Two pots June 1, 2007
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Art , add a comment
Flatbed scanner photography forums February 16, 2007
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Art, Flickr , 4comments
Posted by Vincent de Groot to the Scanned Objects Flickr goup forum yesterday, a link to his article on flatbed scanner photography.
The article is a good one, as an introduction to the concept of scanner photography, but it does become specific to one particular piece of scanner software, called VueScan. Also it makes no mention at all of the same Flickr group where over 1,600 examples of scanned objects can be browsed by tag, contributed by 417 members, founded on 1/1/2005. Instead there are 4 links to his own PHPbb forum, so I might have to sign up there and post a reciprocal advert, or not bother. I see this kind of promoting of other forums happening quite a bit on other groups as well so let me throw out the question:
Are established flickr groups, or any other forum with a substantial membership, considered fair game for trying to recruit members from? Would the use of the word “poaching” be too emotive a description for such activity?
Dave’s Art Project - the wreckers February 7, 2007
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Art, Music, UK, web2.0 , add a comment
Dave left a comment about his art project which includes drawings and text about the Branscombe beach shipwreck.
This is a project I’ve just completed:
http://dev2.manme.org.uk/~davem/wreckers/
It’s an interactive work on the subject of the Devonshire ‘wreckers’.
My idea with this is to make what I call a ‘debate drawing’. I wanted to make drawings that were more connected to a subject, and I wanted to have a debate going on inside a picture - or even a debate that creates a picture. So I wrote a computer script and hooked it up to web feeds. The comments you post are mixed in with other comments from a web feed, and then converted into shapes and lines. Please have a go and post a comment, as every comment is added to the system and makes the pictures more interesting. The best pictures will be printed big, and I’m also thinking of doing T-shirts, if anyone’s interested - please email me.
Hi Dave,
Thanks for your comment on my blog bringing attention to your
interesting art project. I’ve had a look and generated a few pictures.
I did manage to break the URL system for the .png files though, by
including punctuation I think. I tried pasting in the lyrics to my
song, which I’m guessing is what brought you to my blog in the first
place.
I do like your idea of using mashups with RSS to create art, and I
like the original drawings. It made me question the way in which
combined media are used, for example as a writer, I normally consider
the meaning of words to be primary and their visual impact unimportant
as long as the reader can understand. But here you are taking people’s thoughts
and arguments and turning them into almost random patterns, with just
little hints of meaning. Like a conversation out of earshot.
I would also expect the conversations, here represented by overlaid
text areas, to be dynamic, flowing across the images. An animation or
movie other words, and with sound too!
If you are interested, there is now some music to the “wreckers
prayer” song - only existing as a home demo for now, but I intend to
record it again next week.
See if you think there may be scope for further mashups.
Maman Webcam May 15, 2005
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Art , comments closedThe University of Ottawa have aquired one of the giant spider scuptures by Louise Bourgeois entitled ‘Maman’ as seen in The Tate Modern London, and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao amongst other places.
Below is a picture link to a webcam which actually works and refreshes every 5 seconds so you can watch things go by.
Pictures of Maman from around the world are accumulating in Linda’s Flickr group, which now has 32 members and rising as several members go about advocating the group.
Who would have thought such a narrow and specific topic would form the basis for a growing community. It only goes to show………..er, something.
Ghost House April 26, 2005
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Art , add a comment
In every roll of film developed there are always a few surprises. This study of the dilapidated facia belonging to a house in the old East End near Brick Lane has a pleasing colour scheme but would otherwise be unremarkable until you notice a strange shadowy figure walking past who was sort of there but not there at the same time.
Landscape no. 2 April 5, 2005
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Art, London , 1 comment so far
inspired by Virtue
( no 1 )
the Baroque Guitar April 4, 2005
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Art, Music, London , 1 comment so far
I was walking across Hampstead Heath on Saturday, and came across Kenwood House and grounds, which are freely open to the public. Inside there are painted rooms, and a lot of old paintings. mostly portrait s of long dead rich people. I walked into one room and went straight up to one painting remarking out loud “Ah, somebody has tried to paint a guitar”. Reading the inscription, it was by Vermeer - a well known “old master”. Looking closely at the guitar something was clearly not right. “It’s only got five strings ! How can she be really playing it when one of the strings is missing?“.
So it turns out that this was a very famous painting, Vermeer’s “The guitar player” In 1974, the painting was stolen from Kenwood House by supporters of the IRA, and found in a churchyard ten weeks later.
“This painting exudes a joyous energy that makes it one of Vermeer’s most appealing works. One can almost hear the chords of the music the woman plays, an effect Vermeer created by painting diffused guitar strings that seemingly vibrate from her touch. Indeed, the image’s spontaneity results largely from the vigor of Vermeer’s increasingly abstract manner of painting, as in the boldly unmodulated planes of color defining her dress. “
Except from Vermeer, the complete works by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr
Ok, so the strings are meant to be moving - that’s fair enough but there are still only five of them. 1670 is quite a long time ago though.
