Practice as research
3rd October, 2022
Wanting to experiment with making seaweed paper so that I can try making cyanotypes with it, I read up on how to make seaweed paper. I washed then boiled some Ulva lactuca for about 10 minutes, drained it & laid it out between 2 layers of greaseproof paper and forgot about it for a week.
I was convinced it was going to be mouldy but it wasn't. What I did learn is that only 1 side of greaseproof paper is greaseproof - the other is absorbent and as such, the seaweed stuck to it thereby breaking away bits of it. I also made it too thin for what I want to do with it. As ulva lactuca is edible, I tried a bit which is when I discovered that I had not washed all the sand out of it :)) The actual paper tasted fine, the texture is an acquired feel.
I think the thicker parts will hold the cyanotype coating well.
In the three images below, a) is the ulva paper coated with cyanotype mix; b) is the cyanotype washed off, and c) is the paper fixed with hydrogen peroxide.
a) b) c)
Sadly there was no visible image printed on the ulva paper after 20 minutes under UV light. The cyanotype mix washed out and nearly took the seaweed with it. The hydrogen peroxide had no visible image to fix, so, apart from correctly anticipating that the thicker part of the paper would absorb more of the cyanotype mix, this experiment proved that the paper needs to have more substance to it if I want to print on it. I might try putting in cotton fibres.
13th October, 2022
Collecting material for print making and painting:
I collected mainly oar weed because the last batch I collected secreted a liquid which I want to collect to see what it is and use it, mixed with pulped seaweed and literal botanicals, to make a pigment on its own and mixed with crushed sandstone. My research tells me that the secretion is a type of glue, possibly to enable the plant to re-establish itself on a rock once it has come detached. I also discovered that once it is exposed to air, the 'glue' becomes acidic. Is this how it destabilises the sandstone so that it can attach itself?
This is as close as I got to pulping the oar weed, pulse and ulva lactuca because the oar weed in particular was very tough..
Pulped samphire and sea beet liquid.
I painted some of the secretions from the oar weed onto a block of sandstone and put a bit of dried oar weed onto it Here seen as a black shard) to test the theory that the secretions are a form of glue. After 2 hours the sea weed was stuck to the sandstone. Fab glue discovery!
15th November 2022
Experimenting with seaweed paste prints and painting
Left: litoral botanicals pulp: sea beet & rock samphire, produced this mirrored print.
Left: image of crushed sandstone with litoral botanicals pulp print mirrored.
Prints made from seaweed: pulse, oar weed and ulva lactuca, and sandstone pulp.
My first painting made with pulped seaweed and sandstone.
Warped seaweed print.
16th November,2022
Burned Vinamold Hot Melt compound pieces scraped off the bottom of the pan. To me they resemble the seaweed paper I made early in October.
Mirrored image resembling lungs.
26th November, 2022
I was asked on my Instagram page what the process was in getting my 3D print and this is what I replied:
The process is this: I gave a very smelly seaweed to the technician at uni & asked if he could scan & print it. He scanned the object and sent me an image from it. Then he said that I had to do the 3D print but, in order to print it in 3D I had to do an induction course which I did last week. The printing is done by a fused filament fabricator - a machine in which you put a Sandisk card with the scanned file on it.
It communicates with the fabricator which then produces the article. The technician kindly gave me the file when I told him that my husband has a 3D printer, I brought it home and our little 3D printer, a Creality printer, created this item.
At my induction, I also learned that there are now printers which print using plant based resin & the process is altogether different - here is a link to the difference between the 2: https://www.windowscentral.com/resin-or-filament-3d-printing-which-best-you. I much prefer the resin printer for ecological reasons as well as for the aesthetics of the finished article. The article has much more detail and the scaffolding comes off really easily and cleanly so you don't have to sand it to get all the bits of support off.
The brown version was 3D printed first but, because it is so brittle, it broke when I dropped it on the carpet so we printed a second version, this time in white.
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The amount of 'cleaning' in this plastic filament print is evident. I am looking forward to making a 3D print in resin to see if there is more detail and if there is less 'cleaning' to be done.
3rd January, 2023
Cross-fertilisation of practices:
Practices and processes I learned in mono printing and 3D printing workshops has resulted in this:
Process:
The photographic image (left) was sent to a Lithophane generator website which converted into a 3D image. This image was then processed by Chitubox software which then converts a 3D model into slices for the 3D resin printer to process ( this is the resin printer equivalent of Cura for the 3D filament printer). The resulting curved lithophane (3D) print, 6cm x 11cm, made from plant based resin, took 7hrs 50mins to appear. The website can produce files for any shape of 3D image.
