pores and asphalt

In the meantime, streets continue being carpets, that despite its rigidness breaks and incorporates waves into its consistency. The skin of the city was explored today; while the meadow freeze under the icing dew layer, streets continue impenetrable. The skin of the face feels like a painted cardboard; just like the mask we have constructed on top of the soil; the city and its construction materials expands and gets lost in the vastness of the horizontal line. Yarns protect the stories my skin has collected, just like the calcareous stones of old constructions. The erosion wraps surfaces and distracts the attention, soon I will be lost in the microcosmos of a centimeter of urban skin. The sheet that covers bodies and comforts them while resting, is there in as a touch-screen device that becomes the expansion of portable centimeters of city.

on materials

PAPER is essential. It is the first medium on which original ideas are placed; its physical quality and inmediacy are important to graphic development. The paper is empty, is calling for information. It is a void surface that does not expect, but is always ready for absorbing; it is a mirror for the brain. Our body is the first barrier between the world and us. It is the first wall, the individual unit’s container, and skin is the border where the “I” is contained.

FABRICs are veils in between persons, are conventional structures of a determined geographic location; they are our public image, our first-aid box, our intimacy and security methods. It is through fabrics that private and public image is conveyed. The physical wall of architectonic space allows urban space to exist, and it is there where individuals present themselves to society. It is exactly the place where I am willing to present myself as an artist, not just in the confined terms of gallery spaces, where art already ended to become “completed”. The presented piece does represent the original piece of art (the idea), but becomes officially what it already was, ever since the translation of the original idea started.

METAL, is the connector, the bidirectional linking process. It is union between pieces, is the everywhere needed material, with malleable and persistent structure. It is woven tightly through the urban space: fences, benches, drain-covers, streetlights, … Metal is, in conjunction with concrete, what the city (indoors/outdoors) is basically made of.

continuous completeness

The art piece as such does never get to a point where can be stated as complete, the completeness is a concept that can only been perceived in comparison to something else, and even when compared how and who determines its existence as being complete. Completeness is a target, a definition of a point. Where it is been decided to stop, to rest, to continue being as it is without further intervention. The complete work is the no end of its process, the work is completed when its decided to be, and the viewer starts interacting, passively or actively with the piece.

projecting; Cairo

The project is oriented in the handcrafts tradition of the Nile-Waters’ context. The essential liquid allows the appearance of the PAPYRUS. It is difficult to believe that this historically relevant icon had disappeared from Egypt until 1962 when scientist Dr. Ragab re-introduced the plant in the Nile and re-discovered the Papyrus’ production technique. This extremely valuable legacy of Egyptian’s culture is an essential contribution to the development of graphical language, hence to the diffusion of scientific and historic knowledge, and literary and philosophical thought.

The COTTON is strongly tightened to Egyptian’s cultural tradition, and so are clothes and fabrics. Cotton and linen are absolutely relevant to Egypt culture and its historical commercial activity. Fabrics’ meanings are conveyed by colours and shapes, and recall to traditional social practice. Each cloth of the layered-dress-code’s purpose is to establish parameters between social and intimate life. There is a curious analogy of linen layered mummification and woman’s layered-dress-code that reminds to a preservation and conservation intention. The idea of old pharaonic body’s preservation for the transit to the new life, comes to terms in the layered-dressed-code, where the women’s body is preserved from public life and conserved for their private life.

‘The Paper-Dress’ fabrics and japanese paper
Photograph by MªJo Ribas

Experimenting with these two historically rooted materials could open their contemporary conceptual understanding. I propose a project conceived as a communicative canvas, a place where tradition is presented and re-conceptualised by their owners, the geographical dwellers.

weaving spaces

For visualizing and extending the unnoticeable but continuous changes in the city context, a new skin is introduced into the public space, a layer. The understanding of the dynamic process of construction and destruction is pointed out through this process. With the idea of exploring the nudeness of the urban architecture a textile skin is provided; this establishes a complex relational sphere, and the urban structure and citizens are linked and weaved together, interconnected by a not everlasting-ness.

