South Korean Residency

GMD Senior Lecturer, Alistair McClymont recently exhibited artwork at the 2022 Changwon Sculpture Biennale in South Korea. Artists from around the world were asked to create artworks during a residency period. The artworks In winter I will fly and Standard strings and Uncertain Circles were both created in South Korea during this residency.

In winter I will fly is an installation involving a flying hair dryer that blows hot air into a balloon constructed from plastic. The hot air from the hair dryer inflates the 8 metre high form creating lift just like a hot air balloon, in winter when the air is cool the hair dryer provides just enough heat to lift itself off the ground, its height constrained by the length of its own electrical cord. This work plays with the possibilities of everyday devices and our connections to them. The hair dryer might be anthropomorphised, an object with the capability of flight, but ultimately constrained.

Standard strings and Uncertain Circles explore both real and virtual strings as they move across topology. A set of inflated paper and resin sculptures (Uncertain Circles), each with a thin black string embedded in resin sit in front of a projected digital artwork, (Standard Strings). These artworks are sited next to In winter I will fly all three being connected by a single investigative process.

Uncertain Circles is a set of inflated forms, each constructed from paper soaked in resin, then inflated with a hair dryer, the forms are preserved as the epoxy resin hardens. Each form has a circle drawn with a single piece of string, the length of which is exactly the artist’s arm span from fingertip to fingertip: 190cm (also the length of the electrical cord on the hair dryer). The perfect circle is distorted in an uncontrollable process when the paper form inflates, with each inflated form creating its own distorted circle.

Standard Strings uses real-time Javascript code to distort digital ‘strings’ of a fixed length, hundreds of individual strings gradually descend into increasingly complex topography, the digital algorithm acting as a virtual analogy for the physical process in the inflated paper sculptures that sit next to the projection. Standard Strings is projected from a computer running a website, the projected images are generated live in real-time, meaning that the projection never repeats and each moment is unique. A QR code in the exhibition allows the audience to view a version of the artwork on their mobile phone (or any other computer) and download a unique artwork.

View the digital artwork Standard Strings at the link below:
standardstrings.alistairmcclymont.com

Standard strings and Uncertain Circles are influenced by Marcel Duchamp’s 3 Standard Stoppages where strings were dropped to create a set of random profiles, the circles within Standard Strings fall through a virtual space, distorted by a noise algorithm, the physical threads within Uncertain Circles are forced to follow the inflated topology of the paper’s surface.