Nam June Paik at FACT / TATE Liverpool

I was lucky enough to be at home whilst Nam June Paik had a retrospective at TATE and FACT. Some of his stuff was really interesting, especially his piece in collaboration with Norman Ballard – Laser Cone, which was on display at FACT. I cannot describe how amazing this work is. It really takes you away as you get lost within the patterns and shapes that send you into some sort of strange trance like state. I managed to capture a few pictures using a slow shutter speed however this does not do the piece justice at all. It’s something which you have to see first hand. There is even a sense of bond that cannot be described as you lay under the piece and watch the lasers making patterns amongst other complete strangers .

The moving circular patterns were definitely the most hypnotic and I’d love to experiment using similar techniques and ideas using circles! I really enjoyed looking up at this piece as well rather than straight on. It was definitely a different take on how art is viewed which I understand Nam June Paik was interested in.

Video found on YouTube of Paik’s Laser Cone at Fact

Paris–Day 4

Our final morning ritual of eating croissants and nutella! Sad sad time!

Finally managed to get into The Science Museum! Came across this solar panel usb bonsai amongst a lot of other interesting product designs!

This was awesome. Although it was only a display of the earth, the way it was displayed was really interesting. It was basically a spherical sheet in the middle which was then projected onto at different angles.

This was also really cool. I think it was pretty much a water wheel. Not too sure how it worked, however producing some sort of mechanism with dripping paint to produce circular patterns could be an interesting take on this for my project.

Can’t remember who these were produced by and I stupidly forgot to note anything down! These were really cool though – other ones included mini spider man and mini hulk!

There were quite a few installations / things on display that involved the use of mirrors. I’ve previously experimented with them in previous work however I've never really thought of using them in this project. This could be interesting though, especially with the idea of there being 2 different spaces. In circles – the inner and outer, the mind – conscious, subconscious. etc.

There was also a lot of fun interactive visuals in the science museum. I’d love to be able to have something on display like this at visualyze! Really want to try and get more interactive stuff on show!

Spinning mirrors!

Kind of scary in a way how it just goes on forever and ever and ever when mirrors are placed opposite each other! Given me some interesting ideas though!

Definitely want to try out spinning circles!

So our last trip before we went to catch our plane home was to La Defense in the business district of Paris! I was not expecting it to be as big as it was at all! It was huge!

This kind of shows you just how big it is!

And that was our lovely trip to Paris!

Paris–Day 03

Started off the day with a visit to Notre Dame! Got me thinking about the idea of having circles within circles and repetition to create interesting / elaborate patterns.

We then went to the Ménagerie (the zoo) in Jardin des Plantes and found this amazing little fella! He was actually really friendly despite this picture (he’s just in the middle of chewing something!) We named him Stanley!

Cannot believe the zoo had sloths! Have never seen them in real life before but always wanted to! Surprisingly the sloth was moving at super fast speed so it was quite difficult to get a picture!

We then went into the green houses. Looked rather a lot like a set from Jurassic Park as did a lot of the zoo / park!

After the zoo / park we decided to head to the science museum. Just the walk from the metro station to the museum was pretty awesome. There was lots of modern and interesting architecture with seemed to be all linked by these strange red structures.

I was overwhelmed by how huge the science museum was! It really reminded me of the Pompidou with strange scaffolding like features covering the outside! Unfortunately the museum was closed on a Monday which we didn’t realise until we got here, however it was quite nice just having a look around – until we got shouted at by the security to get down from the building! We didn’t want to miss out on the museum though so we decided to go back on Tuesday morning before our flight back home!

This is the large reflective sphere that the science museum is famous for. I love how the reflection is distorted, giving a completely different view of the surrounding space. It really reminded me of  pictures when taken with a fish eye lens.

Because of the museum being closed we decided to go and find a river cruise. This was a lot harder than it seemed! We searched high and low along the banks of the Seine and eventually decided to go back towards the Eiffel Tower we we first spotted the boat tours!

We eventually got on a river tour after much drama including a power cut at the docking station, however it was all worth it to freeze our pants off along the Seine!

Paris–Day 02

 

Amy n Jess going into the depths of the Metro Underground!

Centre Pompidou!

There was quite a lot of work containing shadows in The Pompidou. This piece by Cristina Iglesias has inspired me to maybe experiment with shadows in some future pieces as I think it could work quite well with the concepts and ideas I have.

A lot of the work I have been producing has been based upon the automatic writing I have produced, layering these texts on top of each other and therefore making it unreadable so I was excited to find a section based on “Unreadable writing” in the Pompidou! Artists in this section included Irma Blank and Pierrette Bloch who I plan to do some further research into.

Barbed Salt Lamps (2007) by Sigalit Landau.  These were really interesting and accompanied by quite a strange / disturbing video where she hula hooped barbed wire around her waist. Landau is interested in circles / circular motion so would be an interesting artist to do some further research into!

View towards Sacre-Coeur from Pompidou

Unfortunately I didn’t get the name of this artist but I would’ve really liked to look at some more of their work! I’d quite like to produce a doodle on the same scale as this however not sure if I have the patience to!

Some more interesting Parisian graffiti!

Man making insanely large bubbles outside The Louvre

A well earned chocolat chaud after climbing 2 levels of the Eiffel Tower! Unfortunately the top was closed for some reason!

The Three Musketeers!