Bob
Levene has been a part of our Faculty for the past six months. You may have
seen her last blog post for EngingineeringUs in July or seen her poking
around labs resplendent in her orange ‘Artist in Residence’ t-shirt asking a
myriad of questions. Indeed she has spoken, at length, to around 30 engineers
from our departments giving her a well-rounded view that engineering isn’t just
about the Hotpoint man.
"I tend to choose a material in response to an idea - I'm not a craftsman who works with and through a particular material. I think about the subject, process and the tools being used and see if I can say something from the conversations I've had and what I've seen."
“I had some idea of what to
expect with Civil, Mechanical & Electrical but was not prepared for
Computer Science and Automatic Control Systems Engineering and that whole area
of system control and data mining. I have also been massively bowled over by
the level of medical connections. I found out about a project that records and
banks peoples voices before having a tracheotomy, so afterwards they still have
use of their ‘voice’. Which I find so poetic.”
Perceptions
of engineering are a constant battle especially when trying to encourage female
students to consider engineering as a career choice. Engineering has long been
seen as a dry, boring subject but can engineering really be described as
poetic? Creative even?
“Different types of engineering use different
processes and I see many of them as really creative. Working with numbers,
systems and rules doesn't rule out being creative, I work with these all the
time and what I do is inherently creative. I’m not keen on the stereotypes of
between the arts and sciences (art being soft & expressive and engineering
being hard-nosed and dry). I think there are really interesting crossovers and
they don't have to come together simply by artist illustrating an engineering
project or marketing it – it’s more of a dialogue.”
It is these discussions that have underpinned what Bob will do next. Rather than create a sculpture or paint a picture that can be placed somewhere to be admired, Bob's art is more conceptual than that."I tend to choose a material in response to an idea - I'm not a craftsman who works with and through a particular material. I think about the subject, process and the tools being used and see if I can say something from the conversations I've had and what I've seen."
With
so much dialogue taking place and engineers willing to impart their knowledge
(this is a University after all) we couldn’t begrudge our resident artist
taking some time off from the process. As Bob explains:
“For three months all I’ve had is talking and I’ve tried to understand so interviews went on for a long time. Its been fascinating but exhausting, I can't help but ask more questions to try and understand. It’s hard to process the information and then to jump to thinking about how I can make artwork. I’ve had to stop the conversations and give myself a month off from that kind of thinking.”
“For three months all I’ve had is talking and I’ve tried to understand so interviews went on for a long time. Its been fascinating but exhausting, I can't help but ask more questions to try and understand. It’s hard to process the information and then to jump to thinking about how I can make artwork. I’ve had to stop the conversations and give myself a month off from that kind of thinking.”
The last
thing this faculty wants to do is break an artist! But the next stage of Bob’s
work is coming out of the fog of conversation and creating an artwork inspired by the conversations and the research the she has seen.
"I'm at the playing and filming stage. I'm looking at machines and materials and taking pictures and videos without worrying too much about what it will end up as, this intuitive play is an important part of the process, not every part should be over thought."
"I'm at the playing and filming stage. I'm looking at machines and materials and taking pictures and videos without worrying too much about what it will end up as, this intuitive play is an important part of the process, not every part should be over thought."
Bob’s
previous residency experience was at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park where she
spent two months as part of a Space for 10 project. Coming to the
University, she admits, has been one of the biggest challenges she has taken
on. Having made the decision to work cross-faculty and not concentrate on one
department has been a major undertaking but the fascinating stories that have
been thrown up has given her a greater appreciation of what engineering is and
what can be achieved. So great is this appreciation that she has fallen in love.
With a carbon coating machine.
“I really
like the 70’s machines. There’s this machine where you put two carbon sticks
together and its heated up to get carbon coated, and to do that you need to
sharpen the two bits of stick graphite and there’s this little belt that goes
around and it leaves all these pencil-like drawings – that’s lovely!”
If you
want to be kept up to date with Bob’s progress you can find out all you need to
know on the University website and Bob’s personal sites.
No comments:
Post a Comment