Whilst writing this, my wife reminded me of a lady who rang up to complain about travelling on a brown coach. She returned on a more colourful coach. ~James
I was in Waterstones bookshop today and a book caught my eye: 'Graphic design rules. 365 Essential design do's and don'ts' by P. Dawson et al. Rule number 178 stood out to me: 'Thou shalt remember that people like bright things - brown is not exciting.' It made me laugh because the default palette for AFM images is brown. All the hair images I gave out last week to the TAG members were brown.
Whilst writing this, my wife reminded me of a lady who rang up to complain about travelling on a brown coach. She returned on a more colourful coach. ~James
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The schematic below provides a summary, with an example, of the kind of image interpretation I had in mind, although I'm sure there are many other ways of looking at it. ~James
The PowerPoint slides used for the Portsmouth visit are included below. ~James
The TAG hair AFM images, in coded form as discussed previously, with annotations can now be viewed online here. ~James
Aware that we didn't really capture a formal group photo as such yesterday, I asked Roger whether he had one in his records. He obliged. I am now intrigued by the artwork behind them. More pictures to follow in a couple of weeks. ~James and Roger Some of TAG at one of their exhibitions in 2011.
Hello James
Thank you so much for our visit this afternoon. I really enjoyed it & have more idea of what we are trying to do. I have some ideas but whether I can paint them remains to be seen! My hair images -the tip end shows little breakage but I think this could be because my hair is quite short & had been recently cut. Thank you for your time ~TAG member 'x' (name withheld) Dear x, Many thanks for your email and I'm really pleased that you enjoyed the day. I appreciate that the group have found it difficult to 'see what it's all about', but hopefully some of those concerns have now been addressed. I deliberately kept it quite vague as I didn't want to pre-empt what might come back artistically. It sounds as if you have some ideas now, so that's great! If you have any queries or want to run something passed me etc, please don't hesitate to contact me. Thanks again, Best regards ~James I think it might take me a little while to prepare a detailed blog entry that would do yesterday's visit justice. However, in the mean time, I thought it would be worth me blogging here the formal feedback from the TAG members. In their information packs, there was a form to provide written feedback about their thoughts on the day. Specifically, there were 2 questions (I didn't want to over-burden!):
Q1) What did you learn today? and Q2) How was today important for you/how did it inspire you? Here are the responses: Q1. The different shapes and patterns that hair creates. Q2. It help me to think of different ways shapes can work together. Q1. I understand a lot more about the images we saw before and how the cuticles relate to each other. Q2. Still a bit unsure about how I am going forward! (Mine was the dodgy sample! - do you want more?) Q1. Will take time to assimilate. Good to know more about aim of project and discussion interesting. Q2. Will find out when I sit down to draw etc. Q1. That there is a lot more to be learnt about hair than one imagines! Q2. It was interesting to learn about the structure and what happens to it. Not sure I can apply art to it, but will try. I wonder how age affects what happens to it? (Thanks, James, you made it interesting) Q1. What the project is about!! Q2. Very important, need to go away and do some thinking!! Q1. - Q2. Look at DNA - strands, connect sticks, how DNA twists. I think that getting across the overall aim of the project has been generally quite difficult, i.e., the "not sure what we are supposed to do" questions kept popping up. I set out to deliberately to keep this a bit vague as I didn't necessarily want the artists to reproduce AFM images per se using various paint media etc, but to reflect upon the micrographs and for them to respond in a way that says something about their own identity inspired by the microscale images. I explained this a bit more fully during the session, especially near the end when gathered around the microscope after most of the feedback forms had been completed. I mentioned that I could imagine an artwork that might not look much like an AFM image, but some descriptive text along side the exhibit would reveal an insight/thought process with reference to the microworld. Lynda and Jacqui S provided some helpful examples, which will be blogged about in due course. I was left with the impression that most people were "getting it", albeit they would need to do more thinking. Not a bad thing. ~James A very successful visit of TAG and fellow artists Lynda and Jacqui S to see the microscope suite and AFM at University of Portsmouth. Discussed the AFM hair images of the TAG members in some detail. Loads of interesting questions. Project progress, direction and possible outcomes discussed. AFM instrument explained and demonstrated. Samples examined with the microscope. Great feedback. Much more detailed notes to follow tomorrow. ~James
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