Last week was an unproductive time in the studio for me and I spent most of it reviewing notes for the upcoming oral presentation and reflecting on past projects. This week I'm trying to focus on making progress towards critique on Wednesday. This involves: getting the kaikomako series from midyear printed as high-quality photoprints, getting 3D models made of a few important scans (the kaikomako, the Rangitoto orchids, and the lichen models made in Blender), and beginning another moving image work that is based on point-clouds. My plan is to bring my projector into the gallery to test out the moving image works I've made so far, especially those focusing on Rangitoto (example below - this is a piece I'm currently working towards extending), and to test a couple of smaller sequences out on a TV screen if I have the capacity to.
Skill building - Blender and RealityCapture
Continuing explorations in Blender, I've started playing around with using point cloud visualisers using data from the scans taken on Rangitoto and of the kaikomako tree. I've mainly been using them in small moving image tests in Blender - as the angle of the program's camera changes, it allows the structure to shift between visibility and invisibility, a bit like an optical illusion or hologram. My plan is to continue exploring this by creating a moving image sequence that focuses on the rare native plans I've encountered through studio work so far, specifically those that have been re-established through regenerative efforts during recent years. I think the hovering between here and gone, local and distant, is something that can be reflected by the point clouds, and my hope is to create a simple exploratory sequence using them. I also suspect that the holographic quality could lend itself really nicely to any speculative models if I decide to include the link between Mars and Rangitoto in my EOY work.
In order to make the point clouds, I've started working with another photogrammetry program called RealityCapture. It allows me to make much more high-definition models than Blender does currently, and I'm able to rework the images used to create LiDAR scans into models using the program. While it's my intention to revisit Rangitoto in the midterm break, it's been handy being able to continue exploring using content already available to me.
Midterm break planning
I decided that I want to spend more time on Rangitoto gathering scans and sound and planning out my EOY projects. I've booked a couple of days in one of the historic baches near Motutapu, and intend on making the most of the time by exploring the island, gathering content and expanding on that which I already have. My primary focus is to record sound - specifically the birds on the island - as I think this could form a good soundtrack behind the video above. I also intend on taking some videos at night, directed towards Mars if possible, and potentially of the lava caves if safe to do so (and if I don't get too spooked in the process!). It should be interesting...
Artist of interest: Jean Painlevé
Jean Painlevé was a French surrealist film-making, scientist and photographer. I came across Painlevé's work while looking into the topic of surrealism in relation to the natural world. While he didn't identify as a surrealist artist, he associated with many involved in the French surrealist movement at the time. His works contributed to surrealist film-making practices during the 20th century, especially his zoological-focused films and photographs. Having trained as a biologist, many of his films focus on looking at the natural world (specifically that related to ocean ecology and creatures) through a scientifically informed lens, although do so through an imaginative and expressive format rather than pure scientific analysis or observation. In doing so, he pioneered what is called "scientific-poetic cinema". Below are stills from his film Les Oursins (sea urchin), 1954:
Short YouTube talk about his work below:
"[Painleve] developed a zoological surrealism, based not in dreams nad the unconscious, but in the strangeness of nature and animal life, particularly as encountered through media and technologies"
"In turning its attention to animal life and nonhuman worlds also critically altered conceptions of human ones. He developed a practice of anthropomorphism without anthropocentricism, so that it asks viewers to concider what animals might teach us about being human differently rather than simply how they might reflect our all to human values and foibles."
"Painleve took his training in comparitave anatomy out of the laboratory and into the wild to develop it into a cinematic surrealism"
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