I am interested exploring darkroom printing with AR. Furthering on my work from the other week I’ve carried on exploring Anna Atkins cyanotype printed and edited them to create into an AR artwork.
Scan the QR codes to see further AR works.
Scan the QR codes to open your Adobe Aero app to see further works.
Portals are familiar tropes used as convenient plot devices in fantasy and science fiction stories. This convenience serves both the storyteller and audience by removing prolonged travel and any otherwise necessary scientific/technological/magical explanation.
The character enters a portal from our world and emerges into an unfamiliar one governed by different systems.
The moment of intense change between the two sets of existence is described as liminality. In sociology, liminality is defined as a civilizational shift. While in anthropology, it refers to undertaking a rite of passage. In architecture, it refers to anything from a doorway to an airport. In regards to the landscape, beaches serve as the liminal space between land and sea.
When used in science fiction, the portal is a device that develops themes that makes audiences consider the human condition through the juxtaposition of the old and the new normal. The use of portals emphasizes liminality as both a creative and destructive process. To enter the unknown, something must be confronted or sacrificed in the old self or the old world for the new self or the new world to come into being. Itself a symbolic abstraction that compresses and concentrates experience and meaning, the portal becomes a threshold of acute conflict.
Here’s a long tutorial on water that has already caused chaos in my Minecraft build, god give me the strength to watch it all through till the end.
I had a really hard time working with the old footage and photographs from Ventspils, it was too emotionally charged (but not in a spectacular powerful way, more like in a gentle-nagging-weighing-down way). and I was sitting in the studio, breaking down a bit and thinking “this is not supposed to be so difficult and boring, this time is supposed to be creative, playful and life-affirming!!!”
so I asked myself WHERE IS MY POWER
(and I found it.)
I’m actually starting to work on some fun stuff right now that also came out of my archives but it’s not at all what I expected coming into this residency.
so yeah, I don’t think I’m ready to work with that particular video footage yet. I had glimpses of what kind of film this footage could become but it’s out of my reach right now because I’m only starting to come back to my individual practice, plus so many hard things happened in the past 3-4 months (from my housemate leaving without a word, to another burnout from work, to fighting off illegal eviction attempts, to going through assessments with DWP that kept being rescheduled) – I really need to listen to what energies/thoughts/feelings are here with me and ready to be expressed. not forcing anything anymore.
♥
Jamie Wyld: Thanks for being part of the Vital Capacities residency programme! Can you say a little about yourself and your work, perhaps in relation to what you’re thinking about doing during the residency?
violet marchenkova: So I am a moving image artist, writer, and community organiser. I make short experimental first person films, some people say they are like visual poems of sorts. I haven’t been able to make a film since 2019, when I had a residency at ONCA Barge, so I’m really excited to reconnect with that part of me and see where and how my practice can develop.
My roots are in being an art historian and documentary practitioner – so I’m hyperaware of the money and power that make artworks in history what they are, and I’m very critical of how realism is signalled and how the truth is constructed. That’s just what goes on in my head most of the time.
I’m currently thinking about the theme “Environment” in terms of accessibility frameworks, experiences of isolation, domestic spaces used for feminist organising (and how we lost that during lockdowns), UK’s hostile environment policy, the designed environment of the house that I’m currently in but being evicted from.
Otherwise, I’m looking at some Wolfgang Tillmans’ artist books I got gifted, I’m reading “No Bad Parts” about internal family systems, I’ve just received my copy of Ф Письмо by isolarii with Russian feminist poetry (that I’m too scared to read because it’s too close to my heart), and I’m watching Queer Eye to sleep because apparently, I’m not okay unless a see a group hug every 5-10 minutes. That is what’s in my field of awareness at the moment.
JW: One of the aims of Vital Capacities is to create an accessible site (so more people can use it) – how do you think this will be an opportunity to develop your way of working?
vm: I love that website. It strikes me as this luscious garden patch, where all kinds of pieces – from voice notes and unfinished thoughts to complete videos – can sit together, cross-pollinate.
