New Work In Progress

Following on from my recent sculpture, Planetoid 210, I've decided to continue with the spherical theme and have started a new piece that will hopefully end up looking (if all goes well) like the love child of two of my other sculptures, The City and Cardboard Brain. Like Cardboard Brain, the new piece is going to be constructed primarily of interwoven periscopes and as with The City, I plan to use windows of magnified glass that will allow the viewer to peer into miniature environments, slotted in between the voids amongst the periscopes.
I say all this now but until the work starts to properly take shape its hard to tell how much space there will be for the miniature environments or if the overall shape will even be remotely spherical. These sculptures sometimes have a will of their own and refuse to conform – or is that just me anthropomorphising again?

 As you can see from this work in progress, it's early days yet. I've still not constructed enough periscopes to make the framework for even half of the sphere. I have a feeling that it's going to get trickier and trickier trying trying to fit all the internal sections together as the piece starts to take form but luckily I love that sort of thing.

This was the sketch that I made when I came up with the initial idea for the work. Admittedly it's not the most considered drawing in the world but I do have a habit of quickly forgetting ideas for artworks unless I jot something down on paper as soon as I think of it. So a lot of my drawings are little more than a few quick squiggles, but enough to act as a mental prompt.

Closing Party – The Brain Unravelled (in 3D)

Cardboard Brain (in sterio), originally uploaded by Wayne Chisnall.

As you may know, our show at the Slade Research Centre closes tomorrow so we are having a closing party from 2 to 6pm. There will be a DJ and some free booze but I dare say that we are bound to run out early so please feel free to bring along a bottle and as many friends as you like.
However, if you can’t make it to the closing party but still want to feel like you were there, why not pop on your 3D specs (come on, we’ve all got an emergency pair stashed away somewhere) and check out this 3D photo of my sculpture – taken by the fantastically talented Mr Ben Ashton (also exhibiting at the show).

The Brain Unravelled
UCL Slade Research Centre
Woburn Square, London, WC1H 0AB
Tube: Russell Square
www.thebrainunravelled.com
info@thebrainunravelled.com
Closing Party: Sat 19th September 2009, 2-6 pm

The Brain Unravelled (Cardboard Brain)

The Brain Unravelled Sketch (Cardboard Brain), originally uploaded by Wayne Chisnall.

I’ve been clocking up quite a few late nights recently, trying to complete a new sculpture for the forthcoming exhibition, The Brain Unravelled, at the Slade Research Centre in Woburn Square, London. The show opens in a couple of weeks on the 7th September but to be perfectly honest, progress so far has been a bit slow. My idea for the show was to make a mass of interlocking, multi angled periscopes. Above, you can see my initial sketch which I’ve been using as a loose working drawing. For this piece I’ve been working with cardboard and Perspex mirrors. I had initially toyed with the idea of making it out of wood but considering the limited time frame that I had to work with that seemed a little unrealistic. Plus, after working in cardboard on the maquette for my last sculpture, I had started to develop a bit of an appreciation for the versatilities of this under rated material – which can be surprisingly strong, when used correctly.
Anyway – getting away from my peculiar obsession with materials – I suppose I should mention something about the show and the reasoning behind my sculpture.
The Brain Unravelled is a multi-disciplinary exhibition, pulling together the fields of art, anthropology and neuroscience (I can’t wait to see what the boffins are bringing to the party – it should be amazing). As well as the artwork, which will include painting, photography, mixed media, installation, sculpture, textile, film and some experimental anthropology, there will be a series of talks and events during the show which runs from 7th – 19th September. One of the central themes of the show is the ‘concept’ of consciousness. The show also aims to highlight some of the fascinating areas of current brain research – whilst also drawing our attention to how little we still know about the workings of the mind. Amongst the many people contributing to the show you will find Anthony Gormley, Storm Thorgerson, Future Sound of London, Liliane Lijn, Beau Lotto, Chris Knight, Brian Butterworth, Chris Frith and many more. For details of the show and links to all the artists and scientists personal sites check out - http://www.thebrainunravelled.com/index.html
Although I have strong interests in certain areas of neuroscience and contemporary physics I do admit that most of it goes over my head, so I’m approaching the work for this show from a more intuitive stance. I see my piece as a being a very basic analogy of one aspect of the brain – that of an imperfect (yet marvellous) device for perceiving and interacting with the outside world. I am fascinated by the fact that the world we see around us only exists that way in our heads, because that is the way that our limited senses translate what information we can absorb.
The piece that I am building will rely on viewer interaction to a certain extent. By looking into one of the many window sections of the work the viewer will see what appears to be a distant window to the world outside of the sculpture. However, a series of mirrors will have been reflecting this view over a number of right angles so that if someone else happened to look back at the viewer from the other end of that particular section of the sculpture they may appear upside down to the original viewer and could even be standing next to them, rather than down the other end of what appears to be a long straight corridor. So the viewer sees what the cardboard brain sees - a distorted and isolated view of the world outside.