Arrived in Newcastle for the first time ever - beautiful sunny day!

Arrived in Newcastle for the first time ever - beautiful sunny day! Got greeted by Dom & Andrea at the train station and took a taxi to my new abode for the next 2 months. Lucy, the matriarch of the house made iced tea and we all had a little chat and some cookies. Within an hour of arriving was told I could go to the opening of the Turner Prize at the Baltic - WOW. You have to be in it to get invited to this kind of thing in London!

Day 1 of Residency

Day 1 of Residency

Got my official pass which gets me  into see as many movies as I like! :o) Met Rachel Lancaster one of the other artists in residency in our beautiful new studio. Melancholia it is tonight then!

4th October, the second day.

4th October, the second day.

Met Chris the guide with the great shoes to do the free tour of this splendid art deco building and found out all about the history of the Tyneside cinema - started in 1937 by Dixon Scot - the great uncle of Ridley. Saw one of the original newsreels shown in the 50s and then had soup and a granary bap in the restaurant with Rachel. Yummy!

The final of the trio of PP artists

Kelly Richardson, just off the plane from Canada -  the final of the trio of PP artists 

Popped off to check out the Matt Stokes installation at the Baltic with Rachel

It aint so grim up north.

Got taken to the beach on the Metro by one of my lovely neighbours Sarah Cook & even dipped my toes in the sea. It aint so grim up north. Reminded me of when I lived in Sydney actually! Then back to the Tyneside with the flatmates, Alex & Lucy, to catch 2 of the all night screenings - Hard Boiled and then Eraserhead. I'm so hardcore it started at half past midnight and walked home at 5.30am Sunday!!! Such a good atmosphere during the screenings and the G&Ts were pretty good too!

Amazingly happy and quite tired…..

Spent the third week busy trying to get the Wizard of Oz leader animation ready for Saturday morning's screening of the 1939 film. Lots of the Tyneside staff came to have a sneak peek at what I've been working on. It looked amazing on the huge screen of the Electra cinema and Wayne Urquhart's soundtrack was magnificent! Amazingly happy and quite tired…..

Friday night spent half an hour queuing at the public opening to the Turner Prize. The token painter and the favourite, George Shaw's paintings captured the bleakness of mid recession Britain with a wry sense of humour.  Liked the amateurish feel lent by the Humbrol paint and size of canvas but so brilliantly painted. Liked the Martin Boyce work too but my money's on the painter George Shaw.

The cinema was packed

The cinema was packed with 6 year olds and their parents and a surprising number of 30 somethings who came to watch the classic Wizard of Oz film. My little short came before and looked & sounded fabulous! Quite a buzz after a busy week prepping it!

Mission to Mars

Two weeks in and I've partially tackled the first challenge of my latest project, my mission to Mars. Normally my workflow involves sourcing and filming/photographing an existing landscape. Earlier this year for instance, I spent two and a half months travelling and documenting east and west Texas as part of an artist residency at Artpace San Antonio. The landscape of choice for the work produced ended up being from the border of Texas and Louisiana: the beautifully eerie Cypress forest of Caddo Lake. But the work I'm researching and ultimately producing at The Pixel Palace requires quite a different approach given the inability to travel to my destination of choice, Mars.

Thankfully, over numerous years NASA has recorded the digital elevation data for planet which means that in theory, I could take that data into a 3D application and recreate the lay of the land digitally -- the next best thing to being there. Stage one of this process is to learn a new application, Terragen (which the amazing folks at Planetside have generously donated to the cause) which specializes in digital, realistic terrain creation to a very high standard. Barring a few issues, I'm extremely pleased with the results I've managed thus far.

Now onto the next challenge, getting the DEM data into Terragen...

The Terragen thing

About that whole DEM data into Terragen thing, can we forget that I ever thought of it? It's turned out to be an incredible challenge with few resources available to offer much help.

Taking a small break from the above, I've started to work with a sound designer (Alan Moffat) which I've not really done on any other project. Part of the inspiration for the audio has come from the discovery of the beautiful and haunting sounds of the planets and moons of our solar system recorded by two automated NASA probes, Voyager I and II. Picking up the audible vibration frequency of for instance, waves from the magnetospheres, trapped radio waves bouncing between the planets, the electromagnetic field noise in space itself, etc, these waves were then translated into sound waves, arranged and released on a five-volume collection of space music entitled "Symphonies of the Planets". Check out the amazing sounds of Jupiter below:

Sadly, no sounds of Mars have ever been recorded, despite efforts from the Planetary Society to do just that. In an email exchange I just had with them, they reported that "No sounds of Mars have ever been captured.  We at the Planetary Society have tried.  We flew the Mars Microphone on the failed NASA Mars Polar Lander mission.  We have also attempted to get microphones on various other missions and partnered with others." So, with no sound files from Mars to reference, my sound designer and I are left to speculate, using NASA's recordings as a 'launch pad' (yeah, sorry - blame Alan for that one) and imagining what an alien dust storm might sound like within a future Martian landscape littered with the debris and partially functioning equipment of countless missions to the planet.

