The brief: …create works that are surprising and inventive…the value of collage cannot be overstressed as a tool to expand your pictorial repertoire , inspire new work, or as an end in itself…The hope is that the results will be a fresh take on your own artistic style and interests, and a way of discovering materials you would not previously have thought of using or combining.
I am often slightly disquieted when set a new brief as I’m not always sure how to relate it to my ongoing body of work and I feel there is a danger I get derailed. These mini projects can be good for experimenting and trying new things, but they can also feel like a distraction.
Collage and decollage is something I regularly use as part of my practice so in responding to this brief I wanted to find a new approach. I haven’t done much collage in my book objects and thought this might be a good opportunity. To be honest I’m not quite sure the order of the next steps, my recollection is that they almost seemed to arrive at once. The bookform influenced the poem that influenced the fragments of collage that were drawn from my archive. The fragments also relate to a wider project I’m developing about still life and looking back three and forward three centuries.
I decided on a long accordion book form with a single signature sewn into each fold, all in there are fifty signatures. This was in part why I decided on fragments of collage strewn throughout – one, long collage just on separate pages. I would never have had the time to create a separate collage for every page!
I knew there was an element missing and thought some text was needed but wasn’t sure what to use. Through pure serendipity a post arrived from Maria Popova’s Brain Pickings. In it was the incredibly moving poem ‘Singularity,’ by Marie Howe. I knew it was exactly what I wanted to work with.
How does this relate to digital? For me it has several direct connections – the collage pieces are from images in my digital archive; it is a good metaphor for entanglement; it also draws on the metaphors of threads used in social media. Most of all, Singularity has another meaning in relation to technology.
The Singularity in technological terms is also that point when computers overtake us.
While futurist Ray Kurzweil predicted 15 years ago that the singularity—the time when the abilities of a computer overtake the abilities of the human brain—will occur in about 2045, Gale and his co-authors believe this event may be much more imminent, especially with the advent of quantum computing. (Reaching Singularity)
I made the book object over several days and was really excited by the outcome, technically it is not perfect and I’m still not sure about handwriting the poem – but I have recently been challenged to make pieces that are a bit more ‘raw.’
I am very inspired by this new form and would like to make more – either as a series or some even longer. Someone has also suggested I should make a large one with signatures at least half a metre tall – my only reservation with that is where I will store it!
The piece seemed to be well received in the group crit with people picking up on its organic nature and its likeness to a ‘spine.’ In the project space I was able to experiment with different arrangements and found it was even more versatile than I had first imagined. I read the poem alongside showing the book object and was surprised by how well that was received, something to think about with future works.
Looks great, reminds me of a disintegrated traditionally bound book with accidentally stretched out spine
You can see the spinal quality to your work… and again the contrasts between paper and what looks like (on zoom)…. threads too…
It does have an animal quality
It’s like a slinky
It’s a postmodern serpent in the garden of a digital Eden. (Or not)
… which is a nice contrast to the high-tech context of singularity
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