Hands-on versus hands-off making

I became an artist because I liked making stuff. And for a long time after I graduated that's exactly what I did. I drew, I painted, I assembled things. I made photographs and videos. I brought together exhibitions and even studio spaces. 

So it's a bit disconcerting to look back at the past 12 months and realise I have mostly been initiating and project-managing the making of stuff by other people. I have taken data collected by a glider pilot and a bird biologist and asked a programmer to help me visualise it. Worked with engineers to fabricate sculptures out of virtual models using a high-tech process I only just understand. And collected environmental data using  expertise and technology borrowed from Plymouth University. Even my recent publication about bananas was made partly from appropriated imagery and actually printed by another artist.

It's a perfectly respectable mode of operating  for a professional contemporary artist, so why do I occasionally feel like a fraud? After all, I've brought about number of new things that wouldn't have existed without me. What's more, the collaborative networks of expertise and ideas that came into being to serve these projects undoubtedly make a far bigger impact on the world than any of my paintings.

I suppose I'm very conscious that, in the popular imagination, hands-off artists are often seen as 'not real artists'. Like many people, I admire the time, commitment and talent that goes into the mastery of a skill such as printmaking or casting. So sometimes I'm a bit embarrassed to have to say, "no I didn't make that with my own two hands".

However, I know that unless I'm prepared to restrict my ideas to the craft skills I do have, I'll sometimes have to accept the role of commissioner or collaborator instead of maker. That said, I badly miss making stuff. Perhaps it's time for a new hobby - one that involves canvas and paint?

Not of this world

At a recent talk at Exeter Phoenix, artist Charlie Tweed was asked by an audience member to rate his powers of creation against those of God. I can't imagine your average video artist inciting such big questions. The enquiry seemed a little odd at the time but, in fact, there is something beyond the human going on in Tweed's work for his current show 'I Am Algorithm'. Through it, we are almost looking back at ourselves from somewhere beyond.

Made largely of appropriated images, sewn together in cut and paste narratives, the thrust of his work sits in a highly contemporary space between ecology and technology (and rather, like writer Tim Morton, he seems to suggest there is no boundary between the two). It is also somewhat posthuman. We're shown many images that were made possible by humans but have been created by machines. (The synthesised voice that accompanies them underlines this.) It's all housed in a spaces built of what look like black roofing panels, which emit a strong industrial odour in the summer heat.

This isn't an viewer-friendly exhibition. Coming across like a series of monotonous, relentless corporate videos gone wrong, it's actually too much to take in one sitting. Quite a contrast to the work (from the Notes series, I think) that won the 2009 Exeter Contemporary Open. This had  a lighter, more humorous tone, despite its sinister undertow.

In 'I Am Algorithm', Tweed seems to have entered a darker, more intense place. There's lots to admire, but not much to like. And I don't think that's a bad thing.

I Am Algorithm -  Friday  19 July 2013 - Saturday 31 August 2013, Exeter Phoenix, Gandy Street, Exeter EX4 3LS
www.charlietweed.com

Banana supplement

I've just received advance copies of The Great British Banana - my contribution to Nick Davies' Loophole Supplements series. It features some of the documentation from Foreign Soil, my ongoing attempt to grow dessert bananas outdoors in Devon. Free copies of this limited edition booklet will available later this summer from venues across Wales and Southwest England.

Loophole Supplements is a free quarterly artist editioning platform that commissions artists from Wales and the South West. The booklets are printed using the risography process. Loophole Supplement #6 has been produced with the generous support of Exeter Arts Council.

Find out more about Foreign Soil at britishbanana.blogspot.com

Art/science project takes off

Pigeon Point Cloud (2013) Working digital drawing which depicts positions logged during the 30-minute flight of a single pigeon in relation to a base level. Points cluster where the bird returned to and rested on two rooftops.

I'm very pleased to announce that I've been awarded a grant by Arts Council England for my research project Solid Air. Working with scientists and technical experts, I'll be exploring how to recreate the flight paths of birds as fixed three-dimensional objects.

My key collaborator is Dr Steven Portugal of the Royal Veterinary College's Structure & Motion Lab. I'll be visualising high-resolution data collected as part of his post-doctoral research into the aerodynamics of flocking birds. The data, which is gathered by  free-flying birds carrying highly sophisticated data loggers, is first transcribed into digital models before being made into physical models. Accurate physical rendering of such complex data is only possible through the new technology of laser sintering (also known as rapid prototyping or 3D printing).

The project grows from my long-standing interest in recording bird flight paths as a way of examining processes of transcription and interpretation, revealing the slipperiness of 'the real' when subjected to scientific scrutiny. 

