Anamorphic Colour Illusions

One of the most fascinating first term studio builds for Foundation was one influenced by the work of artists such as Georges Rousse and Felice Varini. We had for a couple of years been looking at colour in space and in order to do this in one session we had students making small boxes within which they would insert different tints and tones of primary or secondary colours, and adjust their spatial positions so that they created the illusion that they sat in the same plane.  At some point (this must have been around 1994/5) someone decided that it would be better to have students working towards an architectural scale in groups to solve this problem. In order to introduce more precision and control it was further decided that they could create large scale anamorphic illusions in a similar fashion to Varini or Rousse’s work.

Working in teams students would initially be asked to share their collections of colour. I have mentioned before that students were often split into groups to collect primary and secondary colours. A large scale illusion of a simple geometric shape would be decided on, a square, circle, triangle etc. and then this would be plotted out over whatever structures were around, often these structures would be left over from the last project. So these might be anything from giant cardboard tools to 3D forms made from the synthesis of two different materials and their structural possibilities. (Another project that I will at some point look at). It was important that these forms could be seen as ‘intact’ geometric wholes from one unique point of view and that they could be constructed over a complex space that would usually include at least two walls, some floor and over several inventions. It’s easier to explain by looking at one of Varini’s pieces.

This is how the final installation looks, seen from a unique fixed point of view.

However if you are anywhere but at the unique viewpoint you can see the forms for what they really are, as in the images below and also walk amongst them.

The students’ would often make far more complicated pieces that the one above, their colours being made of paper, textiles, objects and whatever else they had managed to collect and the forms riding over a far wider range of surfaces. However the final result was similar. There was also an attempt to deal with atmospheric perspective, sharper more intense colours being kept for parts of the images furthest away from the viewer and less saturated colours placed in areas closer to the viewer. Hopefully if it was going to work correctly these differences in colour saturation would optically even themselves out as the eye adjusted its atmospheric spatial colour read.

The best of these images were totally convincing and of course photographed really well; eventually staff and students would then walk into the middle of the constructions to break the illusion. The photographs of course needed to be taken in such a way that these convincing illusions were surprisingly broken. Part of the yellow base of a triangle perhaps revealed to be a yellow bath-duck sitting on the floor, its left hand point a yellow duster pinned to a wall fifteen feet further back. The patches of colour could spread out quite some way into the studio spaces and they were far more broken up than the images of Varini’s above.

These constructions could take a full five days, but it was worth it because of the amount of learning involved. First of all, point of view was vital, and this was a great way for students to get their head around how important this was. The project was often their first ever site specific installation. They would usually use a camera set on a tripod for this, taking it in turns to check that everything worked correctly. The next issue was teamwork; someone always had to be directing others, it was impossible to do this on your own. The next issue was that an audience was vital to the ‘realisation’ of the piece, people needed to walk into the environment and experience it. For those who would eventually work with installations, be these design or fine art based, it was a powerful lesson, not least of course being how important it was to work with ambition on an architectural scale.  Precision was of course vital and any piece of colour out of key would pop forward or backwards and destroy the illusion, and because of the team working mentality we had a much better quality control system, each student checking on the work of others, so that the project maintained high levels of integrity. Finally the importance of documentation was raised. The work only made sense to others who had not experienced it photographically; the camera and its one eye, being part of the message of the work.





The imaginary museum

The people who run the museum site were very happy to host the module. They have kept a few pieces as these can be useful for them, so perhaps it’s time to reflect on one further aspect of these site specific modules, that of preparation for a career in the arts. Like the hospital sector, museums have been regular employers of artists, who have been used to re-engage with collections and to re-energise them for visitors. This fact will hopefully help students see that not everything a fine artist does must be confined to the studio and that there are other very worthwhile opportunities out there. (Or were, we shall have to see where the recession takes us). Thank God it’s not my job to put the PPP1 module together though, professional development is something I’ve always been rubbish at and best left in someone else’s hands. One thing that is useful about it is that it suggests that being an artist is a job. It was a job for Raphael and a job for Turner, I like that; it brings things down to earth.

