1. PAINTING IN N DIMENSIONS 1 by Gerald Shepherd
2. PAINTING IN N DIMENSIONS 2 by Gerald Shepherd
3. ESSAY by Sue Birchmore
4. NASA SERIES: LUNA, LANDSAT & SPACESCAPES by Rebecca Alston
5. MISCELLANEOUS REACTIONS TO MANFRED WING'S MISCELLANEOUS NOTES by Sarah Macdonald

1. COMMENTS ON SOME OF THE ARTICLES (IN GAMMA ION EXCHANGE) AND FURTHER THOUGHTS OF MY OWN by Jonathan R. Walker

1. A REPLY -TO MANFRED WING'S STATEMENT "A SCIENTIST REQUIRES ANSWERS BUT THE ACTUAL PROCESS OF ASKING QUESTIONS SATISFIES AN ARTIST" by Toby Mulligan

1. SCIENCE-ART THOUGHTS by Richard Daniel
2. DON ROUT by Don Rout
3. DON ROUT by Rupert Mallin

I am a painter interested in science. I think it is vitally important for artists working in the Twentieth Century to reflect in their work the great strides which have taken place in science during the last hundred years. I am particularly fascinated by new. scientific ideas and how they can be utilized in an artistic context.

Especially interesting is the world of fundamental physics and cosmology. For example, the current multi-dimensional universe theories which have been formed in the attempt to unify the four basic forces of nature (gravity, electromagnetism, weak nuclear force and strong nuclear force). These have exciting implications for the artistic representation of reality.

Following on from Einstein's four dimensional space-time continuum, we now have theories which suggest the universe may have between five and eleven dimensions. The extra dimensions compacted led in various ways.

For the last four hundred or so years artists. have- given the illusion of three dimensions on a two dimensional surface — using geometric and aerial perspective etc. - The comic strip introduces the temporal element, albeit in a rather naive way. But what about art works which seek to represent five dimensions or more?.

Based mainly on the concept of compacted dimensions, I have listed below a number of possible solutions. I would like to offer these for further discussion by members of the group.
 
 

I) Painting on an extremely elastic surface which has to be pushed into to reveal the full image.

2) Painting on crumpled up pieces of paper.

3) Painting on a rapidly vibrating panel.

4) Painting across a series of revolving vertical rods.

5) Painting contained within the substance of a transparent malleable material.

6) Painting on a fine mesh through which the environment is visible.

7) Painting in segments of rapidly revolving disk.

8) Painting on a network of springs.

9) Painting on surfaces of many sided geometric shape. Each face equals a different dimension.

10) Paintings on series of superimposed panels which can be removed in sequence.

11) Painting across a series of tape loops.  Each loop is moving (on revolving cylinders) at different speeds.

12) Paintings, superposed out of line, on a sandwich of transparent panels.

13) Painting on small balls rapidly moving in glass container.

14) Painting which continues into holes drilled into the picture surface.

15) Paintings on both sides of a translucent fabric which is continually moving.

16) Painting on a transparent canvas which is subsequently rolled up.

17) Paintings on a set of panels which intersect at various angles.

18) Painting on individual blocks which are later squashed and then fitted together.

19) Painting on a rough and irregular panel. Different pictures in hollows and bumps.

20) Painting in box.  Slits in box allow spectators to see different distorted images of painting.

21) Painting projects from the wall.  The surface is blank but the sides are divided into sections which represent different dimensional facets.

22) Layers of painted curtains surround the picture.

23) Painting on a loose canvas. small parts of canvas are tied up with string.

24) Paintings on the inner and outer surface of an array of transparent pipes attached to panel.

25) Multi-media 'painting' which divides the dimensions among the senses.

GERALD SHEPHERD

Somewhere in the mountains of Nepal, there are some people at work who are artists, craftsmen (and women), and technologists all rolled into one.

The subject we are talking about here is Pelton wheels. Not quite as obscure a topic as it sounds — basically, they're miniature waterwheels for generating electricity on a small-is-beautiful scale. You see, Nepal has got a lot of small but fast-falling streams, ideal for microhydro electric schemes — so the Intermediate Technology Group (IT) has been working to help the local people develop their own industry building them. The trouble is, Pelton wheels are shaped like a disc with spoons sticking out all round (the water jets onto the spoon cups to turn it), and it's a beastly difficult shape to manufacture. You have to cast it by a complicated process called lost wax casting.

As it happened, there were already some local people who know a lot about lost wax casting. They make works of art — mostly religious statues —using a secret mixture of beeswax, rosin, and ghee to make the wax patterns. They coat the patterns in another secret mixture containing a fine refractory and rice husks, which sets hard. Bake the lot, the wax runs out leaving a cavity, pour the molten bronze in, and Bob's your uncle.

