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)

Trip to Edinburgh 27th November

KARLA BLACK: SCULPTURES with paintings by Bet Low (1924-2007)
Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh
Inverleith House


This was the first show we went to see by Karla Black. I quite liked the huge mound of earth which was in the first room which had be dusted with patches of coloured powder. The soil's heavinness was quite a contrast to some of the other pieces which seemed very fragile, made from paper or sometimes a thin coating of coloured chalk powder. They somehow seemed to avoid any classification which consequently, but not wholly, didn't really evoke any reaction to these pieces.


I did whowever like the piece Acceptance Changes Nothing (below) which conjured up thoughts of glacial mountains which had been deprived of their peak - the top looked like it had been broken off and dusted with pink powder.

This show at the Fruitmarket Gallery covered a wide range of methods and themes and reminded me how important it is to use drawing as a learning process when you are exploring ideas for your work.

Luke Fowler at Modern Institute

A Grammer for Listening
(Parts 1-3)

Ever noticed the after-effect of sound rustling through a cityscape? What happens when images recede to the backdrop and sound takes on the leading role? Luke Fowler – in collaboration with Eric La Casa, Lee Patterson and Toshiya Tsunoda – creates field recordings to posit questions on how to develop new dialogues between looking and listening. (Read More...)



On the return journey from visiting the site in the Barras we decided to drop by the Modern Institute to see the current show by Glasgow based film/sound artists Luke Fowler.

It was a well and truly revelatory experience where you find yourself becoming completely emersed in the sounds which accomany the documentary-style footage. The use of focus is used to great effect here - particuallry effective in a scene which really brings out the depth through reeds on the edge of a pond.

There seems to be no immediate connection between the image and the sound which creates a sometimes quite haunting atmosphere. The use of contact mics in many of these pieces reveal the always present, otherwise inaudible sounds, travelling through objects which provides a whole new perspecive of our surrounding environments where the sounds transform the otherwise mundane everyday events into something quite extraordinary.




His four new short films Anna, Helen, David and Lester will be aired in Channel 4's Three-Minute Wonder slot from April 20. They're set in the West End close Fowler has just moved on from.

Each film is an elusive visual portrait of an individual tenement dweller, but instead of conventional documentary the films light on the tiny textural details of tenement life: light moving across a room, dust on a sill. Outside are the serried ranks of red sandstone, inside a hidden domestic world glimpsed obliquely. "It's about these very uniform outsides and what's going on inside: the layers of time in the flats, in all the furniture and the fittings. When I made the films I was fascinated by how completely different every flat was, yet it's the same light that goes through all the windows, the same street noise." (Read more...)




I find some of these works to be very reminiscent of John Smith's Leading light (1975) shot in a room over a period of a day and also Worst Case Scenario (2001-3) a series of photographs depicting daily life on a Viennese street corner.

African Pigmy Thrills (1930)

Just thinking about forms of communication, sending signals down cables and along wires, I was reminded of a video I had seen where african pigmys swing accross a vast distance to create the basis for a bridge between the opposite sides of a river.

Nite of Poetry and Soup

Along with a few friends, we thought it would be nice to have a regualr evening of poetry. Amongst the usual T.S. Elliot, one of the most notable poems was read out by a friend studying English Literature at Glasgow University by Alice Notley.

Alice Notley - '101'

It's possible that I still live there
Apartment that is path-narrow
I don't want to be there in this poem if
Anyone else is, from the past, I want it to be empty
A lot of dust I let fall
It gets smaller See mobiles from when, a flasher
Whose penis had broken off That other mobile I
Made it's talismanic objects
A bottlecap a rose a centaur a cactus a coin

Several handmade afghans always and many filthy blankets
Shawls on whatever chair a Mexican shawl a cotton cloth from Africa
What about all of the plants they would get very scrubby
Cunty conches rock collections art everywhere collages and fans
But the apartment's a hallway and odah orange and purple curtains
at one window
Held up by a rope and hanging clothes tacked up dividing successive
tiny rooms

(Read more...)

Other artists which we touched upon included Frank O Hara & Harry Mathews with his rather sexually explicit collection of 'Singular Pleasures'. Here is a sample:

While the Aeolian String Quartet performs the final variation of Haydn's "Emperor" Quartet in the smaller of Managua's two concert halls, a man of three score and four summers sits masturbating in the last row of the orchestra, a coat on his lap. Thirty-three years before, after relieving himself during the intermission of another concert, he had returned to his seat with his fly unbuttoned. Unconscious of his appearance, he had become erect during a scintillating performance of the Schubert Octet and actually ejaculated during the final chords. The house lights had come up to reveal his disarray; he had fled; ever since, he has been laboring steadfastly to recreate that momentary bliss.

Exploring the Barnes (19.10.09)

We were given a project last year where we were asked to go and explore the Mackintosh Building in order to inform our work and choose a site to create a piece of work. I found this to be quite an exciting venture as on close scrutiny, you notice many things which you pass by on a daily basis: such as the ventilation ducts which means that you can hear lectures going on in the Mackintosh lecture theatre outside studio 31.


This is something which I decided to do now that we had moved in to a new building so as to familarise myself with my surroundings, which I had settles into however not fully exlored yet.


One thing which drew my attention when outide the back of the building by Jim Lamberts' studio, was the sheer abundance of pipes and ventialtion grills throgh which the building effectively breaths, transporting water, heat and exhaling replenishing stagnant air. This started my thinking about alternative entrance points into the Barnes building in order to bring sound for example into the building, exploring the idea of internal/external - what is intended to stay inside the building and what is dispersed into the atmosphere.