Broadening my exploring : Llandaff Cathedral

After looking at the church in town, I though that it would be best to broaden my research therefore I chose to go to Llandaff Cathedral as of course they are ‘similar’ buildings. The cathedral was a lot more extravagantly beautiful than I expected.
The Cathedral appears to be a lot more popular (approx 42,000 visitors per year). In one hour I calculated 7 males, 2 females as well as 2 volunteer workers (1 M 1 F), the Priest and I

I managed to get some textures from the cathedral – presenting a visual sensory experience. I noticed endless amounts of texture which would usually go unnoticed therefore I thought representing it visually would help it to get noticed. As well as this there was an extensive variety of typography, also quite unnoticed in a similar way to the rubbings.

I then recorded a conversation between the Cathedral sales lady and I. We were all given a task to represent this visually to the others, so we had to write it out in a way that people could imagine how it sounded. So for example I used capital and bold letter to emphasise sound. I found this useful as it will help me to express things that people don’t necessarily see (like conversations or hidden/subtle things) but in a visual way.

A final task that we were set to do on our ‘areas’ was some sort of mapping. We were given a list of options that we could do: I personally chose to map everything blue that I saw when walking through the Cathedral but in two different ways. The outcomes:

I think as an initial practice into mapping these turned out fairly well, unfortunately the ‘blue pinhole light’ outcome was more difficult to photograph therefore doesn’t look quite as effective. I enjoyed doing this and it gave me an insight into mapping and if I were to take this further, I would push it and be a lot more creative with it.

Task 1

To start us off with exploring we were given some places and some tasks to carry out. I chose to look at llandaff bridge/bus stop area and my halls to begin with. I looked at sound/movement around Llandaff bridge, I recorded age/gender/proximity/mood in my halls flat and I documented lettering/signs/symbols/shadows/reflections from my journey from halls to the bus stop.

I found that this was a useful initial task, which then helped me to apply this to my next chosen site. I wanted to look at St. John the Baptist Church in town and carry out some of these tasks in a similar way.

 I began by visually documenting the colour schemes in the church; light, dark and colour. From this I could see that it was predominantly the stain glass windows that held all the colour and contrasted the rest of the church.

I then sketched out some signs and symbols that I found in there and tried to find some of their religious meanings to find some of the importances to the church. This then led me on to do some research into the history and statistics of the church. I documented how many people took notice and were inside the church which sadly only totalled to 6 (plus me and two friends). I also asked some of the public what stood out to them most about the church, this included such like the spire, the bells and the stain glass windows.

And lastly I took notice of shape, shadows, reflections and pattern which were all a lot more vast than I initially expected:

  

All of this research was useful to me understanding this area better.

Ecology, Energy and Modernity

After 1-2 lessons I had already learnt a lot about this subject as I have never really studied it before.
I learnt about the first and second law of thermodynamics and reflected this in a visual way:
Instead of reflecting the two laws in a literal image way, I chose to draw it more diagrammatically – this perhaps reflects that I think in a more ‘Graphics’ way. I found that doing these diagrams helped to set the meanings more solidly in my mind.

We also read a section of ‘The painter of modern life and other essays’ by Charles Baudelaire. I found this read fairly difficult first time round as i’m personally not used to used to this style of writing. We were given two questions to answer and link quotes from the book to. Firstly, ‘is art and design as much about exploring the moving energy or action between things as the things themselves?’ and secondly ‘How might this energy be creatively captured, expressed or portrayed?’ So my first quote in response to question one was “Inspiration has something in common with a convulsion, and that every sublime thought is accompanied by a more or less violent nervous shock which has its repercussion in the very core of the brain” – I thought this  linked well as it is like a metaphor as the exploring of energies and actions between things is like repercussions of convulsions, not just looking at the initial thing but being inspired by what affects the next thing. My second quotes in response to question two were “The external world is reborn upon paper, natural and more than natural, beautiful and more than beautiful” as well as “All the raw materials with which the memory has loaded itself are put in order, ranged and harmonised” – These quotes are fairly self explanatory as to why I linked them however in response to the question this energy could be expressed with motion, e.g different types of brush stroke, as well as colour to express the energy (mood related colour). I really felt that reading the passage and picking out the quotations helped me to analyse the passage more deeply and to answer the questions with backed up explanations.

In the second session we were lectured further on Entropy, Ecology and Entropy within Art. I found this useful as previously to this I was finding it a little hard to see the relevance that this would have to Art/Design and my work. We talked about how order is created by evolution and that there are endless beautiful patterns within natured which are perfectly aligned. In terms of design and nature, the triangle is the building block, it’s the most economical. There is mathematical order whereby things naturally fit together using space most economically. I found this interesting and useful as I’m quite interested in pattern at the moment and from this lecture found that looking at nature would be a good place to start researching. We went on to look at Fibonacci and the Golden Ration and how you can find it hidden within art. After looking at a couple of artists pieces we could recognise that it helped the image to look balanced to the viewer, which therefore helps to show the beauty of it.

We also looked at how ecology and entropy are relevant to art, especially to modernity. Artists began to challenge art which of course is a form of disorder (entropy). For example I learnt that artists (in early feminism) painted females gazing straight at the viewer which was a huge thing as females were expected to be passive at that time! I really think for me and my design work, this is teaching me to stretch my work further, perhaps to be more daring and push boundaries to attract attention and create more disorder to attract the viewer.

10th Constellation