Morfill, S., Giles, S., 2019.

Found Gestures

This research output comprises a body of work produced through two international collaborative residencies at Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, and Five Years, London. Each residency resulted in an exhibition of a series of related artefacts.

The sound of the human voice, according to Derrida 'lacks extension.' '[A]lthough it belongs to duration, sound never lasts long enough' (79:119); the same is true of the gestures that synchronise with verbal expression. These works delineate the movements of speakers' hands as they draw in air - a point on each palm extending to a line as speakers describe the experience of seeing memorable art works during Hyde Park Art Center's and Five Years' histories. At Hyde Park Art Centre, alongside transcriptions of the spoken word, wall-based adhesive vinyl 'drawings' only temporarily preserve the brief moments of discourse from which they originated. They represent the slow drawing out of a moment of being, through an extended process of making that involves a chain of digital and material translations, and in the last instance they are removed from the wall leaving no trace.

This is a hybrid form of making in which motion capture and computer-aided manufacturing tools combine with the artistic gesture. Digital processes are challenged and coaxed to produce results that belie the mechanical gesture of the machine. In this work, movement is recorded in three-dimensions, and the mass of acquired digital data can be materialised in a range of ways. For Found Gestures (Chicago),the data has been collapsed into near 2-D to produce front view and top view drawings using painted adhesive vinyl over the length of the gallery walls and floor.

Whilst starting with the same motion capture process, the work developed for Five Years included a series of 3D printed artefacts, exhibited alongside diagrammatic drawings that provided context for the sculptural objects.

These works collectively presented an alternative archive to the accumulation of physical and digital material to promote and record exhibitions and events. Instead, these are a series of personal perceptions and memories that in turn generate a new form of drawing.

In November 2019 a 36-page full colour publication including two commissioned texts was published by Hyde Park Art Center. The publication, included documentation from both Found Gestures (Chicago) and Found Gestures (London).

https://www.hydeparkart.org/exhibition-archive/found-gestures/http://

www.fiveyears.org.uk/archive2/pages/263/Found_Gestures/263_2.html