This is all kind of wrong, None of these ideas are mine, and I don't even remember who did the different things originally.

Propeller

Propeller wing, stand made in poplar and fresh new pedestal. Booyah!

Life at Ocean Avenue #1

The main purpose of this post is an attempt to arrange my schedule, which is going to be very tight next week.

At the moment I am TIG-welding on a metal sculpture. It is difficult but very addictive and I have kinda lost track of time and spent way too much energy at this one sculpture / object.
It is a go at a propeller wing and there is a direct link from when I was a kid and built AIRFIX plastic scale models to this. Also it is not bringing anything new to the table in the terms that it is yet another sculpture made in my comfort zone. It has helped my welding skills and also there's a certain language in the construction that I would like to develop further. It is beautiful as fuck though. Photo will be up at my website soon.
Update: I finished the sculpture now. It is called 'precious object' and I basically spent my spring break making it.

End of next week is the 2nd critique, and I want to make an installation about Peter Freuchen and an incident that happened at the 5th Thule Expedition in the 1920's. He was in charge of the most northernly trading station in the world. At one dog sleigh fare he got caught in a snow blizzard and dug himself a cave to wait out the storm in. Unfortunately Peter Freuchen was caught by the masses of snow that had driftet on top. And so , now, he shaped a chisel out of his own faeces. He waited for it to freeze and then used it to dig a tunnel out of the cave. As a result his one foot had gotten frostbites and had to get amputated. Instead he got a wooden leg, as in, a peg leg!
I am not really preoccupied with the historic facts , I am interested in how to tell the story using objects and imagery.

Photos of Peter Freuchen (I just realize that I've already written the tale about him before)


Since last time I made a post I've seen a lot a lot of art.
We went to Spring Break Art Show and Volta which are both big art fairs that has to do with the Armory Show - (which I did not go to).
We also visited Dia:Beacon a museum sporting an incredible collection. I liked the work of Serra, Chamberlain, Robert Smithson and  some of Louise Bourgeois sculptures. I don't care at all about Beuys. Fuck that overrated felt shit.
Yesterday was the opening of Jacob Dahlstrup's show 'Cosmogonia' which I loved unconditionally.

3 weeks have passed since the apocalyptic disaster of my laptop breaking.
I still haven't recovered my files from the bust hard drive, but it is just a matter of paying for it. I've come to the conclusion that 25 photo albums are more important than any moneay.

Monday I am going to paint the 4 by 4 feet pedestal that I built today. I am going to buy a tarp and some grommits, a knife, fork and plate, white candles and some 2nd hand action figures. I am going to check out a Nikon d600 or 700 from the school. I am going to have dinner with our room mates.

Jøssses, Tuesday is going to be more intense!

Ideas for physical computing mid-term project

Dear teachers home in Amsterdam: I am taking a course here at Pratt where we learn how to make a microcontroller control stuff. This post is for that class:

I would like to work with sound for the mid-term assignment.
Several different speakers are connected to the same source of sound and through a clever arduino based switch you can control which speakers are to play. A logarithmic potentiometer is controlling the output volume.
The speakers I would like to be wall based 'paintings' in some direction towards this:


I found a description of something very similar on the amazing internet (it has drawings of the wiring):
http://hlt.media.mit.edu/?p=1372

The knobs I would like to be as tactile as possible, and preferably placed on the wall in the middle of the different design homemade speakers. Everything is to be as bare and stripped down as possible.

 The sound source I don't really know yet. Maybe a noise-making circuit that have a potentiometer placed next to the button that changes speakers so you have three controls. I don't know how difficult it is to put together a noise maker.

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Alternatively I would love to build an open leslie speaker (as in: no cabinet), with a small stringed instrument lying next to it. The instrument would consist of 1 string with a single-coil pickup.
I just don't see how I could make the micro controller a part of it. How about if a hidden light sensor controlled the gain of a distortion pedal? That would be silly silly.

A 12 volt power supply connected to a window viper engine from a car would be the rotation.
I would weld together the 'horn' that is to spin.
An old guitar amp lying down would be the speaker (5W or 10W)
A wooden slab would stand in as the guitar or whatever. A tuner head drilled onto it in one end and a nail in the other end. A heavy gauge guitar string across. in the middle a pickup.

