Blog

Once upon a time, I, Chuang Chou, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Chou. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man. Between a man and a butterfly there is necessarily a distinction. The transition is called the transformation of material things.

Just remembered this quote sort of so thought I should look it up to see who actually said it.  It had been a favourite of mine for some time. I like how some themes keep recurring, butterfly and umbrellas, wings transitions/metamorphosis have always had held a special place in my thoughts.

Not entirely sure why I put this in but it seems important.

Almost thought of dropping the idea but I like it too much. Never has there been a more relevant time to question reality. Many people spend increasing amounts in  virtual spaces, fighting imagined enemies of keeping in touch with the hundreds of friends they don’t have being spammed by robot , tweeting, tagging, poking investing thousands of hours to set various bits scatted on computers dotted around the world.

This is not a pipe.

Ranting now. But don’t want to let this idea go and I can’t really afford to buy a reasonable camera to pull apart.
Sooo… I am going with a screen from a lcd keyring (Maybe a olde mp4 watch screen if it get here from china in time) will display images of reality in it.

I wont get the camera feed, but the idea is dreaming of reality,  can show a series of images or a film on the display instead.

I have a few possibilities on what to show, but am still deliberating on what will work best.

My cheap camera, is a complete pile of crap, it was only just usable  in good light, but in poor light you could make out no detail at all, as I plan to project clouds onto the inside of my skydome I’m planning on a low light environment. Worse still is the fact that the screen is practically unviewable at any angle other than completely square on. would require fine work to remove the screen from the rest of the camera, but its not worth the effort.

The mindmap and idea pool did help solidify things, Out went boxes an in domes, they have far more positive free connotations,  I was definitely starting to feel trapped by the box.

The whole idea of what is reality the blur between what is real and what we perceive is a the theme of Magritte that I am going to explore.

A figure with window head resting on a dome of clouds dreaming of reality.

The windowed figure represents myself, and clouds represent my imagination. The window head will be displaying images of reality, namely a camera feed of the environmet the work is in. A camera will be mounted behind the work capturing the work and and the viewer displaying that image in the figures head.

I have purchased a $20 digital camera that will be dismantled, I will rewire the screen to so it can be become part of the figure, distant from the lens.

Am toying with the idea, of running a nice thick ribbon cable back to the rest of the electronics, this will make the figure looked plugged in. Wired up to reality.

I often contemplate what the surrealists would have made of current technology, particularly augmented and virtual reality, artificial intelligence and the whole concept of cyber space.

Homage Thoughts

This is more how I like to think. (Click the link above)

A bunch of idea floating around in a pool, swishing them around to see what ideas match, adding new thoughts as they eventuate.

Just a very dirty mock up, not actually editable outside of the authoring environment yet.

* not optimised no pre loader yet, so will look like a big pile of nothing until 900kb loads

I had planned to do a homage to Magritte’s painting Personal Values. It was basically to be a reconstruction of the image.
Eventually I decided to scrap the idea as I wasn’t really adding thing of myself to the work.

Instead I will create a work which is clearly inspired by Magritte but is wholly my own. No one work is the inspiration rather the cumulation of much reading about and viewing of Magritte’s work and searching for quotes.

Mind map for homage project.
I quite like mind maps but only to a certain point, I end up deciding everything is related an filling the whole thing up with connections.
Placing things in loosely related groups makes me happy.
Having a mind map app on my phone is really useful as it means I can easily hot down thoughts as they come to me.

My painting evoke mystery and, indeed, when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question «What does that mean ?»

Rene Magritte will be my subjects for homage, maybe because of his love of clouds maybe because of his fascination with frames and windows. not sure but his work has always resonated with me. Im not a souvenir kind of person and generally hate museum and gallery shops however I did find my self carrying a Magritte calendar and pack of playing cards half way round Europe after a stop at the Penny Guggenheim Museum in Venice.

I’m not sure home much Magritte’s work influenced me directly or how much others influenced by him did eg Storm Thorgorson (album art and posters that filled my youth). But once I started looking through his work many themes very close to me appeared there.

The more I think about the more I look back at most art that I have done and I can draw parallels (in theme or content) to Magritte’s work. So whether I was influenced by Magritte or those influenced by Magritte or maybe I’m just running on some strange thought parallel he must be the person I choose.