Outcome:
I was thrilled with the outcome which looks like a piece of resin embroidery. Given the complex detail of the original image, the outcome is remarkably clear. I was also pleased that there was no cleaning of supporting resin required. In the 3D plastic filament printing, I could not completely remove evidence of the supporting structure because I was afraid of breaking the brittle print (see the 26th November entry above). The translation of a 2D image into a 3D image is nothing short of magic in my opinion. I can't believe how smooth the printed lithophane is after washing in isopropyl alcohol (IPA) with a concentration of at least 90% and curing for 2 mins.
The curved lithophane seen from above.
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Reflection:
Apart from being totally in awe of the magic that occurs throughout the process, I can see endless uses for this technology in art, in medicine, in boat building ... in any discipline that requires things to be made. But, I have created a new object, do we need more 'stuff'?
To quote Ursula K.Le Guin in her essay Deep in admiration "... how to get outside the mindset that sees the techno fix as the answer to all problems." (P. M15 A.Tsing [Ed.] 2014) Ouch! I can't do what I have done in any other way. Why do I need to do it in the first place? As my tri-legged holdfast, it's good to know that I can replace the original in some way for an unspecified purpose.
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How can I get beyond this techno fix that allows me to make objects that illustrate my work in a way that nothing else can? Because words can't do it on their own and I can't paint or sculpt? Perhaps another Le Guin quote might get me closer: "To use the world well, to be able to stop wasting it and our time in it, we need to relearn our being in it." (Idem)
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Why am I doing? Regardless of the answer, and regardless of the wisdom of Ursula Le Guin, our current global existential crisis tells me that I need to be mindful of how I am using the world, its animals, plants and minerals.
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Part of my project is to highlight what is going on below the waves in terms of its plant life. I made a holdfast replica in plastic - but that was just to test the available technology. Now I am making it in plant-based resin. Le Guin makes me ask myself why am I doing this - of course I can justify it in artistic terms = to help develop my project and expand the range of materials I can work with so that I can see what is best applicable to my work.
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Time will tell if what I am doing is justified. Will that be too late?
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Le Guin also writes about our relationships which appear to be reciprocal and complex. I am particularly aware of this in our media centred lives in which the internet makes us aware of the multiple connections in which information and experiences race wildly backwards and forwards and drag others along in their path thus complicating the interactions.
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Le Guin identifies these connections as " simple or complicated, direct or hidden, strong or delicate, temporary or long-lasting." (idem). This web of connections is not restricted to inter-personal experiences but involves "all beings - including what we generally class as things, objects."
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This is interesting because at my recent tutorial, Anya, when I said I didn't know what I was going to do with my 3D print of my holdfast, asked if I had considered what an object is. No, but Le Guin's idea of connectivity is a start.
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Le Guin also writes "I'm trying to subjectify the universe, because look where objectifying it has gotten us. To subjectify is not necessarily to co-opt, colonise, exploit. Rather, it may involve a great reach outward of the mind and imagination." (idem pM16).
Have I objectified a plant in order to exploit it for my benefit? At the moment I think that I have made it the main subject that will carry my imaginative voice in my project.
18th January 2023
Development from the Lithophane
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On Saturday 14th January, my friend & fellow student, Derek Youd, came to visit. Derek has kindly volunteered to dive in a seagrass bed near Beacon Cove in Torquay to film life under the waves for 4 minutes. He was here to discuss the process & I was explaining what I have done to date & as he is also interested in 3D printing, I showed him my 2D image transformed into a 3D object. Running his fingers over it he said it reminded him of music.
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I needed no other impetus to transform that 3D object into music. I cut the printed 2D image lengthways into 4 and placed them all under staves printed on tracing paper which I sent to my eldest daughter Carmen, to translate into sound for me (see under Tutorial 3 for the piano music that Carmen played from the sheet music):
See the same tutorial for the subsequent developments and related sheet music.
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30th January 2023
Reading & reflection following my latest tutorial
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Following on from my tutorial in which it was suggested that my art work is termed 'generative art', I have done some reading & made some notes:
A. Margaret A. Boden & Ernest A. Edmonds :What is generative art? Published online 1st December 2010 by Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.
1. Jon McCormack (McCormack 2003, p5) writes "Much of the innovation today is not achieved within the precious bubble of fine art, but by those who work in the industries of popular culture - computer graphics, film, music videos, games, robotics and the Internet."
But my work is in that 'precious bubble of fine art' because I am producing mono prints primarily. The music scores I am creating don't though - so I am producing a hybrid work consisting of work in and out of that bubble.
Do I have to be pigeonholed? My main work is certainly not generative if that means being produced by algorithms or any other computer software / AI.
Boden, p22, states:"The labels attached to these new art forms vary and have not yet settled down into a generally accepted taxonomy. The names preferred by the artists involved include: generative art, ... process-based art, " Jack Burnham (1968) also identified the new work as 'process art'.
Yes, my work is generated by a process - but isn't all work?
