Skip to AAEX Zoom Making 2 – AAEX Zoom Making 3
Can we use zoom as a shared space for making, together apart? The Zoom screen presents us with a grid. The grid is present in many art movements, both as a tool to observe, categorize and compose images. Now zoom is another platform, another stage on which to perform.
Susan Farrelly: Proposal to AAEX – Zoom as Creative Platform
Following a proposal by AAEX member Susan Farrelly, we have decided to re-purpose Zoom for collaborative creative practice and develop a set of Zoom sessions that allow us to work together (or at least alongside each other) for a set time and record this in Gallery view, producing grid view recordings as collaborative artworks in their own right.
The first such session took place on Wednesday, 18th October 2020. 16 AAEX artists took part in the session, in which cameras were turned away from the participants onto a work or performance space of their choice. Instead of participant’s names, snippets of poems and other text were displayed.
List of participants and short statements about their contributions (left to right in the grid view):
| Bernhard Gaul | AAEX spelled in flag alphabet |
| Jenny Slater | My piece was a tableau of objects that I found during lockdown, on walks around my local area and in my garden. It was also about the opportunity the lockdown gave me to re-find or reconnect with a deeper sense of self through working with nature. |
| Ciara Agnew | I am working on wood and a stretched linen canvas, I’m working with oil paints, charcoal, pencils and palette knives. I have no predetermined idea what the finished piece should look like, I’m playing with materials and colours. |
| Catherine McCourt | I was thinking about how this lockdown is all about the promise of Christmas spent with loved ones. For my zoom video I started to make Christmas tree decorations to gift to my family which I hope to give to them in person after these restrictions are lifted. |
| Jean Marshall | Mala Meditation Necklace – “For every knot I make, I untie a knot within myself!” |
| Geraldine Martin | I painted words in black on an old yellow brick – A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing , because of Lockdown. This brick was at the farm. The lines were from Ecclesiastes. I was really experimenting with what I could do with old bricks. |
| Aileen Durkan | I used a symbol of the labyrinth as a means of self-exploration and reflection, a way to find stillness in the storm. |
| Michael Stafford | Out of necessity, my work was made in my house and not in my studio where there is no Internet coverage, so I decided to use my laptop to be creative on. With no preconceived ideas on what to do, I scrolled through my folder called collected images and found a photo of a magpie. I use the bird as a symbol often in my work, superstition, fear hope, I leave it to the viewer. So in Illustrator I quickly made the paths and layers to make an illustration of the magpie. I then set about making a back ground then followed it by more spontaneous images to build a small narrative maybe slightly ambiguous and open to interpretation. It looks fresh because I felt unrestricted by the fact that it wasn’t preconceived…… |
| Sinead McCourt | Medium :wet felt ,beads and threads This is a wet felted piece taken from a painting I did of a bouquet of flowers from a friends funeral I was compelled to capture, as there was so much joy in the flower’s colours at time of such sadness. It’s something I keep coming back to and have been working on it for 2 years on and off I reminds me of my friend and brings me joy simultaneously |
| Heather Cassidy | A hanging form depicting how we are contained, closed in, restricted and how nature is our cocoon. Bamboo. Mixed Media |
| Susan Farrelly | I chose to work on a surface that was a collaborative artwork created (with Bernhard) in 2016 that contains the marks made by many contributors. On it I placed two handsewn soft sculptures used in Craobh Rua (Muirhevnamore), the fabric was co-created at the opening night of ‘Installations’ and digitally printed. In my practice I am interested in the layers of memories that can be created by making. Some materials disrupt. Mirrors reflect and gel filters alter the screen colour, analogue (painterly) interventions on the digital canvas of Zoom. The blue gel (successfully at 16mins in) reflected portions of the computer screen where everyone else’s making was visible. I’ve tried to create a multi-perspective, entangled portrait of places and makers, past and present. Built by the hands of AAEX. |
| James McLoughlin | My piece was titled ‘life through the bell jar’ and was about how we live now in our confines and our projected/online lives are where we interact and live another life. It was also about getting a second life out of a piece of work and bringing it to life with light and shadow play. |
| Una Curley | I worked on a ‘Perfectly disordered contemporary sampler showing the alphabet for artists’ |
| Caoimhe O’Dwyer | Shadow and Light part II – Watercolour The impermanence of the Japanese Maple through the window and how it casts and retracts shadows always fascinates me. As autumn turns to winter the Maple is at its brightest and most vibrant with the leaves seeming to hang by the barest threads until eventually an overnight wind yields bare branches one morning. To paint this I set a light above the table which allowed me to look obliquely and indirectly at the shadows and to line out their shapes. |
| Santa Drozdova | My evening project was to create a “2-meter-distancing” broomstick for sweets and Halloween face mask |
| Niamh Hannaford | I took my inspiration from an excerpt of text by James Joyce. “Pull out his eyes. Apologise”. |
Humans are hard-wired for collaboration and new technologies of communication are currently being seen as a super-amplifier of this collaborative mindset. Digital innovations and representation continue to reshape and reform our society, economy, culture and lifestyle. In this current working within the restrictions of a pandemic we have been forced to interact, to copy, to mimic, to repurpose as well as revalidate our own reality through the screen. We have learnt to navigate, update and continually adjust from both within and beyond an action, to enact, to construe and to reflect back our innermost social and political anxieties.