Researching Foley sound effects techniques

I spent the first couple of weeks of the residency researching Foley sound effects techniques- looking into its history and development within the film industry.  I have been gathering together materials used by Foley artists in order to recreate these sound myself!

The first sound piece

The first sound piece I have created at Pixel palace! Played in the stairwell at the Tyneside as part of the Juice festival….in this work I have created the sound of a heartbeat using a record played needle….

Old Theatre visual effects

Whilst at the Tyneside I have also been looking into old Theatre visual effects. I have been particularly interested in trying to recreate ‘Peppers’ ghost-an illusion made through use of mirrors and reflections. I am hoping create this in an area of the cinema somewhere!

My trailer on show in the Roxy screen….

Some of the Foley props I have been using.

Ideas for a film piece I’m working on…looking at how to combine image and foley sound effects…

Another film piece I’ve just started working on … relating to some photographs I have made recently using cardboard models and light effects….

Why Mars?

OK, back to the digital elevation models and the problems I've encountered converting the data into a readable format for Terragen. I've been in touch with NASA artists responsible for visualizing this data and the bad news is that it took them years to resolve the same issues. While some past works have taken well over a year to produce, with the public presentation for this work scheduled to coincide with my solo exhibition next year at the NGCA, I don't have years in this case. In addition, this is just one aspect of the work; the realistic CGI models and animation of future spacecraft need to be crafted, as does the dust storm which happens to be the most difficult effect to achieve at a high standard on prosumer equipment, not to mention level of skill required to pull it off believably. So, while I'm not ruling out the use of the digital elevation data, working from images taken by various rovers I'm pressing on with creating the most believable Mars landscape that I can and with the assistance of my partner and animator Mark Jobe (Quay Animation Studios), moving onto creating the spacecraft / mission debris.

In other news, last night Northern Stars filmed each of the Pixel Palace artists-in-residence, interviewing us for three short documentaries they've been commissioned to produce. One of the questions that I was asked was "Why Mars?". I defaulted into a lame response as although I know why, I've not found the time to properly articulate it which often happens with new work as it's being produced. It's a good question though and one that I'll begin to answer a little better here.

Firstly, I don't make work about specific ideas; rather, they are always about a collection of ideas and interests with each work communicating a deliberate ambiguity which alludes to these interests. There are always numerous ways that the work can be read, each of which reflects these ideas in some way. I also don't work with narrative in a traditional sense having referred to it in the past as 'collapsed narrative', or so I thought. Recently though, it occurred to me that I am carving out a much larger narrative through the body of work I've produced over the years. In some ways, the work could be read - although not chronologically - as one situation influencing another.

So, how does "Mariner 9" sit within the work? The answer to this question answers "Why Mars?". Firstly, I am increasingly interested in science fiction and the visualization of potential if not probable futures. Albeit digitally, experiencing what life might be like should we continue down our current trajectory presents a window through which we can see ourselves with some measure of hindsight. "Mariner 9" presents a Martian landscape set some time into the future, scattered with the debris and partially functioning equipment from countless missions to Mars in search of understanding of the planet and perhaps most notably, signs of life. That search for life, to know that we're not alone in the universe is interesting on many levels but it's also an endearing endeavour, particularly for a species seemingly hell-bent on destroying the vast majority of life we know to exist as we continue to consume our planet at a truly alarming rate. ;) To begin to answer the question then, while presented with evidence of our beautiful, heartrending search for life beyond Earth – a perspective of which is effectively told from Mars, "Mariner 9" tragically suggests that you're viewing a post-humanity futurescape - a tension of which is characteristic of previous work: the contradiction of the beautiful with the unsettling, the sublime. Then again, perhaps it's not so grim. You'll have to wait until the next work for the answer to that.

One last note about the title that I’ve revealed here. “Mariner 9” was the first spacecraft to orbit another planet, transmitting back the first detailed images of the surface of Mars. A pretty appropriate title, I think. Click here for further information.
 