My process is this: I made a mono print of a cork oak bark or filmed the effects of a decomposing seaweed, and made music scores for both either from the print or from the film. The music then had to be processed either by a human or by a piece of software but the software did not create it.
2. In 1949, Kenneth Martin did abstract paintings using basic geometric shapes (circles, squares, diagrams). "Later his "Chance and Order" and "Chance, Order, Change' series combined rule-driven generation with random choice." (Boden p 23) Martin had designed the rules himself even if the outcomes were chance generated.
3. Brian Eno (1996) generated music by activating a set of rules as well as letting a computer take over some of the decision making. In both artists' method, rules determine the outcome of the art.
That could apply to my art.
In computer generated art, the programmers feel that they control the computer functions when they compile the algorithms - the human has more autonomy over the computer. Autonomy is closely related to art-making.
So where does this leave my work?
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4. Ernest Edmonds asks "Why were generative processes interesting in my art?"His major generative piece was a film Fragments (1985) which was made up of still abstract clips sliced together & came to be called 'video constructs.'His answer to his question was that "Making art is an iterative process. ... (it is) a continual process of conception, action and perception followed by reconceptualisation - and so on."(Boden p 26). He cites as his main issue 'the order and use of rules in the works in the first place." In order to save time, he uses computers to generate the order of his work. He goes on to say that generative art allows the artist to concentrate on the rules that govern making the work - "the structures that define the artwork" rather than the surface of the work.
Edmonds goes on to say that "In G-art, the artwork is generated, at least in part, by some process that is not under the artist's direct control." (P29)
5. Sol Lewitt (1967) "The artist's will is secondary to the art making process he initiates from idea to completion." (P31)
6. Andy Goldsworthy sometimes highlights effects caused by undirected physical change: in his gradually melting ice sculptures " Gustav Metzeger' auto-destructive art. the artwork is originally assembled by a human artist, "but it attains its final form, and its significance, through the natural process of damage and decay."(p31) My decomposing seaweed, par example!
Conclusion: Marcel Duchamp:"The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualification and thus adds his contribution to the creative art (1957).(P35). The argument against this is that Duchamp is referring to the inner work of the piece - what the viewer sees does not alter how it was made.
Creativity involves agency - considerations of autonomy and authorial responsibility. Who is responsible for the art: the artist or the computer? Creativity also involves unpredictability.
My seaweed mono prints are unpredictable. The cork oak bark prints are unpredictable because they are a function of the soft roller and the tissue paper: harder rollers and heavier paper will affect the outcome.
But is it art, really?
Some philosophers argue:"On their view, art involves expression and communication of human experience, so that if we did decide that it is the computer which is generating the 'artwork', than it cannot be an artwork after all." (P42)
According to these definitions and practices, my printing work is mostly in the 'precious bubble of fine art' although the process involves some elements of unpredictability because, although I use the same tools and subject (seaweed / cork oak bark) the subject seems to have agency in that the seaweed moves and so I cannot get the identical configuration of the seaweed elements every time so I cannot get the same outcome every time.
My music generating practice does rely on chance: where I put the 'notes' on the stave is determined by where the 'dots' appear on whatever it is that I am copying: the oak bark or the 'snow flakes'. The computer input is determined by my input - it has no agency.
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B. Pearson, M.:2011. generative art, a practical guide using processing. Manning Publications Co. NY
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1. Organic vs mechanical: Alan Watts
Research Elaine Gan
ELAINE GAN is interested in mapping worlds otherwise. Her transdisciplinary practice combines methods from art, science, and digital/environmental humanities to study the timing and temporal coordinations of more-than-human socialities. Through writing, drawing, interactive media, and installation, Gan explores historical materialisms and temporal coordinations that emerge between species, machines, and landscapes, with a particular interest in plants and fungi.
Gan is an artist-theorist and professor who teaches at Wesleyan University, Science in Society Program. She is co-editor of an interdisciplinary anthology, Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene (Minnesota, 2017) and directs Multispecies Worldbuilding Lab, an experimental podcast about climate change. Her academic writing has been published in journals that include Environmental Philosophy, New Formations, Social Analysis, and Catalyst. Art projects have been exhibited internationally and have been funded by fellowships and grants from organizations including NYU Center for Humanities, USC Mellon Digital Humanities, University of California, New York Foundation for the Arts, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Jerome Foundation, and Aarhus University Research on the Anthropocene.
General Ecology: The Story of the Understory of the Understory
Day 1: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLrFzV6gBibe24y5EIg2vSQVRg9Ia2Hdr
Day 2: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLrFzV6gBibejZdlR6fIdLP1rdB0xiZWK
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Sudo Misa works based on space observation data. All of them are visualizations of fragmentary moments and phenomena, capturing things that we can perceive but not recognize, things that have gotten lost, or things that we will never be able to see, while inviting our imagination to the vast expanses of space and time that each of them involves. Informed by different viewpoints and techniques, the exhibits work as harbingers of the invisible presence that lurks behind each of them.
