Sometimes you have to get out of the workshop to get ideas. This is what I did today, I need to develop a fluid line composition for the composition that will be etched onto the clear perspex. Just coming up with a composition while in the workshop is ok but I always maintain that using real life reference is vital. The fluid lines are representative of the movement on our city streets around the world. In Iggy Pop’s 1993 Album American Ceaser , the song ‘Girls Of N.Y.’ he sings-

“The streets are alive With a rushing river that never dies”

A Rushing River That Never Dies

This lyric is very poignant. City streets are always fluid like a river and although we may sometimes feel lonely or disconnected while walking through them, if we stop to watch all the people, cars, lights flow like a river and we get back to connecting to this energy.

As we walk through our world cities, in this case today, I walked through Montreal. We see signs, shapes, energy lines. The static buildings are at the bottom of the layers. This is what I hope that the final art-piece will also hint at.

I am starting to draw out the composition that will evoke this fluid energy. I will use the process that I often do for this. Basically, I get a big sketchpad and after receiving external visual stimuli, I draw as many compositions as I can, quickly turning over pages of the pad. I then look at all the sketches I have made and carefully decide on the final compositions. I sometimes combine more than one image. This way, I investigate all the possibilities and find I get the freshest image. Tomorrow, I will do this process in full. You can see I have just started some images in the slideshow. On the other extreme of the piece, I was also brainstorming the exact actions of the interactivity as powered by the Arduino I won last weekend. Watch this space for the next blog post…to read more about the work today, please go to the EchoFab blog.

So to summarise the process today was as follows-

1. I decided to take a walk outside to get fresh inspiration for the fluid line composition in the streets of Montreal

2. I took photos ans some sketches of any visual stimuli or ideas

3. I made a brainstorm about the Arduino interactivity actions for the final piece looking at all the different ‘logic’ actions that should be included in the programming and also hardware setup

4. I started to make quick fluid composition sketches for the etch pattern to go on the perspex

Liked it? Take a second to support Crofton5 on Patreon!