The Making

From Eye to Mind (Panel Discussion)

On April 12 2017 Neuroscientist Kristina Visscher, philosopher Marshall Abrams and artist Jessica Angel, gathered to talk about how our brains process visual and conceptual information from different perspectives.

The conversation focussed on the flexibility of our brains to manage visual and conceptual perception using visual illusions and analogies as examples to show the ambiguous and diverse interpretations we can give to a single stimuli. Visual illusions, associations, and previous experiences were the subjects the panelists discussed to understand what triggers our perception to give us a sense of what we perceive.

Artist Lecture

On the opening night of the installation, Jessica gave a lecture to a wide audience of students, teachers, UAB staff, and other visitors. In her lecture she gives a broad summation of her concepts regarding the Hyper Structure and how it was constructed, where she gathered inspiration from, etc. She briefly touched on the information that was discussed in the weekly lectures with the students; the incorporation of different scientific and philosophical theories, the importance of incorporating different physical perspectives and viewpoints, and the relation to the structures to the construction of networks and neurons.

Air in a Loop/ Chamber Music at AEIVA

The week after the Grand Opening, AEIVA opened its doors once more for a group of local musicians. The performance consisted of works written by the world class Birmingham Music Alliance and was performed by Hillary Tidman, flute; Diana Dunn, oboe; Kathleen Costello, clarinet; Tariq Masri, bassoon; Kevin Kozak, French horn and UAB Department of Music Musicians as well. Ultimately the performance was a unique way to appreciate and interact with the installation from a different perspective, which as Jessica states is incredibly vital to true understanding in general.

Opening Night

Opening night is here! The event was a huge success that had one of the highest traffic volumes AEIVA had ever seen. A very wide array of people ranging from students, professors, locals, UAB staff, and many others entered the space with fervent enthusiasm. When the sun set after the lecture, the space truly transformed into a multi-dimensional color shifting experience. Viewers traveled throughout the space and AEIVA's different levels to absorb all the vibrant information that was being presented to them all at once. The opening night also coincided with the Student Juried exhibition where many student's were able to exhibit their work alongside Jessica's piece. Ultimately, the night brought about many discoveries for onlookers and peaked interest about the art community here in Birmingham for many.

Finalizing the Installation

The Project is finished! The team has worked very hard this semester in finalizing every possible detail regarding the installation's cleanliness, precision, accuracy, and truthfulness to Jessica's vision for the space. Now that everything is completed, the team can sit back and truly absorb the work in its entirety while reflecting on the time spent to bring it to this point. Tomorrow the public opening will commence and the public will be able to ponder on the very same thoughts and processes the class has.

Final Thoughts on The Process

The project is finally completed! Here we have a glimpse of the week by week process and intense organization Jessica took part in to complete the installation right on time and to its best possible potential. Jessica color coded, highlighted, and crossed her way through the heavy list of things to be done every week so that everything stayed perfectly on track (with some adjustments). Ultimately, much like the connective structures that exist literally within the piece, the mere instructions that were illustrated to conduct the piece's existence mimicked the installations actual likeness.

Stereoscopic Effects

The lights were tested and placed this week. In the image above we see the effect that takes place when the blue light is filtered over the shapes in the space. The result is the stereoscopic effect that causes our brain to trick itself into believing the image is actually a three dimensional shape. Stereoscopic glasses will also be used to further enhance the effect.

Final Connections: Space, Perception, and Final Decisions

These groups of images are shown together here simply because they exist within the same series of processes that were necessary at the end of the project. Jessica's spring break plans for the "portal" went very smoothly and therein underwent yet another transformation to further bring the space and project together. As you can see Jessica put the "portal" through a series of transformations until one seemed to make the most sense. In the end it is clearly evident that the final image leads the viewer to believe that from some other singularly dimensional plane, a new existence of color, shape, and perception has emerged. This particular section of the installation is probably the most transparent representation of the use perspective theory to better understand planes and existences we cannot perceive literally. Ultimately with the finalizing of these lines and "virtual" spaces we can come to a better understanding, as a viewer, exactly what a "hyper-structure" truly is.

The Workspace

Here is an overall view of Jessica and the student's studio for the semester. In the studio we can see that the space itself has become the planner for the project. Thoughts, ideas, plans, techniques, instructions, and processes are illustrated literally all over the gallery. There is also a wide range of insightful literature that is always available to the students in the gallery. Ultimately, the gallery existed as a safe haven for the creative ventures and leaps this project has undertaken.

