Festine Lente: Make Haste Slowly

“Festina lente: Make Haste Slowly” comprises a group of sculptures and prints made during a two month residency at the two partner foundations in Eindoven: Beeldenstorm (a fine art foundry) and Daglicht (a print workshop). The project was funded by Arts Council England (East) and explores the relationship between digital and material process through print and metal casting.

Beeldenstorm/Daglicht was an ideal context for me to explore the diagrammatic as it interfaces between the digital and the material. By working with printmaking I examined this feature to reveal an overall process of working. This technical aspect of the digital material relationship enabled an analysis of the paradox of things/events seeming to be quick (like the digital) or slow (like the material) while the converse is often the case.

In the Renaissance, the paradoxical is expressed through epigram and emblem mainly in Neoplatonic cultural circles and I explore these ideas, as well as that of narrative, through the sculptures and prints. For example, the notion of digital space as a manifestation of Cartesian coordinates and algorithms is examined and expanded through digital modelling of animals, into other kinds of metaphoric, less rational spaces whereby objects are “grown” rather than constructed, and wherein digital space becomes a more “nurturing” environment. These processes and spatial features find expression in the printmaking that transcribes the process of digital manifestation to final cast metal object through a non-linear narrative structure (the surimono form).

My current research activities continue to address the relationship between 3D digital modelling and material engagement through sculpture. These artefacts embody process, and express connections between the two realms explored in a variety of materials and unique techniques. The digital/material linkages resonate with broader cultural concerns.