A rendering of the proposed Bolt Tower at the Oklahoma State Fairgrounds. (Jenny Sabin Studio)
Bolt Tower: New sculpture proposed at Oklahoma fairgrounds fuses arts, tech and memories
About
Posts by :
Dallas Mavericks beat the Phoenix Suns 98-89, Kim and Khloe Kardashian attend – Photojournalist, Photographing it All – Brandon Wade Photography
Turning sound into sculpture, Brian Eno fuses art and technology with ‘Turntable II’
The renowned musician and composer Brian Eno debuted his first Turntable collection in 2021. Eno unveiled the Turntable II in 2024 after a slew of improvements and tinkerings that demonstrated his developing creative vision. This most recent version of his inventive product design is currently on display at London’s Paul Stolper Gallery, captivating audiences with its blend of artistic expression and technology.
The Turntable II is made with a circular platter and base that alternate colours on their own, phasing through various combinations of generative ‘colour scapes’ easily. The way the lights change, how quickly they change, and their pattern are all programmed, but they change slowly and randomly with the ability to play vinyl at 33 and 45 rpm. It’s the softness of these colours and the way they merge that is so seductive. When it doesn’t have to do anything in particular, like play a record, it is a sculpture,” the product designer shares. Turntable II, which Eno has called both a sculpture and a record player, may also be used as an ambient lighting piece while the vinyl is not being played.
Following his early experiments with light and sound design in the late 1960s, Brian Eno was fascinated by the complex, nuanced, and unpredictable results produced by seemingly simple deterministic systems. Eno notes that the apparent simplicity of these systems belies a deep complexity, a concept that he finds to be in striking agreement with both the ideas of cybernetics and the theory of evolution. “I use the same sorts of generative processes in music as in painting, based on overlapping unsynchronised cycles. Several overlapping light cycles will keep producing different colour balances and blends – and different shadow formations that slowly evolve and never exactly repeat. The process is simple, the results are complex. I started using light and video because I wanted to make visual experiences that had some of the qualities of musical experiences – that’s to say, that existed and changed in time. I wanted to make very slowly changing paintings, to blur the edges that separate those different forms,” Eno explains.
According to Brian Eno, the conventional boundary separating art and design is not inflexible. He compares art to media such as ceramics where interaction is innate, viewing art as including both active participation and quiet observation. Eno draws attention to the odd trend that meaning-related queries often surface in the setting of avant-garde or complex music, in contrast to the more widely acknowledged enjoyment of mainstream music. Eno emphasises the transitory nature of artistic expression and the impossibility of absolute ownership or completeness, reflecting on themes of impermanence and seizing fleeting moments concerning any possible meaning within his work.
With its blend of generative colour scapes, ambient lighting functionality, and vinyl playback capabilities, the Turntable II transcends traditional categorisations, blurring the lines between sculptural art, functional objects, and a lighting design. Eno defies preconceived ideas about what defines art and design with his visionary approach, which is based on his lifelong fascination with complicated systems and his goal to create immersive, ever-evolving experiences. Viewers are inspired to reflect on the transient aspect of life and the beauty found in living in the present moment as they are captivated by the Turntable II’s interplay of light, sound, and form.
WePresent | Vicente Manssur photographs Catalonia’s lesser-seen places
On looking up the places he’d glimpsed he found that they—much like his hometown—were almost photographically nonexistent, beyond a few bland images of the main plazas or churches. “I wanted to create a photographic guide to these small places that have no visual memory or representation. People see these places from the window, but they don’t really see them, they don’t know them.”
Manssur wanted to explore the “concept of the non-place, towns or cities that seem to exist only as satellites to others, to show that these places, which most of the time don’t matter, which almost don’t exist, can be places of interest too…” This was far from a novel motivation for Manssur, who felt similarly motivated by his photos of his hometown. As well as wanting to fill a void in the photographic lexicon, he wanted to challenge preconceptions. “People complain about Guayaquil. They say it’s ugly, unphotographable, dangerous…I wanted to give value to it. You only have to pay attention to see it.”
Harry Kane statue in storage for years and hidden from view in London
A sculpture of England’s record scorer was commissioned by Waltham Forest Council in 2019 but is still yet to appear anywhere in public
Minnesota Ice’s sculptures help boost business at south Minneapolis’ Red Wagon Pizza
It may be hard to come by this winter, but a Minnesota-based company embraces all things ice.
