Penn & Teller : Shadows

Fischli/Wiess

Images from first tutorial...

Bruce Mclean

Bruce Mclean

Richard Wentworth: Found Sculpture

Richard Wentworth: Found Sculpture

Relevant tangents...

 Another fascination of mine is magic/ close up/ conjuring/ illusion/ prestidigitation... what ever you want to call it. I was fascinated as a child and I have fairly recently revisited this fascination as an adult. 
I have recently been reading the Art of Astonishment books by Paul Harris, (must have books for anybody interested in the art form...)
Harris is a legend in the world magic community and has produce a staggeringly large body of work, (inventing tricks is his game.) 
The reason I'm introducing this into my bog is the idea of astonishment which Harris is so passionate about. He talks about astonishment being the natural state of mind and that through magic you can allow people a 'moment' of astonishment/ of clarity/ of strange... I'm paraphrasing wildly and I should probably look up some quotes but this will have to do for now. 
It reminds me of the ways which people like Aldous Huxley, Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey all talked about LSD.
I think what appeals to me about these ideas is the possibility for change; the potential for new ways of looking and seeing and understanding. If you accept that the way you understand the world and your beliefs are learned then surely you accept the possibility that they could be wrong... or at least that other positions may also be as right as yours. Ok its a bit hippy and idealistic but I'm ok with that, Ideals are important.
Maybe you can't change the world with an art work but if you can change someones way of looking at the world, doesn't that amount to the same thing?

Paul Harris

Bootleg

Here is a link to a recording of Lisa LeFeuvre's lecture on Failure given at the Whitechapel book fair yesterday (25/9/10) 


Many thanks to the unnamed friend who recorded this.... 


I hope you find it useful. I did...

Walking Faster, Backwards

This is a thing I made last year... I've recently been uploading things to youtube so I thought I'd share one. more will follow...


It's a clip I took off youtube. For those of you who don't recognise Bruce Nauman walking forwards and backwards around the perimeter of a square, thats what this is... Using iMovie I speed the clip up as fast as I could, 16x I think, and then played it backwards. Hence Walk Faster Backwards.


I played with other clips in similar ways, some I filmed other I took from youtube. I like the idea of the small electronic action being in some way like Bruce's small physical action... I don't think he'd mind


I don't know if it's work or if it's just a thing... but thats ok for now

Positive thoughts...

 Turista Maluco: Gabriel Orozco

How To Work Better: Fischli/Weiss

Mel Bochner

Richard Tuttle

Bas Jan Ader

Centri di Pensiero: Alighiero Boetti

Gustav Metzger painting with hydrochloric
acid on nylon. South Bank, London, 1961/1966.

Like a finger pointing to the moon...

I may be blogging too much, I don't know, but I want to get a sense of what I'm going to use this for. Also,  I want to try and establish a position at this point... before I've had a tutorial or any thing like that. As I sit in my studio it is becoming rather apparent that I really don't know what I do... or what I want to do. I am not a painter or a sculptor. I like the idea of not having a discipline... "favor formlessness to assume all forms." to paraphrase Bruce Lee. Looking back at the things I have made over the last half decade or more there are definitely threads that pull together. While it feels like I have been jumping around from one starting point to another I believe that the motivations for these things are all, if not the same thing, at least related to the same thing... Appropriation, function, purpose, use, uselessness, emptiness (among other things,) are all areas of interest and I believe that all these things relate to an idea of lightness. I did write in my application statement that I wanted to explore this idea of lightness within my practice, and I do, but I'm not sure how one would do that without making it un-light... I want to think about lightness and why it's a good thing in relation to my ideas and ideologies but I'm not sure it will be useful to sit down and try and to make light work, that seems contradictory in some way...

(It may be apparent now that I don't write that well, so apologies if this is nonsense, I hope to get better.)

More doing is probably the best way forward...

As good a starting point as any...

This is the supporting statement I submitted in application to the course. It seems like a logical thing to post. I think the nuts and bolts of it still hold true... I'll let you know...

Andrew Gannon

Written Proposal in Support of Application

MFA Intermedia Art

Among the maxims on Lord Naoshige’s wall there was this one: “Matters of great concern should be treated lightly.” Master Ittei commented, “Matters of small concern should be treated seriously.”

(Hagakure, 1709 – 1716.)

The most recent body of work I have produced is a series of cardboard sundials made specifically to be shown/seen indoors. The starting point for this work was the simple observation that sundials do not tell the time inside and the subsequent questions that arose, e.g. what constitutes a sundial? How do you make a sundial? Is a sundial still a sundial when it isn’t working?

The work I have been making always starts with a simple observation, which may be perceived as trivial, and develops as an investigation of a thing. A recurring subject throughout these inquiries is a fascination with use and uselessness. I am interested in the appropriation of things and their possible functions as part of an artistic practice. Following this process I find myself naturally lead to working in series and due to the type of the materials I choose to work with, e.g. coins, matches, cardboard, the artworks I create are often temporary in nature. This means that the work has to be remade and/or reconsidered every time it is presented.

These ideas of use, appropriation, and temporariness allude to a sense of lightness, which is central to my way of working and inherent in the things I have been making. Lightness poses an opposition to the weight of everyday life and suggests the possibility for change, free from the restrictions of established methods of working. This appeals greatly to me as an artist and it is this quality I will investigate on the MFA Intermedia programme at ECA.

The next stage in the development of my sundials is to make them as accurate as possible using a laser cutter. This will allow me to make the sundials much simpler, no gluing will be required and the drawn aspects can be engraved directly into the cardboard. This technology will enable me to manufacture large quantities of identical sundials and further my investigation into possible modes of presentation. My main concern will be how to develop my work to a professional level without losing any of the lightness inherent to my practice.

Erm...

Help! I have no clue what I'm doing...
So this is my blog. 
My Name is Andrew but I am also known as Ganddie, you may use either of these I honestly don't mind.
I have just started my first year of MFA: Contemporary Art Practice at Edinburgh College of Art. 
This is my studio...

I have great hopes for it...

I hope to write more insightful/informative/interesting things in the near future but as of yet I'm still lost...

...But at least I've set up my blog.