Student Involvement and The Fragile Nature of The Museum

This week the team also took some time to learn about inspecting, shipping, handling, and archiving art in the AEIVA galleries and archive. The students thought out and designed a plan for how the current student juried show (Curated by Jessica) would be laid out in the large gallery space and then took the time to learn to properly move it about the space and install it. They also visited the back space of the gallery where AEIVA has a permanent collection of works. There the team was exposed to the varying technologies and methods used to maintain a large body of work. Ultimately, this time was spent teaching as a opposed to practicing. The skills and experience learned and gained in this time frame will go on to help the students with future careers in the art industry.

ADDITIONAL FINDINGS

As a result of the previous weeks reflection, Jessica went with the idea to have the color leading through a portal that would connect the smaller gallery that acted as the primary workspace, with the lecture hall on the opposite wall. Pictured above is the problem solving that therein took place to come to a general idea of how these lines of color would be placed. Ultimately, the beginning of this  week showed the team that even in the final hours of a large project, something new and excited can be discovered and pursued.

Late Spring Break

The end of spring break was used primarily as a time of reflection for the space. Those who remained on campus during the break took the time to look closely on what could further the space, what could be refined, and what could be added. Jessica took the time to make numerous additional sketches that would be translated in the final weeks ahead. The team came to the decision to add more color and as a result, more time was to be spent to create the ultimate vision for the project.

Early Spring Break

The finishing touches are finally underway! The lines of color on the floor have been mostly cleaned up at this point and are awaiting a final session to make them ready for opening night. This work was completed primarily during spring break while most of the team was away, so Jessica used her precise eye to hone in on many things that may had been missed in the hustle and bustle of the previous weeks and constant traffic throughout AEIVA.

4D OBJECTS ROTATION

A video lecture on further understanding of the fourth dimension and how it can be perceived from our own dimension. The simplex, a theoretical fourth dimensional object, is constructed and expanded upon so that its infinite possible dimensions illustrate the fourth dimension in a way that is tangible and accessible. 

WEEK 7 (Feb 20 - Feb 26)

With the end of the installation period in sight, the team was finally able to work on the beginning processes of installing the finishing details. Pre-Made vinyl panels were installed on the high points of the walls and ceiling via the lift to carry the pixel effect into the void of the white walls. As a result of commencing the finalizing process, we were finally able to reflect back on the space as a whole and how the shapes ultimately affected and manipulated both the space, and our perception of it.

Floor Work With Color

This week we added lines of color that would then later connect to lines that extended onto the walls and through the "portal" that exists between the wall of the lecture hall and the studio work space. In laying down these initial guidelines, we could begin to truly understand how each area of the installation would connect through spaces imagined, and not directly perceived. The team focused in on perfecting their skills with laying down the vinyl precisely, in a manner that would be aesthetically pleasing, and in a way that would not create any distractions from the overall visual concept.

HIDDEN DIMENSIONS: Exploring Hyperspace

Below is Brian Greene's lecture on hyperspace and the many theories that were used to come to a better understanding about the state of its existence. Greene discusses the work of Einstein, Kaluza, and others as well as the theory of relativity, string theory, etc. Greene essentially discusses how objects not visible to the human eye (or mind), exist and what said objects are made of. 

PERSPECTIVE AND PROJECTIONS. The Entryway to Higher Dimensions

Perspective, Shapes, and individuality all coincide in the following lecture. The reader will be presented with the tools and information necessary to understand how the multitudes of understanding of what many artists and scientists thought to be the correct perspective view point, etc. has helped shape three dimensional spaces in two dimensional works. 

STEREOGRAPHIC PROJECTION. Understanding 3D from the 2D perspective

When discussing the third dimension we live in and how we perceive it, we must go back to the second dimension in order to fully understand it in its entirety. Passing three dimensional objects through the second dimensional plane is a good start, however expanding the shape out in a complete 360 onto a flat surface allows us to view an entire shape from one point, on one plane. In the following video, these methods are discussed and illustrated to better help the viewer come to a better understanding of space, size, and depth in the third dimension while only having access to the second dimension.  

The Earth. The Most Recognizable Sphere. Second Dimension

With this video we introduce the relationship between the plane and the surface of three-dimensional objects. Using the earth as a the most recurrent example of the "flattening" of the sphere onto a plane, this audiovisual material introduces the possibility of understanding the spherical surface from the 2d perspective using stereographic projection.

