Archives for category: digital art

It was a real privilege to spend several dedicated months experimenting with the possibilities of Tilt Brush software earlier this year using an Oculus Quest 2 Virtual Reality Headset. This was in the lead up to “Project VR,” part of this year’s excellent Belfast Photo Festival.

The project culminated in a night of performance where I and the other two participating artists, John Robinson and Jane Rainey performed rehearsed Tilt Brush works, accompanied by the excellent Arco String Quartet. The feed from our headsets was projected live in the beautiful surroundings of Riddell’s Warehouse in Belfast. Thanks are due to the vast team of talented individuals who made the event possible.

Excellent photos by Michael Weir, CEO of the Photo Festival.

The incredible video of all 3 performances is available here: https://youtu.be/va6KxjS6slI

Original drawing

Mixed media on black recycled card, A1

Star chart 8

Digital manipulation:

Star chart 8 remix

I’ve been continuing this series of drawings that started in March as the Covid-19 lockdown began in Belfast. The process harks back to an earlier method of working, where marks are added and erased until a precarious, fragile balance is achieved. Lately I’ve felt the process becoming repetitive, the early excitement burning out. Digital manipulation or ‘remixing’ of the work presents a new avenue of possible development, extremely intricate and unexpected new configurations are possible. These may suggest organic growth, the infinite complexity inherent in nature from the structure of cells to galaxies. The next step may be to attempt to replicate these through drawing, or acquiring a plotter and learning how to program it to draw.

circle 24 3

Wall drawing is becoming more focussed and minimal, though I hesitate to use that word. Something is activated when multiple layers of chalk are built up, the form appears more solid and sculptural.

finished

1stblob

I cut out the traced blob indentation shape that keeps recurring in this work and projected it using this antiquated overhead projector; the reliable, clunky type I remember from school.

5blob

I moved the projector across the floor. The shadow shape was repeated at intervals across the wall five times.

layer blob

The projector was moved progressively closer to the wall, and the resultant shadows drawn around. This made these concentric blob shapes.

bloblayered

I continued to work using this process at at intervals until the day of our group critique, the predetermined finish point.

blobangle

The piece was accompanied by a fifty second tape recording I made by digitally slowing a ten second recording of me playing bass drum and hi-hat down. I shifted the pitch down and added a series of effects using a program called Wavepad sound editor. I chose analogue audio tape because of its warm hiss, it’s imperfection. The piece was interpreted as the sound of marching boots, or of an industrial process involving heavy machinery.

Fellow students and teaching staff thought that the sound and the drawing seemed to coalesce to a greater extent than before.

old belfast

Collaged from old photographs of Belfast alongside an old map of the city. A certain famous and tragic ship also features.

postcards from the edge

after Rauschenberg

experimental compositionlandscape of limbscircus

1. Desert station

2. Landscape of limbs

3.  Dream in monochrome

I’ve been continue to play with making images on Photoshop, using elements cut from old photographs and diagrams. I often invert and tint the colours. I am drawn to the mysterious and ghostly atmosphere in many of these old images. Stains and blemishes are welcome. It’s a pleasure to add a fortress to a lakeside, make an inverted head float in mid air or fuse two disparate landscapes.

As always please zoom to explore details.

Composite

A recent experimental piece using found photographs manipulated in Photoshop. I am fascinated by early photography and old anatomical diagrams. I am slowly learning how to use the program.

I am pleased to announce I will be launching a new solo exhibition at the Empress Gallery in Belfast on Wednesday 30th November, with a reception from 6-8pm. All are welcome. This exhibition will run until January 29th 2012. The press release is printed  below.

Structure

Structure is John Macormac’s new solo exhibition of recent works on card and paper and wood. The title refers to the artists concern with combining many elements and techniques to construct works that provoke a subjective sense of atmosphere, and a relationship of entities that coheres in the mind of the viewer.

The artist combines collage, oil paint, acrylics, emulsion, ink, spray paint, conte crayon, chalk, felt tips, pencil and anything else that appeals. Found photographs and fragments of text can be included because of a personal sense of meaning, or purely as passages of visual ‘noise.’
The work does not start with a finished image in mind. Rather it carries a sense of practical progression; each new area suggests the context and space for the next aspect of the piece. The artist will often work on several at a time. Pieces are often playful, rough edges and accidents are encouraged. The work is in a constant state of evolution and reinvention. Layers are added and scraped back. Each finished piece displays evidence of this process of revision, editing and adding new elements until it feels right to stop.

Since graduating from the University of Ulster in 2003 with a First Class degree in Fine Art, John have been working in Cathedral Studios in Belfast. He has participated in many shows including ‘Arrivals’ at the Ormeau Baths Gallery in July 2010 and a 3 person show ‘Graphic’ in the Engine Room in the summer of 2008 As a group, Cathedral Studios have been featured in late night art tours of Belfast art venues and exhibited in spaces as diverse as Newtownards Town Hall in 2011 and the Work Atelier SK Den Helder, Netherlands in 2007.

Here is a video of Cathedral Studios by the very talented Peter Adam. I’m the last artist featured in it:

http://vimeo.com/23344671

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