In some ways, their method is even better than the techniques developed in Europe, because the rice husks in the mould mixture make it porous, so the hot gases can escape without having to cut special channels ("risers") to let them out. The art casters have cheerfully adapted their traditional skills to making parts for hydroelectric schemes, and the whole thing is doing very nicely.

In India and Sri Lanka, another group of artists/craftsmen have incorporated technology into their work. Two problems to be solved here; cheap stainless-steel cookware has been putting local potters out of business, and the wood for cooking fuel has become scarce. The solution to both; design a ceramic stove which the potters can make with traditional techniques, and which will burn wood more efficiently than a simple fire. The result has been some pretty nifty designs, including varieties with a big pot-rest for your rice and a smaller one for your curry so they both simmer side by side. They use 25% less fuel than an open fire, with the added advantage that the smoke gets taken away by a chimney rather than going into the eyes and lungs of the cook. As a bonus, the stoves have an aethetically-pleasing form which would make the grade as an abstract sculpture — unlike the average Western gas-cooker.

Art, science, technology, craftwork, or all of them together?

I have a suspicion that small, human scale enterprises have much less tendency to split off the different sides of human nature than do mass-production businesses. Left to themselves — free of the rigid requirements of the production line — humans add embellishments, make little personal variations on the basic design theme. I saw a copy of the original ceramic stove which had developed a more curvaceous shape and sported a lively zigzag pattern. Technology definitely leaning towards art.

When Schumacher penned his famous "Small is Beautiful", he was thinking more in terms of small enterprise being effective in making people's lives more liveable. I reckon he was right in a quite literal senses as well. Small makes it possible to combine both technical skills and the artistic creativity of the maker into an artifact that's also a work of art.
 
 

I became fascinated by Nasa research technology during 1980—83, while developing colour theory and perception classes at Kansas State University, where I was an assistant professor in the College of Architecture and Design. During that time, I spent considerable hours in the Nasa space technology labs at Kansas University.

NASA maintained a variety of labs for use by professors and postgraduate students pursuing studies in modern space technology. among them were labs on Landsat images, which dealt with collecting and interpreting information obtained from infra-red cameras and computers on satellites and airplanes. The results were utilized for research that included studies of Earth's land, vegetation, water and population growth patterns.

Initially, I began experimenting with infra-red negatives from NASA in my printmaking studio, but soon began simulating images based on my own knowledge of space. Starting with photography experiments, I brought this work into completion with mono and hand finished serigraphs, in which I tried to reflect the compelling beauty of space technology.

The most successful hand-finished serigraphs created during this time were Luna, Luna II, Luna's Passion and Luna's Moods, simulated images which re-created the moon's surface.

I also produced a separate series of related works, "The Landsat Images", which have subtle but luminous layers of hand-finished colours on top of serigraph prints. These were created after months of experiments in my studio with infra-red negatives taken from Nasa.

Prior to my NASA-inspired works, I produced "The Spacescapes", a related series of airbrushed collages which are abstract studies of atmospheric environments.

There are approximately 20 works in these series; dimensions and shipping weight are available. As they have never been exhibited in their entirety, I am currently exploring methods of exhibiting these works in a science and art related setting.
 

Manfred Wing's article appeared to observe the Art and Science relationship in a very perverse way. He said Art was superficial and a juvenile science when in fact science is the superficial discipline due to its materialism. Art delves beyond materialistic science to describe scientific taboos like human feelings and perceptions.

Scientists attempt to describe the world on a fundamental level. They bay down basic principles. Perhaps, because they can't cope with the ephemeral nature of the world. They have a need for something rigid to work on. Yet the rigidity of science is a myth. Theories have been continuously contradicted and superseded by other theories, for example Newtonian mechanics by Quantum mechanics.

Manfred Wing assumes that artists think they need a problem solving mechanism. I thought only scientists were egotistical enough to think that they can solve problems. He said "Science is about knowing". This is the fundamental flaw in the character of a scientist. How can they be so confident about their knowledge. Didn't anyone ever tell them that wisdom is knowing that you don't know.

Unfortunately public opinion is generally to trust the scientists, that scientists know and that facts have been scientifically proven. The result of this trust is the advancement of technology. Progression of which leads to a more detailed state, hence there is more chance of something going wrong.

Art is more observational and: static and enhances life without dangerous side effects. An Artist's perception of the world and subsequent communication (in Literature, Painting, music or whatever the medium) of that perception, enables other people to share that idea and deepens the quality of life.