8th March 2023
Electron Microscope Scans
About 4 weeks ago I approached Glen in the EMCentre to ask if I could get some images of parts of my seaweeds. My main reason was that I had made many images of the outside of many seaweeds and I wanted to go deeper in terms of images. I had to wait for inclement weather to throw up some seaweeds onto the beach.
Glen had asked me to bring in the tiniest of samples still in sea water. I bought some 10 ml test tubes and Steve made me a test tube holder in wood. I collected a Laminaria Digitata from Goodrington South Beach, cut samples of the hold fast, the stipe and the blade. Then I cut a sample from the decomposing seaweed I was photographing; a piece of dried seaweed I had in my room and a few grains of sand.
Two weeks ago I took them in and Glen prepped them with liquid nitrogen and froze them until I could go in and photograph them which I did today.
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Glen taught me how to use the various dials to compose the image, focus it and adjust for contrast and brightness. The followed 3 hours of sheer joy! I loved ramping up the magnification. It was terrific seeing all the tiny parts on the surface of the samples so big. It was terrific when Glen discovered a plankton in one of the specimens!
The plankton is the bulbous bit at the top of the stipe section.
x1200
A part of a grain of sand.
x3000
Parts of the stipe.
x850
The stipe.
x1500
I simply HAD to experiment with colour! Clockwise: blade (x850), holdfast (x1500), sand (x1900).
Two images of the dried seaweed.
L:x2300;
R:x4500
Reflection on the process and the outcomes
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I have been looking forward to this experience ever since my youngest daughter Emily showed me her images of the cells she had collected for her PhD in clinical research 2 years ago. What did I like about them? Apart from the colours she got through staining parts of them, I was intrigued to see what we can't see with the naked eye. This applies to my exercise today too. Layer upon layer of things we simply cannot see - despite the fact that I only scanned the surface of my samples but it is SUCH a deep surface! The 3 hours I spent there were intoxicating and I would love to go back and do some more but I will have to find funding for it because the new system at the university demands it - understandably when you consider the costs involved.
The process was relatively straight forward. The outcomes were mind blowing for me. Ramping up the magnification simply because I could was great but I realised, perhaps because of my history in photography, I had to be looking at something specific rather than the 'landscape' and I did not know the 'specifics' - I had noticed the bulge in the stipe section but I had no idea until Glen's experienced eye saw it, that it was plankton. It made me realise that I was skipping along the top of what was there, looking at the aesthetics of a shot rather than capturing anything significant in scientific terms. Perhaps I should do a crash course in marine biology? My curiosity concerning how different the different parts of a seaweed are was satisfied. The structures I found in each sample were awesome and I got lost in what I saw.
A few weeks ago I attended a workshop run by Sally Baldwin at which she demonstrated how she did her paper lace & I decided I would use the technique to make seaweed lace. How dumbfounded was I when I saw exactly what I wanted to achieve when I looked at the stipe under the microscope??!! ~The question now is: do I leave the seaweed to demonstrate its own lace or do I go ahead and make my own??
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I have made enquiries about costs of doing more EM imaging = rounded up to £60 per hour. Bears thinking about & possibly getting funding for??
14th March 2023
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Changing tack.
Up till now I have been doing really big / long seaweed rubbings in line with my thinking that seaweeds can be huge unlike the common perception that they are all small and clinging to rocks on the shore line. That was not getting me very far in relation to how I am thinking of representing them. This, in conjunction with the electron microscope photographic images, still looking at the surface of the plants, but enlarging and exposing a world we can't see, made me go minimal. I am still waiting for the microscope lens for my phone which will enlarge the surface image 6 or 7 times.
Left: Laminaria digitata full-length rubbing: 57cm x 30cm. (06/03/23)
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Right: Part of a blade: 10cm x 12cm (13/03/23). It might be too 'cute' but I love its simplicity and isolation. I showed it to Helen in the print workshop who suggested enlarging it & doing an intaglio. Maybe.
I was also isolating smaller sections of the long rubbings because I did not think that the entire rubbing was saying much. I am more satisfied with the smaller sections letting me focus on detail.
18th March 2023
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Possibly my next exploration: Polarising microscope:
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The crystals are simply beautiful! But my samples are not crystalline - they belong to organisms. That still bears investigating ... but why? What am I trying to get out of them? Pretty pictures?
Is MA just the start of magpie? ;))
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2nd April 2023
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Trying out some shots. Some drying out, decomposing Wakame ( Young girl) Seaweed.
I have reached the limit of my plan so this is where my blog ends.