Thoughts on Making Games

I was considering keeping this one a little quieter, but I’m very excited to have started work on a classic point & click adventure game. It’s an amalgamation of a few ideas I’ve had for various games, set in something of an alternative 19th Century rural Ireland. Think maybe Monkey Island, Fate of Atlantis or Broken Sword meets Flann O’Brien and Father Ted. I’ve coined the working title of ‘Monkey Ireland’ as a bit of a laugh.

I think it’s safe to say I have a problem with finishing projects, especially when it moves from the exhilarating beginning stage of planning, conceptualisation and exploration, to the more tedious refinement, polish, and eventual release.

I recently revamped my website, moving from Squarespace to Google Sites. When I was doing my undergrad, I made a quick little website using Indexhibit, a free online portfolio creator with a bit of back end coding. Back in those days I was a bit more savvy with doing some web dev stuff, CSS and HTML, having cut my teeth on early internet, Flash, Geocites and Myspace. I switched to Squarespace around 2014, and only recently dropped it as it was becoming increasingly expensive, nearly £200 a year to maintain what is essentially an online business card. I was thrilled at Google Sites and would 100% recommend it to any other artist looking for an online portfolio. Thanks to the wayback machine, there is an archive of my old website, if anyone is interested. 

This was a big deal for me, not only having ticked off one of my big ‘to do’ items for this year, allowing me a bit more financial freedom, and also to reflect on all the weird projects and things that I’ve made over the years. So it turns out that I’ve actually worked on, and more importantly finished, quite a number of projects. And there are still more that I need to add to the website still.

One of the biggest problems indie game developers have is starting a project with too much ambition. Over lockdown I began work on making a new Mod for Half-Life, Valve’s 1998 classic first person shooter. I wanted to recapture some of the feeling of playing that game that I had back in 1998 and worked on a few levels sketching out some ideas and basic geometry. I was happy with the results but I’ve decided to put that project on the back burner for now. I’m a little sad to see that mod languish on the depths of my hard drive, but I might return to it eventually. That said, I am happy with my contribution to that side of gaming, with a number of maps made that gained popularity and are still enjoyed to this day.

On reflection, I have a few other games that never quite made it. I developed a short game about being stranded on a small boat during a flood, having to fish for supplies and befriend a small bird, a Flashback style game where you are a robot trying to return to your factory to be dismantled, a game where you control a hermit, scanning a beach for items to reveal more information about your past, and a Duke Nukem 2 inspired platformer where you play as an older, fat, bald and grumpy version of the classic 90’s action hero. All these titles are on hold, incomplete, and maybe never see the light of day. But theres something about making them that thrills me, I think I’m drawn to the process of development more than creating something to release. 

I often think about these abandoned games, and consider maybe revisiting them and taking them to the final stages of polish, but I’m very happy with what I’ve achieved and what they’ve taught me about making things. Every aspect of the creative process offers something different to me. When I look back on these games I don’t see them as failed projects, but more as experiments that helped me learn a little more about my own creative practices. 

Referring back to the abundance of completed projects on my recent website revamp has allowed me to reflect on my actual achievements, on what I’ve taken from start to finish, and what I can do when I put my mind to it. These finalised works are the results of years and years of those experiments, and I’m very grateful to have the ability and opportunity to take these risks.

The new game that I’m working on is another passion project. Like a lot of my work, I don’t exactly plan on making something with wide appeal. Point and click adventure games are a serious niche, with a very small market, but I think if I release the first act of the game, perhaps some interest will allow me to finish it off. I’ve written the script for it, developed the puzzles and locations. On paper, it works, which is good. But now I need to get into the nitty gritty of developing the actual game. I’m confident I can do it, despite not created a point and click game since I was in high school, The wealth of knowledge and experience in the other ‘paused’ projects gives me something to build on. 

By the big mirror in my bedroom, I’ve stuck a few postit notes, detailing things that I need to do. Not exactly Trello, but I’ve found this method to be really useful in helping me manage my projects. Being the first thing I see when I wake up in the morning is so helpful in keeping me on track. Removing the’ ‘Squarespace’ item from this list was very satisfying, much more than ticking a box on a spreadsheet. I’m hoping to knock a few more things off this list, hopefully including one for this new adventure game. 

A Little Update

I haven’t posted in a bit so heres something of an update on what I’ve been working on. 

I’ve had quite a productive lockdown, mainly focused on paintings. I’ve been able to have something of a studio clear out due to the Artist Support Pledge on Instagram, which also allowed me to purchase some amazing works from artists that I love. 

Much of the paintings have been a continuation of my work from last year, looking at contemporary landscape painting around the border region in Northern Ireland. I was interested in ideas about Brexit and issues with rising paramilitaries in the news. I tried to portray stillness in these paintings, and focusing on creating unassuming little vignettes of life on the border, including aspects like old burnt out vehicles or the side of a road, or some signage in them. My dad just informed me that a Give Way sign that I included in one of my paintings had recently been stolen. Great.