It also builds on my work last year as part of the Exeter Phoenix Digital Art Commission 2012, which gave me my first opportunity to work with laser sintering to visualise flight paths in three dimensions. For that first test piece The Geometry of Air, I worked with GPS data from human glider pilots (who, like birds, use thermals and wind currents to shape their flights).

Now, thanks to the Structure & Motion Lab, I have access to a source of incredibly high resolution data generated by a range of birds including pigeons, ibis and raptors. Working with a programmer and 3D printing experts, I'll be looking at different ways of visualising this unique data. I'll also be taking time to reflect on the critical and theoretical context of the work, including what it means to translate natural flight into synthesised objects.

On going places and never giving up

LOW PROFILE Never Give Up (2013) site specific installation at Exeter Phoenix

Plymouth-based LOW PROFILE staged their 12-hour performance DRY RUN part 2: How to save your skin when disaster strikes without warning last Saturday as part of their show 'Against All Odds' at Exeter Phoenix  (24 May - 6th July 2013).

During this performance, they read, learn from and test each other on the advice offered in a 1960's publication - The Book of Survival.  It all took place in a building decked out with a giant window work encouraging passers-by to "Never Never Never Never Give Up" and with a small, displaced safety curtain draped across its reception space.

I only dipped in for an hour but learned a lot about avoiding avalanches and escaping burning buildings. (And also, I guess, about surviving as an artist.)  The tone of the Q&A dialogue between the two performers veered from funny/absurd to calm/weary to nervy/hyper, recalling Forced Entertainment's Quizoola!  It was good to see a durational performance where endurance was essential to its meaning (rather than a masochistic/macho add on).

Down the road at Spacex, Layla Curtis is showing 'Antipodes' (18 May - 13 July), based around a curation of paired public webcams worldwide. Drawing attention to what's happening on opposite sides of the globe isn't a new idea, but there's something pleasing about the haphazardness of relying on someone else's live footage and the odd correspondences (and blips) that occur.  It's shown alongside an intense video piece Tong Tana with amazing binaural sound, filmed from an tiny HD camera sewn into the hat of a hunter in Borneo and showing you the forest from his point of view.  Borneo is antipodal to the UK and the contrast couldn't be greater.

Fund-a-mental findings

I've always considered working with funding organisations an integral part of professional practice, but my experiences over the past year are making me think again about how to negotiate this relationship.

I've been working on two projects in parallel. The first, Foreign Soil started out as a bit of an experiment, an unfunded diversion from my core practice. And it's ticking along nicely.  I'm not sure where it's headed but the journey so far has been a real process of discovery. Work is getting made, insights are happening and, as a result, I've been able to engage very widely with other people, including a range of generous collaborators.

The other, which has the working title Solid Air, is still mired in administration. It relates to my long-term core practice around transcription of bird flight. I've been developing this particular phase for over a year, pursuing funding, commissions and gallery shows in a more traditional way.

It's based on 3D printing, an expensive process, but one I had the chance to experiment with last summer and would like to use again.  It's the only way I know of getting the complex bird flight data I've sourced and modelled into a tangible form. I've now pitched the idea to various arts organisations at least five times - not including the presentations and proposals I've made to potential collaborators and sponsors.

I'm not saying this is unusual for a professional artist, but I am beginning to question whether it's good for the work - and for me. I've talked about and written about Solid Air relentlessly for 12 months but - apart from my first prototype and a few test drawings - I haven't been able to make any of it. Time and again I'm forced to describe the idea, the process and the likely outcomes. Worse still, although nothing much exists yet and I don't know what I'll discover when I do make it, I have to speculate on its likely critical context and imagine how I'll engage the public.

I'm determined to make this work - it's had a lot of interest and good feedback.  And the very fact that some people can't quite get their heads round it suggests it's showing them something they haven't thought about before. But I have to admit that the struggle for funding and support is destroying its momentum. By the time I've explained it for the umpteenth time, I wonder if it needs to be made any more.

I went to a talk by photographer Jem Southam the other week and he spoke a lot about finding meaning through making - using photography as process of discovery, rather than “trying to put things into the picture”. All good stuff, but it seems to me this is a privilege that's only afforded to established artists. Or those who opt out of the funding game.

I don't know which of these projects will turn out to have the most value or meaning in the long term. What I do know is that one of them is actually happening and the other is still only an idea. It makes me think very seriously about the way should approach my practice in the future.

Wolverhampton wanderings

A selection of works from The Library of Lost Books  is currently on show at the Bessant Gallery, Wolverhampton,  25 April - 23 May 2013.  The show includes my contribution Mutter Erde. http://gabriellehoad.co.uk/mutter_erde.php