Impossible!

I freaking got it!

While wasting my time staring at Surrealist Artists inspired by Escher's work, I found the common thread!

Almost all of them, at some point or another, went back to an exploration of Escher's impossible structures.  And when the "title" of our project is The Fall of the HOUSE of Escher...why didn't I jump right up and say, "OH Hey guys, let me focus on Escher's explorations in architecture!"  Especially considering the fact that we do need to build a set at some point...maybe this can give us some ideas!

First, an iFrame of what this "Impossible" crap is:



Now how about an idea of how to build some of Escher's shit fo' reals:



Also, just for some video:

And how about this one that plays with a "real-life" Escher Waterfall:

Stop thinking too hard, here's the sculpture from another angle with paper on the ledges:

SO yea...I think it would be cool to build the "impossible."

Stairs going in all different orientations, projections moving where gravity won't allow us to go, water...everywhere!

Escher-Inspired

So, as my partners went to choose their approach to their Escher research I started going in a different direction.  Someone already took tessellations, light and shadow, mirroring, Escher's life, and all that good stuff so I figured I would take look at Artists who were inspired by Escher.  I was hoping that I'd be able to explore what they interpreted from Escher's work in order for me to find what might be the best direction for us to take (if it resounded for so many others, maybe it worked and we should mine what they're onto).

I came across this on my iPhone *insert comments about reliance on Technology and the New Media (MANOVICH)* when I couldn't sleep:
http://im-possible.info/english/art/escher-inspired/index.html

Cool, Escher's drawing hands with different utensils.

Cool, Escher's house of stairs with different colors.

Cool, Escher's waterfall with apples.

Cool, Escher's ...snoopy?...Dr. Pepper?...China?

Ok...so maybe staring at a bunch of Escher inspired art might have been a Pandora's Box of surrealist art.

This is gonna suck...what is even worth paying attention to?  Especially if when I look away, for all I know it becomes a Picasso painting!  (That one's for you Quantum group ;-) )

519 Project

For those interested, THP 519 is a Directing New Works / Devising New Works kind of class.  A cohort of artists in academia get together to create art using all sorts of different methods.  This is a very reductionist explanation of all that goes down during this process, but pretty much sums up the basics.

Over the course of this...um...course...I will be blogging my experience throughout this project instead of keeping a paper journal.  I will be sharing frustrations, excitements, enlightenments, and hangups (among a bunch of other shit).

Let me point out that I won't be using any names during this blog and I will try to set the blog to private so only those with the direct link can find it.  We'll see how that goes.

Anyways, to get the ball rolling I'd like to divulge a little secret:  the running title for our project.  Honestly, it's not much of a secret since those of you reading this are working on the project as well...nevertheless...drumroll please!

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF ESCHER: A MOBIUS TRIP

Cool.  Got that out of my system.

Basically, we are taking a look at Edgar Allen Poems alongside Maurits Cornelis Escher's artwork with a little groundwork in Quantum Theory/Mechanics/Physics/Lobsters.

For pre-semester launch work, we all had to read The Fall of the House of Usher along with some other Poe work, familiarize ourselves with the artwork by M.C. Hammer...erm...Escher, and read a book about Quantum Hoohah.

After doing a little base research, we had to write up a couple sentences making connections or observations and whatnot between the trinity of wtf.

For my Poe research I read:
The Fall of the House of Usher
The Masque of the Red Death
The Cask of Amontillado

For my Escher research I looked at:
http://www.mcescher.com/ Focusing mainly on Early Work 1916-1922 as I was already familiar with the tessellations and impossible structures that appear in his later work

For my Quantum Skadoosh I read:
Four Stories of the Schrodinger's Cat by Murat Uhrayoglu
http://www.higgo.com/quantum/laymans.htm A Lazy Layman's Guide to Quantum Physics

After performing my research, I made the following connections:

"One of the resounding concepts from Quantum Physics in mind was the concept that our consciousness affects the behavior of subatomic particles.  Meaning that at any given moment, that which we do and don’t know is happening all around us.  The negative space exists parallel to the positive. 

MC Escher started out mostly working in woodcutting.  Not foundational in additive creation (like painting, where what you put down “is”) Escher’s work deals with taking away in order to create.  His art shows a consciousness of the parallel “negative space,” the alternate possibilities that exist at the same time as what we perceive.

Likewise, Edgar Allen Poe writes in a way that explores opposites.  He explores love and hate (positive and negative) as not simply opposite emotions, but as enigmatically blending into each other.  He explores the incongruence of universal emotions as though they are severed from the conditions of time and space.  He writes in a way that explores the presently occurring and the possibly occurring in the same way that Escher explores that which is and that which isn’t, all paralleling the quantum theory of many worlds."

And that is where I will leave you today.

We have all split up into three groups to approach our research more in depth and share our findings with the cohort.  I'm in the Escher group, so expect to see some trippy shit soon.

Until next time!