I had a painting of a UVF flag included in the Beep painting prize, down in Swansea, although I was unable to attend the exhibition in person due to all the Covid stuff and didn’t want to risk it. The curator, Jonathan Powell, has invited me to partake in an interesting new project about borders, which I’ve just finished up. This should come to fruition later on in the year. Watch this space! I've had a few other digital exhibitions too, check out this screenshot from one last year:

As a response to riots a few years back, I started making a 2D game a bit like a GTA/Lemmings crossover where you have to kettle protesters into a specific area. Unfortunately, a recent upgrade on my computer has made the build a bit unstable, so maybe I’ll spend a day or so soon and work out the kinks and get something usable out of it. Heres hoping. 

I was commissioned a while ago by a friend to do a painting of a famous uilleann piper from an old photograph. This started me on a series based on historic pipers, using black and white photographs as a source. I found it a good challenge to paint these portraits. Pipes, fingers and faces are all hard to capture. I guess I couldn’t have picked a harder subject matter, but I’m very happy with how it’s going.

As a piper with a love of poker, I had an idea many years back to make a deck of cards based on famous pipers/makers. I found my initial idea in an old sketch book while moving house, and I felt that it would be a great time to try this again. The initial inspiration was from a deck of cards that we used to play with when I was a teenager: The Millennium Deck. This had a different portrait on every card of famous politicians, scientists, musicians and artists from the last millennium. I’m about half way through this one, drawing some of the most famous pipers using Procreate on my iPad. I can’t wait to see this finished as a deck of cards. I don’t imagine I’ll sell many but its something I’m doing for the passion of it, and a product I’d love to see in my life. Very niche!

In other news, I’ve been doing a lot of music stuff on the side, working slowly on a Celtic Rock Opera which was a lot of fun, but nowhere near finished. I’ve also recorded two albums of Uilleann Pipes, one doing covers of classic Nokia ringtones on historic pipes, and another of straight up traditional solo piping but recorded on an old cassette recorder that I had since I was a kid. This one is coming out soon, just getting the CDs printed at the minute. I think I’ll release on the next Bandcamp Friday. The ringtones album I’m sitting on for now. Seems like not a great idea to release two strange and somewhat novelty albums at the same time. Well, the ringtones is more of an EP experiment.

I’ve also been working on making a mod for the original Half-Life, trying to recreate some of the old buzz from the single player campaign in a condensed way. I have about 80% of the map sketched out, just need to get some play testing done to see how it flows and then I can make changes if necessary. I’m approaching this one a little differently than normal, building very rough brushwork on the maps and then using Procreate to sketch the details in from screenshots, so I can then make the environments a bit more believable and inhabitable. I wanted to make something along the lines of Half-Life: Uplink, that is, a short 1-3 hour game but tight and fun. I’m a big fan of short games, cant be bothered sinking 40-60 hours into a AAA title these days, I just get bored. 

Ok so thats been a busy year for me, more stuff coming, so watch this space.

IRL BALACLAVA

About a year ago I spent some time doing a residency in SHIFT in Cardiff. SHIFT was a brand new and exciting art space in the centre of Cardiff, supported by the arts organisation & charity Axis. The space was absolutely huge, having been an underground Virgin Megastore back in the day. I instantly wanted to make use of the environment to make some large scale works, but it took me a little while to actually make any. I focused on smaller works and using the size to better understand my subject matter and composition before eventually sizing up to larger pieces. I’m happy with how that body of work turned out, and how it helped me realise what I wanted to get out of landscape painting.

During this time I experimented with an idea that I had left simmering on the back burner. I’d always been interested in the unusual (and disturbing) crossover of violent materials and children. I’ve written about this quite a bit, particularly regarding The Troubles in Northern Ireland and the freshly apparent glorification of ‘the good old days’ by kids. It’s something that has always been a big part of my work, and when exploring the historic violence in Northern Ireland using video game software, I found there was an inherent link between simulated online violence by kids and the real-life violence that influenced so many.

With this small project, I want to make something that bridged that link whilst also using new technology. I had a few ideas from before about using the idea of a balaclava in my work after seeing a piece by Paul Granjon–that had absolutely nothing to do with paramilitary activity in Northern Ireland–but it inspired me to use it as an object because it's such an iconic and thought evoking symbol.

I actually don’t like using Snapchat, but it has featured in my work and influenced my practice a fair bit. I suppose I referenced it most directly in a project emulating Willie Doherty in a lighthearted series of live online ‘performative’ pieces, and there is some similarity with the work I did with #rambo. I did personally use Snapchat for a few months when it came out but pretty soon after I gave up and stopped updating or checking it. I know it's super popular with kids, I imagine in part due to the 100% inaccessible UI that makes it inoperable to the boomer generation, a bit of an ‘anti-Facebook’. I thought it might be interesting to create something along the lines of a face filter that used a balaclava, and Snapchat’s relatively simple filter-making software allowed me to do this.

