Art by Night - images and soundscapes

Art by Night-Concept

The Art by night concept motivated and mastered several aspects of expression, through unifying and melting individual artistic experience into a collaborative and evocative whole, with many other sources of inspiration and different human culture resources. The light collective artists group comes from diverse backgrounds. They have developed innovative strategies, sensitive to their individuality but successfully communicating to a broader audience. Although the works are very personal, each informed by a site- specific experience and influence, they also encourage a second level of interpretation that is larger, more universal and evocative. Their art concept becomes the vehicle through which to explore and learn about one another. In striking a balance between the personal and the transcendental, each artist forges a unique means of communication. This has to be celebrated as a positive forum of exchange. It is the relation between worlds, artists and audience, content and form, in which the artists in one night shaped, and innovatively explored their unlimited strategies of expression, which they chose to communicate.

Magdy Shiha

reconnecting!

hello friends at artlightsound

I've been looking for an opportunity to visit you but maybe that won't happen now until next year. In the new year I'm hoping to set up a space in Townsville for people (multicultural backgrounds, refugees, people with disability, no barriers to whomever) to do things together using some of the techniques I've learned about, from you wonderful artists. So first up, Wanda! Can you email me a quick how to do it step by step approach to making lanterns using merino wool? Would you mind? Also I need to find out suppliers of materials.

As well as this the university wants a letter of support for my project so that can approve it ethically for research. First up though what I'll do is send you a letter that outlines what the project is and what its aims are. Basically it takes its inspiration form what you achieved in Mackay, bringing people from diverse backgrounds together with a range of skills, and then producing a work that the wider community can interact with. It doesn't have to be labelled 'art' but surely it will be that!

Please contact me if you want to talk further.

Cheers

Dave

check this out!

Here is some very amazing work by a UK artist:

http://www.stanza.co.uk/

Launched!

Hi friends,

we are now out there in the blogosphere . . !

Reflecting

Hi folks,

I've written this as part of a proposal and thought I'd share it with you.

I have just been part of a very interesting art experience, by far the most breathtaking one in my life. In true fractal sense the outcome was unknown at the start, as it was a collaborative project that would take shape from our interactions as three visual artists and a sound installation artist. Experimentation sessions were often almost wordless as we explored visually, aurally and spatially, later in the process drawing together recurring concepts and imagery, and then excavating these themes further. Like an archaeological dig, we delved through the layers of our memories and histories, following the footsteps of fleeting archetypal themes, and developed an installation work that engaged all of the senses and drew upon our common embedded memories. The audience/viewers were invited in to this exploration as participants, and the experience for many of them was profound.

We are still trying to determine what it was what it was that galvanised us so deeply as a group, and made this such an engaging experience for the audience. There was a great deal of trust involved, between us as a group and between us and the audience/viewers. The works were deeply personal but not obviously so, only if you took the time to look deeper would you be taken deeper; they were metaphoric self portraits really, offering something of ourselves. Relationship and care were intrinsic to the project – we were present and available throughout the exhibition to talk; people were ushered into a dark space but given a torch and a map so that they could find their way; they were encouraged to explore intimate spaces such as a wardrobe and record their secrets there; they were given free hot drinks and a comfortable space to sit; they could touch the often fragile works and walk though them; they could write their thoughts and responses and add them to the artworks, they were invited in.

I remember

Time and places, have been the trigger to every fleeting moment of our bounded experience. As Goya, visualizes the time, as a giant eating his children at Saturn eats his own. Hamlet comes to confess that he wasted too much time and now time wasted him.

A moment of truth in our vast bounded human endeavours, would be enough to explode our fragile and weak nature as human. It is a consider of so marvelous and extensive scream through that deep rippled light of our solace. An untouched heavenly hunger of hunting the moments that had eat us away, only leaving the shadowy holes and from these, would be our tempting urge for forgiveness.

Any vast beat would only permits that memory to collapse within time but may never leave that smell of the private places which we collide.

Any of such places may not exist today, as we recreate again and every then, such places in a gleam and fantasy of wounder splashes, that kept hanging like ghosts to our celling.


It is the revenge of time and a incomparable ecstasy of the places which we inhibited.


As i remember, i shall only live again and again through these moments of time, smelling the each coroner that my momentary elapsed.

As i remember, my being would melt and shall be laminated again to the every live human existence.

Magdy Shiha
Australia 2010

Hi friends,

Thanks for a quality reflective time on Saturday, good to unearth even more layers, and as Magdy said, there is "yet more light to bring", and thanks to Dave who will hopefully be joining us soon on the blog. I so appreciate the opportunity of working with such a wonderful bunch of people, thank so much!

