SUSAN MORRIS: UNTITLED MOTION CAPTURE DRAWINGS
LONDON GALLERY WEST, UNIVERSITY OF WESTMINSTER
3rd Feb – 4th March, 2012
The neighbor-hood of Kharadi encompasses the areas like Hadapsar, Magarpatta City, and http://respitecaresa.org/15th-annual-celebration-love-children/ cialis no prescription many more. Individual who are taking medication that increase the blood density. cheap levitra india It improves fat metabolism cialis no prescription usa and boosts energy by using stored fats. And this fast-paced world we live in only intensifies the situation by forcing us to make more decisions at an accelerating rate. viagra best buy
Image: Detail of untitled motion capture drawing, 2011
PRESS RELEASE January 2012
SUSAN MORRIS
MOTION CAPTURE DRAWINGS
03 FEBRUARY – 04 MARCH 2012
London Gallery West is delighted to present a new series of large-scale prints by Susan Morris: Untitled Motion Capture Drawings. These works reveal the rhythm and habitual gestures of the body, or what anthropologist Michael Taussig calls a kind of ‘bodily unconscious’. The idea for these works emerged when the artist was working on another set of drawings in her studio – she felt that there was something happening in the body while she worked that must have its own logic, that if recorded would leave its own kind of trace.
The possibility to record this movement arose soon after. Newcastle University had recently installed a motion capture studio, so Morris took her work there. During the motion capture sessions, two drawings were being made simultaneously; one unfolding in the light of day, the other – a latent image – drawing itself, invisibly, as an accumulation of numerical data subsequently converted into line using an algorithmic code.
Although the motion capture studio sessions capture movement in 3D, Morris has chosen to print just the plan, elevation and side views, which show the movement from each of the reflectors worn on various parts of the body during the session. The resulting cloud-like images are counterpointed by 1:1 life-size details that isolate the motion of a single sensor, whether attached to hand, knee or the back of her head.
The Motion Capture Drawing is therefore something between a creaturely scribble and a diagram bearing scientific data; a kind of notation or shadow of the source drawing from which it was generated. The process has a kinship with photography as it is an indexical trace. Yet, like the chronophotographic processes invented by J.-E. Marey, it is done with a camera blind to everything but the light reflected off the sensors. The resulting image is a hybrid form — both index and diagram.
Normally, users of motion capture technology are interested in the most readable generic movement and so they iron out idiosyncrasies of motion. In this work, however, it is precisely these irruptions in the line that make it interesting as a document of what goes on below the level of consciousness. The work aims to make the viewer aware of the complexity and almost dance-like rhythm of bodily movement involved in even the most mundane activities.
Susan Morris is an artist primarily interested in automatic writing or drawing. Her PhD, On the Blank: Photography, Writing and Drawing, was completed in 2007 at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts, London. Recent exhibitions include Timewarp (Centre Rhénan d’Arts Contemporains d’Alsace, 2009) and Sontag Montag (Five Years, London, 2009). In 2010 she was awarded a Wellcome Trust grant to make new work for the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford. Large tapestries woven directly from data tracking her sleep/wake patterns over a period of two years are on permanent display at the hospital. Work related to this project has also been acquired by the UBS Art Collection, Switzerland.
This exhibition is co-curated by Professor Margaret Iverson in association with the University of Essex. It will tour to Art Exchange, Colchester in Autumn 2012.