DEVELOPING MY CREATIVE PRACTICE IN IMMERSIVE TECH

I am super excited to share that over the past 6 months, I have been part of ‘Developing your Creative Practice Fund' with Arts Council England.

During this period, I have been working on bringing my traditional artwork to life using digital technologies. For one of my projects, I have been exploring how to create an immersive installation that engages the senses. Throughout this journey, I have investigated ways to make my artwork interactive through sound, movement, smell, and touch. This has allowed me to elevate my art to a new level, where you can become a part of it and walk around within my installation.

I have collaborated with lots of different emerging artists from creative technologists, model makers, illustrators, and musicians to engineers. Over the next coming months, I will be showcasing at different events and venues across Leicester. I will be sharing behind the scenes about the exciting projects I have curated on my website and social media!

I also want to take a second to thank @artscouncil for giving me this time to explore and shape my practice, to create innovative artwork that uses our different senses to make my artwork innovative, thought-provoking and most importantly accessible!

Developing My creative practice diaries

November

The start of the project…. I wanted to start this project by exploring lots of different ways technology can enhance art and make it more immersive. I began with exploring the use of projection, and how I can use my art to transform bigger spaces. And how you can manipulate projections with glass to reflect onto different spaces.

Developing my Creative practice diaries

December

I began to explore the use of AR after being influenced by an immersive London exhibit. I began using my paintings to appear on different objects. To create more playful exhibits. Growing on from my initial exploration of projections I began to collaborate with a local emerging artist Daria Brzostowicz where we began to manipulate and play with my images, learning how to use different software so the audience can interact with my artwork.

We began testing settings and experimenting with different ways of connecting with my art in projected spaces.

One of my aims within this funding was to explore using traditional and immersive technology together, therefore I continued to explore my love for painting and exploring ways of making it three-dimensional, so that the audience could interact and feel more immersed in the artwork.

Developing my creative practice diaries

January

The start of a new year… but continuing from my initial exploration I began to explore the limits of AR by creating animated pieces, I wanted the artwork to have a playful element for people to enjoy. Through this idea I moved on to animating my painted pieces, with the idea of projecting them in big spaces. I contaminated the development of the projection mapping with Daria, exploring new ways through movement and sound to make the pieces interactive.

Animating my pieces, I worked with an emerging Animator Netty, to connect our different animated artstyl3z to project into large spaces.

I started to experiment with creating 3D flowers, creating mini prototypes experimenting with different materials.

Developing my creative practice diaries

February

With the goal of making my art immersive, I edited myself onto the animated pieces I had been playfully creating. It sparked the idea that I wanted my artwork to be immersive and therefore I started to envision the idea of a physical installation that was interactive through technology. I wanted technology to enhance the experience but not overshadow the traditional artwork.

One Saturday morning I woke up bought a jigsaw and MDF and began cutting out the flower-shaped stands to kickstart the installation…. Of course after a few sketches. An idea began to blossom through my sketches, and the idea of creating big 3D crepe flowers to bloom around the installation became a solid plan.

Exploring how I could make my flowers interact I began collaborating with an emerging engineer from Birmingham to create light-sensored flowers, interactive to movement, so the flowers would bloom when someone waved their hand over it…. Something that became a lot of trial and error over the coming months.

Developing my creative practice diaries

March

March I continued to experiment with projects editing myself on top of the video.

Me and Daria finished creating the projection mapping piece, creating 7 interactive slides through sound and movement.

During this time I went to a networking event supported by Doc Media Centre to connect artists with Leicester local exhibition spaces, where excitingly I created some great connections for my exhibitions in the summer with the Doc Media Centre and Confident Communities.

I collaborated with Emily McCulloch to create moths for the installation, I wanted a playful hut in the installation looking for moths.

Developing my creative practice diaries

April

This month was a lot of cutting and painting, creating the boards for the installation, I had fun creating the installation pieces.

I began creating the big flowers.