I came across this gem from Leunig. Dismayed by political advertising he went to the Melbourne Art Fair for some solace, only to find that "art made with the genius of love is as rare as ever." A great read, there are some insights in there in true Leunig style. May we too make art with love!

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/a-small-glow-in-the-dark-20100813-122c0.html

fresh pics

a double exposure of sorts - shutter open while slide transitioned.

Good to hear from you Fiona!! I've been lax with the blog too - too busy cutting out millions of leaves . . . print print print, cut cut cut, sew sew sew, print print print etc . . Wanda I really appreciate your encouragement to stick to the plan, what I thought was evidence of obsessive compulsive behaviour in artworks I love is just plain old discipline! I have listened to every Radio National program there is for the past two weeks, many of them twice as they are repeated.

As I'll have millions of leaves I'm thinking of scattering the extra ones on the floor and encouraging people to take a couple with them, in a Felix Gonzalo-Torres kind of gesture.

Audio preview did not work

OK, well the upload of the audio preview did not work...will try again another night...

Audio preview

Hi there

I know I haven't blogged for a while...but turning over a new leaf AGAIN, and going to try to blog more often now.

Tracey, I had a few secret spots myself as a child and would often go walkabout for hours on end much to my parents' distress, got in loads of trouble because of it sometimes.

I grew up on a hobby farm of 22 acres amongst a number of other much larger properties, some cattle, some cane. There was a big rock up the neighbours road, and another rock on our drive way. Not surprisingly my imagination would take me to singing performances to sell out crowds...ironically it would also take me to smoking hollow grass stalks as cigarettes.

I also spent a lot of time up a Jacarandah tree, and another spot was behind a dislodged backing between my built in wardrobe and my parents wardrobe. I would climb through to mum and dad's side and hide/play in the dark there. I would pretend I was going to Narnia.

I hope the audio upload has worked.

Fiona xo

Secret Places

I just heard a great program on Radio National about the importance of secret places to children - places where they can imagine and create, and where they are undisturbed by the pervasive world of adults.

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind/stories/2010/2872548.htm#transcript

I remember those secret places, totally hidden from the rest of the world. There were many, but one was really special. I used to climb underneath my nextdoor neighbour's house and make mini aerial landscapes, complete with rivers and hills and landforms, all in the dirt, complete with water courses - I loved tipping water into them to see it run through the rivers. Because it was out of the weather and totally secret it never deteriorated - it was just the same whenever I went back there. It might still be there!

Another, like many children, was up a tree, a jacaranda tree, where my friend and I made bubblegum pictures on the tree trunks, and made up our own language. Actually Tolkien said that most children make up their own languages - but he kept doing it throught to adulthood (the Elvish languages etc.). I felt like I was free up in that tree, far from the world below I could dream away the days - felt like I spent most of my childhood up there!

recent photos

sleepless in Arduino land

Great to meet with you all today . . . just been late night browsing Arduino projects, check these out! The sound is a crucial part of it, just love the sound on the first two of these!

http://hacknmod.com/hack/create-techno-with-a-laser-harp/

http://hacknmod.com/hack/flexible-interactive-multitouch-display/

there are lots more here:

http://hacknmod.com/hack/top-40-arduino-projects-of-the-web/

Also Magdy there are lots of old style slide projectors on Ebay for about $20 plus postage - I reckon you could get one locally easily enough.

Here are some of the many sensors you can buy from an Australian online store:

http://toysdownunder.com/arduino/sensors.html

I just bought a bit more EL wire on Ebay - 3 metres of blue wire with AA battery pack for $9 plus $4 postage . . couldn't help myself . .

Tree prototype

Here is a further development of the tree. I'm really happy using the x rays, a good durable lightweight plastic, that is also recycled, and contains such great images and variations of colour and tone, some translucent and some opaque. The cut panels also project really great shadows - the negative space of the leaf image which has been cut from the panel.

As I mentioned to Wanda although I love the EL wire it kind of complicates the imagery when you add it - maybe there will be another use for it. What I am thinking at the moment is small LED downlights, one at the top of each trunk, that are sensor activated, so that they come on gently, not abruptly, when you walk near them - maybe a dimmer is needed for this . . unless you can buy some that come on and off slowly. It doesn't need bright light to work, the light from a single globe is enough to illuminate the leaves around the trunk.

