Rylie Blogs Rarely ／ blog.ryliejamesthomas.net

I finished this installation a few weeks back now. It’s been difficult to document; the video above is my best attempt.

It relates to the collage project I did at the beginning of the year.  I had the thought as I was making them that I would like to walk round in these spaces. They worked much better as held objects: I think they are interesting from all angles, and have some nice surprises made-in.

I also connect it to the multimedia course I did when I first left school. I was quickly off-put by the lack of animation involved in computer animation, but fascinated by the building blocks. For those unaware, 3D models are made of polygons, of generally four or three sides. Typically nicely put together to give the illusion of rounded  surfaces. More interesting to me were the effects you would get from clipping polygons through each other, the unreal effects from single-sided polygons, all sorts of glitchy, dirty, messy stuff, that reminded me of the beautiful, crude 3D we used to see in videogames.

I’m happy with it. I realised near the end that it was going to be dark (though not quite as dark as in the video) inside, which I hadn’t thought about. I spent most of my time carefully choosing the colour, grain, and texture of the pieces in there, all for little result! But, the effect of the light coming in between the cardboard is a wonderful surprise. I always felt I was working out problems in the same way I would for a drawing, and these lines become something like that. To think I spent so much time trying to fill those gaps! This use of the space between things reminds me of what I was doing with my painting, when the installating wasn’t taking up my painting time.

I’ve been drawing, and am about to start painting, from the structure. (Actually, I’ve been working from the collages too). I want to position people inside, and use the space as an illustration of an internal state. That’s the starting point, anyway.