Why This Course? Mini talk given as related to the Ways of Seeing, episode 1 with John Berger

I know I've been going on about the acronym WATER-FTW (i.e. what are the expected results from this work) and you're probably sick of it by now. But sometimes is is useful to ask the WHY question. And in this instance it's the "why this course?". A course like this could have many different titles: 


Sculpture and theatre
but for us it's the image that is key, and it provides the historical reference point from which we can understand how the practice began. And as we saw (week Feb 4th - Feb 11) with the Ways of Seeing, and The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction things existed in the exact point/place at which they were meant to and were not especially transferable. If they where big (think The Temple at Karnac big) they really stayed put (mind you in the case of the temple at Karnac, the Egyptians extended very much for the monumental structures to stay put).
To see these big things, these artifacts, these objects, you had to physically travel there to behold them. And here behold is a kind of religious word but for us (in the Ways of Seeing context anyway) this is relevant. Often it would be on religious pilgrimage that someone would travel to go and see something that was anchored a special architectural setting (medieval church for example). In regards to the course then the bit of technology that shifted perception of things, well, to actually shake them right apart from their stability of being in one place exclusively - the invention of the camera.
You can now take a picture of the big thing, or the small thing and now you don't necessarily have to go to it (although you still might want to given it's importance to you). In other words, the camera mad things transferable.
With photography, the creating of images has informed a change on how we participate with objects and the world. This is a whole class in itself given to discuss this idea. It is the backbone of what we are doing here. Image creation, its speed of reproduction precipitates the breaking apart of whole static entities into very personal, layered, interchangeable, constituent parts and/or qualities that can be (will be if I have something to say about it!) explored in making of art.
So actually, with the course title Sculpture and Image we not only get the formal aspects and the principles and elements inherent with that, we also get the course content too (especially with regard to UNIT TWO: show, no show).
The hierarchy of a stable, uniform, singular object or image is brought into question. If it can be photographed it is as though it can be broken down, or taken apart, sliced, or skinned even.  Then the new representation of the object is mixed with other components (or contexts) and developed further into some other conception of reality.
I'm going to try (and I've been trying) to make this an understandable feature for the duration (and the remainder) of this course.

Sculpture and Language
Sculpture and the Human Form

With the Invention of the Camera there are losses and gains (class discussion)

group one
What's Lost?
(the losses can be perceived as gains, depending on your point of view)

Context
There's a distortion

Aura

make paintings obsolete

What's gained?

Have an appreciation of work on our own terms
There's more accessibility

group two

What's Lost?

Scale

value uniqueness of event

materiality

overdubbing (over an image) creates a difference

no frame, no environement

loss of intimacy

What's gained?

preservation of works existing now only in reproduction

accessibility

group three

What's Lost?

travel and going to the work, lost of momentum of ownership

scale (Voice of Fire e.g.)

Perspective

no longer involved in a journey or pilgrimage

What's gained?

Artwork available at all times

Satisfaction

couldn't get there necessarily (to see the Mona Lisa) but I still have a simulated experience of it.

Calendar Review

11th Feb

• Ways of Seeing group discussion;
• Intro to Unit Two: The Loss of Aura, the Gaining of Multiplicity, and the No-place of reality  (through the camera's eye) à la The Ways of Seeing, episode one
• Unit Two Project: Show-no-Show, or mind the gap (between photography and sculpture)
• Joinery Workshop;
•  Artist Profile: Erin Shirreff   Panya Clark

18th Feb

• STUDY WEEK: get an idea of direction and a 'soft' start on Show-no-Show;
• Light box frames demo, woodshop

25th Feb

•  Light box frames due (10%)
• Demo book-binding
• Studio Class - "Show-no-Show" individual consult on project progress -> content, context, concept

Artist Profile: Joseph Beuys  and Francis Alÿs

Mar 4

• Intro to Unit Three project: Things Fall Apart (tentative title)
• Studio class
• Artist Profile: Ian Carr Harris

• Mar 11 

• Studio Time
• Installation Art, what is?
•  Artist Profile: TBD

Mar 18

• UNIT TWO critique      (20%) same critique approach as UNIT 1 i.e. artist to speak to work after 'word' brainstorm from everyone else; artist to address content, context, concept   
• Book binding study due (10%)
• Mid-unit scrummage on the direction of your project (present to class, max. 5 minutes)
• Studio Class
• Artist Profile: TBD

Mar 25

• Studio class (individual consultations)
• Artist Profile: TBD

April 1

• Studio class (or if need be, group one, final critiques)

April 8

• UNIT THREE Final Critique  (30%)