I have been exploring light and glass this weekend, trying to achieve a feeling of motion and depth in the macro landscapes I create. Here are a few examples:
‘Mist around the city’
‘Golden missiles’
‘Copper mine’
Monthly Archives: July 2012
Off the wall …
I have just finished holding my exhibition ‘Liquid, Light and Time’ at Exeter University’s Innovation Centre – it ended on Friday. This exhibition showed evolutionary sequences of paintings, and I had some very good feedback from it, which was great! Below is the brochure I produced to accompany the show – it provides short explanations of what each of the pictures is about.
Brochure for ‘Liquid, Light and Time’
Galactic observations
Observed at the Lab today:
‘Creation in a spin’
‘Golden clouds’
‘galactic whorl’
‘Planetary nursery’
Always aware of hexagons..
… especially when vortices are involved as on Saturn’s North Pole, where a central vortex appears as a hexagonal feature.
Here’s a hexagonal feature (5 of the 6 sides) created nearer home, which also appears in the collaborative movie, ‘Knowing’, posted just below.
‘Baroque periodicity’
“Knowing” – a new collaborative video with Tullio DeSantis
This video features Tullio’s music along with my fluid dynamics imagery.
In this movie I explore the major/minor key contrasts in Tullio’s piece, and its mood of perpetual motion. The major/minor aspect of the music made me think of juxtaposing structured and unstructured flow, and the feeling of perpetual motion seemed to match the whirling and wheeling of the vortices which feature throughout the movie.
I am fascinated by vortices; they make such strong, compelling images in themselves, and also have a rich symbolism attached. This symbolism can appear self-contradictory – some mythology emphasising their destructive nature, other belief systems talking of them as the ultimate energy source – ‘getting into the vortex’ … perhaps Knowing in the sense of true wisdom.
I hope I’ve captured a little of both aspects here, and that you enjoy the flow of the whirlpools and their patterns, set to Tullio’s music.
In this movie I explore visual parallels to the major/minor key contrasts in Tullio’s piece, and its mood of perpetual motion. The major/minor aspect of the music made me think of juxtaposing structured and unstructured flow, and the feeling of perpetual motion seemed to match the whirling and wheeling of the vortices which feature throughout the movie.I am fascinated by vortices; they make such strong, compelling images in themselves, and also have a rich symbolism attached. This symbolism can appear self-contradictory – some mythology emphasising their destructive nature, other belief systems talking of them as the ultimate energy source – ‘getting into the vortex’ … perhaps Knowing in the sense of true wisdom.I hope I’ve captured a little of both aspects here, and that you enjoy the flow of the whirlpools and their patterns, set to Tullio’s music.
“Being” – a new collaborative video
Tullio DeSantis and I have just completed a new video entitled “Being”, combining Tullio’s music with my fluid dynamics imagery.
Tullio’s music has a relaxed, meditative quality, which made me think of new ways of expressing links between the cosmos and life forms here on earth. I could see connections between new planets and cellular life forms coming into existence, and wanted to express the slow, inexorable quality of this birth process – a gradual unfolding of events. The whirling galaxies that recur throughout the video are analogous to a kind of ‘wheel of life’, and we see similarities of pattern and form at all scales.
I hope you enjoy this video. It was great fun to make – I enjoyed many hours of experimenting in the Fluids lab at Exeter Uni to obtain the footage for it.
Three insects …
… one made of light:
A galaxy not too far away
I’ve been looking out for new galaxies this week in the lab; luckily I came across some. Here are a few images I managed to capture, including some newborn stars.
‘Many newborns’
‘Red turbulence’
‘Galactic rhythms’
‘Red hole’
Wheels within wheels
I have been going over my recent footage of vortices, and it’s wonderful to see the regular rhythms set up by the swirl and flow of these forms. They have the regularity of clockwork, and even if the flow is disturbed by a new influx of ink, they will soon settle back into their rhythm again. I’m working on the movies now; meanwhile here are three images; the first two being movie stills.
‘Swirls within swirls’
‘Baroque periodicity’
‘Directional dilemmas/Psychedelic spiral/Elaborations’
Going in deep
The illusion of depth in images is something I always aim for. I like to think that the viewer can take a walk around my pictures in their mind’s eye, to be in a new place for a while.
Here are three images which will hopefully conjure up that illusion for you – two images of light and glass, and one from Exeter University Streatham campus.
‘Possibilities within the clouds’
‘Through coloured gateways’
‘sapmap shimmer’
chronoscapes 