digital making — Nicola Naismith

The digital making blog was started when I became resident artist at Hethel Engineering Centre in April 2010 with almost weekly posts about conversations, explorations and reflections. It also covers some of the exhibitions / events / conversations that followed up to March 2011.

digital making was supported by The National Lottery through Arts Council England, Hethel Engineering Centre, Norfolk County Council, Sir Philip Reckitt Educational Trust and SCAN

The original blog was published on the a-n (The Artists Information Company) website, this version is largely the same. Some of the image files need to be located, so screen-grabs have been used where necessary as an interim measure. Corrections for spelling and grammar have been made and some pieces of text edited for readability and relevance.

14 April 2010

Meetings and start dates

The project started on Monday with a meeting in London. Discussing the conceptual basis of the project, ideas about exhibition venues and research papers with Helen Sloan from SCAN was a great way to kick things off. The conversation flowed as I emptied my brain about all the connections, connotations and relationships between the residency focus and my research. Helen put forward ideas and contexts for me to consider. It was a good start to the project.

Tuesday found me at a meeting at Hethel Engineering Centre. Derek Hillyard the engineering manager has been supportive of my project ideas from the outset, responding to my first email enquiry by inviting me to a meeting to discuss my ideas. With the project up and running its all systems go and we discussed logistics such as days to be on site, ordering software, publicity and Derek also suggested a visit to a local foundry that use RP which sounds great. I’m feeling excited about getting started on documenting this new type of industrial space over the next two weeks before I begin my CAD training.

Of course the project didn’t really start on Monday, it’s a culmination of ideas gathered from a whole host of sources, interactions, exhibition visits, conversations, reading and research all of which has been piling up over an extended period of time. These ideas are beginning to be filtered and organised, selected and refined which is a very welcome process. I have wanted to do this residency for a long time.

21 April 2010

Site visit

The intention of the site visit today was to document the architecture of the building. Focusing on only the exterior I became interested in how the landscape is reflected in the materials used.

The Hethel building sits in a large plot, with fields on 3 sides and a road to the front. There are other buildings around but some distance away, Lotus Cars, farms and a few houses are its closest neighbors. It’s a total contrast to the industrial scenes depicted in Lowery’s paintings, where buildings are packed together and people stream towards a factory entrance at the beginning of the working day.

I’m considering the ideas of new industrial space which I have been reading about in Manuel Castells book The Rise of the Network Society. He discusses the changes that have occurred in manufacturing through the integration of new technologies. I’m thinking Hethel is a new type of industrial space and ask myself when did engineering make the transition to using digital technologies?

22 April 2010

Work-pages started

I document my research and practice process meticulously using work-pages which are usually compiled into workbooks but also available as individual pages. I hand draw each page using traditional copying materials. I’m exploring ideas of editioning these books and if there should be one hand drawn master version with the rest being prints (photocopies) or if they should all be hand drawn.