CRITICAL THRESHOLD Ebor Studio Gallery Frank October 2022 Interactive Billboard Image Made in Colory VR presented in Artivive AR Sound by Holly Phelps @IORA CRITICAL THRESHOLD is an interactive piece with sound exhibited in real life and Augmented Reality on the Ebor Studio …
Author Archives: babssmithart
The Exchange 2 Castlefield Gallery co-art Project with Helen Acklam – Part 1
Disappearance and transformation.…. Seven Studios each chose eight artists to participate in this, the second iteration of The Exchange (2). Our brief was to ‘start a conversation’ with no prescribed outcome but with the aim of developing relationships with artists and studios across the UK. This is a record of some of my response to …
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Glitch as Super Perspective
Using phone-based apps Glitch Lab and Lomo to edit my photographs. Glitching creates opportunities to explore accidental errors and subvert the apps use, to explore place and time. Imagining the scene through the portal of a parallel universe, existing very differently from a human time based perspective. Glitch Lab is a phone based app, free …
The Sky is Not the Limit
A digital response to: Vista – tales of shrinking skies and life within the city grid – Nan Collantine – Dez Rez Artist Projects. This project was fast! There was a two-week window. I would have liked to ruminate, research and test ideas for at least a few weeks, but the limited time and exhilaration …
Collaborate with Us?
I would love to chat with you guys on the subject of visualising language. @babssmithart
Collaboration
Collaboration has presented some rich ideas and listening to artists who are new to my work has given me perspective and has been a lifeline during this isolating time. Understanding what motivates other artists is inspiring. The results of the collaborations manifest in many different ways. I thought initially the most effective would be working …
Visualizing Sound in the Anechoic Chamber
Sounds are sharp and clean, absorbed by the diagonal shapes protruding from the walls, there is nowhere for the reflection of sound, even the floor is absorbent. We talk and listen to sounds that we make with materials, music and speech and document our thoughts with words and sketches. There seems to be a pressure, …
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Exploring scale in Tilt Brush in Virtual Reality
The sizing features in TiltBrush enable both work and imported images and objects to be scaled up and down with the wands. This makes for endless possibilities, a series of cracked screens painted with light in the studio became the walls of room into which I could create or import. When considering the abstract lines …
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Combining Fine art and Virtual Reality
Learning to work in VR I like having a challenge in my work be it material or machine based, I would go so far to use the word conflict. I find that using tools in unconventional ways creates mistakes and happy accidents which are like gifts, keys to open new doors. Lockdown presented a challenge …
It Isn’t What It Is
When I look at art, I am always delighted at the audacity of the artist who includes a found image or an object in their work. It is indeed to work on dangerous ground effectively taking a representation of the past, a piece of history steeped in numerous possible narratives and perceptions and recontextualize it. Placing the object in …
The Artist Placement Group
There are two coincidences which link me with the Artists Placement group, firstly it was founded in the year I was born and secondly, sadly, its founder Barbara Stevini died this year on February 16, my birthday. During the mid-sixties the APG facilitated a more active role for the artist within the surroundings of commerce and industry. The artists …
Influenced by Cornelia Parker
I have admired the work of Cornelia Parker since before I started my degree but have understood her practice from a different perspective as an artist myself and have revisited her work time and again. It is difficult or me to choose a piece that I like in particular as it is the process of …
Influenced by Olafur Eliasson
To understand the work of Eliasson I listened to interviews, presentations and introductions to his exhibitions, mostly while at the Gym in Salford University. I subsequently followed this with study in the library when I had an over all view of the artist and an idea of what work that I am particularly interested in. …
Art is Not Made in a Vacuum
Whilst in quarantine I have decided to look back at the artists who I think have influenced my work. I believe influence comes in strange and unexpected ways. There are the artists who’s work ‘I like’ and those whose I respect immensely. There are those whose work resonates with me and those whose practice and …
Tears Continued
Both of the above plates were made in screen printing. The first one was etched with the ink remaining and created using an ‘open bite’ and the second left with the ink image of the tears on it with a view to marking it with a hammer and metal tools. Both of these processes were …
Tears
About the Project The tears project began with Voyager’s iconic image of earth as a tiny spec of dust suspended in a beam of light. Now 30 years old the image made headlines again recently as it was enhanced and republished. I showed this to my friends and was interested in the feedback of awe, …
7 Stories
A Commission for work for the meeting room of The Autism and Criminal Justice System Salford The Brief The brief was to create a piece of work in any medium, measuring up to 6 mtrs long by 2.5 mtrs deep. The challenge came when I visited the site and began to understand the diversity of …
A Print in response to The Superlative Artistry of Japan Exhibition
This brief is to respond to an artist exhibiting in the exhibition, I chose Takahiro Iwasaki Out of Disorder – Clothes, Acrylic Cases, 2017 My response to Iwasaki’s work is based on his use of everyday objects to render an impression or sculpture of a scene or object affected by catastrophe such as the disaster …
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Venice Biennial 2019
This blog will explore some of my favorite work at the biennial…..
