Exhibition in Garage Space

Barnes Building, Garage Space
4th December



I had booked out the garage space earlier on in the term however I left the promotion till quite late on as I wasn't too sure what was going to happen.

I quite wanted to have a show which would expose work across the broad spectrum of Environmental Art by inviting people from third and fourth year to show work that they are currently working on to provide an opportunity for people to see what kind of work they were producing.



I was really keen on using the large windows in the space to act as a frame for a band to play, playing with the idea of the audience being able to witness the performance from outside. This would be heightened if I managed to create a large enclosure for the band so that when you are inside the garage space you wouldn't be able to see them, but it would be quite overwhelming acoustically.


I then blocked off the other enclosure at the far end of the garage space, where I had set up my steel cone which was attached to a plastic pipe which passed through the wall of the enclosure. Inside, I had set up a few speakers to play sounds which I was creating on my computer down the pipe and out through the cone.


A video of people dancing was projected onto the surface of the enclosure which we had created for the band.


James was performing a piece using old umbrellas whose spokes he had removed and attached to his fingers.



With both of these pieces, it was interesiting to observe how the dynamic of the piece was interpreted depending upon the style of the music which shifted from funky to rather harsh, loud noise at times.

At points, when the music wasn't quite so overpowering, it was possible to create a dialogue between the sounds that I was creating through the computer and waiting for a response from them.

I was quite please with the way that the show turned out and I think there should definately be more exhibitions which combine work from a range of years and cover a whole variety of media, creating a more fulfilling experience.

Trip to Kelvingrove and Hunterian Museum (30.11.09)

Kelvingrove Museum

I wanted to go to the Kelvingrove museum to see if there might be anything concerning antiquated forms of communication.


I didn't manage to find much on the matter however there was one thing which caught my attention which was the ventilation grills which at one point looked as though they were presented as a frame in themselves.


There was one which was emitting a particularly loud, high-pitched noise which sounded like it was coming from a massive heating room hidden somewhere in the basement of the building. I was quite interested in the idea of sounds being transported around the building in this manner, much like servants would be called for in a large Victorian house via bells.



Hunterian Museum - Lord Kelvin permanent exhibition

Lord Kelvin was born William Thomson in Belfast on 26th June 1824 and was the fourth child of James and Margaret Thomson. After the death of his mother, William along with the rest of the family moved to Glasgow where his father took up the Chair of Mathematics at the University. William entered the University of Glasgow at just 6 years of age, officially matriculating at age 10. In 1841, at the age of 17 he entered Cambridge, graduating there four years later before returning in 1846 to take up the Chair of Natural Philosophy (what we now call physics) at the University of Glasgow.


In the mid 1850s and for the next decade he became increasingly involved in the cable laying projects that were to allow, for the first time, Britain to communicate instantly with the other side of the Atlantic. By 1866 his skills as a mathematician, applied physicist and engineer had led the Atlantic cable project to successful completion earning him a Knighthood.

(Read more...)

This fantastic display was truly engaging and included pieces such as a a wine glass placed inside a perspex box, a certain pitch was then played through a bass amp which would cause the glass to resonate and wobble.

Some of the scientific apparatus were just fantastic items in themselves but I particulary liked a pair of brass parabolic mirrors with a description of an experiement carried out by Jean Antoine Nollet:

" I am persuaded that cokes act mostly by radiation like that of the sun. There is a pretty experiment in Nollets Lecons de Physique: he set two mirrors, (made of pasteboard gilt), parallel to one another, and face to face, in the opposite sides of a room: in the focus of one, a bit of charcoal, and in that of the other, a little gunpowder he blew upon the charcoal to brighten it, and the gunpowder took fire."

Concave brass mirror

These seemed to me very similar to the sound mirrors which I had looked at earlier on. On further investigation I found this website which seemed to bring together these two apparatus. (follow the link here)