When starting this project I found it drew out some parallels between IRL activism, online anonymity, gaming culture, privacy, oversharing and illegal activities. Why not use a balaclava to hide your identity for online activities? I suppose the V for Vendetta Guy Fawkes mask would be more appropriate when referencing these issues, but as someone from Northern Ireland, it's hard to move past the image of a balaclava and its inherent implication.

As it stands, I might break this work out for an exhibition some time. I understand it is possible to use geofencing to localise a Snapchat filter for events and such, or do I have a device in the exhibition with Snapchat locked in for people to post their own balaclava photos? Or why not both? Maybe a running feed on a display of people’s filtered faces when posted on social media and tagged with a specific hashtag. The balaclava model might need a little more fine-tuning and tweaking but the overall concept and execution is solid. Now to work on a face mask & ventilator filter for this COVID-19 pandemic…

Randomly Generated Landscape Paintings

I’ve been working on this project since my Masters but only recently shown any of the outcomes to the public. You could say that this represents the ‘physical object’ outcome of my Digital Border work, as it stemmed from the same randomly generated landscape game that I made using Unity 3D.

My process with Digital Border was to create these unique landscapes using a Perlin Noise algorithm. I then added in generic game objects from found online sources and created these little narrative-driven vignettes that were ‘photographed’ in-game. The photos were reproduced as 9x16cm acrylic glass on aluminium, emulating the language of a mobile phone screen. I also recorded a few and replayed as video installation work (see my exhibition in Nantes and also my MFA show).

During this time, I was using the same algorithm to generate landscapes with the idea of producing physical work of charcoal on paper with them. I made perhaps 10 or 15 works based on this but never uploaded them or shown anyone. They were purely run as tests–and I was happy enough with them–but my focus was on digital work at that time.

I’ve gotten back into painting since then, so I decided to expand on my simple charcoal sketches and developed them into full-blown paintings. This came from a random opportunity in Splott Market. I was having a look at the car boot section with a friend of mine and came across a load of floppy disks that were going for free. I instantly knew I had to paint on them, and that paintings derived from digital source imagery would be perfect for them.

Also, painting on floppy disks? Sure–why not? I had someone comment that they were reminiscent of Richard Higletts little landscape paintings on old paintbrushes, and I didn’t think about it but there is a familiarity there and I really like Higlett’s work. I had a bit of trouble figuring out how to best approach the surface for painting with oil. I initially tried to mimic canvas with a heavy gesso crisscrossing but then I realised how much I actually hated painting on canvas. I dipped the disks in generic varnish a few times to prepare the surface and found that this worked much better.

I applied the same approach to preparing the wooden panels for painting. Rather than gesso (which I normally do) I found this gave a fresh and interesting flat surface for painting on. My favourite will always be painting on sheet metal or MDF, but this worked well too. I might try some varnish with canvas at a later date and see if it give that amazing smooth finish that I love.

So from these initial charcoal ‘en plein air’ sketches evolved a body of work around the same subject matter and with cool & unique paintings on 3.5” floppy disks. They were recently shown at a View from the Edge in M.A.D.E. Gallery in Cardiff, with other works by landscape painters with unusual approaches to the subject matter. 

In the past I've made some work exploring plein air painting with digital images. I found the act of working from 'live' sources than working from photographs breathes extra life into the process and the introduction of random chance and change adds to the immediacy of the paintings. When I painted from in-game DayZ, there was always the danger of an incoming Zombie or enemy player ruining the scene. The environment forced my hand to make quick decisions about how to approach the work, and I enjoyed this freedom and embraced immediacy of painting like this.

I’m currently revising making paintings from webcams. This was a series I’d only made a few pieces for, and I look forward to exploring the process again and seeing what new outcomes arrive.

Endurance Art and Crazy Self-Imposed Gaming Challenges

I was thinking about the relationship between performance art and the performative aspect of some digital artworks.

Pushing the human body to it’s physical and mental limits has featured in many performance artist’s works. Perhaps the best-known example of this ‘endurance art’ is American artist Christ Burden. His performances such as Five Day Locker Piece and Shoot (above) put the artist through great risks, physical pain and endurance.

We see virtual similarities within the gaming community. Things like the World of Warcraft Iron Man Challenge, or the Nuzlocke Challenge in Pokemon (amongst countless other challenges) allow gamers to get more out of their games by self-imposing limits, very often to the point of ridiculousness. The rise of streaming, social media and online multiplayer gaming have allowed these challenges to grow, with people now able to get immediate feedback from the community from their exploits.

I had the idea of doing a virtual marathon in-game after playing a little on the 2002 PS2 title, The Getaway. In this game, the developers broke significant ground by creating a virtual version of London that was vaguely recognisable. The now-primitive graphics were cutting edge for the time, and having a digitised version of London as an open-world gaming environment was fantastic. For example, the second mission in the game calls for you to visit ‘The Reptilian’ gallery in Hyde Park (read: The Serpentine) and steal a Chinese artefact, before making an escape across London to your hideout in Soho, chased by Triads and Police.

