MikeAdamsArtist.com Blog

One of the projects I have in mind while I’m here in Oslo on my Fulbright grant, is to project video images on one of the extant Viking ships at the Viking Ship Museum. Professor Jan Bill, Curator of the Collection at the museum, and I are going to do some sample projections with this video! The ships are rather dark, so who knows how it will work. But there is only one way to find out. Alternatively – this was Jan’s idea – we could project video on the walls, which are smooth and very light-colored. Moving images on the walls might be more effective in producing the illusion that the ship is moving, although I have to admit I am quite enamored with the idea of projecting upon a ship.
This video contains aerial images that I took over the Canadian arctic on the way to Europe in August, along with forest imagery from the Cascade Mountains in Washington, and the Rockies in Idaho. I have also included some images of the wake of a ferry in the Oslo Fjord on the way out to Langøyene, which is small island, and some glacially scoured bedrock on the same island. I layered the images using the green screen feature on iMovie, which is an amazing tool. Yet before I become too enamored with my (limited) technical prowess, I need to remind myself that the images need to create meaning. Any sequence tends to make a story, but I’m not sure how explicit I want to be. These abstracted video images remind me of the paintings I used to do, with layers of organic patterns and rich colors. Those paintings were about experiences in nature (at least I think that’s what they were about). Now, I want to convey the idea of the voyage, using the ship as a carrier for the images. I see the projected imagery as representing memories or past experiences (and I am not sure there is a difference between the two). However, I am not interested in creating something that is kind of historical record, I want the projections, in concert with the ship, to allow an audience to create new experiences for themselves. Perhaps persons will reflect on their own journeys, and where they’ve been and what they would like to do. I don’t want to demand that anyone has a particular reaction, but I am hoping for an emotional response, even if it is subtle – what we could call a feeling.

Sample Video for Projection on Viking Ship from Mike Adams on Vimeo.

I’ll be writing extensively about my Fulbright project very soon, but in the meantime, I’m working on another project: video projections for a performance of Arnold Schönberg’s Peirrot Lunaire (it can be translated as Moonstruck Clown), which will be performed by mezzo-soprano Laurel Pumphrey next March. I am working on the video imagery in collaboration with Heather Freeman, Professor of Digital Media at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. I saw Heather’s work in Idaho Falls, and loved it! In that case it involved the use of high-tech media, but the technology was used to convey meaning, not for its own sake.
The following is a preliminary video I’ve made for the first poem. Bear in mind that this is intended to be integrated into the musical performance, to create a theatrical experience, so especially for this first poem, I don’t want the imagery to be too dominant, but to introduce the Moon, so to speak, and to take advantage of poet Albert Giraud’s symbolist imagery.

The great thing about wandering around in a new place (or even an old place) is what one comes across that strikes one’s fancy. . .When Faysal and I went to the Folk Museum, we visited the weaving studio of Anne Strand Raftevold. There she had a display of tablet weaving. This style dates from the Bronze Age, and tablets were found in the Viking ship burials (which is considered the Iron Age, I believe), the artifacts from which are now in the Viking Ship Museum here in Oslo. By rotating the cards each time the weft (the yarn that one moves back-and-forth, “weaving” the more-or-less fixed warp yarns together) is run across, one can achieve the most amazing patterns. I was reminded of a British TV show called Connections in which the host James Burke followed the thread of technological advances. If I recall correctly, he traced modern computing back to devices like the tablet loom, because they are kind of “counting-machine.” What strikes me is that the tablet loom manifests ingenuity, and the use of technology to make things of great beauty. I could not resist buying a starter-kit, and I’m going to try it out!

Click on the image for a larger version. On the right, you can see the “output”: intricately patterned, belt-width fabrics.

I went to Victor’s studio today, and spent about four hours there. He’s on vacation in the UK, so I had the place to myself. I actually had the whole building to myself, which was a creepy. Anyway, this is first time I’ve worked in the studio since just prior to installing my thesis show in late February. I have of course done some sketching in the meantime and have been thinking. . .but this was quality time in the studio.
The little painting below is gouache, which is more-or-less an opaque watercolor. This is the first time I’ve ever used it, and I liked it! You may recognize parts of this image: it’s based on some that I did of the Gokstad Ship, shown in the previous post . Of course there’s no tree growing where the mast would be in the actual ship, but this is Mikeyworld, where just about anything can happen. . .I turned the ship into a landscape, too, because I could. . .

I think this is a good follow-up to the previous post because it was about the Tune Ship, which is a fragment of a once-whole ship. The following sketches are of the exquisitely intact Gokstad ship. The irony is, however, given the viewing position that I had while making these sketches, I couldn’t really see the whole boat at once. I mentioned this last summer in Viking Ships!. I could see the whole thing in my “field of view,” but basically had to turn my head to see different parts of it.
In honor of my arrival in Norway, I read Beowulf. I didn’t think I would like it, but it has a hard-driving, compellingly irresistible story. The notes state that an old story like Beowulf would have been presented by a singer who would periodically invent new stories with elements (characters, episodes, anecdotes, sub-plots, and descriptions) appropriated, as we now say, from older ones, basically meaning that fragments were strung together. Authors still do this today, of course, and so do visual artists. What I find interesting is how once these things are connected, they seem to have done so with a certain inevitability. I’ve mentioned this in earlier posts, too, such as The Vessel as Narrative. This idea is brilliantly expounded in Frank Kermode’s The Sense of an Ending.
As I stood on the balcony drawing the Gokstad ship, I was thinking of fragments of this very whole ship. I thought of David Hockney’s shapshot pieces, in which he would make a collage of different views of something, with the final result looking somewhat like a Cubist painting. As much as I like Hockney and the Cubists, I want something more fluid, less agitated.
Regarding the first sketch below, at the top of it is what is called the “mast fish” or as I had always heard it, the “mast step.” It’s a rather beautiful, sinuous “shark like” shape that provided a footing, or holder, for the bottom of the mast. The other sketches are of the entire Gokstad ship, more or less, as I was trying to “get the whole thing,” Then I concentrated on parts and thought about how those might be combined into a whole. By “parts” I mean some big things, too, like just the inside of the boat, and leaving off the outside (kind of a mind-bender!), or leaving out everything that wasn’t in shadow.

