Wk 1 // studio thoughts

In honesty, it's been a bit of a rough week. I think on top of my general anxieties and creative block I've been feeling over the past month, the full impact of the cyclone and floods is starting to sink in - my household was lucky where we were thankfully, but the impact on our own and wider communities is starting to hit home. Last week I mentioned a curiosity about some of the physical/environmental events of the storms (silt deposits, shifts in land, a sense of permeability around where we are and where the water is usually, etc.) but for now I want to hold off on digging too deeply into these things - it feels too soon to do so with everything still so fresh. I'll still hold onto those curiosities, but at a distance for now.

I feel like I'm doing a lot of planning and reading and not much making currently (even though it's only Wk 1!) and it's something I'm feeling a little insecure about in all honesty. In terms of studio, I've definitely been getting caught up in the "shoulds" of what I feel I need to be doing. In an effort to combat this, I've decided to take the rest of the week off from making with any strong intention - simply exploring, experimenting, playing - and to try and let things flow organically. As well as this, finding readings for the literature review coming up is my current focus.

NB: the green highlighting is mainly for me so I can find information quickly around project plans :)

Project thoughts - mapping, mark-making, parallels, material connections

I have begun clearing space for a studio workspace at my family's house but the task is going to take a few days at least, so in the meantime I've been planning the nuts and bolts of what to do next week with what I can. For now, I can work digitally and from my city flat. I've begun taking more photogrammetry images and video to play with for now and will upload as I go. I've also collected a decent quantity of lichen from my family's property, which I'll be experimenting with this week - I want to see how easy it is to extract dye from it, and if there's a way of creating some kind of contact print or drawing from it... if not, could it be used as a pigment in other ways?

Following the meeting with Sonya and Victoria on Monday, I've been thinking about way information is mapped and coded into languages, and the connections between NASA's rover missions, space/exploration, mapping, and mark-making of other terrestrial spaces; how land (or the concept of land/scape) is surveyed and visualised. For some time now I've been following the documentation coming out of NASA's Perseverance - I'm especially finding the marks being left by the rover itself as it makes its way around Jezero Crater interesting. Thinking a lot about traces and points on contact, and indicators of interactions or connections...

Below: Perseverance images; the last is of some thermal blanket that was potentially lost on entry...

The bore holes left by the rover as it collects samples are a little amusing to me - as well as the scientific possibilities of what it collects of course, it makes me imagine someone sticking their finger in wet paint and leaving a mark behind for the sake of doing so, "I was here", whether or not that's the intention... Something taken, something left behind.

There's also the element of landscape construction in the images themselves - the reminder that these images are coloured, patched together and edited prior to release is often included alongside any images in NASA's online content, and in honesty it's a nice reminder in a world full of visual information from an institution that has a lot of weight behind its history and name. I found some small posts online about how raw images are processed, though nothing specific really around how it is done; I'm curious to see what would happen if I apply some kind of filtering logic to images of sites here on earth. For now, I've been looking at the different layered information coming out of my LiDAR scans and photogrammetry models (separate layers for normals, textures, etc.) and thinking about how they could be utilised...

Ambitious projects: glass and iron

Whether its the influence of seeing Kate Newby's Had us running with you, reading up on concretions, the desire to be working with something physical or a combination of all three, I've been looking into the possibilities of

making glass from raw materials. The basic ingredients are simple - a high-silica sand and some kind of flux agent - but the process is not. I need a kiln or set-up that can reach at least 1700'C, and a hefty amount of PPE. In theory, it would be possible to make glass from ingredients found around Tāmaki Makaurau. Soda ash can be made from samphire that grows along the coast; sand can be collected and washed; seashells can be ground for calcium; and as long as variables were controlled and quantities were tinkered with, it's possible... I wonder what could happen if I was successful and was able to create different kinds of looking glasses and lenses from different sites, even if very very small amounts (perhaps even the head of mapping pins). I wonder how similar and different the sand content and materiality of the different islands in Auckland are, and if different impurities would cause different colours... I'm curious about the idea of making mapping, surveying or looking devices from places themselves... What does it do?

Similarly (and this is in relation to the Mars rovers and Rangitoto's volcanic qualities), it is possible to collect iron from beach sand with a strong magnet. I'm still untangling it, but the links between the iron oxide in Mars' atmosphere, the rusted wrecks around Rangitoto and other sites, the iron found in Auckland's volcanic rocks, and even the iron content of blood all have a temporal, material, physical flow between them... Something to explore. In the past, I have done mapping experiments that tracked my own movement via my smartphone and translated records into wire 'drawings'. Similarly, during my BFA I experimented with copper wire marking imagined pathways between freckles on my skin akin to constellation mapping, as well as returning those markings to the medium of light via installation (which I considered a form of expanded drawing). I wonder if it would be possible, assuming I am able to collect enough to make wire and have access to a forge that can burn hot enough, to translate these maps being made via Perseverance using iron sands, as a parallel action here on earth in the material Mars is most recognised for - or even if not, could I replicate those paths traced by myself and a magnet via what is collected? While I figure out if the forge concept is doable, I've bought a strong magnet and a bit of rope to drag around the beach, and depending on the weather next week, aim to go exploring and collecting (likely on Rangitoto due to the volcanic correlation and iron-rich rock, but first more accessible beaches).

(Past mapping works from BFA)

Finally, in simpler plans around information, mapping, coding etc. around landscape and natural environments - I picked up a Resene colour swatch packs this week,and have been taking note of the colours associated with different organic objects and places. I've also picked up a few printed maps of Auckland and the islands in the Hauraki Gulf, and have some plans around abstracting them.