Conrad Shawcross makes large-scale sculptures, some mechanical and involving light. But he is conceptually a draftsman. He draws: images and objects are pulled into being from space and matter. Lines are directed, patterns form\u2014some are fleeting phantoms, others extruded masses and skeletons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The technique of using the optical tracery of a moving light source to make drawings was first employed by Picasso in 1949\u2014or at least it was first recorded then, by photographer Gjon Mili for LIFE<\/em>magazine. The drawn line essentially traces something\u2014a conceptual form\u2014that in a Platonic sense already exists. It is drawn out of the ether as a thread or perhaps like a gas; think of when an image emerges from a dotted haze in the pointillist paintings of Georges Seurat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During Hong Kong art week, and as part of an ongoing collaboration between The Peninsula Hotel and British Royal Academy of Arts, Shawcross will install one of his drawing robots in the hotel\u2019s grand classical lobby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shawcross was born in 1977 in England. His parents are prominent writers, and he studied at revered, but also quintessentially traditional English art schools: Chelsea School of Art, the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art (Oxford University), and the Slade School of Fine Art (University College London). Shawcross is the youngest member of the Royal Academy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Drawing ex Machina<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Conrad Shawcross:<\/strong> \u201c[The installation] in Hong Kong is part of an ongoing series of commissions called the \u201cAda Project\u201d. The core of it is a robotic instrument we have created, a six-axis robotic arm with a light at the end of it [ like a pen in a hand ], with which we create choreographed movements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe invite musicians to come to the studio and they have to spend a week with this preexisting movement and they respond to it musically\u2014in some way, to compose music for the machine. So instead of the robot responding to the music, the music responds to the machine\u2014flipping what normally happens, not unlike how a film-score [is composed] after all the edits have been done.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ran Dian:<\/strong> Essentially, the robotic arms trace a line or form, or, as Shawcross says, a path.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Conrad Shawcross:<\/strong> \u201cWhen you see a photograph of the robot\u2019s path, it\u2019s a bit misleading, because that is a photographic effect. But the arm actually moves in a very human-like way\u2014sensual, beguiling. It feels very alive. It\u2019s quite slow, not rapid.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe machine is essentially drawing a line in space and then, when the light bulb is travelling fast, the line is thinner, and when it\u2019s slow, the line is a bit thicker, like a brushstroke on paper. \u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ran Dian:<\/strong> There\u2019s a nice play on the concept of light being a particle as well as a beam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Conrad Shawcross:<\/strong> \u201cAbsolutely. When you\u2019re in the room with it, it\u2019s a particle; but if you blink, you can see the tracery of the wave on your eyelids.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lovelace \/ Byron \/ Computers<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The title of the work, \u201cThe Ada Project\u201d, comes from Ada Lovelace (1815\u201352), a Victorian mathematician and daughter of the romantic poet Lord Byron, who worked with Charles Babbage on a prototype computer called the \u201cAnalytical Engine.\u201d Often regarded as the first computer programmer, Ada died young following a misdiagnosis by doctors of ovarian cancer as \u201chysteria\u201d induced by over-education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ran Dian:<\/strong> How will it be shown in Hong Kong, at The Peninsula?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Conrad Shawcross:<\/strong> \u201cSo far we have shown it in quite a variety of locations, such as the Palais de Tokyo\u2014in the basement; a concrete, industrial, cavernous space, very dramatic and quite eerie. Then we took it to Tasmania as part of the Mofo Festival at MONA a couple of years ago, and then to the car park at the Vinyl Factory in London last year. In Hong Kong it is a really striking setting\u2014this colonial tearoom, very polite! This stark, lunar-like robot will be in the center of the lobby and while people are having tea and scones, this strange, quite sensual, quite sexual robot will be caressing itself in the middle of the floor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cDepending on the time of day, there will be a series of live concerts. Mira Calix [the musician] is coming out with us and she\u2019s going to perform from her track. But when it\u2019s not live, you can go up to the robot and there\u2019s a series of four buttons you can press to activate the track and choreography. It\u2019s like a robotic Wurlitzer jukebox. At the moment we\u2019ve got four tracks, but it\u2019s an ongoing project, so in the next year I hope to commission a couple more.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The \u201cAda Project\u201d is co-presented by the Royal Academy of Arts and The Peninsula Hong Kong from 22 March\u20135 April. Paradigm Studies will be on view at Victoria Miro, Art Basel Hong Kong, from 24\u201326 March.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Ran Dian \u71c3\u70b9translated b y Wu Chenyun … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/randian-art.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com\/2022\/12\/zh-hans\/image-531.png\")
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