Yesterday I made my first visit, since arriving in Norway, to the Viking Ship Museum. These sketches are of the Tune (it sounds somewhat like “tuna” in English) Ship. This particular vessel was quite deteriorated when discovered, with the upper parts of it missing. However, what remains is quite interesting, especially in contrast with the other two ships which are intact. The Tune Ship reminds me of a landscape. My friend Dennis Walsh pointed out that I have a strong tendency to mix the vessel form with some kind of landscape, which is something I hadn’t explicitly thought about at the time. It’s uncanny how words can express concepts immediately, and I think it goes to show how a visual artist like myself is operating in a kind of non-linguistic realm.
The name “Lukas” at the top of the first page of sketches is in honor of a six-year-old German boy who was watching me draw. At first I thought he was speaking Norwegian because he was saying “du,” which is “you” in Norwegian, but it’s the familiar form of “you” in German, not the one he “should” have used with a “grown-up.” Anyway, that made it all the funnier. I spoke German to him, which is difficult for me because my limited Norwegian has a kind of supremacy in my little brain. Lukas wanted me to write his name in my sketchbook so he could see it, then I wrote mine. He was very interested that I came from “Amerika.” He also seemed oblivious to the fact that my German was peppered with Norwegian and English. Kids seem to grasp meanings intuitively.

For this second page of sketches, I was trying to thing of the ribs and deck-beams as trees. An idea that I have is to make a vessel-landscape, with tree-forms of some-kind-or-another replacing the ribs or frames of a ship. One would be able to walk into the sculpture, as if it were a forest-grove. I may have mentioned this in an earlier post. . .but I don’t remember. . .{Yes, I did mention it in The Forest for the Trees}

It’s interesting that as the Tune ship deteriorated, it became more and more “organic looking.” Returning, as it were, to its natural origins.

I got the keys from Victor! Here’s a photo of me that he took yesterday in his studio in Romsås (in Oslo), along with one of the pallets that he is re-forming into new work. I know Victor and I will do great things together!

As a follow-up to the previous post, I should make the very important point that I do not believe that the role of art should be to fulfill a specific purpose. It’s hard to know how and why art works. I think great art is ambiguous: it has to transcend a particular function, especially that which could have been more easily conveyed through language. Certainly the worst art is propagandistic, because it is blatant and simplistic. So even if you have a lofty goal in mind, as in the previous post, of promoting peace, let’s say, that message can lose its impact if the work of art is too narrow in scope.

I was talking to Isaac Larison, a Fulbright Roving Scholar, who is here in Oslo with me. (I’m technically a Fulbright Grantee, since I’m in the student program, even with a terminal degree). I was telling him about my very moving experiences yesterday, seeing first a memorial to the victims of the horrific events here on July 22nd, then going to the Nobel Centre, and seeing exhibitions about Fridtjof Nansen (the renowned Norwegian polar explorer and humanitarian), and refugees. The Fulbright program itself is a peace initiative, something critical to fostering understanding, and that is why it has such enduring importance and prestige, as. In a way it’s ironic, to send artists, such as myself, on such a mission as this, since we tend to be, shall we say, self-absorbed, and ask us to think more broadly.

Isaac and I were talking about images of peace, in a visual art context, specifically along the lines of having a kind of community collaboration where many individuals would submit images, as stills or video, for instance. I have to admit, though, I have a kind of trepidation about these visions of utopia, since I can’t help but think that this can be sappy. I also wonder, as in the case of the Norwegian terrorist, that his vision of a peaceful utopia was not ours. What I’m getting at, in a roundabout way, is the idea of tension in a work of art. Great art, be it Michelangelo’s David or Wagner’s Ring, has beauty to spare, but also has a great deal of tension, particularly in a way that reaches an audience emotionally. This tension, I believe is a kind of dialog, a sort of heaven-and-hell, that is very compelling. I don’t think real life needs to be like this, and I would hope that people don’t need horrific events to help them better enjoy the happy ones. Ideally, this clash creates compassion in us, a broader understanding. I think for those like the terrorist, visions of peace that lie outside of his world-view, might even cause him to be angrier. So I would argue that we should not just say, or show, that peace is groovy, but allow some of the darkness to seep-in, as a contrast to our visions of peace. Peace needs to be seen as a conscious alternative to something.

I don’t know the answers to these questions. And I can think of art that is rainbows-and-ponies, in many ways, as in the work of Claude Monet, whi is very successful, but not usually syrupy. I’m going to Paris in September to bow before this master, so we’ll see what Claude has to say.

Yes, it’s true. I’m here in Norway on a Fulbright grant to work on my sculpture. For more information about the grant, and other ways you can share this adventure, click here. You can also subscribe to the blog by clicking on the icon which gives you an RSS reader or email option for receiving updates.