This is the third print I am making available for Christmas season. It is from a build called "Scissors" which I never actually exhibited, I just filmed the narrative in a machinima/movie which I will embed below should you like to see it. The story is of the girl who is cutting endless paper soldiers outside at a table, then a storm rolls in. A flash of lightning startles her resulting in the dropping of the scissors. They twirl falling to pierce the earth almost in the shape of a cross. An Emperor moth comes to land upon the scissors looking down upon the insects around it, and from there the other insects look up at the mysterious scissors made of metals and plastics so seemingly foreign and magical to their world of sand and grasses. They begin to worship the symbol and the moth upon it. The Ants and wasps vie for position and begin fighting among themselves as the storm worsens. The girl watches the events unfolding and in horror retrieves her lost scissors while eradicating the damage it caused.
No I am not against rational religion, it is the blind obeying that alarms me.
The Giclee prints are on Hahnemuehle cotton Photo Rag paper. They are museum
quality prints and rated with a 200+ years of fade resistance. If you are interested in purchasing one send me an email for details brynohhh@gmail.com
Every Sunday for the next while I am releasing Giclee prints of my work. The Giclee prints are on Hahnemuehle cotton Photo Rag paper. They are museum
quality prints and rated with a 200+ years of fade resistance.
Today I am releasing "The sky fisher". She is a character that I have been slowly working on. She wears antlers with long strings dangling from them with little hooks. She walks through fields and forests occasionally capturing small birds as they are flying by. In the detail below you can see a goldfinch and cardinal hanging from her antlers which she had caught earlier in the day. The sky fisher is an evolving character who might get her own story one day the same way the Rabbicorn, Anna, Lady Carmagnolle, Flutter and others have before. If you would like this print for Christmas please contact me soon as they need to be produced then shipped. Message me at brynohhh@gmail.com for details on price.
So last year I put out bronze sculptures of my Rabbicorn and Daughter of gears ... after Christmas. Yes terrible idea I know. I kept hearing "Oh but I spent all of my christmas money already!" It wasn't actually my fault they just took longer than expected to be ready but sigh. Some people told me that at $700 us the bronzes were too expensive and could I have things at different price points.. well yes I can!. So for the last little while I have been creating what are called Giclee prints on Hahnemuehle cotton Photo Rag paper. They are museum quality prints and rated with a 200+ years of fade resistance.
I plan to release a new print each week for a while so they can be created and shipped before Christmas should anyone wish one for a present. Each one is 16 inches by 24 inches and will cost $160 USD + shipping.
The first print is called Seahorse carousel and is from my work called Tilt-a-whirl but also seen in a newish video called the girl with the paper crown. Watch the video should you wish to see it in the poem build.
I had one framed to show what they look like but the artworks will not be, they will come in a rolled tube which you could bring to a framer if you liked or display as you wish.
If you are interested in ordering a Giclee print (pronounced Zee-Clay) or have any questions then please email me at brynohhh@gmail.com.
So this is kind of embarrassing but I forgot to post about making bronze sculptures of the Rabbicorn and Daughter of Gears. I came to the blog to see what I wrote about it and discovered that the answer
was .. nothing.
Every so often I create limited editions in bronze of my artwork. In the past I did one of a ballet dancer from "Hand" and a Long Legged Maskitt as a commission for awards to artists for the Santorini biennial. Then just after christmas last year, which is a really dumb time to release anything i think, I put out the bronzes for two of my personal favorite characters, the Rabbicorn and Daughter of Gears. At the same time I released the three part story, rebuilt in mesh, in Second Life which told the story of these same characters.
The whole story was originally conceived one day years ago as I was walking through the forest.
