06/03/2009

Bernie painting her shanty home

Arranged to meet Mark at 10.30 and was pleasantly surprised when he turned up. It was a slow process saving the files to the external hard drive, so he headed off while they were downloading. He must of forgot about it but I was able to complete the transfer of the files to another mac without any problems. Spent the rest of the day downloading my video work on to DVDs to present to the tutors for the progress reviews. I had some sad news today, my colleague and collaborating artist Mathilde, (on Erasmus exchange from France) has been told that she would more likely than not, be refused continuation of the course into 4Th year, and worse still, she would not be permitted to redo third year. She mentioned something about her English but she speaks it very well, as for her written English, I have read some of her notes and her written English is of a high standard. I don't know the politics involved but I do know that our class is a small one (24 originally, 1 left in first year, Tom passed away, and Amy has gone to sculpture. Jo is in second year but we got Rachel repeating instead, so we are still 3 students short. Mathilde is devastated to say the least, she loves it over here, and especially loves the college, she gets on really well with everyone. I suppose I am biased but we get on really well as collaborating artists, we have some great ideas for future work together. I believe she will be a big loss not only to me but to the college as well. I hope there is something we can do to keep her in the class.

05/03/2008

Had a funeral to attend today, nevertheless, came in for a couple of hours anyway. Had the usual debacle of trying to actually get some work done on the macs. Managed to nab the elusive Mark but he was unable to sort the problem out due to time restraints, as a result, I could not get any work done.

04/03/2009

Went to the animation intro this morning, very interesting but a few us agreed that we would need a few weeks to get into the swing of it, a couple of hours is not really enough time. The mac computers that have just been over hauled, updated, and have had the student u drives added to them, has now reverted to the old format for some reason. Nigel is furious with the calamities which are going on, I can't say I blame him, it seems utterly pointless to spend thousands of euros on state of the art computers, and not have them working properly. As a result, I now have to find the computer that my movies were saved on, they were all in use this afternoon so I was snookered. Progress reviews next week,Alan has asked me to present some work, so I will have to get some things onto discs. They will be works in progress.

03/03/2009

Lady Lisa and baby

03/03/2009

Photoshop this morning. I am intrigued by the limitless possibilities inherent within the adobe programme. I am starting to make some kind of sense out of it now, Nigel was very helpful by explaining things (more than once) ! I am convinced this will be a useful tool in my studio practice. My colleagues seem to be very keen about the Berlin exhibition, we will have a meeting after the literary review, to see where we go from here. Had a chat with Alan about Berlin, he seemed quite enthusiastic about it, and gave some very helpful advice.
David stopped to have a quick chat about the FYP he said it was fine but needed a little tweaking to make it a more specific or less broad question, on the whole though he was very positive about it. Mathilde I and Carried on with our sound experimentation, we did not record it on video this time, as we would have way too much footage to edit. We went around the college recording various sounds/ ambient noise. The basement was an interesting place to record sound, especially as it was in darkness, this added a sense of heightened sound awareness to us both. We had a chat with Nigel about our project, he seems very interested in it. He recommends the after effects programme, as well as premier pro.

02/03/2009

No reply from Sheelia Deegan (Limerick City Arts Office) yet. The Turn-Berlin gallery replied today, I will give my colleagues the info tomorrow.


Name: Richard

FYP Option: Thesis

Choice of tutor: David Brancaleone

Description of project

Art galleries/Museums have been the usual means by which artists exhibit their work for all to see. With the use of modern technology, many artists and galleries are choosing to display their artworks in cyberworld,1 by means of various artist websites, and gallery websites, including virtual art galleries.
In this thesis I aim to make an inquiry as to whether this will ultimately lead to the demise of the art gallery/museum as an institution, and also to the way we view art.

Context of Project

Historically, the art gallery institution has remained relatively unchanged for many years. Initially it was designed as a place where people could go to marvel at the wondrous works of the artist, the artist being endowed with marvelous awe inspiring, divine like talents. The upper echelons of society would have been the forefathers of the gallery, only they would have been supposedly educated and enlightened enough to appreciate the works of art, or indeed have the leisure time to visit such institutions. Even today, there still seems to be a certain kind of snobbery associated with galleries; closed circuit television watching everything, and the stewards watching everything the cameras miss. There appears to be a secret kind of etiquette when visiting galleries also, silence seems to be observed, even when there is no requirement to do so, the flow of people appears to go in an ordered, rather than random way.
In cyberworld however, there are no unspoken rules of etiquette, there are no class distinctions, even the technology used today has become affordable for almost all walks of life. There is a generation now then, that has been reared with this technology since childhood; play stations, x boxes, mobile phones, I pods, mp3's, cgi's etc. They have face book, my space, bebo, blogspots, so for actually going to see artworks in real life galleries, why would they even bother? When their own reality is primarily based in cyberworld.

Research Sources

I will use theory based books to research the sociological, historical and cultural aspects of galleries, ie, Art in Theory, Modern Art Criticism, Museum theory; Pierre Bordieu. I will look at what individual artists have to say regarding the gallery; Hans Haake etc. I will research writers such as Bruce Altshuler (collecting the new), Andrew Mc Cllellan (Art and its publics, museum studies at the millennium), Emma Barker (Contemporary cultures of display). Another book which I believe will be of good use is: what do you expect from an art institution in the 21st century by various contributors. I will have to investigate the web for comments and writings on virtual art galleries; Wilson web, Google scholar, Ebrary etc.

Work plan

The first part of the project will be to gain a brief overview of museum theory, I will have to research several writers to gain an understanding of the methodologies, social implications and theoretical constructs of galleries/museum's.
The second part of the project would probably involve selecting the precise theme or line of inquiry that I would expect to be concentrating my efforts on, eg from the general to the specific. I would also expect to research modern museum practices, with special emphasis on theory relating to contemporary issues.
At this stage, I will take an in depth look into cyberworld art practices; virtual galleries etc. The final part of the project would probably consist of a consideration of all the research, and a summing up of same. As a proponent of cyberworld technology, I would like to make a DVD, incorporating aspects of my thesis, IE images, a virtual gallery etc.
1For the purpose of this proposal, I choose to use the term cyberworld to mean the world of cyberspace. For me, the term seems more appropriate than cyberspace.

02/03/2009contd.