Liquid Light - Berlin

Liquid Light 2022 - a site-specific Installation at the Sounds of Water Festival - im Kleinen Wasserspeicher, Berlin-PrenzlauerBerg. 

Water dripping steadily into a shallow pool creates ripples that are reflected on suspended drafting film and the surrounding walls, resulting in the projection of a rhythmic, pulsating wave. The pool is 1m x 2m.

     

Foliage-flow

Reflective moment in the botanical garden of Braunschweig, early September 2021

A moment in time

Summer 2020 

Two birds flying past, making a fleeting appearance on Live Sky - a 'slice' of sky floating in the space (CCTV live feed projection on acrylic glass).

A year has passed since the exhibition @ King Edward Street, Light Works. I had used the space for nine months as a laboratory, setting up new works in response to the space and refining existing ones. It has been an intense, demanding and beautiful time, a dive into new territory, quietly challenging me on various levels. 

Subsequently the last year became a time of recovery - and also of final goodbyes, with  impromptu travel and long stays abroad. 

It would turn into August before we could take down the projection works on the upper floors. And it was then, just before dismantling Live Sky, that I accidentally captured two birds flying by, a coincidence I could only dream of during the exhibition time...

Lightning

left: Lichtenberg figure from "über elektrische Entladungsfiguren auf photographischen Platten" by Anton Blümel (Berlin, 1898)
center : Hiroshi Sugimoto, 'Talbotized 011', 2012
right: Hiroshi Sugimoto, Lightning Field photograph from 'The Long Never, 2008

from St Ellock's page

Haven

A world at the bottom of the Mediterranean:


HAVEN from Les films engloutis on Vimeo.

The story behind

PS: ...reminds me of Jason deCaires Taylor work. 

LIQUID LIGHT

A site-specific installation as part of SETTING OFF at RED Gallery Hull
22 Jan – 21 Feb 2016

Water ripples projected on suspended drafting film and on surrounding walls. Seven film sheets form an arch between a pool and the skylight above
dimensions: 2.7m x 70cm x room height


A wooden frame and pond liner form a silent musical instrument. Water acts as the medium conveying the message. Light projects water ripples on the suspended drafting film and on the surrounding walls as enlarged drawings in motion.

The video below shows projections of dripping water on sheet one to four and then the entire installation.

'bubble bath'

April - the pond in our garden - seething and sizzling with life:

the frog tadpoles feed on the surface film of the pond and thus create zillions of air bubbles. A constantly changing landscape tinted by the blueness of the sky.

budding

Magnolia buds, captured in the garden today. Click thumbs and/or find colour images here.

January's harvest

Japanese anemone seed heads gathered at the end of January - studio pics.
Click thumbs and find four more images in this album.

more on seeds

<< The dried remainders of the broad beans we grew this summer - and hidden within:  pink-black seeds.

The seed-head above - I found it recently while weeding one of our flowerbeds. No clue what it is though. It's about 3cm wide. Maybe next year, we'll find out what's hiding within...

Seedheads

Tuesday, 29 July's post updated

Captured in the garden, the seed head of an opium poppy and seeds of a wildflower (?), pitch black and about 3-4mm wide. The flowers of May and June go to seed.

Click here to see more images

A 'brick' in the air

'One to Three' from below [30cm]

A first snapshot of 'One to Three', a sculpture modelled on the brick in January's posts.

Taking images of this piece is a further task. While I try to capture what is barely visible - it really depends on the lighting - I realize that I'm reverting the process once more: Having mapped the 'real thing' I then remodelled it to its 'ethereal' 3-D version. Taking pictures means bouncing back to 2-D again.

PS:This sculpture has been sold.

'The real thing' from above [10cm]

More winter harvest

The scanned skeleton of a leave. An interlude while setting sail for another threaded drawing.

"... I could almost feel the undertow"

Ever since the joined forces of a storm-surge & a spring-tide hit the east coast on 5 December I was wondering how Spurn peninsula was faring. Only a week later we came across some images.