Week 6 (Feb 13th to Feb 17th)

Week 6 showed a further concentration to the upper levels of the building and therein the "ring" that connects the first floor to the second. The team worked on the lift once more to fill the aforementioned space with the intricate illustrations that thematically pull the separate levels in the space together. The primary focus of this week was unification through color (or the lack there of), shapes, and space. 

NETWORKS. The Structure of Knowledge and the Construction of Space

The following lecture illustrates the intricate relationships between maps, networks, biological neurons, and nebula in space. The similarities in function and appearance are more than coincidence as humanity constructs things of great functionality out of an image or idea they find familiar, whether it be conscious or not. 

THE CEILING - Week 5 (Feb 6th to Feb 11th)

Week five of work on the installation produced the initiation of the scissor lift in the daily process. As a result, work could finally focus on the ceiling and all the high, hard to reach nooks and crannies that the building presented to our team. We collectively began the process of filling the upper level of the building's ceiling with squares of color. As the week came to a close, the ceiling presented itself as a new dimension to the project perhaps not previously noted. 

Hard Edge Space vs. Dynamic Space

The following lecture is an introduction to the relationship between drawn lines, and warped surfaces and the relationship they have to a perceived space or existence. Using architecture that pushes the very idea of what a building truly is, we are able to come to a better understanding of perspective and space and what their interactions mean for those exist within said space. 

Week 4. Jan 30th - Feb 5th

As most of the first floor is outlined and covered, this week was about incorporating color adding a visual impact to the work. Color is an important element of this proposal as it follows the line of study in optics from Newton in science and Goethe in literature and art. Color in this project helps us understand the visible spectrum and the relationship between wavelength and space. We will be using chroma-key glasses to view the piece enhancing the color-space perception.

ART AND ARCHITECTURE: From the City of the Machine to the City of Codification

The following images are part of a presentation given to the HypeArchitecture students on Monday Jan 23. We reviewed a chronological progression of futuristic influenced architecture from the 20th to the 21st century and its relationship with art and film. We started by analyzing Italian futurism between 1909 and 1944 by reviewing the exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York titled "Italian Futurism - Reconstructing the Universe" studying how the work of Mario Chiattone and Antonio Sant'Elia influenced dramatically the development of the aesthetic in Metropolis by Fritz Lang, Hugh Feriss Illustrations and Archigram. The idea of this presentation is to contextualize post-modern architecture and expose the students to the background found in the work by Frank Gehry, Randall Stout (AEIVA's architect) and Zaha Hadid.

Week 3 Jan 23 - 28

The main focus of the work completed during week 3 was to finish the floors that would complete the first initial stage of the project. White and black were used to create a sense of void in contrast to a sense of space. Space and the lack there of immediately cast viewer of the installation into a state of pure perception; the only guidelines for existence they are given are that which are presented in the space to be digested by the viewer. 

Interview with AEIVA's First Long-Term Artist in Residence: Jessica Angel

Interview by Zach Edison, AEIVA Intern

How has being a Colombian artist based in New York attracted you to the idea of the internet as a representation of the city or a point of connection? 

I see the internet as an underground platform where the boundaries between nations are erased. A virtual arena where race and gender have no play. A nursery of culture and knowledge that depends entirely in the free and uncensored flow of information. The ultimate revolution! Along those lines, I see myself as a node in this vast and global net of information referred to as “The Sixth Continent” by Paul Virilio in his book “The Information Bomb”. So, by being a Colombian artist in New York, I have experienced the fading of the frontiers of space and distance as I have maintained the connections and relationships with my homeland intact and alive.

METROPOLIS (1927) by Fritz Lang - Rescore by The New Pollutants

Week 2

Week two of install saw a further progression on the base layer of vinyl that will act as a skeleton for the line work and color that will be applied to the walls in the coming weeks. It was through this finishing of the very initial process that we begin to see the dimensionality of the space that will manipulate the viewer's perspective, truly begin to appear within AEIVA. Week two also happened to coincide with the opening of an exhibition in the gallery next door by Beverly Fishman. 

THE FLOOR

FIRST STEPS

During the first week participants defined their roles in the installation production. UAB students are encouraged to apply their skills and strengthen their areas of expertise by focusing on specific aspects of the project. Assignments ranging from animated drawing and 360° video documentation to the installation of large portions of vinyl over walls and floor where the main focus of the practical component of week one.

This was a good time to assess the students's commitment to the project and to identify a highly driven participant who shows excellence and reliability to be named the lead assistant for the project. the opportunity was offered to Augusta McKween 

THE TEAM

THE BUILDING