I never had a real artist studio! And my whole adult life I’ve been stuck between art institutions and DIY art scenes – between the institutionally validated ways of working and rebellious acts – which is not the worst place to be but it brought a lot of inconsistencies to my life that I used to not know how to hold.
For my creative practice to flourish, and even to simply exist, I’ve always felt like I needed to first organise spaces and structures where art like mine could be appreciated. I think that is what drove me to put so much energy into community organising with Devil’s Dyke Network. Art needs to be shared and when you can’t see any contexts or venues or projects that your work could unapologetically fit in (or those are too out of reach) – you start questioning yourself.
So yeah, seeing this virtual space already set up for me, that is so versatile and served so many different artists before me – I feel held! and ready to express and document ideas.
JW: What would you like to achieve through the residency? Is there a particular project you’ll be focusing on?
vm: Honestly, I just intend to be the most neuroqueer artist version of myself that I can be and stop apologising for it, for being different, for any of that.
In previous residencies, or while at uni, I’ve always struggled with my failing to “do things properly” or was insecure about my film practice, unaware how neuroqueerness draws me to new and unexpected paths that are equally as valid. There’s too much professionalisation of the artist that’s gone down in the past decades, and I don’t think I can perform that to any good outcome. And I think I’m at peace with that.
The thing is that many disabled artists are perpetually emerging, we are constantly stuck in being emerging artists because the consistency and progression that we expect in an artist’s career are jeopardised by barriers to access and the shortage of opportunities. Disability often directly relates to our capacity for labour so things like long periods of inability to work, and maybe just general ableism of the art world are major exclusionary forces. So, honestly, I’m just here to take this paid time, focus on my art and see what needs to be said.
JW: How do you see the next few weeks unfolding? Where would you like it to take you?
vm: My art practice never works out in a planned-out cause-and-effect way. I just love listening to Alexis Pauline Gumbs talk about receptivity and being a vessel, our practice being a portal. Whatever comes through us is a gift. No ego, no control, just receiving.
Usually, I just kind of sketch out ideas, listen to what asks to be made visible. Filmmaking is a space for me where I can speak in a language that is true to me, as opposed to the life of writing narratives on other people’s terms (disability assessments, funding applications, social media, stuff I write in my day job).
I’m looking forward to just sitting down to look at the footage I have accumulated (some important pieces from visiting Latvia and Scotland), playing around with editing, writing a bit more, maybe a new script.
This reel is on my Minecraft mood board for sure:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CPyBLT-lTkb/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
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Video description: An Instagram reel by @minecraftprimebuilds that shows a Minecraft player jumping over objects/obstacles in a tunnel while in the child’s voice we hear the following words (that also show up in large letters over the video): “Roses are red, violets are gay, I sent this to you cause you are gay”
Minecraft is a sandbox video game that was first made public in 2009 before being released in 2011. It has since become the best-selling video game of all time. A game with over ten years of development and lore is intimidating to step into. Instead of just releasing a video game with the possibility of sequels like a movie, the recent trend in video games is to continually make improvements and add complexity over time, through updates. Added complexity retains the interest of hardcore users, and updates keep up with current trends to absorb new users. Developers consistently introduce new skins, maps, items, stories, missions, etc. As a maintenance format for the medium of video games it works. One can’t help but think what other systems could benefit from similar forms of continual improvement and incentivizing.
I am embarking on the early portion of the adjustment period and wondering how long it will take to where the game feels intuitive. The controls are still uncomfortable and there are too many types of blocks to know what to do. Luckily I can stand on the shoulders of giants and channel the wisdom of millions before me by watching Youtube tutorials. So far I have figured out how to build a tunnel and put some light in it.
As I was unable to visit Foredown Tower for this residency as it is still closed due to covid. I’ve instead recreated Foredown Tower in Minecraft.
It took me a couple of days to learn how to use Minecraft. I thought my difficulty was due to my dexterity but was mostly due to my mouse not having a right click and you need a red click to place blocks. I oddly also experienced motion sickness and had to take breaks in between creating.
