Katharine and I meet with Ron Roscoe, technical instructor, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, to discuss working with fluorescent light. Professor Roscoe refers us to Professor Steven Leeb, Laboratory for Electromagnetic and Electronic Systems. We meet a student who is working with dimming fluorescent light based on the proximity of person to the light fixture. Katharine's friend, Tyler, a computer science and electrical engineering senior, visits the studio to review data sheets Professor Leeb pulled for our project.
Art and Science
December 09, 2008
November 19, 2008
November 10 - 17, 2008. London and Paris
With many thanks to support from the Center for Advanced Visual Studies and the Kelly-Douglas Fund for Traveling Fellowships at MIT and Location One in New York, I travel to London and Paris to research the Floating Sculpture and the Rammed Earth Sculpture Garden.
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London
I attend "The Artist and the Garden" symposium at the Garden Museum (http://www.museumgardenhistory.org/).
Geffrye Museum curator Christine Lalumia presents on the domestic gardens featured in the paintings of James Tissot (1833 - 1902). In contrast to the strict protocol of the drawing room, the garden, as well as the conservatory, was a socially more open, potentially promiscuous, place. With the proliferation of the domestic garden in the Victorian period--the "big, big gardens" of "big, big houses"--there was a sense that "all kinds of things could happen behind these walls." Lalumia discussed Tissot's use of the garden to allegorize as well as document modern women.
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Garden historian David Jacques presents on the restoration of the landscape at Chiswick. "One of the problems for the historian," he observes indicating the archive garden plan, "is these writhing paths. Could they have really been like this?"
Dr. Jacques notes the preponderance of Dutch topographers working in England in the 18th century.
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Accompanying a slide show of his images, garden photographer Andrew Lawson presents a list he devised as a rubric against which photography's capacity to capture and express the sensual life of the garden can be evaluated:
Experiencing a Garden
The relationship of spaces
The wind in the trees
The disposition of beds, trees and buildings
Where the paths lead
Dappled sunlight on the lawn
The encircling landscape
The crunch of gravel underfoot
Plant associations
The fragrance of crushed thyme; the perfume of roses
The sense of place
Seasonal changes
Sculpture, ornament and garden furniture
The sound of water
The heron overhead; a kingfisher flash
Flower detail
The passing of time
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Paris
I visit with Isabelle Lemaistre, curator of 19th-century sculpture at le Louvre, where together we view the "French Bronzes" exhibition as well as personal favorites in the collection. I linger to see the Mantegna exhibition and meander the vast and opulent Museum.
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Versailles
Trianon
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Château Courances
November 07, 2008
November 4. Cambridge
MIT Materials Science Technical Instructor Mike Tarkanian uncovers the 3D model printed overnight Monday after he and Katharine did some work Monday afternoon fine-tuning Friday's scanning.
This model scales up my handmade version, making it easier to reshape the complex forms. First, I'll have to hollow out the hood and after reworking, repair the neck. We will then re-scan and re-print the amended version and scale up the newly printed model, which I will again rework, with the goal of approximating as closely as possible the shape of the original "Sculpture flottante I."
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November 3. New York
Christian Duvernois, landscape designer and author of Marie-Antoinette and the Last Garden at Versailles (Rizzoli 2008), sketching thoughts about the "Rammed Earth Sculpture Garden" in my New York studio at Location One.
Christian's Marie-Antoinette offers a fascinating history of the development of the garden, from the sanctuary the cloistered medieval garden provided against a hostile world to the pronouncement of Man's dominion over Nature expressed by Le Nôtre's formal French classicism.
Marie-Antoinette's initiative at Trianon revitalized Versailles by ushering in the next generation of thought and practice in landscape design, bringing to bear the philosophical discourse of the day exemplified by Rousseau and his Theory of Natural Man. In striving to balance the high artifice of Le Nôtre with a return to the pristine beauty of nature, Marie-Antoinette's gardens were both laboratories for the new sciences of botany, biology, and chemistry as well as forums for the new social structures of modern, increasingly urban life to come, anticipating the contemporary environmental issues of sustainability and the organic movement in agriculture and husbandry.
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November 01, 2008
Cambridge. October 30 - 31
3D printing of the Sculpture flottane model and tea with Katharine and Mike Tarkanian, Technical Instructor, Department of Material Sciences, MIT. Tea with Enno Lenzmann, theoretical mathematician and MIT CLE Moore Instructor to discuss the Floating Sculpture soundwork.
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October 22, 2008
Marta Pan.
Born in Budapest on June 12, 1923, Marta Pan passed away Tuesday, October 14, 2008, in Paris.
Ars longa.
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October 19, 2008
Lund. October 9 - 12
Thursday, October 8: KG Olsson of the Skissernas Museum arranged for us to meet with Desmond Caldwell of the Lund Botanical Garden to discuss collaborating on the "Rammed Earth Sculpture Garden."
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Friday, October 9: Working out the siting of the Rammed Earth Sculpture Garden with Elisabet Haglund, Skissernas Museum director, Museum staff KG Olsson and Jens Arvidson, and Desmond Caldwell of the Lund Botanical Garden.
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Siting the Rammed Earth Sculpture Garden (clockwise from top: KG Olsson, Skissernas Museum archivist; Malin Enarsson, Museum curator; Desmond Caldwell, Lund Botanical Garden; Jens Arvidson, Museum assistant).
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Jens Arvidson, Lund University architect Finn Werne, and Skissernas Museum assistant Örjan Bellind confer about the Garden construction.
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October 05, 2008
Göteborg. October 5
Newark to Copenhagen to Göteborg, working on sketches for the Rammed Earth Sculpture Garden en route.
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Cambridge. October 3
Studio visit with sound artist and CAVS affiliate Jessica Rylan, discussing the sound project collaboration with Enno Lenzmann. Follow up visit with Enno to show him the new hand-carved model. Conversation with MIT Materials Science Technical Instructor Mike Tarkanian about mag lev and 3-D scanning. He will come to the studio when I am back from Göteborg and Lund. Meeting with MIT Arts Council director Susan Cohen. And catch-up, go-to meeting with Katharine, who will shepherd the 3-D scanning of the Sculpture flottante model while I'm in Sweden.
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