The narrow directed research of a scientist may enhance your life in a materialistic sense. It can also make a mess of it.

My immersion in a scientific environment for four years helped me to decode the trouble with scientists — their directness. Once they find a researching niche, they go off, often too far in that direction.

There is a lack of communication between people who's directions have diverged. Technological terms developed for one area may be totally incomprehensible to someone working in another area.

Art is generally to do with human life and so artists can communicate with each other because of the universality of personal experience.

Scientists who have transcended reality into their abstract world, are very much alone. The shy and retiring, introverted image of the scientist, which is generally true, suggests that science is a form of escapism. Escaping to a land of mathematical abstraction, where no social skills are required.
 

MANFRED WING'S MISCELLANEOUS RESPONSES TO SARAH MACDONALD'S MISCELLANEOUS REACTIONS TO MANFRED WING'S MISCELLANEOUS NOTES ON ART AND SCIENCE IS PROMISED FOR THE NEXT ISSUE!
 
 

"Applied science is the pursuit of knowledge with an aim in sight (usually money!)", Gerald Shepherd.

A) This is correct to some extent and with regret to the practitioner of the science or art. Although other factors such as personal prestige are sources of motivation as in any career, individual scientists don't make much money usually. Science only appears to involve larger sums because of the large (usually government sponsored) projects involving many workers and large capital expenditure.

B) A point that I think is important is the involvement of the military in science and technology. To the point where the vast majority of "High Tech" work is at least partly military based (including regrettably my own work). To work in these fields is to enter a moral dilemma. The arts seem less affected by this.

"Well, for a start it should be worth doing", Sue Birchmore

The old manufacturing base of "smoke stack industries" has largely departed the UK. Replaced by the "service industries. OK, Sheffield is a lot cleaner than it was, and I'm not saying for a moment that the old industries weren't grim, hard work and dangerous in both accidents and occupational disease, aspestosis etc.). But am I alone in thinking that the old style engineering had a kind of cheery dignity, that's lacking in a VDU?.

"Other effects that seem to rely heavily on science, for example, explosions", Claire Thomas.

There is a noticeable, and I feel worrying emphasis on explosions — in "Star Wars" etc. I understand that these days we use the term "Civil Engineer" because originally (about the time of the Renaissance) the term "Engineer" was a purely military one. Sometimes I think we are going back to this!.

"In Kraftwerk silence is explicit/minimal structuring , John Goff

I found the comments on "Kraftwerk" particularly interesting, having always considered them to be one of the seminal influences of "synthetic" music. The repetition and mechanical quality of the music is reminiscent of, for example, the use of screen printing in Warhol's art. Or his elevation of the common place product of mass production to the status of an icon. A metaphor for the dehumanization of society and the isolation of the individual. Silence as structuring is also relevant to some other groups of the late seventies and early eighties. "Bauhaus" for example, had a great sparseness to their music that gave it the quality of a sketch rather than a completed painting. In contrast to the baroque richness and detail of "Joy Division" — which were ironically to metamorphose into the minimalist and synthetic "New Order". The role of popular music in the culture of the sixties and early seventies has been much analyzed. That of the following decade much less. But the "punk" movement however could be richly mined. Personally, I think it has been both underestimated and misunderstood. The underlying philosophy was not anarchy but nihilism.

"Art could be considered a stage towards science — a juvenile science", Manfred Wing

I'm fairly certain that Sir James Frazer said something very similar about magic being science that didn't work. This brings me really to my final point: That in addition to the arts and sciences, the world of the mind surely also includes the religious, occult or metaphysical. Surely, as in the other two fields, there are truths to be expressed here?.
 
 

I wonder why an artist draws if that was so. As you feel incomprehension you set your hands to paper. As you draw you enter the process of "asking questions , as you continue you formulate some order; to some extent (depending on how hard you have looked and your original and ensuing intentions) this order will embody the principles inherent in the thing that you are studying.
Obviously this is easier to recognize in so-called objective art than in paintings of pure fantasy.

The important thing is that the drawing is an answer • It isn't enough for the artist to ask questions. Drawing does both ask and answer. This provides the "knowing".

Scientific theories change from state to state (like the process of etching) and often the first have most to recommend them. One has to ask these questions: Do scientists think that there is a right answer (and that they can ever know it)?. Or do artists think that there can be no tight answer ?
 

Some thoughts about the balance between the statement/system/delivery and the look/aesthetics.

