Meeting about graduation publication
After some troubles yesterday which ended in our having to call off our planned meeting, today Cecilia (the designer from the Werkplaats Typografie with whom I am working on my graduation publication) came through to Amsterdam to see my tiny studio and discuss our plans.
The problem which arises in making a book about my work is that it is quite varied; I have been busy with video, sculpture, photography, text, and other media. To make something which makes sense within the budget available, it seemed necessary to focus on something fairly specific.
We had originally concentrated on my video work, and since our last meeting Cecilia had prepared a concept booklet with frames from four works in four corners of each double page spread.
This seemed to be a bit literal, though, and perhaps a bit limiting in what it would show. That’s not so say that we won’t go down that road, but it would all the same be worthwhile to consider what else is possible.
Cecilia had seen my page about my 3-axis robot on my other website, and suggested that we do something based around this. I was very excited about this idea because I have been really keen to find a way to make a link between this type of personal project, and my art practice. The idea would be to focus not so much on the machine itself, but on the process of building it; like a lot of my other works, this is a work about which the experience of making and doing is perhaps the most important element.
What should hopefully emerge is a description of the process of building the machine and making it do things, along with the mistakes and strange outcomes along the way. I have started by getting it to draw things, and sometimes I get the feeling that when it screws up and draws something very weird, this can be sometimes more interesting than a perfect result.
