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Last spring I watched some frogspawn develop and hatch into tadpoles, filming it through my microscope. Here's a timelapse video from someone who has done something similar, but over a longer period of time. The change that is underwent is fascinating. How something so vividly full of life comes from something so unassuming and dormant astonishes me. But this is not so dissimilar to our own creation. The images I captured through my microscope were strongly reminiscent of an embryo in the womb, even the shape was sometimes uncannily similar to that of a human foetus.

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The finished trailer I made for Bellow Theatre's 'Fish Can't Swim Backwards'. Hope I get the chance to work with these guys again sometime! It's very different to my normal work, but really shows how everything I'm learning and doing is transferable. 

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‘It made me feel like, like if I turned round I might catch myself right back at the beginning.’ Annie can’t quite get her story straight. She’ll tell you that before the accident she was fine, she was sorted. One day she finds herself sitting on a cliff top and she’s not quite sure how she got there. But it’s only when she gets a phone call to say everything’s going back to normal she realises that she’s standing on the edge. Filled with stories of first love, fresh starts, and fish, Bellow Theatre bring a brand new one woman show to Union Mashup. October 1st, 2nd and 3rd.

Some stills from the filming I did yesterday. Really quite excited to finish off filming later today and start putting things together! 

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So my cousin is putting on a performance in Hull in a few weeks. She asked me to lend a hand with various parts such as the photographs for the poster, a trailer and a projection. Above is the poster, with all the details, so get yourself to Hull!

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The beauty of a mathematical equation can definitely be compared to a work of art. In fact to some I expect it IS a work of art, myself included. I miss it, for the first time since starting this course I really miss it. There's a peace of mind, a quietness, that comes with maths that I find in very few other places. There's community centres with art/creative projects all over the place. I wonder if there are any similar places where you can go to do maths just for the enjoyment of it.

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All ready for hand in! I was amazed at how well my new recipe for the agar plates has worked. Got things growing on there that I've not seen before on mine, a risk that was definitely worth it! Just hope they go and see it before all the good stuff goes.

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A piece at the Irish Museum of Modern Art by Vong Phaophanit. More information can be found at  http://www.imma.ie/en/page_236811.htm

but for me I really liked the glow visible from the far end of the corridor where one entrance was, seeming to draw you in as you walked through 3 empty white rooms. Red for danger? Red for warmth? I'm not sure but it definitely got your attention.

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Some photos of other things I saw on my trip to Dublin. The top one is the text near a painting by Mark Francis in the Hugh Lane gallery, although the gallery had a no photo policy when I asked the security guard he said he was going to get a cup of tea and what he didn't see didn't matter, however I didn't feel I could take photos of the actual work, seemed to push it a little. 

Next is a plaque for the women who suffered in the Magdalene Laundries; institutions that enslaved and abused over 30,000 innocent women while they were open. I always feel things like this should be remembered and commemorated, some of the things humans are capable of doing and think they're doing nothing wrong sicken me

Following that are several images of statues and plaques dedicated to Oscar Wilde, including some quotes I quite liked.

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Some more photos of Bacon's studio and of the plaque outside the house where he was born on Lower Baggot Street which I also visited. In the exhibit of his studio there were some 'peep hole' kind of things that you could look in and get a tiny glimpse of the inside of the studio, this is what the 3 images that appear like they're through a telescope with a wide dark circular border. 

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Some photos from Francis Bacon's studio when I visited in Dublin. Unfortunately didn't have my camera with my so had to use my aunts little snapshot one so the photos aren't the best. 

There was a small perspex box in the doorway to the studio where you could stand and look around but without actually being inside it. The techniques they used to transport it from London to Dublin were the same they use at archaeological digs, preserving not only the contents but the surroundings. When I left the Hugh Lane Gallery where the studio is I very nearly bought every book they had there. But instead I only bought one and made a list of the others that looked good, I hope to get a copy from somewhere. 

