The Speed of Light

The Speed of Light is an installation by United Visual Artists, commissioned by Virgin Media to celebrate 10 years of broadband. I decided to visit this installation because of my growing interest in interactive, installation art. I found their use of lasers appealing and interesting as I thought about using them myself as means to visualise chance encounters between people and some of my intersection ideas about different paths connecting. The exhibition is a spectacle of light, the laser beams create an exciting environment which works in conjunction with sound. As you enter you are prompted to speak into a microphone by a screen asking you different questions, the sound you produce is then looped around the three floors of the exhibition and used to trigger different lights as you hear your own voice echoing around the rooms. This interactive element is very successful and really engages with the visitor, because of this interaction the exhibition is different every time, depending on who visits and what they say, making it a good example of the use of chance elements.

On the third floor the show reaches a crescendo with a laser light show, using four lasers one in each corner of the room. The beams move and dance, crossing paths at varying speeds, suspense and tension is created by the way the visuals work with the sound which is a mixture of voices collected in the first room, live streams from news sites and ambient sounds. The sounds and lights work together to create layers of interest and at times a sense of confusion which I think mimics the confusion that growing communication technology creates. I think the exhibition did very well to visualise the themes of broadband, the internet and communication. In the last room in particular the show worked to conjure ideas about the way people interact across the world and how peoples life interconnect, which is very relevant to my work at the moment. The show has given me inspiration to attempt to tackle an installation myself and well as sparking further ideas for me about the way people communicate and how this links to my ideas about chance.

I have recently discovered the work of Jonathan Harris who is an artist and designer based in New York. His book We Feel Fine: An Almanac of Human Emotion presents graphic representations of peoples emotional responses, gathered from thousands of blogs from all over the internet. The book collects and quantifies a mass of data from these blogs, presenting: ' a contemporary portrait of the world's emotional landscape, exploring the ups and downs of everyday life in all its colour, chaos, and candor.'

The way he presents this information is clear and concise but also sensitive to the emotional content, a truly inspirational piece of graphic communication for me.

Jonathan Harris

Final Coincidence Book

CHANCE/CHAOS/ORDER book series

I am planning to collect all the stories I have come across during my research for this unit of work and compile a series of short stories on the theme CHANCE//CHAOS//ORDER. This idea is based around Penguins 'Great Ideas' series.

I want the covers to relate to each other and also the overall themes and be presented as a collection in a box. The series will include:

The Lottery in Babylon by Jorge Luis Borges

De Impossibilitate Vitae and De Impossibilitate Prognoscendi by Stanislaw Lem

The Three Princes of Serendip - ancient Persian tale

Short extract from Silence by John Cage

Short Extract from The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart

Coincidence Book Layouts

Coincidence Book

I have organised the information collected through my coincidence survey. My aim is to present this information in a small book. This is an extension of my experiments with presenting the coincidence stories next to collaged illustrations.

I have picked out the stories and quotes that have the most impact and arranged them opposite photographs. The photographs were taken on my Diana mini lomography camera which allows double exposures. In this way the images taken have two layers which coincide in an unpredictable way, it is not therefore their content but the way they are taken that is important in this context. I did however choose to photograph crowds of people as I wished to show the complexity created when people coincide. I have mocked up an initial book (pictured here) which will be refined before being printed finally.

Daniel Eatock

Daniel Eatock has proved an inspiration to me particularly his ongoing photo journal ‘photo of the week’. In these photo’s and throughout his work he shows how coincidences occur in the world around us, depicting them in a simple and humorous way, on his website he states: ‘I seek alignments, paradoxes, chance circumstance, loops, impossibilities and wit encountered in everyday life.’ The simplicity in which he presents his work, no frills just raw ideas and lots of them has shown me the possibility in making connections through photography and how an idea can be realised with less fuss than I am inclined towards, but with great results.

http://www.danieleatock.com/

Nearly Different

By manipulating these old family photographs of my grandparents and father as a baby I am trying to visualise the idea that it all could have been different, if one little decision was made differently, our reality could be something else entirely, that is if we exist still at all. I am interested in trying to bring this to attention in order to highlight how improbable the world in the form it appears to us. This rather crude depiction shows the real photograph and also an altered one where a different man is in my grandfathers place and my father is blurred out.

Screen Printing Experiments

Intersection Screen Prints

I have made screen prints using the photos depicting the intersections between people as an explanation of how chance works. I've overlaid text and experimented with image and background colours. This is a real example of how my work has developed through a process as the final look of the images is all a result of trial or accident.

Feedback Film Experiments

Second experiment

Feedback Film Experiments

These are some initial experiments I have done today with feedback from a television to a camera in an attempt to illustrate chaos theory. I am finding these experiments fascinating, and the visuals created have some potential. Doing this has also allowed me to come to grips with the theory through practical work.

CHAOS

The concept of chaos in science has come up during my research and provides a concrete theory for the reason we cannot accurately predict anything and that the future is in fact undeterminable. Most of us are familiar with the butterfly effect as a concept that explains chaos: a butterfly flaps its wings causing the air current around it to move which in turn causes changes in a larger air current and so on until large weather systems are effected. We cannot predict how a tiny action will effect other actions and in turn how it will effect our future.

A television program that was suggested to me by my tutor has illustrated this for me clearly, The Secret life of Chaos <http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00pv1c3/The_Secret_Life_of_Chaos/> The program has brought to my attention a way of showing how a small action can create unpredictable outcomes, by filming feedback the layering of actions that are effected in sequence by the previous action is shown on screen. I am now in the process of carrying out film tests to discover what can be shown myself.

Intersecting Objects

This is a quick sketch visualising the photographs I am planning to take of the intersection between the worldlines of objects. The lines will be created using black elastic, I am imagining that the elastic will create interesting patterns and shapes in the room when lit in the right way, giving the overall aesthetic of the image complexity in turn illustrating the intricacy of the way objects interact.

Representing Worldlines

At the moment I am working on how to visually represent the concept of worldlines, which are basically a causal chain explaining how someone moves through time and space. The intersection of people’s worldlines is what causes them to interact and chance happenings to occur. These photographs are initial experiments with representing these concepts.

I have used small ready made models of people and connected them using thread, experimenting with the lighting and the way the shadows fall. I have tried to create complexity in the image by layering photographs. Although I find these images somewhat successful I will now refine the ideas and tidy up the production of the photographs. I also wish to show this concept in a slightly different way by creating worldlines in thread for objects instead of people, putting them in a real domestic situation and photographing them.