Tag Archives: Creativity

Omay Lee: In sleep my songbird comes

This piece of writing is an exploration of our interconnectedness with nature through the conscious and unconscious parts of the mind. It interweaves poetry, art and the imaginal with neuroscience and depth psychology to explore our troubled relationship to the natural world and also to ourselves. It is written from the imagined viewpoint of a migratory bird that has become marginalised from the conscious mind but which appears conceptually in a dream. This is similar to how, collectively, inner environmental values of society might have become marginalised from outer agency. It proposes that by facilitating these inner depths through art, collective transformation and more pro-environmental behaviour may occur.

Ancient Ritual in Contemporary Mark-Making

“The power of the natural world, its intrinsic energy and fundamental properties, is dependent upon a fine balance. The balance of positive and negative forces resides from the smallest particles that make up our universe to concepts we live with every day: night/day and dark/light; finite/infinite and one/zero; quiet/loud and soft/hard; organic/manmade and the natural environment as opposed to the constructed cities. My work has been centered on concepts of this balance of opposites, as well as methods of numerical systems and patterning we use to construct an order to our world.”

Catherine Eaton Skinner’s works incorporate painting and encaustic, sculpture, printmaking, and photography. The figure, both human and animal, is an important element in her work and acts as a source of inspiration and exploration of identity, spirit and the paradoxes of human existence. She discusses her life and work in ‘Ancient Ritual in Contemporary Mark-Making’.

The queer uses of colour

This text looks to undo assumptions of creative individuals existing apart from dynamic material relations. Following a material ecocriticism ethos, it describes many simultaneous instances of materials affecting the narrative or meaning-making potential within human art practice, specifically in recounted moments from an artist residency taking place within collective gardens where plants were made into paints. In developing Sara Ahmed’s refrain of ‘use’ coming before, during or after relations, the creative tendency to find potential in pre-existing materials, using them differently, is proposed as a life-sustaining mode, like that of Margulis’ Serial Endosymbiosis Theory.

Handspan, handspun: navigational lines in the work of artists Inge Thomson and Deirdre Nelson

This essay considers projects by two multimedia artists working in Scotland to propose that culture and local ecology are inseparable and mutually-determining aspects of our understanding of and care for place. The work of Inge Thomson and Deirdre Nelson encompasses material cultures and oral traditions, with an emphasis on marine environments, creating new narratives of passage as works of advocacy for ‘vernacular, community-based ecology’.

Returning the artist to the field: Utilizing printmaking’s multiplicity, mediation and materiality for enhanced science communication.

Visual art as a parallel practice to science research offers opportunities for communicating the complexities of many ecological systems to non-experts. Immersive and interactive artworks provide a means to complexity, perceived distance, and opaqueness of language surrounding ecological systems. This paper describes the use of printmaking and print installations as analogues that engage audiences in complex soil systems. The three projects discussed here trace the journey of artist observer to field collaborator and examine printmaking’s capacity to facilitate the communication of both explicit and experiential knowledge of soil systems.

Keywords: field research, practices of arts and sciences, soil science, tacit knowledge, fine arts, printmaking

Processing Hyperacusis and PPPD : Inner-view of Neurological Disorder

“This visual article is based on my acoustic condition of bilateral Hyperacusis (both pain and vestibular type) with also its related levels of hearing impairments (i.e.hidden and  fluctuating hearing loss, bilateral tinnitus, vertigo) as well as Persistent Postural Perceptual Dizziness (PPPD). The combination of hyperacusis and PPPD creates a sensory disability.” This article and the following article will look at the inner and outer response to the disability with a different lens.

Luca M Damiani is a Media Artist and a Lecturer on BA (Hons) Graphic and Media Design at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. Luca practices internationally in the fields of art, digital media, and visual culture. He works and experiments with creative techniques such as digital technology, animation, photography, coding, and mixed media.

Mistaken Identity

Since the early 1990s, Paul Vanouse’s artwork has addressed complex issues raised by varied new techno-sciences using these very techno-sciences as a medium. His artworks have included data collection devices that examine the ramifications of polling and categorization, genetic experiments that undermine scientific constructions of race and identity, and temporary organizations that playfully critique institutionalization and corporatization. These “Operational Fictions” are hybrid entities–simultaneously real things and fanciful representations–intended to resonate in the equally hyper-real context of the contemporary electronic landscape.

Considering the Human Condition

“At the core of my practice are concerns as to how humankind comes to terms with mortality: by unearthing the unseen, making the invisible visible. Part of that process is about being open about impairment, and working to empower others through creativity to find a voice with which to challenge stigma. Ultimately my work is underpinned by themes of fragility and resilience, a shared and positive sense of survival in the face of chronic health conditions, and the politics and myths surrounding disability.”

Rachel Gadsden is a British artist who is exhibited internationally and who works across the mainstream and disability art sectors, presenting cross-cultural visual dialogues that consider the most profound notions of what it is to be human.

Processing Hyperacusis and PPPD : Outer-view of Neurological Disorder

“This visual piece is interconnected and follows the previous piece ‘Processing Hyperacusis and PPPD : Inner-view of Neurological Disorder’…….in this piece, I look into the outer-view of the condition, considering how the impact of the “inner-view” in response to sound modifies my experience of the urban as a case study.”

Luca M Damiani is a Media Artist and a Lecturer on BA (Hons) Graphic and Media Design at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. Luca practices internationally in the fields of art, digital media, and visual culture. He works and experiments with creative techniques such as digital technology, animation, photography, coding, and mixed media.