Some interesting recent and related Mars articles:
Spacewatch: the missions to Mars
The Curiosity Mission: Nukes in Space
Martian curse: Russian probe may crash in populated area
BBC: The Sky at Night, Curious about Mars

Image: Mars DTM image courtesy of the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment

Made some taster adverts for our Meet the Artists event to go pre movie to challenge the audience. I saw my mute slo mo explosion piece Silent Landscape directly before the Ides of March where in the first seconds of the film, Ryan Gosling , whilst testing the microphone makes the sound of an explosion. Couldn't have planned it better myself!

Saw ET on the big screen for the first time ever at 10.30am at the Tyneside. A real treat that set up my mood for the rest of the day! Wish I could do that every day for a living!

Popped down to Sheffield for a Symposium for Bloomberg New Contemporaries.

Popped down to Sheffield for a Symposium for Bloomberg New Contemporaries. Interesting discussion with 3 generations of BNC artists and Sacha Craddock, the director.

Got a pic of my film Silent Landscape in the S1 Artspace immense basement. Read a sweet review by David Steans with a whole paragraph about my 'glacial' piece.

The weekend ...

Had a delightful weekend of good food. Made possibly the best roast tomato and basil soup I've ever tasted with the bargain box of tomatoes I got from the market. And then on Sunday, Alex & I made a top roast dinner! Here Lucy & Alex enjoying it.

Half way through!

As part of Wunderbar, me & around 80 other cyclists took to the roads, walkways, alleyways, crannies of Newcastle for a tour.

Beautiful winter's afternoon for cycling - sunset over the bridges of the Tyne.

Kelly in the studio in her scarf that makes her look really short!

Kelly in the studio in her scarf that makes her look really short!

Kelly, Rachel & I presented our work at the Datarama 15 'Adult Geek club'. It was encouraging to get feedback from the outside world and see how far we'd come in the past few weeks. These are my rather 'special' notes for the presentation.

Realised we didn't have any photos of us in the studio so : Kelly on the sofa - her throne. And me looking silly at my desk.

Then this evening we got interviewed for a little documentary the Northern Stars are creating about our residency.  Feeling soooo over filmed & famous!

Thought I'd include a pic of our Friday ritual Detox/Retox at Olive & Bean, where I always have the same so good it can't possibly be good for me, chicken & avocado & mango chutney salad swiftly followed by a massive slice of cake.

Went down to Durham for the evening to see family and along with 50,000 others went to see some of the Lumiere festival. Saw some playful light interventions with on this beautiful city. These French artists, especially, with Jacques Rival's Snowdome over the town square's statue (complete with streetcleaners to keep the polystyrene snow moving) and the inside of the cathedral full of glowing vests by Compagnie Carabosse.

Went back down to London for the night to go to my opening preview at the ICA. Was a fantastic party and it was good to see my mates. So crowded it was hard to see the work but I'll go see it again with my mum when the residency is over. Stayed in a hotel in Waterloo so popped into the Tate Modern to be mesmerised by Tacita Dean's monolith to film.

MY FINAL WEEKEND IN NEWCASTLE!

Ended a busy week with the Meet the Artists event where the public came to meet us and saw what we've been working on (Andrea modelling the poster!). So good to see that such a diverse bunch of Tynesiders were interested in what we're doing here.

Spent the weekend with my good friend Danielle from Newcastle, Australia who came up to see me from London to check out her hometown's namesake. This involved clubs, breakfast stotties, cream teas, beaches, and men on stilts???? I think she preferred it here defo.

Ian & Hannah have been busy editing our documentaries to be screened at the Pixel Palace Breakfast & Programme presentation on Monday. Rachel looking thoughtful and talking to herself.

Walking through Newcastle in the sun. Will miss it here. My flatmate's gave me some little presents - the stottie a touching one!

Last DAY :o(

Last day I think my ground down bike brakes can't handle anymore Westgate Hill so walked this morning.

The Pixel Palace Breakfast & Programme Presentation breakfast was a great success and our documentaries went down well and my final final final version of Dawn of the Rainbow looked truly cinematic on the 10 metre screen.

Decided to have a bit of a lazy afternoon and Kelly, Rachel & I went to see our final film - The Deep Blue Sea - Kelly's first film of the residency, Rachel's tenth, and my twenty second!!!

Still Melancholia gets my best film Oscar but let's wait and see.

Over and out.