Circle designs at UTC

Art workshop with students at UTC Oxfordshire drawing designs based on locally sourced science images.  Their designs will be etched into the glass circles in the finished sculpture.

Café Scientifique

I gave a short talk about the Reach public art project for the Café Scientifique group at Cornerstone. 

The main presentation was "Origami and Its Engineering Applications" by Professor Zhong You from the University of Oxford's Department of Engineering Science.

Wonderful stuff, and you can find more info here:
http://www.didcotfirst.org.uk/article-cafe_scientifique_origami_and_its_engineering_applications__20th_june_2017.html

Cornerstone exhibition

"Reach - exhibition of public artwork by Michael Condron"
  5th-29th April 2017

The main installation contained an animated sequence of science images projected through theatrical mist.

  

The mist reveals the projected light rays as viewers enter the installation.

Visitors were also invited to add their own ideas for the sculpture circle designs.

Cornerstone exhibition - installation

Setting up the video installation structure in the main gallery at Cornerstone Arts Centre, Didcot.

Ready for business!

Calling all Scientists!

 Do you work in science or have an interest in science, or know a scientist working locally? I'm making a sculpture to represent the striving for scientific understanding.

The artwork will include a composition of hundreds of glass circles, each etched with a fragment of information relating to our understanding of nature.  

I’m after...

• Images
• Text
• Diagrams
• Formulae 

...that describe nature on any scale, from galaxies to subatomic particles.

These can be widely accepted theories, but I’d love to use ideas from work that is being carried out within the Science Vale. 

A couple of technical points:

• I'm using an etch process to make the glass designs.  High-contrast monochrome images work best.
• The biggest circles are only 5cm diameter, so succinct or representative info is ideal.
• The quality of the etch is roughly equivalent to paperback book print, so design text should be at least 2mm tall, and very fine lines won't show.
• JPEG images approx. 1000px would be good, and please indicate what each image is of. 

The best place to submit images is the facebook  page.

There are 600+ circles, so feel free to contribute as many images as you like.

Many thanks!

.

Final design for "Reach" sculpture

I’ve made some changes to the Reach sculpture design...the original proposal had a sharp, hard-edged style. 

As I’ve been researching the science theme, I think it’ll be better to take a step on from simple straight-line geometry to something more interesting and relevant.  The refined design is still in keeping with the idea of radiating growth, but now has a curved form which is inspired by the shape of the expanding universe. 

The Big Bang is the origin, and the front edge represents our current point where the expansion is becoming ever more rapid.

The front will be covered in illuminated glass, etched with images, text, formulas and diagrams relating to scientific knowledge.  

These are now in a pattern of circles of varying sizes.  From a distance they make an interesting composition, a bit like a newspaper image viewed through a magnifying glass.

I’ve started making some glass test pieces using transfer-etching onto glass:

It's a balancing act in the kiln to get the layers to fuse together well and to not degrade the image by overheating it.  760°C seems to be the answer.

For the final sculpture I’ll need hundreds of  glass circle designs, and will be appealing to the Science Vale community to contribute!  

Sketch designs

I've been working with GWP residents and UTC Oxfordshire students as part of my design process for new public artwork at Great Western Park.

From this foundation I've now produced three three initial sculpture designs.

Rather than make a piece that directly represents any one of the great scientific endeavours local to Didcot, the public artwork aims to celebrate the “Science Vale” as a whole.

As an alternative to etched metal, the front surface of the hand could be facets of plate glass, with sandblasted patterns of text and imagery.

Another option is for the surface to be made with thick cast glass panels. Original designs with diagrams, formulae etc. would be made in clay slabs, then reproduced in thick cast glass. Illuminated from within, these would create a spectacular and colourful effect.

 
Examples of cast glass artworks in my previous public artworks.

---

Stepping into the sculpture reveals a completely different experience. The top half of the sculpture is internally mirrored, creating a wonderful kaleidoscopic effect.Looking up into the tapering form creates the illusion of a massive globe, of which the sculpture is a fraction of the size, built up from colour with radiating lines of light.

  
Tapered kaleidoscope test models.

At night the nature of the internal reflections is changed, with a dark “globe”instead of light that responds to the viewer moving and shading the various light sources.

During my sessions at UTC Oxfordshire with students and residents, discussions arose of how the public artwork might represent science as an overall endeavour.

Models from sessions with students and residents at UTC Oxfordshire.

Personally, I find it hugely inspiring that scientists are improving human knowledge, and finding ways to apply this knowledge practically. Whilst any particular scientist or team will be focused on a particular task or theory, they are also part of a network of peers. This network extends internationally as specialisms and branches of science overlap, creating a global expansion of knowledge.

This concept of human understanding improving from the sum of many individual endeavours is what I seek to embody with this design.

---

Scientists use an array of tools to study nature, and this artwork is all about looking at things in different ways in order to discover their properties.

The idea for this artwork came about during my first session at UTC Oxfordshire, as one student tried different compositions with her crystal design.  Another participant’s study of a DNA molecule is also very much in keeping with the overall concept.

All the students’ artworks were inspired by local science centres, with particularly strong visual prompts from the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy and Diamond Light Source.

---

So those are my initial ideas, and if you have any comments or ideas, I would love to hear them.

All being well, over the next few weeks we will finalise a location and which will enable me to start working out a detailed sculpture design.