Nail folds – A project with an Imaging Researcher
Working with a scientist and researcher of Scleroderma and the more commonly known Reynauds Syndrome, has uncovered interesting similarities in our practice and fed my studio practice this semester. Looking closely at the magnified flow of blood to the very tip of the fingers presented some beautiful and interesting shapes. A big factor in this …
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7 Stories
7 Stories is a project for a proposed piece of work for the Autism Criminal Justice Service at Salford University. It began with the brief to produce work for an interview room which houses many people who are involved in the criminal system from students to people with autism who are involved in crime. It …
A Murmuration 2023 Wall Sculpture
Material Description – Dichroic Acrylic with Computerised Light Sequence, Wooden Base and Aluminium Frame. A Wall sculpture commissioned by the Data Communications Company (DCC) in conjunction with University of Salford and The Maker Space, responding to the theme of energy. This is a Permanent Exhibit at Brabazon House Concord Business Park, Threapwood Rd, Manchester. As a …
Signs of Life 3D cont…
On my second trip to the site less of interest was available as new material had covered much of it. This caught my eye it is .75 meter and is bent beyond recognition but still maintains a reminder of its original use as a support of some kind for many years, then its destruction has …
Photographing the Perspex
I returned to the photography studio with coloured gel sheets that affect the light. I used different mixes of colour to experiment with the effects and think about the energy of the object. Light is a form of energy and changes what we see from different directions. This is inspired by the work of Olafur …
Perspex
I considered concrete blocks with using clay but wanted to expand on this without encasing the objects permanently. I am trying to combine my research such as the work of Mathew Ritchie, MIT and the Broad artists who make art work driven by science and scientific research. I am considering the possible narrative and energy …
Signs of Life 3d
Work in progress….. These objects are of particular interest to me as they are sculptural, have a wonderful contrast with the stones against the concrete and steel. I felt that the energy inside these objects and the life that happened on them was still contained inside them. Sketching them in charcoal helped me to look …
Signs of Life
Work in progress…….. Using camera-less photography gives me the the ability to combine objects and collaged photographs. These need processing to stop them developing so have to be kept in the dark until then. I scanned them in the printer to give me the image. The paper is particularly light sensitive and detail of the …
Signs of Life
Work in Progress…….. Above is a collage of a piece of the smashed floor containing concrete,pebbles and bent iron. This was then expanded backwards with transparent paint and forward with solid sections to describe the hold time has on the object and the energy from the wrecking ball breaking it up violently and maintaining its …
SC3 Crystal
As I gathered images and objects in SC3 from the Signs of Life project which is basically my observations and interpretations from a demolished local home, I used a crystal to create photographs of the objects and surroundings that investigated the human memory and the fact that we remember our memories and that this repetition …
Summary of Sound Art
SC3 Working with Scientist Dr Andrea Murray as she researches Raynaud’s Disease and Scleroderma. Discovering the cross disciplinary process and discovering the beauty within. The aim of our collaboration is to increase awareness of the research that is taking place and making our work accessible to patients, researchers and artists. Working in Audition I have …
Curious Campus 25/9/19
Curious campus is a chance to work experimentally across different levels and introduce level 4 to a community of work. Be safe respectful of others and property. All art made must be dismantled. The session started with a rundown of local history and sculpture by Brendan Fletcher. Mentions of Robert Peel, Marx and Engels and …
Babs Smith
Fine Art Student level 6 BA(Hons) University of Salford
Babs Smith Multidisciplinary Artist 