So I had the idea of drawing up a route based on the London Marathon and recording my run around virtual London as a performative work. Take some water bottles, energy gels, buckle in with my PS2 and see how many hours it takes to run my avatar around 26.2 miles of virtual London without dying.

Talking with a painter recently about the relation between ultra-endurance running and landscape painting sparked further questions on how learning an environment through repetition helps to understand better. The outcome is more than just a visual replication, but something towards a more in-depth representation of the entire landscape. Painting through the image and with a better understanding.

As a runner (albeit, not yet interested in 100-mile ultramarathons) I had questioned this idea before. There is something to be found in the detachment of painting a landscape from a single source image. Perhaps this is more to do with how we have mostly second-hand experiences through photographs and other media these days. It could be a psychological thing. Still, when we look at, for example, Plein air painters, is it possible they’ve developed a deeper connection with their landscape, and this has, subsequently, informed their work differently? Probably more to unpack here than is necessary for a short blog post.

Lyra McKee

Journalist Lyra McKee was a massive influence on the development of my art practice over the past two years. She was sadly shot last week at a riot in the Creggan area in Derry. Police have since arrested an 18 and 17-year-old concerning the murder. I thought I'd dig up some writing I'd made about the subject.

Here are three extracts from some pieces of writing from last year, where Lyra McKee's journalism had influenced my decisions about how to progress with my practice. I was trying to boil down the essence of her article on post-Good Friday Agreement depression and her report on the subject gave me a bird's eye view and the clarity to tackle it head-on.

I’d like to try and convey an auto-ethnographic sentiment somehow via interactive & narrative work and feel that manipulating game engines as a medium will allow for a wide net of scope and execution. 

I made the decision to create work about the border situation in Northern Ireland, shifting from purely implied and understated narrative to using some specific anecdotal tools such as interview recordings or text, in conjunction with my more traditional landscape approach.

There is an excellent article by journalist Lyra McKee entitled Suicide of the Ceasefire Babies, which delves into post-war intergenerational depression in Northern Ireland, and I’d like to dig a little deeper into this specific area myself through such conversational interviews.

In previous works, I have experimented with the introduction of human figures with simple artificial intelligence, exploring their virtual environments autonomously. I found that in doing this, the overall concept suffered by having scores of digital men running around and killing each other randomly. Although this method is more faithful to the in-game online confrontations that I had been investigating, I felt that it had undermined the feeling of foreboding and the tension inherent in my other works, in particular, the project Digital Border.

Much later, following a long period of experimentation, I decided that my work would switch back to an implied narrative, with the preparatory work I'd made in recording stories etc. to go toward a critical paper exploring the relationship between post-GFA tales (such as McKee's) and the morbid eccentrics of Flann O'Brien.

My interest in this subject came after reading an article that helped to clarify my own experiences with growing up in Northern Ireland after the majority of the ethno-political conflict (The Troubles) had ended. Suicide of the Ceasefire Babies, written by Lyra McKee, outlined mental health issues experienced by people who came of age after the Good Friday Agreement.

The Good Friday Agreement was seen as a significant political development during the peace process in Northern Ireland, signed on the tenth of April, 1998. It was marked as both an agreement between the Irish and British governments, and between the majority of the political parties in Northern Ireland. It is understood by most as the unofficial end of The Troubles. By this time, most of the bloodshed had happened, and any post-GFA incidents were more widely condemned and typically seen as attempts from the lunatic fringes of paramilitary groups. Life in Northern Ireland after the Good Friday Agreement was about optimistically rebuilding the country and vast amounts of government and EU development money was introduced to bring both sides of the community divide together.

For people growing up in this time of ill-placed optimism, it appeared that there was little to worry about. Unfortunately, it only took 16 years for the number of post-Good Friday Agreement suicides to overtake the total number of conflict-related deaths during 40 years of The Troubles. Where it is clear that a period of community and mental healing was necessary, it appears that much of the mental health issues of living in a war zone have permeated from one generation to the next. Northern Ireland is unique in this respect, in that the conflict has been relatively recent, the location was in a first world country, and that there has already been an extended period of healing. Additionally, Northern Ireland was revealed to have the highest level of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, beating current live conflict locations such as Lebanon and Israel.

Much research has been done in this area, most notable by Queens University Belfast lecturer Mike Tomlinson. It was not my objective to reinterpret or improve upon Tomlinson’s work, but to try to document and explore these experiences in some small local way.

This led me to try and understand this kind of intergenerational trauma through family (folk) stories. I collected a number of these via both audio recordings and written means from friends and family, and read up on articles posted by people in similar situations. My initial thoughts were to try and use my artistic practice to open a dialogue about these stories, including creating a self-playing game with some of the stories as both backdrop and direct narrative tool. I am ultimately happy with the work, but I feel that instead, my strengths in this area lie in using less direct methods of storytelling.

