ARTISTS TALKING

# 15 [28 April 2009]

After some downtime, and an extended visit to India to discuss the work at the Indian Institute of Science, amongst other places (and get the project billed at Critics Choice in Time Out Bangalore!) I have hung the prints and fixed a private view date. So... here are the details, if anyone is in the Bedford/Milton Keynes area it would be nice to hook up!

In Particular  - Private View

A drinks reception to launch In-Particular - an exhibition of works by Julie Freeman representing the culmination of an artist residency with Professor Jeremy Ramsden, at the Microsystems & Nanotechnology Centre, Cranfield University.
6 - 8pm Wednesday 6th May 2009

Vincent Building Atrium, Cranfield University, College Road, MK43 0AL

All guests will receive a limited edition copy of Nano Novels. But if you can't make it and would like a copy of the Nano Novels (limited edition of 1000) email me with your postal address and I can send one out.

Please RSVP to: jmanners@mannerspr.co.uk
Exhibition runs until September 2009. Free entry and fully accessible to all.  

It's nearly over even though I've been eeeeking it out  :(   ... although there's always the evaluation report to sweat over... 

# 14 [13 January 2009]

Website launched!

http://www.in-particular.net

It was actually launched a while back 17th November 2008, but I forgot to blog it here.

# 13 [15 September 2008]

Nano Novels

I've been working up large scale images to support 'Nano Novels' I'm writing. V exciting. What I thought was going to be a set of cartoons about nanoparticles has transformed into a series of tiny stories that represent some form of process, reaction or material from the nanotechnology realm.

Why the switch? Because:

* conveying complex processes - such as how laser tweezers work - is hard enough in plain language let alone with hardly any words

* there is so much to say, and sketches of nanoparticles can't say it all

* I don't normally write, and I'm really into it so while it's happening I'm going with it

I also think I have to touch on a lot of issues and facts lightly. Delving deeply into a single aspect of this vast subject (and I mean vast - it will (and is) impact a huge percentage of the industrial world, and in turn our everyday lives), although tempting, will not satisfy my need to share what I am learning and wouldn't really be representative of the field-at-large. Later in the residency, some nanotech detail will be represented more abstractly by a physical piece of work.

So what I'm working on (with TP) is a set of Nano Novels, each accompanied by matching plain text:

OUT OF CONTROL  -  HOLD ME TIGHT
“In the mating season, the tiny female Slippranophus brightly bugs increase their velocity to more than ten times their usual pace, creating a challenge for any potential mate. Fortunately, due to a unique symbiotic relationship with a plant, the male bugs have evolved a technique to demobilise their chosen mate long enough for procreation to take place. The older males produce electroluminescent droppings that are placed near the female and these dazzling droppings temporarily stun her whilst impregnation occurs. It is believed that this faecal electroluminescence is created by the male Slippranophus brightly eating a diet of Gnipglowantha – a tiny weed that releases a curiously obscure chemical at dusk and grows in the Hartlepool region of the UK. As the faeces glow for less than a second, this fascinating natural phenomena has only recently been discovered.”

“Nanotechnology seeks to try to manipulate nanoparticles, something which is extremely hard to do. It is almost impossible to hold a single nanoparticle completely still – using optical tweezers is one method scientists use to capture and move individual particles. These 'tweezers' do not hold the nanoparticle in the traditional sense. Instead, the intense optical field separates electrical charges on the particle, causing it to acquire a pair of opposite electrical charges (poles—hence called a dipole). The interaction between the dipole and the optical field traps the particle at the point where the field is most intense. This intense field is created by focussing a high power laser, and the particle can be then moved by moving the laser.”

# 12 [11 September 2008]

Art & Science Talks

I've finally got confirmations from speakers on 4 talks I'm organising at Cranfield. This part of the residency 'deal' was such an easy thing to write on an application form but it actually takes a lot of time and effort to find a good balance of interesting people to come and speak. Let alone the admin - book a room, get permission, talk to security, figure out who to ask to move a table, get a risk assessment on blu-tack, and so on... 

My aim is to attract people from science, engineering and business to come and hear artists talking about their collaborative work in various disciplines, and maybe get inspired to work with artists themselves, or just to consider opening up research strands to include lateral subjects. I think I've got a great line-up:

1st October 2008 -  Professor Paul Brown - artist

Subject: Can a robot evolve to demonstrate creative drawing behaviour?