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I could also be up for co-operating with another student. I don't really feel stoked about any of the ideas, most of all because sculpture class is taking up 90 percent of my time, and these two projects are doable, but would take a lot of time. The lack of conceptual ground is also an issue. It proved a lot more difficult than I expected to incorporate the Arduino board into sculptural work. Endless possibilities (in theory mind you).

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Here is the work that I liked and presented about in class:
http://www.designboom.com/design/julis-von-bismarck-benjamin-maus-perpetual-storytelling-apparatus/

Aaaaaand here is my own drawing machine:
http://www.sorendilling.com/index.php?/projects/drawing-machine/

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A self-portrait

Drawing class is interesting it just does not relate to the rest of what I am doing here.
Here is a self-portrait that I am going to continue drawing on next class.

I updated my homepage with some new works and also changed the layout, I believe for the better.
http://www.sorendilling.com/index.php?/projects/muscle/
I've spent all afternoon trying to photograph the installation properly. I am not really satisfied, but I am going to call it a day now. I borrowed a DSLR from the school and some lights, but the photos uploaded are actually from my own OLYMPUS PEN camera. So that's that.

Exchange week 3, 4 and 5

 

Muscle
Installation 2013
T-shirt fabric, Beeswax, Linseed oil, White spirit, Rope,
MDF board, Wood glue, MDF dust, Metal table,
Golf clubs, Matte inkjet prints.

Dear Eva, Miek and Frank;

This is now day 2 after the first critique, and I can honestly say that I am pleased with the result. I don't know if the teachers went less hard on me because I am an exchange student but I hope not. The installation ended up very different from the sketches but I do not necessarily think that it is a bad thing.
The starting point of the piece is the lives of 4 'playboys' from last century. They all had two things in common; they loved women and they died a spectactular death. The photograph on the lower level of the table is of Alfonso De Portago who was a spanish race car driver killed in a crash in 1957. He was a nobleman who raced cars, bobsleighs, played polo, was a spanish diving champion etc. There is a great story or myth saying that he had a license to fly, but never bothered learning navigation so he would often get lost in the air.
Whether or not the stories about the 4 men are true, I am not that interested in. I wanted to make an installation that would show this fascination of their lives but also tell a story about macho ideals and how far removed they are from contemporary living.
I did not want to ridicule it, but not put it on a pedestal either (as in glorify). First I wanted to make only phallic symbols.
The object on top of the small table was actually meant to have been a nose from an airplane. Like this:

found photo - not my work

I just spent ages gluing it and in the end I ran out of time at the lathe so it became this strange looking 'objet d'affection'. It kind of just took of in a direction and a lot of the choices made was not planned from the beginning. The t-shirt I glazed with wax in order to make it into oilskin. It's very far from what I expected but it looks like what I wanted. This kind of hyperrealistic fabric that you always see in movies. Do you know what I am talking about? I want to say authentic but that word is so sticky and over the top, that actually, that is what I was aiming for. Abercrombie&Fitch Vintage Authentic Rugged Greasy Caveman apparal. 



I like how this - on a formal level - is a big step forward. Instead of making self-contained sculptures I am now trying to build a narrative with objects and photographs. I have the intentions to make a better use of the space later on. In this piece I feel the individual objects could be tied together more nicely - Especially the golf club is kind of on its own and could just as well be left out. The club is definitely a continuation of the sculptures made at Rietveld. It was meant to be a polo mallet but then it had this great wooden head that somehow looks like a pipe and then I couldn't get my self to cut it off.

All in all I feel like this is a big progress from what I've been doing last semester.
I am considering using text to open up for the meaning next time. Only text in this one was the tag on the t-shirt saying 'muscle'.
It needs to be a balance though, over explaining is the worst thing there is.... Or maybe I should just go all in.
This was the first of 3 critiques in sculpture class. The other classes I've been neglecting a bit, but I really need to focus on sculpture. There's a lot of unrelated homework and it's starting to bug me.

The last 3 weeks I have also seen tons of gallery shows in Chelsea and around Brooklyn. I've become pretty obsessed with the textures of surfaces. Things are going way fast and there's always something happening.
Yesterday I went and saw an opening of Rachel de Joode. It pretty much rocked my world.
There's talk about getting Urs Fischer for a guest-teacher critique. That would be freaking awesome. Being here I am exposed to so many interesting things that I could not possible put it into work. I am missing out making all the equations and only producing the end result of the inspiration process.

