PATRIOTIC FISHING

 

The point is not to replicate a work by Escher but to reinterpret in a way that reflects the different medium. Lithography v BIM. The challenge is in the rendering. How to create a compelling image? An underwater feel with real depth.

I used planes of glass material and chose my viewpoint carefully. The addition of text is a nod towards the "information" aspect of BIM. I'm not claiming to have been fully successful in treating BIM as an artistic medium. 

 

Maybe if you take the larger sheet with multiple views as part of the work then it comes closer. Add in the fact that it was presented over time in blog posts, an allusion to the collaborative process. This unfolding over time could lay claim to be the use of BIM for artistic expression.

Of course it remains very derivative. Which great art can be. But this is hardly great. It's just nibbling around the edges. But hopefully it does point to the possibility. Just as photography is just a means of mechanical reproduction... And yet can be used by genuine artists to speak to our souls. BIM is just a project management tool/methodology. But we owe it to ourselves to use it to probe the human condition. Lest we become swallowed up in a world managerial tedium.

 

 

Imagine for a moment the investment in time and skill that went into any one of Escher's works. Then think about the effect of this disciplined effort of hand eye and brain over extended periods. Surely that transformed the man. He made the prints and they made him.

My version is from the 2013 Parametric Pumpkin competition.

 

Flying across the desert in an EK thirty one.

I saw Bob Dylan on the silver screen.

Landed on VE day just to find myself

a Brown Eyed Handsome Girl.

 

Apologies to Chuck Berry. The girl is my granddaughter and she has grown up a lot. The flags are in the garden of the block of retirement flats that will become my primary home next year. Arrived to a stack of mail and persecution for a TV license that I do not need. I gave up watching broadcast TV 30 years ago but apparently they can find me guilty in absentia.

 

 Waiting to see the brown eyed girl on Cross Street I noticed the blue coat boy for the first time. A bronze statue to commemorate a school that operated for almost 300 years but closed 150 years ago. That's the depth of history you routinely stumble across here.

 More recent attempts to mark history have a certain poignancy. An arrangement of paving slabs has sunk and cracked. One corner patched with asphalt. What does it celebrate? The Common Market and it's gradual evolution into EEC and later the EU. From trade agreement to bloated bureaucracy, it's a natural progression. Nothing more reliable in human affairs than mission creep.

 But I'm not trying to make a political point. Just noting how "the way we build" can hold up a mirror to our collective soul. Victory in Europe day led directly to a wish to bind nations together in trade. But those nations also had very deep histories, symbolised by the bluecoat boy and the Union Jack. Deep enough to crack those paving stones, hastily laid on top?

 New wine in old bottles perhaps.