June 29, 2021
AIRCAT 2021
Lots to report given the first full run this summer in Tossa de Mar.
Stay tuned...
June 6, 2021
Compilation
The 2021 summer residency program AIR,CAT will begin next week. To document events, I've made a battery of intros and outros to bracket videos that tell the story.
This is a compilation of various intro and outro clips in preparation for the documentation of a summer project, an artist residency that I created with old friends Gerard Smulevich and Alberto Barcia.
AIR,CAT (Artists in Residency, Catalunya) runs from June 12th to July 12th in the Costa Brava seaside town of Tossa de Mar. The objective of the residency is breathe life into an artist presence in Tossa that thrived in the interwar years of the 20th Century. Geographically, Tossa is situated behind a mountain range on the Mediterranean Sea behind a thoroughfare connecting Spain and France through Catalunya. Hidden thus, a wide spectrum of artists found a refuge together, making art and sharing ideas. Marc Chagall, Andre Masson, Georges Bataille, Oscar Zügel, Otho Lloyd and Dora Maar among others were part of the scene. They had a golden moment together then. A museum was created at that time in Tossa, a museum whose collection consists of work created by those artists at that time. It is said that this is Spain's first contemporary art museum.
Tossa branded itself a "Blue Paradise" (Chagall's coinage) and a "Babel de les arts", signifying its special status as a refuge for contemporary art. The ensuing Franco era eclipsed that moment, and when he exited the stage and democracy bloomed, the museum survived but just so, frozen in that creatively convivial moment of the 30's. Forty years later, we recognized a chance to revive the Babel de les arts and make the promise real again.
When Alberto, Gerry and I proposed the residency to the government of Tossa, they spontaneously and generously provided the residences, studio space, exhibition space and funds to assist our invited artists in their work. 2019 was our proof of concept with our sole invitee, Berlin artist Avital Yomdim and us three mentors composing an exhibition to an appreciative throng. This summer will be our first full formal run with six artists coming in from around the world. Spirits are high.
Aside from helping the artists settle in to their studios, get to know the town, the people and Catalan culture, the task of documentation looms. The story will have its arc, that much is easy. What is difficult is to capture are those beautiful moments in conversation, like butterflies. Whip out the recording device and a pin pierces a thorax. Tricky, that.
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Blender notes:
It's been a little over a year of learning Blender in the margins of my time. This time, Blender physics has two ways to render moving water. The ocean physics modifier looks at first glance like a one button solution. Press, and a multitude of settings present themselves: resolution, depth, size, scale, choppiness, wind velocity, foam... You've got to set keyframes into the timeline to see the results of the animation, back and forth trial and lots of error. The other method of rendering fluids is a button called physics properties > fluids, where you establish a bounding domain, geometry, flow or effector bodies. Or, you could simply press a quick liquid effects button and off you go. A whole other menu of settings framing fluid dynamics present themselves, quite bewildering not only at first but for a very long time. More trial and error. With each attempt, you have to "bake" the settings to see what you might have on hand. Arduous, and fun, actually.
The upshot for visual artists is the peek at how much we take for granted.
Sobering.