I’m absolutely in love with anything involving suspended motion, the more obsessively detailed the better. One artist I particularly enjoy is British artist Claire Morgan. What intrigues me about Claire is not only the amazingly beautiful creations she makes out of an insane amount of small suspended objects that can be as difficult to work with as that fluff that flies out of dandelions but that she introduces taxidermy to her pieces which is rather odd – but I love it. The thought of putting things like dead crows or fruit flies into a sculpture can seem grotesque and yet her creations are anything but.
In the artists words:
My work is about our relationship with the rest of nature, explored through notions of change, the passing of time, and the transience of everything around us. For me, creating seemingly solid structures or forms from thousands of individually suspended elements has a direct relation with my experience of these forces. There is a sense of fragility and a lack of solidity that carries through all the sculptures. I feel as if they are somewhere between movement and stillness, and thus in possession of a certain energy.
The way Claire artfully freezes time is one part of what makes these pieces so engaging but I’m especially drawn by these completely fabricated scenes that are inspired by nature and contain elements of form or movement that we are familiar with and yet she puts her own spin on them in a way that pulls them completely out of reality. Like the above image from her 2011 collection titled, “Gone To Seed”, she creates the shape of a dandelion that has begun to release that signature fluff and is in the middle of expansion when a crow falls through the middle, splitting the form in two. The forms are natural and yet the scale and interaction between the crow and the dandelion are completely impossible.
While You Were Sleeping, 2009
Clearing, 2009
Tracing Time, 2007
Here is the End of All Things, 2011
Claire has also begun drawing and exploring the two-dimensional world on paper. She begins by using paper which includes actual residue of the taxidermy process and refers to them as Blood Drawings. Below is Monumental from her 2011 drawings.
The most fascinating thing to me by far is when someone developes something, whether functioning or static, that gracefully walks the line between art and science.
The SolarSinger, a fascinating piece of engineering by Markus Kayser, falls into this category. But what makes it art? Is it the machine, the product, the questionable usefullness or perhaps Markus’ clothes?
One of the details I find particulary interesting is that he’s harnessing the energy from the sun using glass to make glass. We all did those experiments when we were kids but I can’t say it ever occured to me to use those powers to create rather than to destroy. Check out the video below documenting the process of this cool and fairly simple concept of using the hot sun in the vast open desert for the purpose to create.
Wednesday November 09th 2011, 6:15 pm
Filed under: Art,Landscape,Sound
People are continuously pondering whether plants have audible communication abilities or if they scream when they are hurt or chopped down. Even Mythbusters did a show that put the latter to the test which was ultimately busted but had moments of possibility. So what do you think, can plants talk?
Artist Luke Jerram thinks they can and set out to make an art piece centered around the audible abilities. However what he captured is not so much communication as it is a concerto of noise that lead to his aptly title installation, Plant Orchestra.
Jerram’s artistic interests parallel my own so I can’t help but enjoy his work that pulls from his own fascination with the natural wonders of the world. This piece in particular explores an entirely acoustic experience that seeks to put the viewer in the world of the plant whether it feels comforting, overwhelming or even downright scary due to the unfamiliarity of this strange place.
In the artist’s words:
Although imperceptible to the human ear, plants create sound. Using specialist microphones water can be heard as it flows slowly up the stem of a plant. If trees are suffering from drought, scientists can measure acoustic emissions that occur caused by cavitation and embolism within the plant. The sounds created during the day are different to those at night and they alter with the seasons of the year.
Amplifying the acoustic emissions of plants using dozens of special microphones the Plant Orchestra reveals this new and hidden acoustic world. Through amplifyication, each plant is transformed into a musical instrument and becomes part of The Plant Orchestra.
The video below captures the experience of the Plant Orchestra at Night Jar at the Cambridge Botanical Garden which was the very first installation of the piece. “Hundreds of sound samples were recorded from dozens of plants within the glasshouses for the arts project. The best recordings were then played from their prospective plants as part of a light and sound installation.”
