MFA Final Degree Show - Stained Ice
The work presented here in some ways represents a natural end point to a body of work phylogeny which has concerned itself with the visualisation of evolutionary interactions. Here Bohm's views have been addressed as "the dialogue between behaviour of materials in nature and the conscious remodeling of the underlying processes in different ways in science and art". This idea resonates with those of Thompson in 'On Growth and Form' where he refers to inorganic patterns as "curious resemblances and analogies to phenomena of organic form". It was in research trips to Greenland and Belize that the two ideas coalesced along the lines of those proposed by Bohm as he probed the idea of an implicate order of unbroken wholeness using the analogy of a stream.
"On this stream, one may see an ever-changing pattern of vortices, ripples, waves, splashes, etc., which evidently have no independent existence as such. Rather, they are abstracted from the flowing movement, arising and vanishing in the total process of the flow. Such transitory subsistence as may be possessed by these abstracted forms implies only a relative independence or autonomy of behaviour, rather than absolutely independent existence as ultimate substances."
The work at the Point Hotel moves from the chaotic of the organic to the chaos of the inorganic. The final drawing utilises graphical data of glacial melting using exaggerated graphical plot points. These plot points become a leitmotif throughout the photographic images. Layers of plotting points and phylogenic relationships are layered onto interventions carried out in Greenland.
What this amounts to is essentially recourse the Kantian idea of the impossibility of a completely detached or 'observer-free' viewing. This is in line with Kant's analysis in 'The Critique of Pure Reason', the notion of viewing nature "sub specie eternitatis".
A recapitulation of a Michael Power film 'A Matter of Life and Death' can be used to set the tone of my thoughts:-
This could be rephrased as "This is the Greenland. Big isn't it?".
It is the feelings provoked by the vastness of the Greenland landscape that overrides every other sensation. Surely this volume of space cannot be touched by us? The problems that are the scales of things we can deal with do not include this landscape or indeed the timescape involved. It is these non-understandable elements that art and science must tackle routinely. These disciplines must deal with, for all intents and purposes, unknowable time; from the yoctoseconds of molecular transformations to deep time of geological change.
The embryonic work completed in Greenland is by nature scientific and by nurture artistic. It is what Kemp refers to as "structural intuitions" i.e. those factors common to both the arts and the sciences.
Elements of Glushchenko can be seen as paraphrased in the ultramundane forces at work in this environment. These are juxtaposed with the mundane. This tension is the quintessence of the working idea.
As Grayling points out, "There are at least two senses in which something can count as a trifle, firstly by being small and unobvious and secondly by being ordinary, familiar or mundane". This is reiterated by Walter Pater, "It is only the dullness of the eye that makes two things look alike".
A tension is constructed between the unknowable and the unnoticed, the mundane and the ultramundane. Perhaps it is here that the virtual space at the boundaries of art and science interact.
Reference:
David Bohm, 'Wholeness and the Implicate Order', Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, Boston, 1980, p.48.
"On this stream, one may see an ever-changing pattern of vortices, ripples, waves, splashes, etc., which evidently have no independent existence as such. Rather, they are abstracted from the flowing movement, arising and vanishing in the total process of the flow. Such transitory subsistence as may be possessed by these abstracted forms implies only a relative independence or autonomy of behaviour, rather than absolutely independent existence as ultimate substances."
The work at the Point Hotel moves from the chaotic of the organic to the chaos of the inorganic. The final drawing utilises graphical data of glacial melting using exaggerated graphical plot points. These plot points become a leitmotif throughout the photographic images. Layers of plotting points and phylogenic relationships are layered onto interventions carried out in Greenland.
What this amounts to is essentially recourse the Kantian idea of the impossibility of a completely detached or 'observer-free' viewing. This is in line with Kant's analysis in 'The Critique of Pure Reason', the notion of viewing nature "sub specie eternitatis".
A recapitulation of a Michael Power film 'A Matter of Life and Death' can be used to set the tone of my thoughts:-
"This is the universe. Big isn't it?"
This could be rephrased as "This is the Greenland. Big isn't it?".
It is the feelings provoked by the vastness of the Greenland landscape that overrides every other sensation. Surely this volume of space cannot be touched by us? The problems that are the scales of things we can deal with do not include this landscape or indeed the timescape involved. It is these non-understandable elements that art and science must tackle routinely. These disciplines must deal with, for all intents and purposes, unknowable time; from the yoctoseconds of molecular transformations to deep time of geological change.
The embryonic work completed in Greenland is by nature scientific and by nurture artistic. It is what Kemp refers to as "structural intuitions" i.e. those factors common to both the arts and the sciences.
Elements of Glushchenko can be seen as paraphrased in the ultramundane forces at work in this environment. These are juxtaposed with the mundane. This tension is the quintessence of the working idea.
As Grayling points out, "There are at least two senses in which something can count as a trifle, firstly by being small and unobvious and secondly by being ordinary, familiar or mundane". This is reiterated by Walter Pater, "It is only the dullness of the eye that makes two things look alike".
A tension is constructed between the unknowable and the unnoticed, the mundane and the ultramundane. Perhaps it is here that the virtual space at the boundaries of art and science interact.
Reference:
David Bohm, 'Wholeness and the Implicate Order', Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, Boston, 1980, p.48.