Susan Farrelly: Proposal to AAEX – Zoom as Creative Platform
For the second session on 11th November 2020 we chose to impose a colour scheme (blue and/or red) and let performance artist Niamh Hannaford play with peoples text/name tags and choreographing order of appearance by removing and re-admitting participants to re-arrange the screen layout. We also increased the work duration to 40 minutes. Participants enjoyed the aspect of just working alongside each other as absorbing and calming, but felt interrupted after 20 minutes.
Participant’s statements:
| Bernhard Gaul | AAEX spelled in flag alphabet |
| Jenny Slater | My piece was a tableau of objects that I found during lockdown, on walks around my local area and in my garden. It was also about the opportunity the lockdown gave me to re-find or reconnect with a deeper sense of self through working with nature. |
| Ciara Agnew | I am working on wood and a stretched linen canvas, I’m working with oil paints, charcoal, pencils and palette knives. I have no predetermined idea what the finished piece should look like, I’m playing with materials and colours. |
| Catherine McCourt | I was thinking about how this lockdown is all about the promise of Christmas spent with loved ones. For my zoom video I started to make Christmas tree decorations to gift to my family which I hope to give to them in person after these restrictions are lifted. |
| Jean Marshall | Mala Meditation Necklace – “For every knot I make, I untie a knot within myself!” |
| Geraldine Martin | I painted words in black on an old yellow brick – A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing , because of Lockdown. This brick was at the farm. The lines were from Ecclesiastes. I was really experimenting with what I could do with old bricks. |
| Aileen Durkan | I used a symbol of the labyrinth as a means of self-exploration and reflection, a way to find stillness in the storm. |
| Michael Stafford | Out of necessity, my work was made in my house and not in my studio where there is no Internet coverage, so I decided to use my laptop to be creative on. With no preconceived ideas on what to do, I scrolled through my folder called collected images and found a photo of a magpie. I use the bird as a symbol often in my work, superstition, fear hope, I leave it to the viewer. So in Illustrator I quickly made the paths and layers to make an illustration of the magpie. I then set about making a back ground then followed it by more spontaneous images to build a small narrative maybe slightly ambiguous and open to interpretation. It looks fresh because I felt unrestricted by the fact that it wasn’t preconceived…… |
| Sinead McCourt | Medium :wet felt ,beads and threads This is a wet felted piece taken from a painting I did of a bouquet of flowers from a friends funeral I was compelled to capture, as there was so much joy in the flower’s colours at time of such sadness. It’s something I keep coming back to and have been working on it for 2 years on and off I reminds me of my friend and brings me joy simultaneously |
| Heather Cassidy | A hanging form depicting how we are contained, closed in, restricted and how nature is our cocoon. Bamboo. Mixed Media |
| Susan Farrelly | I chose to work on a surface that was a collaborative artwork created (with Bernhard) in 2016 that contains the marks made by many contributors. On it I placed two handsewn soft sculptures used in Craobh Rua (Muirhevnamore), the fabric was co-created at the opening night of ‘Installations’ and digitally printed. In my practice I am interested in the layers of memories that can be created by making. Some materials disrupt. Mirrors reflect and gel filters alter the screen colour, analogue (painterly) interventions on the digital canvas of Zoom. The blue gel (successfully at 16mins in) reflected portions of the computer screen where everyone else’s making was visible. I’ve tried to create a multi-perspective, entangled portrait of places and makers, past and present. Built by the hands of AAEX. |
| James McLoughlin | My piece was titled ‘life through the bell jar’ and was about how we live now in our confines and our projected/online lives are where we interact and live another life. It was also about getting a second life out of a piece of work and bringing it to life with light and shadow play. |
| Una Curley | I worked on a ‘Perfectly disordered contemporary sampler showing the alphabet for artists’ |
| Caoimhe O’Dwyer | Shadow and Light part II – Watercolour The impermanence of the Japanese Maple through the window and how it casts and retracts shadows always fascinates me. As autumn turns to winter the Maple is at its brightest and most vibrant with the leaves seeming to hang by the barest threads until eventually an overnight wind yields bare branches one morning. To paint this I set a light above the table which allowed me to look obliquely and indirectly at the shadows and to line out their shapes. |
| Santa Drozdova | My evening project was to create a “2-meter-distancing” broomstick for sweets and Halloween face mask |
| Niamh Hannaford | I took my inspiration from an excerpt of text by James Joyce. “Pull out his eyes. Apologise”. |
AAEX invite you to make with them on zoom. It will be a relaxed, non judgmental space. It will give attention to our making (not talking). We can consider the roles we play as observer and observed. A temporary microculture, us all producing sample like petri dishes, presented as a grid. A virtual sampling of how we (AAEX) make. Our multiple views and value systems portrayed.