And a little on rising paramilitary glorification amongst the youth. I've written about Paul Donnelly and his interview on the Blindboy Podcast. Note that the following piece was written pre-Cambridge Analytica yet it is somehow strangely foreboding.

Part of the retelling of these stories is to indicate the idiocy of youth and for the future generations to attempt no such objectives/idiocies/follies. There is a worrying trend amongst the younger generation today, notably in areas of Belfast but easily imaginable in other locations around the country. The glorification of The Troubles for young people seems to be a growing problem. Belfast historian Paul Donnelly describes working with support groups for young people and how in some situations there is an uneasy reverence for people who have experienced The Troubles first hand. ‘It must have been class’. This is why we need stories like these, not only to show the flawed nature of these acts but also to re-contextualise this in an understandable modern day situation. 

I estimate that part of the rise in popularity of this problem might be from the use of social media and the internet amongst the younger generation. This ‘echo chamber’ allows people with dangerous fringe ideas such as nihilism, fanaticism, and sectarianism to find solace and blossom in these online communities. This runs in parallel to the rise in online countercultures such as Incels, 4chan and the_donald. 

Powerful algorithms on websites such as Twitter, Facebook and Reddit actively redirect your own ideologies back into your timeline daily. This is dangerous in this context in that it allows for deeper separation and less critical debate, but in the context of blooming online sectarianism in the youth of Northern Ireland, it is suddenly much more severe. 

On the flip side, it cannot be under-appreciated what role the internet played in this healing process. Early internet days of fastfude, etc. was an online forum for people from Northern Ireland’s two communities to come together and discuss music. This was much in the way that the Belfast/Derry punk movement in the 1970s allowed both Catholic and Protestants to mix freely. Although fastfude is no longer functioning, those music driven communities have branched out into a healthy discussion into other areas of the internet and social media platforms. 

I feel this highlights a significant diversion between the storytelling of Flann O’Brien and modern internet communications. In each of my stories, the hero is ultimately an anti-hero, providing life-lessons through their own mistakes. It’s difficult to imagine anyone sympathising with the unnamed narrator or his murdering accomplice in The Third Policeman, but it is possible that if the murders in the book had a sectarian edge that it might be read differently, or perhaps even glorified.

I'm not sure I'll post the rest of the paper on Flann O'Brien. Maybe someday it will make an appearance.

Revisiting Digital Border

I’m not one from shying away from revisiting old ideas and bring new concepts, techniques or approaches to the work in an attempt to develop my practice in some new direction. I’ve written about this a little before, when making my emoji still-life paintings last year and how they are a continuation of my eBay Morandi project from 10 or so years ago.

I would consider Digital Border to have been a very successful work for me. It has opened a number of doors through exhibitions and awards (it was shortlisted for the 2018 Lumen Prize). This work was an attempt to make some physical objects out of an abandoned interactive game project. The game had just begun to pivot towards using a different tool to create it as I felt that it didn’t fit the narrative or approach that I wanted to fulfil my project: looking at topographies, immigration, Brexit, intergenerational trauma-related stories and modern day issues with conflict areas. So, as I was drawing the experimental stages of this project to a close, I decided to try and make the most out of the scenes I had already created. Although the work was unsuitable for a 3D interactive game, I felt that I had created a beautiful randomly-generated environment, and, through populating it with found in-game objects, camera tricks, rain and ‘atmosphere’, I had made something that wholly captured the mise en scène I was looking for.

After some further investigation, I created digital photographs of my generated environments and had them printed on small gorgeous acrylic/aluminium panels as some kind of miniature votive mobile phone worlds. These were exhibited in a few shows (In Cardiff, Brighton and Nantes) and shortlisted for the 2018 Lumen Prize.

I made a proposal for SWAP Editions latest open call–BREX Kit. I was to make another one-off print to be included in their Brexit artist first aid kit. My proposal was selected and I had to make this new work.

I ran into a few difficulties: It had been some time since I last made one of these ‘digital photographs’ and I had to manipulate some older games in Unity to make it work. I had since made some Digital Border video pieces and also experimented with a dual-screen live projection, resulting in issues with in-game cameras. Additionally, due to this, I had reduced some of the post-processing effects such as vignette, bloom and colour correction. This all had to be reintroduced and was an absolute pain to find my original settings. It’s kind of back to where it should be, but I did keep the wide field of vision from the video work because I liked its drama and it also helped to differentiate this new piece from the previous work.

My other issue was how I was going to produce 18 editions of this work. The acrylic/alu panels are super sexy, but they do cost a fair bit to make and take a little while to be printed and shipped from Germany. I wanted to try some giclée prints after having a few really nice ones made for the South Wales Pipers Club (a musical endeavour close to my heart). We had some giclée copies made of old Irish piper paintings to raise funds for the club and also for people to own them if they wanted. I was thrilled with the results, and so I ordered some Digital Border prints from the same printers.