Daughter version 1
Daughter version 2
As I was walking I saw a peculiarly shaped branch with a bend in it. I stood looking at it a while and began to imagine it as a leg for a girl. From there I started to think why this leg would be so bent and it grew into a story called the Daughter of Gears. Now I had not built this story yet, just sketched out ideas, but shortly after I was approached by a company called Rezzable who built sims such as Greenies and black swan in Second Life, and they asked if I might build something to go on the black swan sim for a month or two. The black swan sim was created by artist Starax also known as Light Waves. It was a bit daunting because at the time Light Waves was quite a legendary artist in Second Life and I really didn't want to mar his work. So I decided to build the tower for the Daughter of gears story, which I worried was a terrible idea as I had just come up with the concept of creating immersive artworks as a style or movement, but I hadn't really built any substantial ones yet. What was interesting to me was to try and create a story within second life as I had not
Daughter version 3
Daughter version 4
come across any at that time. In my art practice before second life i was an oil painter and each work essentially was a snapshot in time. My work would indicate a story, but there was no duration. When I discovered Second Life and the virtual space I realized that I could create art where the visitor was an active participant to the piece not a passive observer as most other mediums treat the viewer. For example in cinema we sit on the couch and are told a story, or in a gallery looking at paintings we are separate and stand looking upon a scene which might captivate us to imagine something happening, but we are separate. Cinema and painting both try to immerse the viewer, and succeed, yet to me I saw the virtual space as a far more powerful medium for immersion. I wanted
Daughter version 5
people not to just get caught up in my artwork, similar to how you
Daughter version 6
get caught up in a good movie, but to also be an active participant to the artwork. To be alive and exploring in an open ended manner within my artwork. The tower for the daughter of gears was my first attempt to do so. It was quite popular with tens of thousands coming to see it which then had IBM approach me to build something for their region. For IBM I built the second part of the story a year later which introduced the Rabbicorn. Oh and did I mention that for some inexplicable reason I decided to write it all in poetry. I am not a poet but I determined to be one for all three parts of the story. The story was well received and I agreed to do the final part of the story a year from then for IBM. The final part of the story was called Standby which referred to an empty white space where the Daughter of gears would stay
Daughter of gears oil painting
within her mind alone with her memories. Like the standby our computer goes to when its been idle too long. The final part finished the story and was written, as most of my work is, to let the ending be debated by those who explored it. Was it a happy ending or sad one? Was the Standby, a place the daughter and rabbicorn hid from the world, a good thing or bad thing? I like to take the fears of society and its universal dislikes, such as the fear of virtual spaces, and show them in another light.
For example I recently had a studio tour and showed VR to visitors to my studio and some would say VR is fantastic, but that people would become obsessed with it and live in virtual spaces rather than
unused poem
real life. A very common comment and to be honest some will. Just as some get addicted to gambling or alcohol or social media. Stand
staring at your phone when in groups of people checking meaningless things? yep social constipation.
One of my favorite stories after the final piece was release, and I heard years later, was of two people who went on a sl "date". They had met and were getting to know one another and decided to explore the final part to the Rabbicorn story together as each had already seen the previous two parts. She told me that before they went to the exhibit she was not sure if she really liked this guy and was not convinced they would talk again. They went through the story together and at the end, faintly over his microphone, she could hear him silently crying for the Rabbicorn. And she told me that at this moment she fell in love with him. Later on they got married and now many years later they are still together and still enjoy exploring art in second life.
So back to the bronzes. I apologize to those of you who were reading my blog expecting this information and so were unaware for that they had come up for sale, that was my mistake but there is good news! I do have a few left so if you would like to purchase the bronze of both the Daughter and Rabbicorn (they only come as a pair naturally) then just email me at brynohhh@gmail.com. The Daughter is six inches tall and the Rabbicorn is 4inches and together they sell for $700 + shipping.
And to finish up the post I will embed the machinima story for Standby.
FILE Electronic Language International Festival
FILE SAO PAULO 2019
I have four machinima being exhibited at FILE that opened last week. If you are in the area then you can experience the festival at the Art Gallery of the Fiesp. I will put my machinima below should you wish to see them.
FILE – Electronic Language International Festival is
a non-profit cultural organization that sparks a reflexion on the main
aspects of contemporary digital and electronic universe; disseminating
the electronic language across Brazil and South America through events
and publications since the year 2000.
FILE gathers
works of aesthetic expression that capture the main trends and
movements of our contemporary culture, which are diversified amongst the
main categories of the festival:
Electronic Sonority:
Sound Performance, Sound Installations, Sound Art, Genetic Music,
Biologic Music, Classical Electronic Music, Pop Electronic Music,
Dramatic Radio Broadcasting, Radio Art, Sound Landscape, Sound Robotics,
Music Video, Sound Poetry, Sound Robotics, etc.
Interactive Art:
installations, performances, internet projects, virtual reality,
augmented reality, multitouch tables, digital objects, outdoor
projections, phone projects, electronic graffiti, VRML, etc.
Digital Language:
digital games, animation, digital theatre, machinima, digital video,
digital architecture, digital fashion, digital design, robotics,
artificial life, biological art, transgenic art, software art, new
interfaces, animes, hypertexts, non-linear scripts, artificial
intelligence, programming language, digital poetry, digital dance, etc.