There is something that makes the job special though and why every year new students come and why they have so many expectations of the discipline.

There was one small piece of work done in response to the museum that sums up why the museum want us back, why museums use artists and why this is such a great discipline. One student was using moss or lichen to work with. (There is a type called lung lichen) She had seen the similarity in structure to human lungs and was aware of how chalk dust had killed many of the workers who had spent their days grinding chalk rocks into a fine enough powder for the putty. After years of exposure chalk accumulates in the lungs and causes respiratory failure. After some materials investigation she discovered you could dip the lichen in white gloss paint and when dry you had a delicate filigree membrane that could be easily controlled to make a shape like a tiny single lung. She then constructed two of them with connecting tubes. This tiny sculpture was then put under a transparent bell dome and a wooden base turned and polished to fit exactly with the existing furniture in the museum. The object was then placed where you would expect something similar to be. For the casual observer passing by they would probably miss it but on second glance there is a moment of poetry that in one object conjoins many of the stories about working conditions in the 19^th century, with the Victorian need to collect and categorise and the museum’s own remit to freeze history. The object works both as a type of vanitas and as a Surrealist object. Art can do that and when it does it’s fantastic.

This is a first year module and it occasionally produces moments of real poetry, the friction between what young artists want to do and the reality of the site, sometimes sparking off moments of insight that come from being taken outside of their comfort zones. This is the real learning curve, one we all need to take on board. The world out there is amazing and when you need to invent or move work on into new territories, just push yourself into new and different situations, something will come up, it always does. All you have to do is be open and receptive.

Site Specific Module

 We have finally concluded the site specific module, all the work has now been installed and we are assessing. Once assessment is over the work will be tweaked to make sure it is audience ready and it is then open to the public.  Some useful lessons have been learnt by a good percentage of the people involved, not least the importance of good planning and the testing of pieces on site. However it’s the more subtle issues that perhaps lead to deep learning. It sometimes appears that the whole process is linear. You start the module with walking the site and getting a feel for its history from the people that work there. Because it’s so easy now to take photographs, people usually have very good documentary evidence of the site to take away with them and it is very easy to research about any historical or other aspect related to the site because of the Internet. Therefore it’s easy to think that ideas will germinate out of this mix and that once they start surfacing it’s simply a matter of manufacture and installation. However time and time again, it is the people who spend a lot of time on site that make the more interesting and powerful work. Often these are students who had an initial idea and through trial and error have scrapped it and evolved a new idea through a poetic engagement with the experience. This ‘poetic’ engagement often taps into areas of thinking outside of logic. “I don’t know what this means” or “It just seemed to come out that way” are typical responses to the process that might not fit the structure of the rationale, but are honest appraisals of something that is about just getting to know the subject and finding a feel for the place. I suppose this is the difference between art and illustration, the one discovers something new and unexpected about a situation, the other clarifies what we already know. Somehow when someone gets lost in the process of responding and making on site something else starts to emerge, something intangible yet meaningful, something you cant quite put your finger on but which opens out new meanings, meanings more to do with a feeling tone or intuitive grasp of possibility that a logical analysis and this is a territory where poetry starts and education ends. As an educator it is a privilege to watch this happen and I’m not sure how to facilitate it because I have to on the one hand get students to evidence their experience so that we can record it as learning outcomes, and on the other try to edge them towards something that is indefinable and so easily lost, that something that allows you to keep playing whilst being alive to the moment that is magic or that ‘works’. Perhaps that re-creation, re-making, re-imagining or revealing is in fact easy, but logic makes it hard, only experience and trust in yourself can tell you when to just let it happen. Today I saw some staged photographs of two people having a good time recreating proposed comedic moments that could have happened if workers had had time on their hands to play about. Something happened and the images transcended their makers. Rough texts written on walls engaging with these images in such a way that you just knew this was good, this was in the game and was worthy. I hope to see more tomorrow.