A dialogue between public and private space is established through the wool strings, they interconnect both pulic and private activity; opening up the question:

Does the introduction of textile into urban space affect the appearance of the city? And does the transformation of the piece influence citizens’ perception?

http://www.vimeo.com/6488521

The interrelations of public-open space and intimate-restricted room were explored by means of gainig a better understanding of how the viewer will perceive and understand artistic implications and concepts. The interventions in Edinburgh’s public space were presented as a audiovisual installation at the School of Architecture on the 31st July 2008, and were digitally compiled in website http://www.weavingthecity.eu

defining concepts

The creative expression comes out of a need to communicate internal feelings and ideas to the wide public. The piece of art resides inside until it is translated, and is communicated to others. That art piece exists even before it’s materialization and transfer into the sensorial perceptive sphere. ART is about communication, is about engaging others to your thoughts and surroundings. For the communication to take place a translation has to happen, converting the idea into something feasible (such as traces and inscriptions). The technique is definitely not essential to the piece of art, but defining the technical way to express the original idea, choosing carefully and consciously the container that will support the matter, combining substance and textures. The concept has to be received by the viewer and establish an individual communication paths. The uncountable languages of artistic practice are not searchable in any dictionary, and it is the viewer’s perception that decodes the signs that contain meaning.

la situación acústica

Performer, Guitar and Place were warped and weft with colored wool strings. The acoustic sounding experience guided and inspired the weaving process; simultaneously to the web where the performer was caught, the sound was captured by the resonance of buildings and open space where the weaving existed for an extremely short time. The weaved space was constructed during the sounding process, starting, growing and disappearing just like the tone of the wood of the guitar when no strings are played. The weaving game and acoustic performance took place and where conscious of their transitory character from beginning until end.

This event happened in September 2008 in collaboration with Arran Southall (Arran Arctic) at Dunbar’s Close (Edinburgh) where the acoustic situation was weaved into the space of the garden.

the unknown

The headphones_theatre concept focuses on the journey in search of the unknown; YOU, a soul with body, will enter into a discovery process while receiving constant audio-visual information. The sound that wraps the ears, alienating the person from the outside-real world, from the safety and routinary environment. Through this isolation from ‘reality’ the body experiments a change in its habitual functions and becomes more aware of internal stimulus, particularities of surroundings and definitions of concepts.  The visual aspect plays a relevant perceptual role filling viewers imagination with suggestive images as means of inquering subconsciously hidden concepts. The sound content is related to the physical space, and it affects, distorts or reinforces sensorial perception. How would the audience react to a surrounding that experiments climatical changes while experiencing an audio-visual temporary scape? Is audio-visual communication simultaneously a textural and tactic experience?

This is a space in which the audience encounters modifications in sensorial preception, a changeable status for understanding a guided journey into the depths of oneself. Once the adaptation period to external technology has passed, the out-side input becomes an in-side signal with which to re-evaluate and re-conceptualize temporary and spacial notions.

http://ddm.caad.ed.ac.uk (alpha and beta)

e-graphic trace

Ø. E= electronic i.e. Digital/Evolution
Graphic= drawing/engraving/lettering/visual image
Trace= mark/object/indication of existence or passing of something

The e–trace is an optical perspective of graphical tradition, a way of understanding and approaching contemporary creative practice, analising and discovering routes where to imprint and inscribe individual visions. Technolgy, nowadays, offers the possibility of constructing unthinkable narratives, and is conscious of its potencial to  forsee the change that has undergone artworks. As if by opening an expression path and discussion ground individual traces would come together.

What lies behind investigating physical captured moments through the digital frame, is the perception and signinficance of the e-graphic. Due to the existence of digital technology static traditional surfaces have shifted to another context, and the virtual generated visual perception arises. This digitalized surface, indefinitely-geolocational available, has a common expression; and perception processes get transfomerd by the use of technology.