Birth UK Welcomes Director and Photographer Celine Van Heel
Celine van Heel stands out as a director and photographer who embraces authenticity and uniqueness.
Celine began her career by capturing images of her 92 year-old grandfather during covid. He was her first muse and inspiration (she called him “the Spanish King”). Celine set up an Instagram account for him, which lead to them designing a global collection and shooting the accompanying stills and film campaign for Zara.
Colour and extravagance are at the core of her work, creating vibrant and dynamic imagery that transports viewers into a bold and vivid universe. Her work pushes the boundaries of artistic conventions, delivering striking and lively images that celebrate inclusivity, fun, and uniqueness. Her skill in capturing these extreme and exaggerated moments has led her to create images that challenge the conventional norms of fashion film and photography as we know it.
“Celine’s work is so rich in colour, texture and narrative, her characters exuding exceptional, unquestionable naughtiness. Celine is carving out her own unique narrative . Undoubtedly one of the most exciting new talents in the industry.” said Kate Elson, managing director and executive producer.
“I’m very happy to join this family. As a photographer and director, it is brilliant to have the support of both the film and Image division at Birth. My 92 year old grandfather ‘The Spanish King’ is my forever muse and the reason why I started doing this. I love colour, extravagance, diversity and irony. I can’t wait to introduce him and my work to the UK! Let the show begin!” said Celine Van Heel.
“Satanic” sculpture coming to Houston
The piece features spiraling horns and a domed skirt adorned with mosaic tiles.
History in a photograph
Visitors to Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest on Saturday got a glimpse into photography during Jefferson’s time with a seminar on collodian wet plate processing.
Thomas Jefferson was fascinated with technology, such as the camera obscurer, which allows the photographer to project a reversed silhouette of an image onto a piece of paper. Visitors learned about the history of the photography form that laid the groundwork for modern photography.
In the studio with Mary McCartney
The photographer’s influences range from Eve Arnold and Pre-Raphaelite painters to her artist mother. She welcomes us to her West London studio, Leica camera in hand
In the bathroom on the ground floor of Mary McCartney’s studio hangs a framed image of the Queen. Dressed in pink florals, she gazes shrewdly from the front page of The Daily Telegraph, framed by one of her famous red briefing boxes. Over the decades, the Queen was captured in many moods, via many methods. Stately as a painting, soft in black-and-white, snapped at close range with flash – each iteration becoming as much a portrait of the photographer as it is of the monarch herself.
McCartney made the picture in 2015 to celebrate Elizabeth II becoming Britain’s longest reigning monarch. Like much of her work, it has a candid feeling of something caught mid-motion – the Queen glancing over her shoulder at something beyond the lens, reading glasses just visible in one hand.
McCartney’s studio is testament to her varied and visually alert career. Tucked away on a quiet cobbled mews in West London, its three floors combine all of the practical needs of a working environment – office space, shoot backdrops, an extensive range of herbal teas – with the white-washed atmosphere of a gallery.
The space is festooned with McCartney’s images: some in a state of completion, printed at huge scale, others attached to a large silver board with magnets, covered in felt tip notes. A monobrowed Tracey Emin (as Frida Kahlo) stares down from one wall. Mark Rylance dressed as Olivia from Twelfth Night from another. Celebrities face off frogs and white horses, reigning over the neatly arranged piles of contact sheets and books. On the floor, a photo of neon lights has been turned into a rug.
“When I first came here, it was all offices,” McCartney explains. “I just stripped it out… It’s nice to have it quite clean.” We are sitting at a huge round, wooden table that used to belong to McCartney’s mother, Linda. To one side, a bank of windows reveals a bright-ish winter day – all that glass crucial for a photographer who prefers to work with natural light. In the background members of her team drift up and down the stairs.
McCartney has been here for more than two decades, using it as a hub for photographing, post-production, exhibition organisation, ideas generation, and more. For her most recent publication – a plant-based cookbook-cum-portrait project called Feeding Creativity in which she captured figures including the Haim sisters and David Hockney eating her meals – she had two large armchairs installed near the kitchen so that she had somewhere comfortable to sit and write.