They've just been delivered to the curator in London, and I am looking forward to seeing how the work will appear in the exhibition and as part of the 'Brexit First-Aid Kit'.

SHIFT Residency

Last week I started a residency in SHIFT–an exciting new space in central Cardiff.

SHIFT is not long established and is run by Jon Ruddick and Pria Borg-Marks as a workspace for artists to make and test out large scale art. The space is in an old empty shop below the Capitol Shopping centre in Cardiff. I recall the place as a seasonal shop selling Halloween and Christmas stuff many years ago, but it's been vacant for a long time now. It is absolutely massive and an excellent location for new large scale artwork.

I have a few projects that I need to work on during my time in SHIFT. In Spring I will be taking part in SWAP Editions, where I will be creating a new & exclusive piece in my Digital Border series. I’m looking forward to relearning my processes for producing those pieces. I think I can probably work out how to make the landscapes and snapshots from memory and last year’s studio notes. Fingers crossed. My other project is one I have been meaning to investigate for some time.

I’m interested in what it means to be a contemporary Irish landscape painter in this post-internet age. I’m thinking about looking at the written descriptive elements of the Tory Island Painters and how that might feed into the addition of text to images shared on social media. I’ve spent some time wrestling with these two disparate elements and thinking about how they might be combined through my own work. I’ve written a bit already about the Tory Island school, and how they’ve influenced me. I think they represent an independent art school–and one that is uniquely Irish.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to make the most of my time in SHIFT to not only produce some exciting new work but to also develop these two projects in ways that I would not have been able to otherwise. Watch this space for more info when I get a chance to write it up.

FIRST BLOOD AND FACEBOOK FILTERS

NEW WORK: #rambo

This is a project I’ve been attempting for a while. It’s taken inspiration from two separate incidents: one wild night in the Brazen Head in Dublin spent messing around with Facebook filters, and an old video piece by Al Pritchard featuring the climactic scene from First Blood delivered ‘en Español’.

Previous works have explored both emoji culture and online social media sharing, as well as re-appropriation of pop culture imagery. This project is something of a Dadaist approach to these different articles.

This work started off with a Facebook Messenger filter over a live video of First Blood. I made use of the ‘Medusa’ filter, with a head of snakes and a yellow forked tongue when the mouth opened. My initial thoughts were to have the work as a video piece, but after a few attempts, it became apparent that it was working better as still images. These stills were easier to edit, and using the post-processing of Facebook Messenger I ended up with some jpg files with filters, stickers, emoji, text and backgrounds.

When I describe these works on my website, I talk about the relationship between the film's core themes (depression, PTSD, and post-conflict mental health) and the blasé nature of millennial internet users approach to these issues. To those not overly familiar with the franchise, John J. Rambo is the typical gun-totting 1980/90’s macho man musclebound hero. The first film actually portrays him fairly different to this popularise image from the sequels, in that there is only one (!) death, and that it uses his mental health issues to explain his actions. It does this through horrific flashbacks from his experiences in a Vietnamese concentration camp, culminating in his eventual mental breakdown at the end of the film where he discusses in graphic detail how he and his squad were ambushed and mostly killed. I wanted this to feed into the work and be reinterpreted through the prism of self-deprecating internet subcultures such as r/meirl and suicide memes.

NEIL SHAWCROSS

40 YEARS OF PORTRAIT PAINTING

I think I was living in Bath at the time, when Shane, an artist friend of mine, went to an exhibition opening with my brother. The exhibition was in a small gallery in rural Donegal, and I was familiar with it having been asked to play music there on a few occasions. The exhibiting artist was Neil Shawcross, a Lancashire native who had been living in Northern Ireland since the 1960s. Shane had the opportunity to speak with Mr Shawcross, who kindly offered a private tour of his new retrospective in The Ulster Museum. They arranged a date for the meeting, and Shane asked if I wanted to go up with him as I was to be back home that week.

So we both hopped on the Goldline 273 to Belfast and walked out from the Europa bus depot to meet Neil at the Ulster Museum. We picked up a bottle of Rioja on the way, to say thanks (Neil took great pleasure in informing us that the opening night of his exhibition had the most wine ever drank at the Ulster Museum and that they even had to go out for more when the supplies ran out). When we arrived Neil was great to chat with, we talked about art and the Tory Island painters as I had recently come back from a painting scholarship on the island. One of Neil’s friends and their daughter joined us, and we went off on the tour of the exhibition.

The show was a retrospect of his portraiture entitled 40 Years of Portrait Painting, with 34 life-sized oil on canvas pieces, displayed in chronological order. I was fascinated by his approach and the choices he made. I loved his use of pencil, charcoal and loosely applied oil paint to create these fantastic large-scale works. In one of the first in the series, he explained to us how he was experimenting with drawing a line along the bottom of the canvas to serve as the ground, his inspiration comes from observing how children paint pictures and also from outsider art (such as the previously mentioned Tory Island artists). I found this approach fascinating, and much of this has gone on to influence my own work in concept, technique and composition.

