Sunday 11 April 2010

Neglected Blog!! and now getting on with it......

Ok so I have completely negelected my blog.....slap on the wrist! However I have had a complete mental block with this project which I am happy to say I have now cleared! I have spent the whole of my Easter break thinking, sometimes enough to make my head explode but it is both surprising and frightening to think that a project requires this much head room. I spent a whole day recently revising music notation, just to understand what symbols go where on a music score, a whole day taking my sketchbook apart and writing reflective notes and then a whole evening playing with latex gloves and cement!
I couldn't see where I was heading with this motley assortment of ideas but I am glad to say I now have the inkling of an idea. As you will see from the picture I did eventually find a way of plotting a guitar chord in a three dimensional space but got to a dead end with this as I felt it didn't push the boundaries of my work enough.



After much thought and a couple of nights of interrupted sleep I sat down with Richard and discussed the whole project from start to finish. Doing this made say what I was looking for 'out loud' and I discovered what I am trying to convey is an interpretation of musical score into a more three dimensional, physical display. Richard and I batted a few ideas about (he is such a good sounding board (pardon the pun)) I took a series of photographs showing his hand as he plays the chord.


I also took a series without the guitar fret board in his hand which led me to the idea of making 'hands' out of plaster to embelish or hold part of a sculpture. I realised that I did not know how to take a cast of a whole hand, so spent a mad evening with Richard mixing up cement, filling a latex glove and then using masking tape to manipulate the fingers while it dried!! As you can see the results were not spectacular as it became a little too 'gorilla' like....



So! I have spent most of this weekend reading up on life casting and the do's and don'ts of how to achieve realistic casts so the casting alginate is on order, the plaster of paris now purchased and will be hunting around university tomorrow for some plaster bandage - I am finally excited about this ......

4 comments:

  1. How about trying to capture an imprint of a hand - ie negatively - like a footstep on the beach??

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  2. ..or try to capture how sound waves might look in three dimensions? or add some video footage of guitar frets along the lines of the work of victor and george??!

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  3. wow after reading this my head hurts! i like the sound of negative space creating the sound and vision (if you have enough clay )experimenting with what sound would look like (what does music look like to a deaf person they cant hear it but they can see its effects and feel it and see the emotion it creates in the surrounding people!! ) or am i way off the mark? anyhooo good luck

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  4. Glad to hear that your mental block has passed!
    Have you thought about using a different material to sculpt the hand? How representational does the hand have to be? I was thinking wire-work. Can metal guitar strings be manipulated and set in place? Dan Lobb at uni is probably a good person to contact ref the plasterwork. x

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