Hi Guys ,
have you come back from Melbourne as techno wizards ? am eager to hear your news,
have been continuing to play around with shadows and am currently exploring the idea of using felt and cane to create my shadows casters and the possibilities of projecting down through them. Spent a day searching the local hardware and lighting shops, had a great chat with the guy who owns one of the lighting shops in town, He's given me a great catalog for theater/ club lights etc, with some amazing gear in it, including the floor light panels that are pressure or sound sensorsed but at $1500 per square m i'm quite glad i'm steering away from that idea .
speak to you all soon
wanda

Surprise...

ssshhhh...it's our little secret...

mmm...m..m...m...m...m...mmm

It's Wednesday and there's a song in my heart...can you hear it?

night tree

Here is a preview of a tree trunk with some hanging leaves. They should be at least twice this height, and am thinking of some kind of suspended web above them which would support lights and the leaves and the trunks, which are fairly unsteady at the moment - lots of logistical problems to solve, all good . . .

art taking over the house..

far better art than mold!!
My studio is smelling very damp.

incubating

Beyond The Measures

An Amazing stark of light
Would Bright, pierce the shrouds of haze
A wonderful blaze from the insight
Reflecting how images from the cave of our delight
Nostalgia, the glimpses of rough old footpaths, black
Touching the blare of hazy blown rain drops
And chasing the night oblivious sublime
The streets in lost foggy deep self to the wind of an ancient mariner
The words of fallen letters
And the letter that shin to a consciousness of a moment
Waiting, for lovers to meet
And fingertips to collide
Sounds jumping to the corner of my mind
And the voices of all my memories chasing me to the deep
Touches my veins and shivers my whole
I am the all in one, anticipating, inviting my inspiration to approach
Beyond my whole measure

Thank you for this precious collaboration of a great moments of our lives to be inspired and reflect upon.

I'm truly honored to share with you all this constructive and creative thoughts of every moment of our project

Thanks for your effort, time and devotion you give.

To my fellow artists, Tracey,Wanda and Fiona

Shiha

super nature

Hi all, had a fantastically inspiring drive home after our last get together, my creative brain went into overload, fueled by the great Asian noodles suggested by Fiona, although not the best thing to eat whilst driving! Any ways after letting my creative thought process go wild, the practical side of me has now started to reign in my ideas to try and decide on one achievable concept, a piece of work that explores our themes of- shared memories, interaction, reflection, illumination and hidden stories - During my process of 'concept elimination' I explored and really thought about the 'core essence' of my own work, and what makes me do what I do.
I'm always tempted to fling myself into the unknown to explore totally new methods of working for new projects, but this time round I feel with our relatively short production time line , I'm going to feel far more confident if I continue to develop some of the ideas and materials I've been working on and in over the past 12 months - I feel the fusion of hand made felt fibre with synthetic resin and perspex have really exciting prospects with beautiful illumination qualities.
A concept I keep being drawn to is the idea of a large scale floor labyrinth, interactive with pressure sensored illumination, hidden secrets, and many paths of life all leading to a central light. Labyrinths them selves are something that every one has some association with, or memory of. For me labyrinths are very representational of life journeys, twists and turns, some shared some alone , some light , some dark.
So thats my ramblings for now - on a practical note, i'm very excited at the challenge of constructing a false / raised floor, that the perspex and felt pieces could be inserted into - DO ABLE, will have to really explore the pressure sensor light technology, and cost of weight baring perspex. Start on Marquette next week
Some great friends of mine in the UK who work together under the name of 'collective nonsense' worked on a project called 'super nature' part of it was to construct a large scale outdoor disco dance floor ' so have emailed for technical info .. check it out visit www.johodges.co.uk and I think its under collaborative projects, shes also got some nice projection installations
x ramble again soon
Wanda

imagination . .

Hi all, so good to meet again, even in the sticky late afternoon heat!

Do you like the blog description? I am loving this shared creative space, what a wonderful thing to be a part of!

I am hearing some themes emerging, let me know if you think this is on the right track . . .

Shared stories: secrets, disclosure, revelation, recognition, sensory triggers, archetypes, collective memory

Transitions: dark to light, hidden to revealed, silence to sound, mystery to unveiling

Responsiveness: participation, interactivity, play, discovery by doing, viewer/audience invited to share

Wishing you a cool night,

Trace

Trees

Hi again,
I have just read through the rest of the blog and How bizaar, you would not believe the coincidence that I too have been thinking loads about trees.. particularly.. BANYANS.. dododododo ( weird cosmic/ sci fi sound effect:)) , both in connection with our project and also as a possibilities for an additional visual aspect for the river rock to mountain top festy.. My glow bug workshops went down really well, the last one being out in Gargett, and I got speaking to Vern from the festival re the possibilities of getting UV spots to be suspended around one of the large trees in the parks and one of the community workshops being used to created weird, wonderful and beautiful UV creatures and plants to attach to the tree. This then led me to day dreaming images of very ethereal, illuminated branch like structures, with vines and hidden nooks and how they might connect to paxtons.
Hmmm, so yes even whilst on hols the brain has been ticking over,
see you all this evening
wanda