As we walked through the large rooms of the exhibition, a Primary School group was busy milling about. Each kid had a pencil and paper and was trying to recreate their favourite works for a class project. Neil walked up to one of the children, looked at their reproduction, and then signed it ‘Shawcross’. He then remarked ‘that's more like it now’. I doubt the child knew he was, but it was a genuinely nice gesture.

We finished up the tour and moved across the street to the William Conor Cafe, where I was completely astounded as to how many espresso shots Neil had in such short succession. Artist Clement McAleer joined us, offering myself and Shane up to attend a private view of his work in the Gordon Gallery in Derry. Before we parted, Neil offered to send us some books, which arrived a few weeks later, again, signed like he had done with the kids drawing.

PATSY DAN RODGERS: KING

When I was in school and starting my A-Levels my art teacher, Declan Forde, recommended I apply for a scholarship to Tory Island to spend some time with the local painters. To apply, I had to make a piece of art about the island. Having never been, I asked my father for some information about it and he pulled out an old RTÉ  documentary about Derek Hill on VHS. Hill was an English painter who frequented the Donegal island on long painting trips and encouraged the locals to take up painting themselves. With this newfound interest, I searched 2002 google for some images of Tory Island. I settled on painting from a striking photograph of the famous 'T' stone cross. If I recall correctly it was an acrylic painting on that strange canvas board stuff, slightly abstract and expressive but enough detail to know it was Tory Island. I submitted this for the scholarship and was successful.

Tory Island is perhaps the most remote island off the coast of Ireland that is still inhabited. Lying some 10 miles into the Atlantic Ocean and measuring approx 3 miles long and 1 mile wide, it is a desolate and barren island of great beauty and isolation. No trees grow on Tory, for the wind is too strong, and the great high cliffs make for outstanding vistas. Derek Hill was known to have said that every rock on Tory was worthy of painting, and when he first starting making work there in the late 1950's he was approached by James Dixon, a local fisherman. Dixon, of no formal training or understanding of art, argued he could do better. Hill gave him some paints and, thus, the Tory Island School was born. Dixon went on to influence a number of locals to take up painting, including Anton Meenan, Ruairí Rodgers, and Patsy Dan Rogers (King of the Island).

The school of art can be typified as naive or outsider paintings, with a focus on local happenings, landscapes or mythologies. The execution is often simplistic, with perspective and orientation not commonly found in the regular art canon. For example, important historical events are often painted to mimic a bird's eye view of the scene. Like many other artists before me, I was fascinated by the approach to the work, the use of text in the image, the different tools utilised in the mark-making process and the need to fill the entire composition with detail.

In the Summer of 2003, I made the journey out to Tory Island for a week of painting and playing music on this scholarship. I was accompanied on the ferry across by a few other eager teenagers and Jim Hunter of the University of Ulster. The King of the Island, Patsy Dan Rodgers, met us as we landed and welcomed us to his island. Over the following days, I spent some time learning about the local island, the legends and about the art community. Patsy Dan took me out to do some painting on the coast. He told stories about how he used to add little things to his compositions and didn't mind if it was 100% authentic so long as it suited the painting, which now seems like an obvious idea but had never occurred to me as a teenager. He was also willing to bend the rules, unafraid to use unorthodox materials such as boot polish in his paint for 'a blacker black'.

In the following years, I often returned to Tory in the summer, camping there with my friends for weeks at a time. No internet, no phones, just time to reflect, paint, write, play music or drink beer. When it was sunny it was the best thing ever. When it rained it was a different story. I got to know the locals pretty well, and always looked forward to getting back over. The last time I went was to play a gig with my rock band. There was a mini-festival on the island called 'Rock on the Rock' and somehow we got asked to come and play. I'm not totally sure our weird brand of blues & metal went down so well but we at least had fun. I haven't been back since.

I'd always wanted to own one of Patsy Dan's paintings, as they are both amazing little pieces of art, full of his idiosyncratic approach to painting and his outlook on the world, and also to remind me of those amazing summers on the island. My journey to obtaining on was not easy. Having not been able to get back to Tory Island for many many years, I looked to see if I could get some online, perhaps through Ross's auctioneers or somewhere else. I eventually found a website selling a painting, but after attempting to complete the purchase, nothing happened and it fell through. It wasn't until a year or so later that I stumbled across the website again, and noticed that the payment method was PayPal. I pressed 'buy' again but immediately cancelled the order. In doing this, I managed to see the email address associated with the online gallery selling the painting. I contacted them about buying some work, and after a few months, I actually got a reply.

It wasn't from anyone on the island but luckily enough it was from someone who had a direct contact with the King. I eventually received some photos of Patsy Dan's most recent work, which had been shown in Dungloe, and asked to have one of his paintings sent over to me in Wales. This took another few months but by the end, I finally received my very own Patsy Dan Rodger's painting of Tory Island, complete with boot polish black.

