Latham and Artist Placement Group – his period at the Scottish office – an interesting project about the Niddrie Bings, Nation’s disgraces exist in other places (e.g. Sunderland), Barbara Steveni
calummartin 