In other news, Pratt's main building top floor burned! It won't affect me, but it's pretty mysterious what started the fire.

In the wee bit of spare time there is, I like to surf the internet and find information about amazing people:
www.badassoftheweek.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Freuchen - There's not much information in english, but he once got caught in a snow blizzard on Greenland and dug himself a cave. He then shaped his poo into a chisel, let it freeze and used it to get out, but he was caught in the snow for too long so he got frostbites in his foot. It was amputated and he got a wooden leg instead. 

Exchange Week #2

It seems like time is moving slightly faster here than in Europe.

Still, I haven't made anything that would count as my own work. I changed the film class with a course called Robotics & Physical Computing. Not that the film class wasn't relevant to my work, the class just turned out to be more about how to show your work - the beaming, than the actual filming. With the name "Multimedia Installation" I probably should've guessed it.
Anyway I am happy about the new class, the teacher is young, talented, into it and keeps a webpage: www.ericforman.com/

In the welding class we are starting out learning oxy-fuel welding which is fun and difficult.

In the drawing class we are drawing.

In sculpture class we have a presentation due in 3 weeks. I have an idea of what I want to make, but I should probably wait spilling it out, a lot can change and I feel obliged to the idea if I put it down in writing. It is probably going to relate to Porfirio_Rubirosa, Alfonso_de_Portago and Hans-Joachim_Marseille. A kind of biographical installation loosely based on real-life myths. The documentation afterwards is gravely important.
I am kind of re-evaluating which direction I would like to take my artistic practice. Or maybe it is a clumsy wording - 'develop it' I guess. I am aiming for a complex installation with a strong narrative whereas earlier I have aimed subconciously for The Masterpiece aka one brilliant art work containing everything that I wanted to say. I looked at Roman Signer and Jean Tinguely and I thought: Wow. I want to be that concise.


I went to MoMA and I did not see 'the clock' but I fell head over heels in love with their section of Arte Povera. Also I saw a performance take place.
Yikes.
I have yet to see a performance that is not vomit inducing. I fucking hate that shit. I can not recall the name of the artist..
On the ground floor, a whole wall is used to project Guido Van Der Werve's:
"Nummer acht, everything is going to be all right". Absolutely brilliant work - and by a former Rietveld student (I think).

Guido Van Der Werve - Nummer acht, everything is going to be all right - video -  2007



Over and out.

Night Owl

I stumbled across http://theories-of.tumblr.com/ and now I can't sleep because I got so much inspiration from it. I had planned to visit MoMA tomorrow to go see Christian Marclay's 'The Clock'.



You can click the tags on the blog, I really enjoyed all the sculptures. I have ideas for maybe 10 works now, after having no aim for weeks. I want to get some speed in the process of making, and not worry so much about concept but let it work itself out. I wish I could keep this feeling of positive urgency in my body.

Andreas Schimanski - projektion

EXCHANGE AT PRATT INSTITUTE BROOKLYN

The next semester I am going to spend at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. The blog will function as a kind of diary, in part for my teachers in Amsterdam to see what I am working on, but also for my own sake, to get some distance to my works and to write down what I am doing and want to do.
My classes are as following:

4 credits sculpture (the major)
2 credits digital photography
2 credits film
2 credits drawing
2 credits welding

The photography classes means that I can print all I want as long as I provide the paper. It opens up for some works that are more easily transported than sculptures. I have an idea that I would like to mediate the physical sculptures so that the piece is not a physical object but rather a film, an altered photograph etc. It is only a vague idea at the moment, but I think that I would like to work towards making sculptures with a more narrative approach.
In May I need to go back for the assesment in Amsterdam, that leaves me with a bit more than 3 months to experiment.
The idea of incorporating text is also something that I've been thinking about. English being a second language is a bit of a barrier. I mean, no matter how hard I try, I'll never obtain the fluency of a native speaker. It is a possibility to write in Danish, but then not even my teachers are going to perceive the meaning. 
Anyway, I've promised myself that there is going to be a weekly update, writing it down in a blog post is probably going to validate it a bit more.
I need to make at least 1 blog post a week.



This week I went to Brooklyn Museum, The Sculpture Center, an opening and MOMA Ps1. The photo I stole from the internet.

                                         James Turrell: Meeting (1986)