Well, I wrapped up very quickly in Winnipeg and didn’t manage to write a blog post while everything was still fresh in my mind.
My final two weeks were preoccupied with finishing preparing the ecliptic file so that when Geremy arrived, we’d be ready to do some laser cutting. We had an incredibly productive four days at Assentworks, preparing various versions of the ecliptic files (layout and colour mapping) for laser cutting on to baltic birch. We began with some controlled testing of power, frequency, and speed to determine what would be ideal for each component of the cut pieces: stars, the ecliptic, the lines of the constellations, and cutting through the wood. I was pretty thrilled with the results as tests. I ended up outputting a pair of 28″ full ecliptics, with and without the lines of the constellations, along with two sets of 11″ wide pieces depicting each individual constellation with and without their boundaries. I am happily gifting the 28″ pair to the Carr Astronomical Observatory (where I am for all intents and purposes a resident artist 🙂 ). Both Geremy and I also managed to output some other items as well: he, a Settlers of Catan game board, and me, some of the Trees of Canada.
virgo, as per H.A. Rey depictions, without lines.
aquarius, as per H.A. Rey depictions, without lines.
During that time I was also interviewed by Derek Bruekner and co-host Aleem on Eat your Arts and Vegetables radio show (I am in the last 15 minutes of the first link on the May 22 mp3 file and the first 5 minutes or so on this second link on the May 22 mp3 file.), and prepared for and delivered my lecture on May 28th at Video Pool. Finally, I prepared and delivered my poster files for the Subtle Technologies Open Access exhibition and poster session curated by Farah Yusuf.
I was happy to receive positive feedback from the poster session (Farah emailed: “I just wanted to let you know that your project has sparked a very animated conversation about astronomy btwn about 6 people (I think architecture students). They’ve been huddled in front of your posters for the last hour and the opening reception hasn’t even started yet! It’s a thoroughly engaging project.”). I have never done a poster session before, and the invitation was not for a single poster, but a set of posters that could fill the presentation frame. I treated it as a sort of pamphlet about the project, which worked out well. Here is a link to the .pdf: Horowitz-poster-SubtleTech_01
And that wrapped up my month in Winnipeg. If I haven’t mentioned it enough, I am so thankful to the folks at Video Pool, Assentworks, and the Canada Council. I am managing to make technical, material, and conceptual progress with the Modelling Views project, and feel confident now that I will have a very productive year, with big production taking place next summer in preparation for the first exhibition.