15th October 2008 - Francesca Galeazzi - artist & architectural engineer

Subject: A recent expedition to the Arctic with Cape Farewell; preventing creativity freeze in the name of climate change awareness

29th October 2008 - Dr Emma Lawrence - experimental psychologist & Julie Freeman - me

Subject: Tricks of the Psych Trade: an artist/scientist collaborative event unraveled. How did a public understanding of science event get helped by art?

12 November 2008 - Anna Dimitriu - artist, founder of The Institute of Unnecessary Research

Subject: Talking to bacteria - our relationship to the everyday microbial world in which we co-exist, plus the importance of Unnecessary Research

The talks are free, and open to all, and are at 6pm, Building 52a Cranfield University. More info: http://www.in-particular.net/talk-series

I'm intrigued to see what kind of response I get - there are very few activities on campus that involve art (OK, well none) yet I speak to people here regularly who have a keen interest in art or who are artists 'on the side' as well as scientists.

Now to get the audience to come in the first place... 

# 11 [26 August 2008]

Pencil on Paper - it's war

The results from the ESEM imaging (see previous post) were interesting, but a little adrift of my expectations.

Looking at the images the gentle process of marking paper with pencil is turned into something destructive. The paper clearly putting up a fight against the sharp point of the pencil, which in turn gouges the paper like wolf claws in deer flesh.

...... add here

# 10 [21 August 2008]

Looking closer, seeing less

Yesterday I had a 2 hour session with Matt Kershaw and TP with an Environmental Scanning Electron Microscope (ESEM) which can enable us to view up to x5000.

ESEMs focus a beam of electrons in a scanning motion over a sample placed in a sealed chamber. A vacuum is created in the chamber and water vapour is added. The electrons penetrate the sample (a tiny amount, say 10 micrometers) and stimulate the ejection of other electrons (Secondary Electrons) from the sample, which are amplified in the water vapour environment. The secondary electrons are counted by an electron detector and this information is converted into an image viewed on a display. It's complicated and I barely understood, but that's the gist. The most important thing is that what we see on the screen is a combination of a hardware sensor and a software translation of moving electrons into a black and white image.

In preparation I made 8 cardboard slides each with pencil marks from the entire range of Faber-Castell pencils and then some. From 6H to 9B, plus charcoal and wax pencil used for writing on glass. Each slide was a different quality paper ranging from very smooth (professional tracing paper) to super rough (crepe paper). So 8 different papers, 20 different pencils, 3 different marks per pencil = 480 samples. In 2 hours. I didn't really think that through and we managed to look at about ten, plus some marks made ad hoc on a little aluminum stub (so we could tilt the sample - my slides were too big).

I was hoping that the equipment would reveal landscapes of graphite and clay, boulders of charcoal, great crevices formed torn by the hardest pencils, sprinklings of dusty rubble at the edges of lines, mountains made by single dots.

Mostly when we mark with pencil on paper it's a purposeful action, a dynamic set of movements that build a bigger picture. In using the equipment I was interested in looking closer at the pencil mark to see how complex the simplest of artistic processes is from a very close-up perspective, whether the dynamic nature of making the mark was clearly apparent in the debris left behind, and if it would even be recognisable as a pencil mark.

I hadn't considered the interaction between pencil and paper, or the elemental ingredients of the samples.

More following...

"As I prepared my samples thoughts nudged at me, what would they look like, what would we see, what if we discover, something new, something free from the norm, something quite beautifully strange? What if this pseudo-experiment is so out of the range that the magic we find is the first of it's kind? And the thoughts they went on and I let them, I let them push the excitement along. I wondered if the scientists feel this, if this is what they get, when they prep for the next most amazing experiment yet..."

# 9 [20 August 2008]

Art and Science Talk at Imperial

Yesterday I gave a talk to a bunch of post doc researchers at Imperial College. They were all scientists that had been and will be working with school children (ages 8-11) to enthuse about and teach science. The workshop was one of many organised by Wayne Mitchell (Cranfield Health) and he invited me to talk about how art can be used in the understanding of science. My work often manifests itself as abstracted representations of scientific processes so that made sense, and I really enjoyed thinking about the differences and similarities between art and science methodologies in preparation for the talk.