Why? It’s a way of visually exploring how we communicate as a group, our relationship with how we make, our AAEX peers and the virtual world we inhabit temporarily – a testing ground for dialogue. A chance to perform and participate in a pool of common meaning, capable of constant development and change.
Susan Farrelly: Proposal to AAEX – Zoom as Creative Platform
Our 3rd Zoom making Session went international. In a collaboration with Creative Spark (Dundalk, Ireland) and Anda Cowork (Granada, Spain), AAEX members were asked to correspond to Haikus, photos and videos related to a project by Spanish artist Manuel Navarrete López, in which he raises chickens to distribute eggs to people in need. Some Haiku snippets were inserted into the recording.
P2P EXCHANGE PROGRAM: The Creative FLIP P2P exchange program is aimed at engaging leading, established, and innovative creative hubs with peers from emerging creative hubs across Europe, as well as with relevant educational institutions. The idea of the exchanges is to seek new formats of cross-sectorial cooperation between creative hubs and the educational sector, initiate projects of co-creation or collaborative plans, as well as to share knowledge and expertise across Europe through public and/or community events. https://creativeflip.creativehubs.net…
List of participants, chosen Haiku and short statements about their contributions (left to right in the grid view):
| Ciara Agnew | The fowl headed hen Getting ready to peck Her way to the top |
| Grainne Murphy | Kikiriki Or Scairt an choiligh / cock-a-doodle-doo I made drawings in response to the Spanish, Irish and English version of cock-a-doodle-doo |
| Susan Farrelly | I introduce the eggs of my hybrid hens that are laying: Joan Jett (Big Brown shelled egg), Coco Chanel (Medium size cream brown shelled egg) and Charlotte (small china blue shelled egg). Presented on a red pillow, edible treasure. I collected the shells from the eggs, feathers from the wing clipping and the cock feathers (from the lost cocks that had to be returned). I used plaster to make the hen-made materials into totems and relics in thanks and remembrance. There are 3 haikus that I have taken inspiration from. Coloured ears and punk is a translated line from one. |
| Heather Cassidy | Line from poem – And so scary The blood sucking mite that terrorises the chicken.. |
| Bernhard Gaul | Costume What day is it today? I look at the moon Animated GIF and images for postcards made by altering one of Manuel’s photos |
| Claire McAteer | I run, I fly I do everything I want I peck at everything I see I used pre-gathered black, white & red materials & yarns to freely play in response to the haiku. Moving fabrics became a loose collage of a hen pecking. This was repeated. Finally 3 hens were drawn with fast, free marking making using ink, twigs, fabric & brushes. |
| Una Curley | My first was a quick drawing, a humerous response to which came first the chicken or the egg. In response to: Fuimos lo que nos coméis Fue antes el agua Y antes la nada My second is collage of images of Spent Hen and Síle-na-gig with text and Haiku Spent Hen, eggs all laid Body lean, legs long and splayed Síle-na-gig like? In response to: Se me pone la piel de gallina: I get chicken skin (Goosebumps) Aunque ya la tenía : Although I already had it Gallinescu The ‘Spent Hen’ (a hen which has finished Laying) which has very little flesh on the breast and longer legs compared to a chicken bred for eating. I thought it looked like our sile-na-gigs (grotesque stone carvings from the middle ages showing figures of naked women displaying an exaggerated vulva) www.irelands-sheelanagigs.org. Sounds like She-lay-no-gug (‘Gug’ was our childs pet name for an egg) |
| Catherine McCourt | So curious And so myedica My intrigue I printed off Manuel’s Haikus, and glued them to a canvas sheet to create texture and then used one of his photos as a reference for a charcoal, chalk and pencil drawing. While I was drawing I tried to emulate the scratching actions of chickens as they explore their surroundings. I may manipulate them digitally. |
| Isabel Lapuyade | Fuimos lo que nos coméis Fue antes el agua Y antes la nada I used a cyanotype coated paper, to paint over with water. I then placed a golden paper shaped like an egg and exposed the cyanotype to my luminotherapy lamp for 20 minutes. Once done, I cleaned the cyanotype using a paint brush and water, to slowly bring out the design. By using cyanotype, and accessible source of light and water, I brought the golden egg to life. |
| Niamh Hannaford | Mala puntería Me pica el dedo, No coge la comida I chose to represent the haiku which describes the hens feeding and lack of coordination. The hen missed the mark. I too often feel I miss the mark, and so this poem spoke to me. During our zoom making session, I cut lino ready for printing and made some clay eggs, which I plan to fill with the words of the haiku. |
| Caoimhe O’Dwyer | Haiku by my son Lochlann in response to my water colour: At the crack of dawn, The old cockerel crows loudly, Waking all from sleep |
AAEX (Art As Exchange) 