“Vermeer’s compostitional organization my be linked to his decision to depict a guitar player rather than a lute player. The guitar was just coming into vogue in the late seventeenth century as a popular instrument for solo accompaniment. The music it created was bolder than that of the lute, in large part because its chords produced a resonance not possible on the lute which had begun to take on associations with an idealized past, a sophisticated era where music had been enjoyed and contemplated for the purity of its sounds. The bright and direct character of The Guitar Player thus, spoke more to the modern world of music represented by the guitar than to the conservative and contemplative traditions of the lute. “
The baroque guitar
The baroque guitar may be considered as having had its own particular history both in terms of its shape, tuning, sound and style. It was very often used as a solo instrument but, according to certain sources, also as an accompanying instrument. Even though it may be difficult to give exact dates, it was in use in the second half of the 16th Century until the end of the 18th Century in Italy, Spain and France. The baroque guitar is a lightweight instrument with a clear yet rich timbre that is perfect for accompanying the voice while still being capable of making itself heard in the company of other instruments.
It is used in continuo playing and is often included in ensembles with the theorbo, archlute, viola da gamba and other continuo instruments.
So the Baroque guitar does have 5 strings, or rather five courses of doubled up strings, in much the same way as my own prized vintage american 12 string guitar.
Communities of Practice PART 4 February 21, 2005
Posted by Andy Roberts in : learning, internet, Art , 4commentsAnother example which is barely a community but I’d like to mention because of the speed at which it came together. I think the rapid formation can be attributable to the social photograph hosting service at Flickr.com, which has been built especially to enable social interaction and is attracting a growing core of active users. So maybe it’s the use of graphical images as the basis for building relationships, maybe it’s the functionality of flickr or maybe it was just a good idea, facilitated at the right time.
The group, “scanned objects”is for people who use scanners, not to scan photos or documents, but scanning objects mostly for the purpose of making art. This idea gathered 20 people together who were each doing something similar on their own, to form a proto-community in no time at all, just through the power of images, tags, and a minor recruitment campaign over just a week or so. Since January the group has grown to 32 members with 111 images in the group pool.
Measured against Wenger’s criteria, the group has a shared domain of interest - Art, Technology, Imaging.
it has a shared practice - using digital scanners to create unique art from found objects.
it has an embryonic community - Artists remain subscribed to the group, view each others’ work, and are influenced by what they see and the comments left attached to the images. There is some discussion as to which scanners are best, the use of backgrounds, problems of condensation when scanning seafood!
So the community would appear to fit or at least begin to fit the criteria according to Wenger and yet I would be very reluctant to describe this as a COP. Why?
Brainstorming now…..
It isn’t a COP because
[Quantitative reasons]
There aren’t enough members yet - 32
There isn’t enough conversation yet - words or pictures?
There isn’t enough practice yet - merely a trivial sideline for most.
[Qualitative reasons]
The members are mainly hobbyists rather than professionals.
[Other]
Calling this a COP devalues the meaning of COP.
There’s something wrong with Wenger’s criteria.
The investment required to join and to remain a member is trivial. It’s too easy.
There’s something about the way the group rapidly emerged into being which reminds me of other sub-communities within larger online environments.
The group homepages on H2G2 for instance, some of the subcommunities within Ultraversity, the JellyARTclub on JellyOS. Web bulletin boards and newsgroups which were created in a fit of enthusiasm by a handful of people, or even one individual. 
The thing that seems to drive them at first is a sense of group identity. Some people, perhaps all of us, just feel the need to to belong to something. So we come across something which interests us, note the apparant energy of one or two instigators and we happily sign up to the club. We identify ourselves with the group by adding our name onto the group’s growing list of members, we reciprocate and reinforce by proclaiming our membership of the group on our own homepage. It’s all about identity. But then after we have done that, what is there for the group to do? In some cases absolutely nothing. The group just sits there doing nothing, proudly proclaiming it’s list of adherents. Over time, the members lose interest because there is nothing to do, the instigators get bored and go awol, passers-by try to join in but find they are talking to ghosts.
While some might call these ‘false communities of practice”, such groups do seem to serve an important purpose. at least for a while.
I call them “Communities of Identity”
“Fans” would seem to be another example. People who are fervent fans of a particular rock group, a cult TV program or a 
football team need to identify themselves with a fan community. They seek each other out through fashion, wearing badges, attending fan events and buying merchandise. Perhaps it’s an ancient tribal thing, this need to belong. To make visible the difference between our tribe and everybody else. This is what communities of identity do, and I suspect there is an element of it to be found behind the magic properties of Communities of Practice as well.
image manipulation February 5, 2005
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Art , 3commentsI wonder if I could get my blog club to produce work like this, using just “the Gimp” :
Millenium Man January 23, 2005
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Art, London , 2comments
A sculpture by Anthony Gormley, located on the bank of the Thames next to the Millenium Dome, it needs to be be viewed from a moving vessel in the river really. Most of the time it looks like an abstract arrangement of angled steel poles, but every so often you can glimpse the form of the Man within.
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