The road and the dunes have been washed away, the images below may tell the rest. Three dozens of the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust's Hebridean sheep, a rare and beautiful species, drowned in the surge. See Yorkshire Post  and [BBC].

photo credit: RNLI

The image below is taken on the morning after the surge at 9am, a moment after high tide.

photo credit: Env Agency Geomatics

The submerged area is the site where we, Jo and I, recorded Fr-Agile early in the morning on 8 August '08. It was a stormy day too and cold as if it was winter.

Trying to imagine what it must have been like on 5 December ... a comment in the visitors' book at South Square Gallery, where Fr-Agile first was shown, surfaces: "Standing close I could almost feel the undertow."

This referred to Buoy [Fr-Agile]. Here's a studio clip:


A long post about a stretch of landscape - or rather seascape - that is rich in every aspect, wildlife, history and the power of the elements to name just a few. It's a microcosm that has been changed considerably.

Aconcagua

K2

Although in real life I prefer the sea to mountainous terrain I find this type of maps fascinating.
I keep coming back and 'wandering' the Himalayas and other peaks. It's as if the contour lines de-scribe the terrain and, in a way, make it readable.

'arborescent forms'

No. 40

I read about William Armstong's experiments with electrical discharges in his book 'Electric movement in air and water', see last post.

No. 41

While he recorded many of these experiments directly onto photographic plates and created beautiful photos all along, he had to find a different way to capture experiments that produced very bright sparks.

Images No. 40 and 41 are made on plates with a very thin layer of wax and dust. What he captures this way is describes like this [p. 50]:

Inverse image of a wintry tree

"I have already spoken of electricity as organised motion, and we have here an example of it carried apparently to the verge of life. (No. 38)
[...]in the succeeding figure (No. 40) we see arborescent forms, showing trees and undergrowth, in which stems, branches, and leaves find their approximate representatives. Lastly, in the one remaining figure to be shown (No. 41), even the root is indicated lying at the foot of the stem.”

And later on he concludes [p. 52]:
“Examples have been presented of the remarkable correspondence between some electric figures and living organised forms.”


It brings back the photos of the trees I took last winter and Drawings in the sky.

Water - and electrical currents

A few days in Northumberland. First we stay in Newbiggin, home of the Couple by Sean Henry. On the beach I find drawings created by the sea. A thin layer of black sand covers the usual beige and the ebb and flow of water 'paints' intriguing patterns into this black canvas (left pic).

In contrast the black & white image* shows the trace of an electrical current. This photo stems from a book by Lord Armstrong 'Electric movement in air and water', published 1897. We come across Armstrong's work and genius when, from the coast, we turn inland to visit Cragside near Rothbury.  Cragside was the first house in the world to be lit by hydroelectricity. See also: National Trust site / Cragside

*Image source:
Electric movement in air and water with theoretical inferences
Armstrong, William George London, 1897

Filigree drawings in 3-d

When I recently scanned the garage, or rather shed, for useful items to reinstall my studio in Hull I came across these webs. Fortunately I resisted a first impulse to wipe them away - they were somewhat in the way - and realized how intricate and beautiful they are.

Underneath the webs I found loads of chipboards, moved from Basel to Hull ages ago - in fact it's 12 years... These boards now shield the wooden floor in my redecorated workspace from future activities. And yes, I managed to remove the boards without touching the webs.

Another asset is that much of my equipment, loom included, is now on wheels. One of the things I learned in Marion's studio in Berlin is, that it's soo handy when shelves and stuff are movable!

Deforestation - reforestation...

A couple of days ago I had a go at tidying up the computer. Then on Good Friday, confident that only rubbish was in the trash I pressed this sweet delete button to empty it. I remember the crunchy sound of the process - it took a short moment...

Next thing, I felt a strange mixture of bliss and amazement... The whole iPhoto library magically had disappeared into nothingness! And with it hundreds of tree pics that I've taken over the last couple of weeks, intrigued by the drawings of the bare branches and their signatures in the sky.

Luckily dear Stefan found a program that allows to recover 1GB of images on a mac for free. So I spent Easter Monday browsing through about 37'000 deleted pics (many of them trash) to find the ones I wanted to restore. The images below are about 10% of the now purged tree library.

Thank you, Stefan :-))

Veggies

A while ago I captured this pair in the kitchen while cooking - and wasn't quite sure whether this is rather for the eye or for eating.

But in the end just these pics survived...