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Bought an underwater disposable camera to play about with in my Aunt's garden back home. Unfortunately the pond water was rather dirty and dark so not all that many of the images came out. The ones that did have been printed but I also got them on disc and I've edited them a little. I liked making them as grainy as possible, the dirty water and the poor light already gave a very unclear image and I like how the grain adds to his. On one of the images you can just about make out the frogspawn that I'd taken a sample of to look at under my microscope.  

There seems to be two features evident in the images, one is what looks like reflections of the fence or trees or flowers but this is actually the object itself, distorted and curved by the refractive nature of the water? When taking a photo of water from above it is usually quite evident where the air stops and the water begins, taking it from the other side of this barrier the barrier becomes less clear. 

The other feature in the photos are the colour and shapes against the dark background. There is nothing entirely identifiable, just colour and shape. 

Oh and then there's Clover and Ella, two of my three recovery buddies from when my knee was fixing. Ella loved hunting frogs and Clover liked to sunbathe. 

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Mark Francis is someone I came across in Dublin's Hugh Lane gallery. He works using science and things that aren't generally visible as strong influences, using sound waves and most importantly for me microscopic imagery as starting for his work. In some of the paintings shown here on the Tate website there are what appears to be cells/other microscopic things brought onto a more macro scale.

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Mark Francis is someone I came across in Dublin's Hugh Lane gallery. He works using science and things that aren't generally visible as strong influences, using sound waves and most importantly for me microscopic imagery as starting for his work. In some of the paintings shown here on the Tate website there are what appears to be cells/other microscopic things brought onto a more macro scale.

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Will Gompertz meets Marina Abramovic, self-proclaimed 'grandmother of performance art'.

Although I've never considered trying my own hand at 'performance art', some of the things Marina Abramovic talks about in this interview on Radio 4 have been important in my thoughts this semester. She talks about how the crucial thing to her for art is the interaction with the viewer. Without a viewer the 'art' is nothing. Interaction between work and viewer is where the art is really made. It takes its meaning and purpose from that interaction, forcing the viewer to be completely present in the moment, not thinking of what they have to do later that day, not dwelling in the past. Art is an experience of the present.. 

In the work I've done with mould this semester this is parts of this strikes a chord. Each time someone comes to look at it it will have changed slightly as it is constantly growing. Its growth and change is irrelevant without the viewer noticing the change. What is has been and what it will become are unimportant, the important thing is how it is at the point of being viewed.

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Been to the reconstruction of Bacon's studio today. And it was wonderful. The effort and measures that have been taken to move it from London to Dublin is incredible. Apparently they used the same techniques they do at archeological digs/extractions to maintain it exactly how it was. It was rather brilliant. They brought everything and rebuilt it exactly how it was. From pieces of paper on the floor, to paint brushes and paints, to the walls themselves that Bacon had used as his mixing pallette. THEY BROUGHT THE WALLS. The documentation of all of it was outstanding. Perry Ogden photographed his studio in 1998 before it was moved, I'm currently looking through the photographs he took. Every item was documented and its location mapped. Alongside the reconstruction of the studio, the Hugh Lane gallery has also got audio commentary of the studio, its contents, the people in Bacon's life, his influences and many many more areas that create such a large library of audio information that I could have sat for hour after hour listening to it all. Unfortunately I did not have time to do this, so only spent about forty minutes before I moved on to the rest of the gallery which wasn't completely focussed around Bacon, but was actually really lovely and had some very interesting things that were new to me and some other very well known things that I was surprised to find there.

I'm writing this on my tablet from the hotel room so shall leave this for now, but shall link some other things in following posts when I have access to a better computer.

Francis Bacon’s kitchen at 7 Reece Mews, London, 1998. Photo: Perry Ogden.

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Not really relevant to my work, but I thought these were beautiful.

Eruption of Puyehue - Puyehue National Park, Chile (by Francisco Negroni).

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Its nice to know I'm not the only one who gets this urge to see the insides of animals! Much neater job than I did on Mousey, though I did use a vegetable knife...

Set up traps in my room because a mouse wouldn’t let me sleep at night. One was set off next to my feet, while I was on my laptop …sneaky, but not sneaky enough. Decided on a surprise skinning session. I never knew mice have testicles bigger than their hearts 0_o