I am interested exploring darkroom printing with AR/VR. Today I downloaded an Anna Atkins cyanotype to edit and create into an AR artwork.
I used Adobe Illustrator to edit the print.
1. Use the image trace tool to turn your image into a vector
2. Use the 3D & materials tool to inflate the vector into a 3D shape
3. Used the eyedropper tool on the original blue colour on the print and added this as the material
4. Export the shape as an .obj file
5. Uploaded to Abobe Aero
If you have the Adobe Aero app you can scan the QR code below to see the work in AR. Sadly the material hasn’t transferred over and so I need to learn how to keep the colour when exporting from Adobe Illustrator.
Edit…
I used Vectary to add the colour and I also used Vectary to create into AR.
Please find another QR code to see the work in Vectary. You do not need to download an app for this.
Breathing in,
I have become space
without boundaries.
I have no plans left.
I have no luggage.
Breathing out,
I am the moon
that is sailing through the sky of utmost emptiness.
I am freedom.
~ an extract from Thich Nhat Hanh‘s writing
Research into the subterranean reminded me of Ursula K. Le Guin’s sci-fi short story, “Semley’s Necklace” (1963). In the story, a highborn woman goes in search of an heirloom and is instructed to embark on a journey that will last “only one long night.” Upon returning with the heirloom from only a two-day journey, she discovers nine years have elapsed on her home planet. The story borrows from Nordic mythology and utilizes the concept of time dilation.
The subterranean often represents the collective past of our species’ earthbound existence, which has manifested into the the most recent geological age of the Anthropocene. Yet outer space has always and continues to be considered humanity’s final frontier, associated with things hopeful and futuristic. Le Guin shows these narratives are not at odds with each other and adeptly weaves them in an alternative reality where a being from the equivalent of our historical past is thrust into our prospective future in such a way that the two realities not only coexist mutually but are able to inform one another.
—–
“Can we go soon on this journey? I would not stay long away from my home.”
“Yes. Soon.” Again the gray lips widened as he stared up into her face.
What was done in those next hours Semley could not have retold; it was all haste, jumble, noise, strangeness. While she held her steed’s head a dayman stuck a long needle into the golden-striped haunch. She nearly cried out at the sight, but her steed merely twitched and then, purring, fell asleep. He was carried off by a group of Clayfolk who clearly had to summon up their courage to touch his warm fur. Later on she had to see a needle driven into her own arm—perhaps to test her courage, she thought, for it did not seem to make her sleep; though she was not quite sure. There were times she had to travel in the rail-carts, passing iron doors and vaulted caverns by the hundred and hundred; once the rail-cart ran through a cavern that stretched off on either hand measureless into the dark, and all that darkness was full of great flocks of herilor. She could hear then: cooing, husky calls, and glimpse the flocks in the front-lights of the cart; then she saw some more clearly in the white light, and saw that they were all wingless, and all blind. At that she shut her eyes. But there were more tunnels to go through, and always more caverns, more gray lumpy bodies and fierce faces and booming boasting voices, until at last they led her suddenly out into the open air. It was full night; she raised her eyes joyfully to the stars and the single moon shining, little Heliki brightening in the west. But the Clay-folk were all about her still, making her climb now into some new kind of cart or cave, she did not know which. It was small, full of little blinking lights like rushlights, very narrow and shining after the great dank caverns and the starlit night. Now another needle was stuck in her, and they told her she would have to be tied down in a sort of flat chair, tied down head and hand and foot. “I will not,” said Semley.
But when she saw that the four daymen who were to be her guides let themselves be tied down first, she submitted. The others left. There was a roaring sound, and a long silence; a great weight that could not be seen pressed upon her. Then there was no weight; no sound; nothing at all.
“Am I dead?” asked Semley.
“Oh no, Lady,” said a voice she did not like.
