Author: Christine

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No dice rolls: Project hand-in week.

A busy few days finishing things off and doing some playful extension pieces before final group crits for The Dice Project. Next week we move on to a new Pathway project. Next week also includes a day trip to Glasgow galleries and museums and the start of UCAS personal statement tutorials following the trip most people went on to the UCAS fair in Manchester on Tuesday. Rather than doing that, I had a quiet day in the studio completing ‘Neuroimagining’ and doing some research about M.A. courses on the computer.

Cutting perspex is an awful chore! However, I resolved the piece eventually, finding some smart nuts and bolts to put through both layers of plastic and hold the sculptural pieces in place. I did some PVA experiments on some of the perspex off-cuts and decided to add some into the ‘Neuroimagining’ composition to add a different ‘plastic’ texture – I like the way it puts a bit of punctuation between the polystyrene elements and sort of bridges the materials gap between that and the flat perspex layers. Final refinements included cutting and carving a polystyrene border/frame to fix between the perspex layers that will hopefully seal the piece up and help to prevent dust getting in – it has a huge static charge and attracts dust like a magnet!

Just the protective polythene layer to peel off the front.
Placing in different light (above). And doing a photographic exploration of the details. (below)

Printing with the polystyrene practice cutting pieces.

Finally, use photographs I have taken throughout the Dice project to do some image manipulation….. rather nice surface pattern results I think.

Neuronprint experiment- Manipulation
‘Me And My Friends’ digital image manipulation
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Perspex and Textiles.

A trip to where you get perspex sheets from – horribly expensive stuff! Nevertheless, materials have been purchased for mounting the ‘Neuroimagining’ piece. While I am contemplating how to accomplish this …. more work on ‘Me and My Friends’ dual brain textile piece – it’s hand in next week so there’s a lot of finishing off to do!

Clear perspex for the front and box profile perspex for the back I think. I like the way the latter catches the light.

I have experimented with a variety of arrangements of the bowel, brain, microbe and neuron motifs before attaching everything to the hessian backing fabric. The pieces are appliqued to the backing using the sparkly thread that represents the vegus nerve connecting the gut and the brain. Little shiny french knots help to secure everything and represent the ‘communication’ through the system …. the electro-chemistry of the neuron-bacteria link sort of idea.

Microbes in the Bowel
Neurons in the Brain
Finishing off the edges with a macrame binding stitch…… thread by thread VERY TEDIOUS!

The Finished Piece – except for working out how to mount it. Photographed with different lighting effects.

As Bruce Mau might say …… ‘Love your experiments as if they were an ugly child’ …. this certainly isn’t very pretty!

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Recording and Annotating The Development

Keeping track of developments. The problem solving: no more black marks from drawing onto the styrene. Use stencils pinned to the surface as a cutting guide.

  • Pinned stencils – no melted black marks
  • Creating depth
  • Original layout – copied and cut up as stencil.

Beautiful light responsive qualities of practice pieces discarded on the bench influence decision making about how to mount the work. It would be lovely to let light shine all the way through the finished sculpture….. consider using perspex and how to accomplish a professional looking finish.

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Neuroimagining.

There’s a word that I have invented for this phase of the dice project – I rather like it.

It has been very interesting to read about the history of neuroimaging and its development from employing EEG technologies through to modern MRI and CAT scanning techniques, also to understand the difference between functional and structural scans. It would be lovely to actually get hold of some MRI ‘slices’ printed on ‘film’ (plastic assumedly?) and be able to play around , perhaps collage with them etc. however, I imagine it’s impossible unless they are your own scan results …… ah well…..

But, while feeling a bit deflated about not being able to follow through on the scan film idea, I did have a bit of an epiphany….. I have shed loads (almost literally!) of polystyrene and there is a polystyrene cutter in the studio ….. ‘plastic’ sorted!

I have begun to sketch out some ‘shapes’ derived from the visual research I have done about neuroimaging and have been practising cutting them with the polystyrene cutter …. I am calling this process neuroimagining…… sort of drawing/carving 3D neuron tropes out of the polystyrene.

The process of driving pieces of polystyrene past the hot wire is very soothing if you are not wanting an accurate cut, however following the lines I had drawn on the polystyrene is quite difficult without a lot of practice. Also, the pen marks make the edges produced ‘dirty’ if you melt them so you have to work either just within or just without the guide marks you have drawn. There is a carving tool on the machine too, but, it needs new wire on it so, I will develop some skills with that when we have replaced the broken one.

In further visual research, I came upon this – exciting! This has produced some rather less cliched and more conceptual responses to consider than the images I found earlier in my initial searches.

https://www.neurobureau.org/galleries/brain-art-competition-2018/
https://www.neurobureau.org/galleries/brain-art-competition-2018/

I have very much enjoyed browsing through the various competition galleries from over the years. Here are some of my favourites. … a vast array of different styles and media.

Confluent: A Chenot. Colourful Pathways of The White Matter: F. Rheault. Empire State of Mind: J. Buntaine. Forgot which Box I Left My Mind In: Zoey-J. Thought Torture: S. Hillen. My Musical Brain: A. Lad. Retina: L. Griffanti. Explants: T Sloan. Brain Sketch: X.Pitkow.