A few weeks ago, I, like many, was deeply saddened to hear of the passing away of Patsy Dan. He was a completely unique individual and I never underestimated how much he influenced my work as a young artist.

Bonus Content- short 1992 documentary about Tory Island painters with some amazing flute by Matt Molloy

Curation of my work for Sideways into the Distance

Galerie RDV, Nantes, 23/06/18-27/07/18

Artists:

Pascal-Michel Dubois
Lara Davies
Victoria J E Jones
Jason Rouse

The curator of the show, Pascal-Michel Dubois, had two of his own pieces that he wanted to position on opposite walls. The prints were of 180-degree photographs, taken in an abandoned play park in the valleys. This method of displaying entirely suited the two prints, but it wasn’t long after hanging had commenced that it appeared to also work well for my Digital Border triptychs. As the show developed, it became clear that also hanging Pascal’s two opposing prints in this same method would be immediately gimmicky. We refrained from showing those two pieces.

I was particularly happy with how my two triptychs had enough breathing space and also how they occupied opposite walls in the gallery. I plan on experimenting on how this might be applied to my other work (video/games) and how this might be implemented with a dual monitor or projection. Upon reflection, I might guess my fascination with this method came from seeing Willie Doherty’s famous Re-Run Derry bridge piece at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in my formative years.

My third work in this show was to be a pre-recorded video, played back on a projector or screen. In preparation for this, we had contacted the gallery via email to confirm if they had a display and a projector. This was correct. I was planning on using the screen for some video work to compliment my di-bond panels. Pascal had intended on projecting a video animation piece onto the floor via a roof mounted data projector. As the show developed, Pascal decided against showing his animation.

There was a small problem with me using the display, a 1080p HD television, in that it had a built-in ’foot’ which made it unsightly for wall mounting (as you’d typically expect in an exhibition). After searching the back room for tech, we found one other display, but this was a rather old 4:3 monitor that wouldn’t match the cleanness of the rest of my work for this exhibition. To remedy the situation I tried taking apart the monitor but found that the foot had been somewhat difficult to remove without risking significant damage. We asked a nearby gallery (Galerie PARADISE) for help, and they were able to offer us a larger display. I was happy to take this or opt for the projector, but Pascal thought that the current monitor was the perfect size and any larger would dominate the room (he was right, of course).

I stopped short of taking a saw to the extended foot, for fear that it might make it look worse, and compromised. I felt that the positioning of the cable down the wall helped to negate any issues, and Pascal reassured me that perhaps the clientele of Galerie RDV was used to this display and found no problem with the extended foot.

There were some further problems with the video itself. I had the game ready to go (for screen capture) and had done a small, short test before the show. Having only my laptop with me, I found it difficult to get the right settings in Unity for the game app. My MacBook Pro doesn’t default display at 1080, and unity automatically sets the window size to your current screen. I had to do some last minute code to overwrite this and export to a simple 1080 window, ready for screen capturing. I had some issues with this, as my little Mac was dropping frames all over the place trying to render out my game and screen cap simultaneously. This was remedied by both changing screen cap software and removing some of the in-engine visual effects such as vignette, noise, colour correction, and later adding these back in via Final Cut Pro and rendering there. This was useful too, to help get the optimum colour on the oversaturated monitor, and something that I couldn’t do so well if it were a live game direct from a computer–something to be aware of with my new experimental interactive work.

My videos typically don’t have sound. This is on purpose, but when you send a movie file to a tv without a soundtrack, it misunderstands and pushes up an error message at the start of every loop. I had this problem in the past, and couldn’t remember exactly how I remedied it–I think with some particular codec or similar. This time, I fixed it a little simpler by just adding an audio track in Final Cut Pro and then muting it, which worked. I also had issues with which video codec to choose, exporting multiple iterations and test videos. I didn’t download Compressor but I kind of wish I had at that point. Oh, and my final export was too big for the USB drive, and I needed to get another (thanks, Lara).

We had about 4-5 days worth of setting up, and although we didn’t need all of it, the cushion of time helped ease the problems. With thanks to Pascal for the first three images.

BORDER PHOTOGRAPHS, 25th MAY 2018

On the 25th of May, 2018, Ireland voted to Repeal the 8th Amendment. As the votes were being cast, I decided to take some photographs on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, along the Strabane/Lifford bridge.

The landslide victory for the Yes vote, one which shows how Ireland is finally ready to dump its image as a bastion of the Catholic church, also signifies just how backwards Northern Ireland is on this (and other) matters amidst extensive religious influence.

It’s difficult to discuss these images without taking into consideration the implication of religion as a political tool, one that now sees the ultra-rightwing party DUP now stubbornly at odds with both Ireland and the rest of the UK. I find this is particularly damning concerning the immediacy of Brexit: we currently have two weeks with no solution in sight. One can only hope that the current debacle will shine new light on the political darkness of Northern Ireland (on both sides of the religious divide) that was very much lacking in the run-up to the Brexit vote a few years ago.