Opening her eyes, she saw the white face bent over her, the wide lips pulled back, the eyes like little stones. Her bonds had fallen away from her, and she leaped up. She was weightless, bodiless; she felt herself only a gust of of terror on the wind.
My interest in subterranean spaces is not recent. I had previously made two pieces several years ago about forgotten tunnels dating back to the Second World War. In one, titled Autosave: Redoubt (2017) I worked with two other artists, Peter Nelson and Alexis Mailles, to rebuild the Shing Mun Redoubt in the popular game Counterstrike. Below the video is a link with a lot more information.
https://www.autosaveredoubt.com/
The second project consisted of a small monitor placed into a sculpted capsule. On the monitor was a POV video of someone crawling through a tunnel. The sculpted capsule was a framing device that separated the image from the environment, and in doing so, also extended the walls of the tunnel into physical space. Its placement on the floor required viewers to get on their hands and knees to peer into the capsule similar to how one would enter the tunnels. Information surrounding these tunnels is scant (even their existence is only known by a handful of history enthusiasts) but it’s been suggested that they were excavated by local slave labor during the time of Japanese occupation – meaning that although these tunnels are not associated with any actual fighting, they nevertheless are heavy with the suffering and deaths caused by wartime imperialism, racial dehumanization, and subjugation of forced labor (estimates show the population of Hong Kong dropped from 1,649,000 in 1941 to 600,000 in 1945).
In the tunnels, none of this is immediately apparent. The stone surfaces in the dark appear utterly austere aside from the cave centipedes shuffling across the ceiling. As the eyes adjust, surfaces becomes textures, and the textures becomes mark making. Then it hits you – the entirety of the tunnel interior is carpeted in neat little rows of parallel lines cut by hand chisels. Crouched in the dark, it dawned on me what must have been the scale and process of such an excavation. I found myself enveloped within a systematic repetition of little slashes, each one a uniformly incised unit of hurt etched into stone. Overwhelmed and devastated.
This week I’ve been reading ‘Art as social practice technologies for change’ edited by Xtine Burrough and Judy Walgren.
I have an interest in learning how to use technologies when collaborating with others on inclusive arts and participatory based projects. In my practice I’ve been learning how to use digital technology tools and how to use them in my creative work. In the future I would like to feel confident enough in my digital technology skills to develop and deliver inclusive arts and participatory based projects using digital technologies with participants also developing new skills through the work. So far I’ve been developing my skills in AR, VR, projection mapping and sensors.
Through reading the book I hoped to of learnt more on how others are using digital technologies creatively for socially engaged practice but most the projects where using already very established technologies such as photography, websites, social media and other forms of visual arts such as clay. Or the artist worked with participants to create visual artwork and then the artist developed the digital technologies aspect by themselves afterwards or beforehand. I would like to learn from more projects that have worked with participants to create the content but also worked with them to develop the digital output.
“I see technology as a tool, an important addition to my traditional, artistic skills, and like materials, to be used to strengthen an idea, and not for the sake of novelty. In social practice, technology allows participants with limited art experience to create beyond their own experience” – Kin Abeles – Valises for camp ground page 56
What I did like was the participation prompts at the end of each essay.
“I feel, for one, technology is merely a tool, and it’s really important for me to think in that way. It can be easy, as a technologist, to create projects around technology and the capabilities of the technology. But that’s merely an exhibition of the potential of technology. For me, the questions are: How can I execute this idea that I have, create an experience around it and then what are the best tools to make that happen? – Ari Melenciano page 115
I managed to work out how to download the stitched files from Samsung Gear 360 software and I’ve uploaded the four 360 stitched footage to YouTube. You can move around the 360 footage.
Being a 360 recording you can see a 360 view of the area outside of Foredown Tower. There is a dry field, a path next to the field and the road that goes alongside Foredown Tower. Foredown tower is an old water tower and so is a cube shaped made of bricks with a black triangular roof. I am in some of the footage wearing a brown coord jacket, dark blue jeans and a yellow jumper.