helllooooo

Hi guys, wahey i'm blogging!!, and yes it is truly easy for those of us who are slightly cyberly challenged, I'm impressed. Apologies for being slightly slow off the mark guys, I should have explained that I really try and totally take time off during the summer holidays, for me this is a really precious time with my kids and I find it's really important as both working from home, and doing work that you love can sometimes mean you never take a break from your work, so for me the Xmas school hols are my yearly break, And its been fantastic, well needed and I'm feeling all recharged and creative again!. So don't worry guys we are now sadly counting down the days until the end of our blissful break, and I will be once again 100% engaged in our project and the wonderful world of art. So that's it from me, thought I'd better make a quick entry before tonights get together. AND GUYS I THINK THIS BLOG IS GOING TO BE GREAT,
love and light,
Wanda

Hi again

I thought I would post this picture. I took this while in Central Australia, I love fact that nature will take hold where ever it wishes. I love the thoughts provoked by this solitary tree, humble in its strength and so beautiful with the light, shadow and colour in this image.

Fiona xo

Trees

Hi all

There is a sacred fig at Queens Park I think I have some info on it from Sharon (MR Parks) at work, will have a look and get it to you. There is also the Leichart Tree on River Street (this is a very significant tree to many, and holds history for the Australian South Sea Islander People), you will find alot of info on it in our history books. Berenice Wright is a local historian who would probably have many stories to tell us about the trees around Mackay.

There is also the Jubilee tree (Now located in Queens Park). It has many historcal stories associated with it too. I may have a recording about it from old interviews I did for previous projects...will have to look...

I also have been collecting a photographic series of trees..Will collect them up some day soon and show you.

I have a fella here at the moment (Eduardo) He is an IT wizz from Colombia and is restoring my old PC that had died and taken with it all my old recordings and installation work. He is backing it all up now and will fix my computer...He's says I have to treat it like a baby now, and if I do this it should continue to work!! YAY!!!

Nothing else to report...other than today being hotter than I would like and I hope rainclouds take away the light from the sky and replace it with lots of cooling rain!!

Fiona xo

Tree Musings

Hi all, I hope you find your way onto here soon Wanda and Madgy!

I might be getting a bit ahead of myself here but I woke up in the night with "Ban-yan" in my head, so got up and did a bit of research - I've been thinking of a tree, a large spreading tree, like a banyan, that sends down new roots from its branches . . thinking of internally lit pillars of cut boxes for the trunks, hanging white leaf skeletons . . anyway my imagination is off and running, like the sourdough starter on the top of my fridge, all bubbling and fermenting furiously!

Today I've been reading about significant trees - the Great Banyan in India, a banyan that covers 4 acres; Yggdrasil, the great tree of Norse mythology; Celtic stories of the branch of white blossoms given to Bran on his voyage; Tolkien's Trees of Valinor (Telperion and Laurelin) and the White Tree of Gondor, decended from the White Tree of Numinor, which was saved from Telperion; the Biblical Tree of Life . . . many many trees . .

And the sad remains of the avenue of glorious figs near Pleystowe, and the strange desire of people to cut down trees for no apparent reason . . . in Celtic culture a large tree would be kept when land was cleared, and the greatest outrage you could perform against your enemies was to cut down their mother tree (echoes of all this in Avatar as well - lots of archetypal references in there.)

I need to to go the Botanic Gardens and have a look at the Banyan tree there, and find out about other significant trees in Mackay.

check this out! very interested in how they get the LED strips into the acrylic like that!

http://www.inhabitat.com/2009/11/04/living-light-is-an-interactive-real-time-map-of-seouls-air-quality/

My first Post!!

Well...I welcome myself to the realm of Blogging!! Hello Wanda, Tracey and Magdy.

I'm impressed I got this far, for a digitally challenged girl such as myself it was a bit of a challenge to work out how to make a post...but I got there and feel better for it. Might take me a while to work out how to leave a video message now, but promise I will at some point.

Glad to be at the end of my work day, four days into my first week and I'm already feeling the pressure of local government ways!! Oh well...what with my new work ethic of a well lowered bar...I should be fine!!

This whole blogging experience has also inspired my ideas for this year's Regional Arts Awards...won't divulge too much until I know whether this blog is going to be public or just between us....

It would be interesting to gain input from potentially anyone who cares to, although for an introvert like me it also might cause me to edit my contributions....oh, it already has....

Anyway, I look forward to the evolution of this process, and will enjoyit where ever it takes us.

Bye for now

Fiona xo