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.

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.

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.

INTERACTIVITY AND EXPERIENCE

This past year I have been thinking about the role of interactivity in my work. Typically, my digitally produced work compromises of two parts: the exhibited piece, and a digital download. To give two examples–Clifton & Postcards from Ankara.

Clifton was a reimagining of the Avon Gorge created for the Bristol Photography Festival back in 2010 via the popular multiplayer game Worms. A video capture of one CPU controlled match was displayed via a data projector in the gallery. With Postcards from Ankara, physical postcards were produced of five scenes taken from a game that I had created and exhibited as such.

When exhibited, my work regularly opts for a more curated experience. By that, I mean the work typically consists of either screenshot or video, within which I have personally constructed the path of the viewer. This could be through a screen capture of a playable scenario (which I have acted out) or using some software to generate a specific still image from the game. Each of these methods allows for a work that is non-interactive and exists in the traditional gallery space to be viewed, as one might consider a painting, photograph or video piece.

The interactive element has always been via an external download. In Clifton, the map I made for the work was available, via my website, to be downloaded and implemented with the user’s own copy of the game. In work where I have created my own games (such as Postcards from Ankara, etc.), copies of the game are also available to download in Mac & PC formats. Part of the attraction from this method of production & distribution is the running parallel with the nature of gaming in the internet age. People make things and post them on the internet, often for free (or at least pirated for free). I wanted to try and tap into this with my own work, as I believe that it's deeply ingrained in both the medium and culture.

I found this dual method of curation and exploration to be beneficial. Being able to dictate someone’s experience of my work in a gallery setting allows me to set the boundaries, to let as much or as little to be shown, and also to create limitations within the work. This entirely suits the work and the environment. When exhibiting digital work, or more specifically Game Art, there is inherent difficulty in how to go about it. There can be problems with computers, Game Art can be made from badly hacked together mods and glitches, how to introduce interactivity in a meaningful way? I have experienced some good and bad examples of this, the worst perhaps being a sign apologising as the work was unable to function. There are many benefits to showing a non-interactive piece, especially with Game Art.

In some ways, allowing a digital download of the work is somewhat similar to a magician revealing their tricks, or, in traditional art terms, a painter exhibiting their sketches and studies. I’ve always been fascinated by the processes of artists, and especially love when galleries and museums curate both finished pieces with unfinished or preparatory works. Indeed, in many of my created gamescapes, it is possible to move the camera around and find mistakes, optical illusions and tricks, or to simply walk off of the edge of the playing area and fall endlessly.

The idea of a self-playing game was something I had been investigating. This started with changing my once interactive Schooldays Over into one that could simply be left and watched. I read an article (tongue in cheek) describing how people would soon no longer have time to dedicate to playing video games, and that a self-playing game would solve this conundrum. There are further examples of self-playing games exhibited in the traditional white cube space.

I’ve felt that my digital work is very much implicative of my paintings. It is perhaps through this lens that I am drawn to the non-interactive method of exhibition. I like to think of my digital pieces as ‘living landscapes’, and plan on proceeding with this duality of exhibition and download.

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.

THINGS I WISH I'D KNOW RECAP

 I exhibited some new work in Bristol’s The Island gallery as part of the third group show from the MFA in Cardiff School of Art & Design. This show was entitled Things I Wish I’d Known, and I think having a title and theme for this show helped us to bring it together a bit more than what we’d been previously doing.

The blurb for the show was as follows:

'Things I Wish I’d Known is an art exhibition featuring current Master of Fine Art students from Cardiff School of Art and Design. The group show brings an honest exposure of things we wish we’d known; exploring the often eschewed aspect of development and personal growth as an artist. Within the show, there will be a variety of works in different media from both local and international artists.'

My statement responded:

'This show marks a departure from my usual practice of work based on 3D computer games. It is the first exhibit of my exploration into both sculptures, via 3D scanning/printing, and into photography with the accompanying supporting image.

As an artist who typically utilises and manipulates software for developing games, I imagined that transitioning to 3D model software would be somewhat similar and easy to pick up. I was very wrong. My prior experiences creating digital worlds did not prepare me for the inherent difficulties with this new toolset. Ultimately, I went through 7 different pieces of software until I found one that was both easy to use and had enough complexity for what I needed to achieve.

The end result is a number of printed copies of a shell casing. The original object was a friend’s family heirloom; a relic from the 1970’s conflict in Northern Ireland, fired from a paramilitary weapon. The act of duplication is to try and describe the importance of passing on family stories, but also how intergenerational trauma is still an issue in these post-conflict communities. There are a few copies that I have modified to try and point towards what it means to have an unfaithful copy, referring to misinformation and especially important regarding the conflict in Northern Ireland.