As there were only ten or so people in the workshop I decided to do something I usually do but backwards - I showed a piece of work called The Lake  (2005) and asked them to guess what it was without me explaining anything up front. No one guessed exactly what is was (a sound and animation work that was generated from 16 fish tagged in a lake), but it sparked an interesting discussion and some new ideas. This completely proved the point that presenting scientific data in a non-obvious manners sparks curiousity and wonder. Conveying complex systems and/or biological processes is possible in a way that is accessible (for want of another word) and allows each visitor to explore the concepts behind the work further to the depth they want to.

When The Lake was installed at Tingrith Fishery children of all ages loved it - I think this was because it gave them space to make up their own stories and theories about what the shapes were doing and why. Science enabling creativity :)

Two other people spoke at the workshop - my friend Dr Pink talked about his event organising org Rusty Promotions and a science communicator called Ian Dunne. Interesting both. I learned that sperm whales hunt by sonar, and when they find their prey (generally giant squid) they emit a super loud noise to stun the squid stupid and then attack. I've met people like that in East London.

Actually maybe not true about the whale after all: http://scienceline.org/2008/05/12/ask-locke-whale/...

(This article contains this quote "This was a a lovely idea killed by data". I think I've just found the title of the nano works.)

The Lake http://www.juliefreeman.co.uk/lake

Dr Pink http://www.rustypromotions.co.uk/

Ian Dunne http://www.ianbdunne.co.uk/

# 8 [5 August 2008]

Hacking printers, losing brain

It occurred to me today that I think it would be possible to misuse the networked printing system across the campus by outputting statements from the printers to the people that use them. Most people always look at what comes out as they wait for their print.

I wonder if I could access all the printers on the network - my mac seems to sit outside of the PaperCut system anyway so it might be possible. Wouldn't it be nice if you found a bit of paper and it had a special message on it?

  500 pages that all say "I want to but I can't"

  "No one asks me about the weather" 

  Pictures of other photocopiers with their doors open. CopierPorn. 

Or maybe I will use this to promote the work when it gets exhibited. After a little test or two...

Sheesh. What am I up to? Is this what happens when your studio is an open-plan office. You start making photocopier jokes? From a storage cupboard to a Tatiesque workers greenhouse. I think I am missing my old studio. A lot.

# 7 [4 August 2008]

Purple Gloves

I know that having the chance to witness a nanoparticle experiment in the lab is a great opportunity to learn, so it's probably not really OK to be dazzled by something as simple as a pair of very purple latex gloves. 

More to follow...

(probably)

Very lovely gloves though.

"Are you really being serious? Taking it all in? Are you learning from the masters, or have you been off-topic on the gin? Because it seems to us, it appears to us, it looks to us, like - you are coasting flat out in neutral, clutch down, gear agnostic, mildly out of control. And we're not very impressed when the point of you being there IS NOT BEING ADDRESSED. On the surface, to the naked eye, you know -outwardly at least, it seems a little tiny bit like you are taking the p*ss."

# 6 [29 July 2008]

Building 52a, Zone A1, Position 068

I have just moved to a new desk space on Cranfield campus. The new building is a glass addition to an old hanger style building, which there are a few of here as there is a private airport on-site. It's very light and airy, standard grays with flashes of lime green, pink and yellow. I like it, even it's corporateness, as it's novel for me to be in a place like this. On the outside it's impressive to visitors but inside is pretty inflexible in terms of workspace - a small desk and a tiny cabinet each - but it's not to house artists, it's for academics so maybe that's all they need, and there are the labs upstairs which are ace and slightly sci-fi and smell just right. I doubt some of the format meets their needs but will have to remember to ask around. The great thing is that it is populated with people and that is what I need. People. Yip.

My old desk space was in an office halfway up the stairs. I had two desks, some shelves, a white board, lots of light, walls to put things on, spare tables BUT it was empty (and it smelled). SamNewPhD joined me in the room after a few months but the isolation was still there as we were cut off from the rest of the people in the building - we couldn't see them and they couldn't see us. I didn't spend much time there and came up with lots of reasons - TP wasn't in, I need to save fuel, I'm wasting 40 mins due to the drive, I work better at home, my dog chewed the front door handle off with me inside...

I realise now that when I was in there I felt like an item of storage stuck halfway up the stairs - like your Grandma's corner cabinet that is potentially valuable but doesn't fit anywhere. 

So today I am feeling excited as I have witnesses (even though they don't know it). Does everyone need an involuntary audience for their life?