Landscape on a Black Square – Process as part of the piece

This week, I am part of an exhibition called “Everyone should paint a black square at least once in their life”, which is on display at Raum Gallery. It is very interesting to see how 14 people approach this theme from so many different perspectives.

I have to say that this was quite an interesting experiment for me, as I wasn’t sure about what I wanted to make just hours before the deadline. At the end, I delivered a piece that evolved into the most unexpected thing, as I ended up doing a drawing/text piece.

The day before that, I made a drawing of a landscape inside a black square using a fairly complicated process. I did record the whole process as I thought it would present it next to the piece. On the day of the opening and having a chat with Anthi and Donald, I ended up writing a text that became a significant part of the piece.

The process (text)

1. A Preview was used to open a .jpg file made from a screen capture of an environment created using a .fbx file made from a .svg file generated from a .jpg file built from a .cr2 file of a Black Square drawn over a white sheet of paper from a black notebook.

2. A Blender was used to import a .svg file made from a .jpg file built from a .cr2 file of a Black Square drawn over a white sheet of paper from a black notebook. A curve was converted into a mesh, and then it was extruded on a “Z” axis. Afterwards, it was exported as a .fbx

3. Photoshop was used to open a .cr2 file of a Black Square drawn over a white sheet of paper from a black notebook.. It was developed and saved as a .jpg

4. A black marker was used to draw a Black Square over a white sheet of paper from a black notebook.

5. A camera was used to make a .cr2 file of a Black Square drawn over a white sheet of paper from a black notebook.

6. An Illustrator was used to open a .jpg file built from a .cr2 file of a Black Square drawn over a white sheet of paper from a black notebook. It was converted into a vector shape and exported as a .svg

7. A Unity was used to import an .fbx file created from an .svg file made from a .jpg file built from a .cr2 file of a Black Square drawn over a white sheet of paper from a black notebook. It was placed on a plane and scaled up until it looked huge, then a prefab character was placed inside and used to walk around to test all. Some mountains and trees were added, and it was tested again. A prefab character was used to find a perfect spot, then Command+Shift+3 were pressed to create a .jpg file from a screen capture.

8. A black pen was used to draw a landscape inside a black square that was drawn over a white sheet of paper from a black notebook using a black marker. It was a landscape from a .jpg file made from a screen capture of a 3D environment generated using a .fbx file created from a .svg file that was made from a .jpg file built from a .cr2 file of a Black Square drawn over a white sheet of paper from a black notebook.

   
   

The process

My reflections

I had the intention to add text as part of my pieces. This exercise has given me some ideas to use it in the future. It was fun to remove myself from the text and make it a vague instructional document. I think I will keep on looking for new ways to reflect on my process.