All these overlap to a greater or lesser degree and are emphasized by the artist. The final view has a lot to do with the viewers perception and it is important to be aware of the obvious first impressions (not an easy task when one's head has been involved for hours, weeks or months in a project). The balance is the artist's problem.

I put more importance on the finish than on how I arrived at it. What I have created's continuing life not the exercise of creating it. The creator does have a special relationship with a work, which may go as far as being in on a private joke. Though it is a mistake to think that theirs is the definitive knowledge of all that is contained within a work.

Science has a similar problem in being able to see an aim and make a way, yet having no knowledge (or control) to the ends it may be put. This is a more serious problem, one that we all have to share though. I think we will have to temper are potential use of science and restore aesthetic judgments to our quality of life. There must again be a balance.
 
 

After working for many years in marine biology, both experimental work in the laboratory and exploratory sea work, I changed my activities to full time drawing and painting (and thinking!).

So called psychedelic painting was popular at the time, in my first exhibition and 'happening' my work was described by a critic (Hamilton Wood) as 'mind wandering', psychedelic with little glimpses of moving nature. I was not willing, did not claim, that any of my work was psychedelic and certainly used no drugs to stimulate the pictorial images, having plenty at hand in my subconscious and dream world.

Biomorphic shapes occurred in my work, as the pictures developed, these became sepulchral, exfoliate, at times agitated, and at other times restful and more meditative. My work became very personal and by the late seventies less influenced by the formative days of American abstract artists (De Kooning, Pollock, Gorky et al.). A balance between Chaos and Order and Caution. Both analytical, cerebral, 'cool' and wild, free and abandoned Action Painting and Tachism.

I have exhibited in Norwich (Norfolk), Windsor, London, Paris and in my home town of Lowestoft (Suffolk).

Don Rout has exhibited in Norwich (Norfolk), Windsor, London, Paris and in his home town of Lowestoft. (Suffolk).

Don Rout's early work was concerned with the sea, nature, metamorphosis, biomorphic shapes, movement and violence. The frenzied work alternated with meditative sepulchral work. Working with statistics and grids at the fish lab. Don Rout brought grids and matrix devices into his art. Treating visuals like frames in a film of one's life he began exploiting the photocopier image, creating a graphic diary of his shifting states of mind.

For Don Rout every act of art is life and vice versa. His performances and beachworks are imbued with both the mundane, banal and the great news events of our time. His work is richer though less spectacular than Norwich's own Performance Artist, Bruce Lacey, who Rout admires. Don Rout's work is certainly more philosophical than ?Lacey's Mother Earth events. Don Rout's intention is not specifically to shock an audience but to wake them into life.

Don Rout lists his interests as " Visionary Poets, random celebrations, the trivial, astrology, philosophy, religion, mysticism, guitar, yoga and Tai Chi.

A rotund rude complexioned man, with a simple sailor's earring through an earlobe, Don Rout was for some time a practitioner of Tai Chi at Pleasure— wood Hills, the local American theme park, Unfortunately he became surplus to the razzmatazz requirements of the park last year.

Seeking new arenas for his dancing and arts, he found two spots in the open air; his allotment and the beach. Even the vegetable plot has become a sculpture (an earthwork) with carrots and cabbages sprouting from spiral trenches and stones measuring shadows from the sun around its borders throughout the seasons.

During the summer of 1988 Don Rout performed to holiday makers on Lowestoft's sandiest beach. Adorned with half mask, make-up and a beautiful Chinese robe, Don Rout created a stage for himself by raking and brushing the sand beneath the promenade's Public Convenience each morning.

Children helped him create temporary totems, shrines, sepulchres and sand— castles on the beach or copied his Tai Chi gestures — with precision. Few adults joined the games, possibly assuming that Don Rout was a care assistant or play leader provided by the local council.

For Don Rout the mundane and banal is universal. He is not the imposer of urban monuments because his work centres on the collision between these worlds — Chaos versus Order.

There are many facets to Don Rout. He keeps many diaries. One is specifically about his art work, the theory he has developed as an artist, making connections between his wide range of reading and the signs, symbols, times and events of his life. Another diary catalogues the flora and fauna of his corner of the beach.

His current 'beachwork' is a series of circular and spiral trenches and mounds shaped from shingle. Punctuated by large stones and other objects, this tracks the movement of the sun. It is a grid, a matrix, within which elements change each day. These shapes and movements are Don Rout's life, which is his art. To paraphrase Marcel Duchamp, protagonist of the Dada movement which changed the face of Twentieth Century art, Art is the activity of itself!. Don Rout's strategy points to our alienation in an exploited world. Don Rout is more than a Character of Lowestoft, he is a fine artist.