Founded in the year 2000 by Ricardo Barreto and Paula Perissinotto, FILE
aims to magnify technological discussions in the cultural scope.
Besides the traditional annual event in São Paulo city, the festival
expands itself across national and international borders to cities such
as Rio de Janeiro, Vitória, Belo Horizonte, Curitiba, Porto Alegre, São
Luis and Brasilia.
FILE’s mission
is to promote a wider access from the general public to technologic
languages demonstrating how our contemporary world builds itself on the
advances of new and digital medias.
In part five the Scientists are shocked to see the Rabbicorn and one sends out a tiny spider which clings to the Rabbicorn acting as a tracking bug. The old boy lifts his cane and distracts them while telling the Rabbicorn to flee. The Rabbicorn does and again is alone, the boy who she spent a lifetime with now gone, as well as everything she once knew.
Spider bot attaching to Rabbicorn
"There she is!" exclaimed one "quick tag her with the G.P.S gun"
With a flash of light followed by a pause out shot a tracking bug which told them where she was
"She is an antique a priceless find the fabled Rabbicorn with both a heart and mind"
Then the old boy pushed the scientists aside "Run my Rabbicorn find somewhere to hide
and never come back or they will catch you and place you in a robot zoo"
The hunter sleeper guards
When I imagined the world which all my characters live in, it is like ours but technologies and philosophies branched out in different directions. One thing that I considered, from the perspective of the military, is how to create effective tools and machines that would perform their jobs in the best way. What I decided on was a military that focused on using base emotions within their tools. So for example, the Spiderbot tracking bug is not malicious but rather once it attaches to a host it is imprinted on them much like a duckling to its mother. It follows and stays with the Rabbicorn because it loves her as a child loves its mother, not aware that it may lead them to her. The Rabbicorn was the first to be programmed to love, but one hundred years passed while she lived with the boy and now that program exists in many things, though never quite replicating the perfection of the Rabbicorn. (because the Scientist who made the Rabbicorn hid the plans after).
In the next scene the Rabbicorn is shown running past some guards who attempt to catch her. Again these guards are not what they seem. On the outside they appear fearsome, but if the viewer clicks on the wings they will open and by camming inside we discover a boy child in one and a girl in another. They are called Hunter Sleepers and, similar to the Spiderbot, they are designed to use their innocence as a weapon. The children are orphans who are procured by the military, they are made comfortable in beds within the thorax of the beetlebot, where they sleep. In their semi conscious state they are put in a dream world where, in this instance, they wish to hug and hold the Rabbicorn. The Rabbicorn seems to beckon to them in their dreams and they will do their best to catch her. Again they have discovered that love is actually more powerful than hate, so they take that love and warp it to their needs, manipulating the emotion rather than learning from it. If it were another situation of say a riot, the Hunter Sleepers would perhaps be fed a dream where they are playing tag with a group of other laughing children. They would rush about trying to tag them while smiling in their sleep not knowing they were chasing and impaling rioters with their metal needle legs.
Humans were never meant to kill other humans in nature. Much like the animal kingdom, disputes rarely resulted in death, often there was no physical violence rather mere posturing. There are statistics taken over time which show that our earliest conflicts often had few casualties as most soldiers didn't actually want to kill another human being. In the 1800's apparently soldier often would shoot over the heads of their enemies and it persisted until WW2 where it is said, that many soldiers didn't even fire their rifles. Historically many armies liked to bang drums and chant, wear scary clothing or makeup in an attempt to scare off their enemies.. much like posturing in the animal kingdom. The modern military saw this as quite a problem and took measures, such as changing bulls eye targets to human silhouettes, to training which focused on reactionary behaviour.. as well as psychologically embedding ideas that not firing your weapon at the enemy endangers your comrades etc. Not to mention you can kill from much further distances which allow the enemy to remain faceless and abstract, not fathers and sons. I imagine if you look at the rates of gun violence in the USA over the last 50 years you might find the increase to be connected to desensitization from violent movies or perhaps some video games which seem so realistic and reward oriented that they almost act as training tools, and hey I like video games but it seems reasonable. However, in my stories the military did not spend time and money trying to retrain a stubborn instinct, but rather decided to trick a powerful non violent one into doing what they required.
So the Rabbicorn ran as fast as she could past some guards and into the woods
Into a world she had never seen into a world that had grown obscene
with wars fought just for fun to try out the latest gun
and Presidents picked from TV shows who planted hate then called it a rose