Throughout this time I connected with an emerging sound artist Doo Rhee create a soundtrack for my installation, inspired by British wildlife. Thinking about the use of senses I researched the most popular relaxing scents that the public enjoyed, it was gut grass, therefore to go alongside the installation I got a mystifier to expel a cut grass smell.

Developing my creative practice diaries

May

This month was full of painting and making to meet deadlines….

At the end of May my installation was exhibited at the Connect, Create Converse event with The Mighty Creatives at DMU, It was a great chance to receive feedback for the installation so far which was really positive, and allowed me to see how the small uses of technology had enhanced the piece drastically.

I also attended a live painting event at the LE1 spotlight event, where I bought a small part of the installation along, this also was an exciting opportunity to get feedback from the public. The 3D flowers proved to be a big hit!

inspo

Developing my creative practice diaries

June

Throughout the month it was a moment to stop and reflect and what I had achieved so far. I connected with local artists to gain feedback and see how I could improve, with Sian Watson and Rachel scanlon. And those who I was collaborating with.

The gave me the advice to go to Manchester Science Muesum, and after the experience it allowed me to explore how the artwork needs to be more tactile, to encourage the sense of touch.

With the moths created, I began to think about how I could use technology to enhance them, I used NFC stickers to make them interactive where you would scan them which would take them to a page that had a fact about them. Giving it depth.

This month was getting ready for the exhibition with Confident Communities at their art gallery at Stoughton Grange Farm Park in July, I was influenced to introduce musical instruments to make it more interactive.

I also wanted more soundtracks to go alongside the installation, I started the collaboration with Luke, wanting a fairy piece, to make it feel magical which will be played on these exhibition sound players.

In June I exhibited at Platform 31 for one of their stakeholder events, exploring the strengths of their organisation, with a garden theme I exhibited alongside a florist artist, which sparked the idea to have live flowers in my exhibits as well.

Developing my creative practice diaries

July

During July I spent the month finalizing the exhibition ready for Confident Communities Art Gallery where I exhibited for 2 weeks and ran a workshop day creating Cyanotypes with the local community.

I also experimented and researched musical instruments to go alongside the exhibition to support play and sound within the exhibition.

Developing my creative practice diaries

August

Exhibiting at Leicester adult learning centre with Doc Media Centre, I was able to transform the space with the installation, I created. Colouring in the station and lots of painting, where they could press a button and sound would play.

For the love of art amongst lots of other talented artists

  • Emily McCulloch

    Emily McCulloch is an emerging artist passionate about the environment and promoting the importance of moths in our wildlife.

    During this project, she created a series of 3D paper moths to sit inside my 3D flowers.

  • Daria Brzostowicz

    Daria is a Leicester-based emerging artist in creative technology. During this project, I collaborated with Daria's specialism to bring my paintings to life, through a series of interactive project maps through sound and movement.

  • Doo Rhee

    Doo Rhee is a Bristol-based emerging sound artist, specialising in wildlife sounds. For my DYCP Doo supported creating a wildlife soundtrack to go alongside my installation.

  • Netty Christoforou

    An emerging artist, specialising in murals, projections and animations using vibrant colours.

    I experiemented with combining our animation styles to create pieces to be projected to transform large spaces.

  • Luke Howse

    An emerging musician Luke Howse, I collaborated with to create three magical pieces of 30 second music to go on exhibition sound players

  • Madhav Ramesh

Moving with nature

Installation

Some Blooming Art exhibition

Connect, Create, Converse event

Platform 31 event

Confident Communities Art Gallery Exhibition

Some blooming art exhibition

Exhibition at Adult Learning Centre in Leicester supported by Doc Media Centre.

What’s next?

I'm currently developing a plan for another Arts Council grant. The idea is to create a large art tent where I can host workshops and share short, feminist-inspired stories with a unique twist.

Stay tuned!

Next
Next

Garden of Senses at Create, Converse and connect