“It became my friend. What I like about film is that when you’re wandering taking pictures, it’s just you and the camera”
The table is not the only thing McCartney has inherited from her mother. Also a photographer, Linda McCartney was responsible for providing Mary with her very first camera, a Leica R7. After grappling with the challenges of shutter speeds and light meters, it quickly offered a new window onto the world, travelling everywhere with her. “It became my friend,” McCartney says. “What I like about film is that when you’re wandering taking pictures, it’s just you and the camera.”
In her 1927 essay ‘Street Haunting’, Virginia Woolf dwelled on the pleasures of walking through London. She describes the process of becoming extra-observant, distilled to “a central pearl of perceptiveness, an enormous eye.” For McCartney, the camera crystallised a similar feeling – preserving and making concrete the fleeting details she had been noticing since childhood. “It can be this big scene, but you see one little flower or something within it and it then seems like a photograph.”
As an ambassador, McCartney works frequently with Leica cameras, whether an SL for “all singing, all dancing” projects that might end up on a billboard, or the Q “if you’re out and about, or at a party.” She also has “a little compact Leica” which fits in her bag – another portable eye.
This range of models speaks to the breadth of her work, spanning portraiture, fashion, landscape, and documentary (both static and film), as well as more commercial endeavours. A particular light comes into her eyes when discussing portraiture: the delicacy of creating a rapport, knowing when to speak and when to be silent, the skills both personal and technical that go into reaching something “deeper than surface level.”
“If I could do a portrait of someone and just be in their home and take a picture of their unmade bed, that would make me happy”
Some of McCartney’s portraits are made here in the studio. “If I’m shooting here… it pares it all back,” she observes. “It’s really about the pose, the connection, how you’re feeling with the person. There’s less space to hide.” Really though, one suspects that she is happiest out and about where her gaze can rove.
“I love going into somebody’s environment,” she confirms, explaining her interest in what people’s possessions and personal clutter betray about them, “like how Pre-Raphaelite painters would have little symbols.” She references a 1996 photo of hers titled ‘Mum’s Side of the Bed’, a patch of sunlight falling across beautifully embroidered duvet and pillows. “If I could do a portrait of someone and just be in their home and take a picture of their unmade bed, that would make me happy.”
This image is currently sitting as a sizable print on the ground floor, resting against the bookshelves. It is magnificent up close, the scale revealing every wrinkle and stitch. It was recently featured in her 2023 Sotheby’s show Can We Have a Moment?, part of a trilogy of solo exhibitions that began at the Château La Coste in France and ended at A Hug From the Art World in New York last November.
Each taking a different theme, this trilogy gave McCartney free reign to revisit her archives from the past three decades, drawing new threads between her intimate, playful images – family portraits, rubbing shoulders with snogging couples, muddy festival-goers, fleshy roses, and performers readying themselves backstage.
The pleasure of a photograph is not just in the taking, but in its continued afterlife. McCartney’s studio points to the ongoing physicality of a photograph, whether it is a question of tweaking colours and rebalancing shadows or drawing out fresh details in the chosen scale and opacity of a print. In an exhibition setting, too, new conversations can be created as disparate images speak to one another across time and genre.
Towards the end of our conversation, McCartney brings up a fortuitous encounter she had with Magnum photographer Eve Arnold in the 1990s while overseeing a show of Linda’s work in a museum in Bradford. Arnold was working on her own in an adjacent gallery. “She was incredible… She looked like the lady in the [Looney Toons] Tweety bird cartoons. But then when you observed her hanging the show, she knew exactly what she wanted. She was very direct, feisty in a really good way.”
“Take a moment, observe, and think – what is it that I see here?”
The two got to know one another and McCartney learned an important lesson from this woman who had coaxed extraordinary candour from the famous: that the subject should always come first. “She had so much trust with her sitters,” McCartney reflects. Sometimes the perfect image might arrange itself in front of the camera as if conjured – but if it ruptures that sense of trust, it is not worth it. This sort of mutuality seems to define McCartney’s work, which often has a grounded, contemplative edge, full of quiet warmth. Really, it is very simple, she says. When you lift a camera, you “take a moment, observe, and think – what is it that I see here?”
Images taken by Alice Zoo with Leica’s SL2-S, with 35mm, 50mm, and 90mm lenses