A recent photograph from the area is adjacent to reference the graffiti sloganeering of kids contextualised via post-conflict paramilitary glorification.'

Overall, I’m relatively happy with how my work holds up in the context of the space. I arrived to set up the show with two images on paper and a box full of 3D printed replica shell casings. It wasn’t until a few of the other pieces had been displayed in the space that I decided to use a plinth against the wall for my tiny sculptures. My initial thought was to present these on the floor, but the floor was pretty messy, and I felt that they might get lost amongst the splashes of white paint down there. Perhaps if I had more of the shells produced (like 200 or so), it would have worked better. But elevating them on this plinth worked well, and brought them nearer to the double image I had included.

I had the photograph printed off and tacked to the wall via map pins. The image itself was on a standard A3 portrait page, with the image composed towards the top of the page. I intentionally used this typical format and wanted the white space to draw the attention down towards the 3D printed pieces. In retrospect, this was probably too much, and somewhat unnecessary. Perhaps even the image as a whole was superfluous, but at least this was a good experiment to do.

In the future, I’m not sure if I will do much more 3D printing, with a new focus on reinterpreting 3D topographies as before, but I think documentary photography or video might play more of a part in contextualising my scenarios. The next group show is in Penarth Pier Pavillion and will be followed by the MFA show in Cardiff School of Art & Design in September.

Included below are a few more images I took at the exhibition.

Half-Life: 2018

Working with a 19-year-old game engine

For a recent project, I’ve decided to make a change from using the game development tool Unity and begun producing some work using the original Half-Life Goldsrc engine. I did this because I felt that there could be a much easier setup of a server (using a deathmatch/bot driven system), familiarity with the tools and knowledge of its limitations. There is also a definite history of artists using this engine for game art such as Tobias Bernstrup, Aram Bartholl and projects like Velvet Strike. I’ve also made some stuff with it in the past.

Valve Hammer Editor

During development for Schooldays End, I wanted to move away from interactive work to creating self-playing work. This would be easier to display in a gallery setting, require less setup, and avoid the immediate problems inherent in typical interactive art (of any kind). I piggybacked a version of Jumbot, and, with some modifications, I was able to get relatively close to an autonomous first-person deathmatch game with on-screen narrative elements. The prototype worked well enough for me to invest more time in creating the map for the scenario.

Simplified prototype game

This proved to be quite the problem. Although I had some experience in the past working with Valve Hammer Editor, I found it somewhat clunky to set up from scratch (via Steam on a boot camped Mac), and once I got into the swing of things, there was seemingly no end of errors and issues. Finding fixes to problems was also tricky, often encountering dead links on old forum posts. Very different from my experiences with the most positive and supportive community with Unity.

In-game screenshot

Currently, I’m trying to find a way to record a video of my game in action for exhibiting, but I’m now having trouble with the game quitting after 5 or so minutes.

Part of me is strongly considering switching back to using Unity after completion of this project as I’m not entirely happy with the text-based narrative and the other aesthetic compromises.

THREE DOORS UP EXHIBITION RECAP

Just some immediate thoughts and reflection from our recent group show in Three Doors Up. The show was called Who Me? and was the collective work of the 2017/2018 Fine Art Masters group from Cardiff School of Art and Design. While not a traditional exhibition, the space was presented as more of a working environment with a relaxed attitude. We were encouraged to drop in and produce work, change up the pieces and evolve the show over the period.

For this show, I chose to exhibit my Schoolday’s End self-playing game. I had initial thoughts to have the piece projected onto a wall, but it eventually worked out better to display via an old CRT TV on a plinth. A requirement of the space was to have a sofa for people who wanted to come and chat. I positioned my work adjacent the couch, something which I felt added a little to the overall feeling of my work and suited the nature of the exhibition.

I was able to change up my game throughout the show, adding different things, correcting errors, adding a new level and overhauling the colour. Other artists produced works on paper in the space, adding to the exhibition throughout the fortnight.

Some commented on the ramshackle appearance of the show, and I do indeed agree that we could have taken a more refined approach. Overall it wasn’t particularly bad considering it was the first time we had all exhibited together and also that we had all mostly different work. Part of my idea for at least one of our future exhibitions is to have a theme to glue our works together. It can be a loose theme, perhaps just a word or phrase, but something to help make it feel like a curated show and not just a collection of works produced by people studying together.

As far as paperwork was concerned, we had a printout of artist statements. There were no other materials, and some artists and visitors expressed that we should label the work, perhaps also including a visible price. It would probably have been useful to some extent, but I did enjoy approaching the public and explaining the works and artists, often giving much more insight than a simple title or printed piece while allowing for further conversation and discussion.

Thanks to Rob, Richard and Ronnie for their parts in the organisation of this show.