For my residency I would have liked to been able to visit Foredown Tower a camera obscura in Portslade but unfortunately due to covid they are still closed. I would have liked to of recorded scenes from the camera obscura to create VR piece of work.
Recently I visited the outside of Foredown Tower and recorded some footage with my Samsung Gear 360 camera. I then learnt how to use Adobe After Effects to stitch the footage together as unfortunately Samsung’s software does still work but you are unable to download it anymore as the software is now not being updated due to them discontinuing the camera. I then used Unity to create the short VR work. If you click on the screenshot it will take you to YouTube to play the short VR recording.
Being a 360 recording you can see a 360 view of the area outside of Foredown Tower. There is a dry field, a path next to the field and the road that goes alongside Foredown Tower. Foredown tower is an old water tower and so is a cube shaped made of bricks with a black triangular roof.
The initial plan for my residency was to go through video footage, images and writing pieces that I accumulated since the last time I made a film.
Finding these images I’m sharing today immediately changed the tone of what I needed to say.
I don’t feel like I can do the “welcome to my blog” thing for this; it’s too abstract, too sad, too intimate. So I recorded audio instead of writing the image description, and there is a transcript for it below too.
Transcript:
Hi. So I want to talk about these images that I’m posting. I selected them in… I selected them on Tuesday and then was at a loss, I didn’t know what to write, what image description to write… that is not boring. What kind of context to give to it, or what introduction to give to it. Because these photos are the photos I took in November 2019 in Ventspils, Latvia, where my grandparents live, and that was the last time that I visited them – I was a complete emotional mess. And none of the words seemed right, so I’m recording this audio now. So those of you who are just here for matter of fact description, let me do it first. There are three photographs. They are in landscape orientation mode and, and these images show sand. Just sand, what else can I say, but very particular sand, obviously, it’s the Baltic Sea beach. The sand is very light in colour, almost off-white. You… The image shows this interesting pattern on the surface, it shows thin kind of lines created by the wind: very long, thin, wobbly lines quite close to each other. And then it shows footsteps in the sand like sole imprints, that are more rough. Like while the pattern created by the wind is very gentle, as if you know the sand was stroked in this gentle way. The imprints, the sole imprints are obviously like more rough and deeper. There are also like little pebbles of different colours kind of scattered around the images. They’re mostly medium shot. One of them is kind of like a long, longer shot. One is more of a close up, and it maybe makes me think a teeny tiny bit of the surface of the moon. You know that patchy quality of it. But yeah, when I saw this image, the thing that came to my mind was, Oh my God, this is kind of my DNA like the DNA of my perception of the world, the DNA of my perception of beauty, my understanding of what home feels like. It is a very quintessential element of growing up by the sea in that particular place. And also, it’s quite stunning in maybe a quiet, more reserved way. But that’s me talking about the place itself, not necessarily about what these photographs would convey to other people.
Being sick with COVID kinda ended up being the perfect time to explore the thing I’m doing for Videotage – having a go at creating an intervention for their Leave Your Body realm in Minecraft.
I’ve been struggling with falling asleep for more than a year, and whenever I get sick I secretly hope that falling asleep will become easy at least for a while – it never does. So feeling poorly, unable to sleep and very bored, I tried my first build.
I never played Minecraft before, it took me a couple of tries and a couple of random YouTube tutorials to get the hang of the most basic things.
The game was fun and quite calming, it required the perfect level of engagement and effort for somebody lying sick in bed. I loved doing a bit of math to figure out the scale of what I wanted to do, and then thoroughly enjoyed the repetition of placing a block after block next to each other. it drew me in. Tiny repetitive tasks can be a source of calm to neurodivergent bodies.
I don’t know if Videotage had things like disability and dissociation in mind when they named the project Leave Your Body, but being disabled, we get a lot of reasons to want to leave our bodies so it all really connects for me.
I decided to recreate my bedside table but massive like a tall building. The bedside table was nearby, quite pleasant in shape, basically contained my life in it, and maybe by now, it is an established subject matter in Disability Arts iconography?
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