After discussions this morning and in previous tutorials I have wanted to see if I can take some of my Braille messages and make them larger and take into the environment as a piece of Land Art, maybe not quite on the scale of Robert Smithson in this case but maybe in another location...
Having watched 'The Dig' last night it made me think about creating large scale modern man-made humps, reflecting the Anglo Saxon burial mounds found particularly in this art of the work but all over the country. However I still wanted them to remain unreadable as seen at ground level and to become a part of a disruption to the environment. Something you question, walk around and over, become part of without actually knowing what they could represent. It's not until you see them from the air that they can be seen as some sort of language, coding or message. A language you still would need to understand and translate and even then not in the traditional way that Braille is read.
For this location I thought I would use somewhere that viewers would expect to encounter work of this sort. I could have gone remote, into the desert, on the beach, to a piece of land that very few people are likely to come across. I chose Houghton Hall as it has heritage with this type of work and hosts several pieces by Richard Long, who has created many substantial land art pieces not only here but also in places that many people wouldn't be aware that they were in the middle of or stepping over a piece of work.
I'm not sure what the Marquess of Cholmondeley would make of it. He might be quite receptive if it had been a proposal by Sir Richard Long but a mere 2nd year Fine Art student studying at NUA?
I had the idea before I had thought about what I might want it to say, I knew I wanted to keep it relatively short and punchy to make it fit, even then I have had to extend the image to give me enough space. I was unsure whether it should say 'Keep looking', 'See differently', or 'Question everything' but I decided on 'Look closer' as I felt this could be interpreted in more than one way. Look closer to read the message or as a more general statement about looking closer in life, as we are moving at such a pace nowadays we rarely slow down and take in the detail.
Using a Braille translator I created the graphic for the wording, this is Grade 1 translation (UK), it gives a code for each character from a grid of six. The first dot indicates a capital letter, if you go up to Grade 2 it starts to combine common letter groupings, ie 'ER' into one graphic. I can actually recognise a few letters now, having played around with it. It still fascinates me as to the possibilities but also how it can be read by fingertip touch.
The technical bit.
Once I had found an aerial shot of Houghton Hall, I needed to firstly extend the avenue to give me enough space, it is quite long but the image cropped it, I then had taken a separate image of a burial mound at a similar angle, touched that up, feathered the edge and made the gras a similar hue then I needed to get the message in place. I took the translated message and imported it, skewed the perspective to the same angle as the avenue, faded the opacity so I could see the position and started plotting my mounds. I like a challenge..
I have x2 thoughts...
A) Do I put this out on social media and tag Houghton Hall in it?
B) Do I create further messages that are site specific and potentially on and even grander scale, as it is a virtual proposal the limits are my imagination and resources of images.
View from the ground
I wanted to see how this might look at ground level, the view the audience would encounter and how it would possibly read it as a piece. The interruption to the language is extended to the disruption to the landscape and to their experience.
Update
I put this out just on Twitter to see what sort of reaction I would get, I tagged NUA in as well Houghton Hall. Through a couple of retweets and re-posts the idea has been picked up through connections and correspondence is to be presented as an idea to the Marquess of Cholmondeley to see what his reaction is. This is extremely exciting and although I may well be a little bit behind several other rather more well known artists in the list for exhibiting at Houghton, it is still extremely gratifying to have made the connection and to get the work seen at this level. You never know...
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