Just skipped right over Skype Session 5, mainly because it was about the E-Library and I have yet to go through the live streaming video (I missed a part of it) and I don’t want to lag behind because of one missed video. So yes, onwards to Skype Session 6!
Date: Tuesday, Nov 7th 2017
Guest Speakers: Donald Takguy and Terry Quinn
Both of these artists were UAL alumni. We started the session off by meeting Donald, who began the MA as a filmmaker and during the MA focused on making simple abstract films. The idea behind these films would generally be simple, usually one element or idea that repeats itself. Since video is a challenging medium to exhibit, he often took stills from the videos and used “Adobe after effects” to enhance, change them into some visually artistic. He preferred Adobe aftereffects over Photoshop because aftereffects has a lot more interesting tools and filters to play around with.
At this point some of us asked him why he considered video a challenging medium for exhibitions. His reply was that the audience may not have the patience for it. For example, they may not wait till the video restarts from the beginning and therefore miss a certain part of it, which may hamper their understanding or they may not watch the whole video till the very end which again limits their appreciation of it. So, essentially, in order to involve people in the video exhibit you need to make further arrangements based on the nature of the exhibit. For example, perhaps have headphones that allow people to move around the remaining exhibits even as they listen to the video. The act of putting on headphones is likely to draw in more commitment from the audience since they will make a conscious choice to put them on and may not then decide to take them off until they have heard the piece. So, there are potential ways to make the medium more engaging such as setting a timer or clock that tells people when the video will restart so they can view it from the beginning or comfy chairs that encourage them to sit through the documentary etc. But, it definitely requires more thought to put together a video exhibit.
Donald’s final MA exhibit was incredibly fascinating. He showed us a picture of multiple screens of different sizes placed on floor level, facing up. Honestly, that looked like a piece of art in itself!
All these screens were showing those short abstract films, looping at various times.
For the prints that he put up he would take still images from these short videos, layer them with other images and then use after effects to turn them into an abstract. Jonathan suggested that Donald was following the idea of literally, “playing with time”. Donald also mentioned something about using a lot of ‘mapping’ though I did not manage to get a clear idea of how that was.
Now, post graduation, Donald seems to have drifted back towards traditional painting. He mentioned being inspired by “Stuckism” which I understood to be an art movement that emphasizes ‘figurative’ versus ‘conceptual’ art. With an inclination towards the use of traditional painting mediums, Stuckism expects its followers to give importance to the aesthetics and appearance of art as opposed to art where concept takes precedence.
So, after deciding to re-explore painting, Donald felt inspired to paint cats. The whole point was, that these cats were not realistic cats, it was like throwing the question out there ‘do we even know what cats look like?’. If you draw a human face and at pointy ears, doesn’t that make the audience think of a cat too? Janet called this series ‘catstracts’ which was pretty accurate!
We ended the discussion with Donald by discussing a small exhibition he was organizing for all the students at the 3 Girls Gallery Cafe in Peckham. YAY. and us online students can send digital work in as well!
The next guest was Terry Quin, a very recent alumnus. Before he joined the MA he was a hobbyist and life drawer, but his career was in IT. That was kind of what led him to consider a fusion of technology with art. Perfect for this MA 😉
Since his practice before the MA had focused on realism/figurative drawing, he decided that he would use these 2 years to explore the following things:
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Instead of using perspective to create a painting he would explore the use of 3D technology.
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He wanted to move from the ‘static’ and add ‘life’ to the life drawing.
Kehkashan, I find this a really cogent piece of writing, repesenting the Skype session very well.